revived in a scientific form, similar to what we have witnessed, or, if
we look around us, may still witness, with our own eyes. And as little
can the free spirit of supreme knowledge look down from its own height
on this center of the soul, and pay no regard either to faith or love.
In the depths of sensuous observation, amid all the rich treasures of
physical and historical science, it can not move as sovereign without
being first invested with the luminous garment of pure faith and love.
Otherwise it only hastens from one error to another to fall from the
first abyss into a second and still deeper one.

The pure and living faith of a loving soul abiding permanently in God,
is properly the center of the human consciousness--the natural passage
of life for the senses as they ascend into the heights, and for the mind
or spirit as it penetrates into the depths. It is the connecting mean
which not only reconciles and adjusts, joins and combines the two, but
also restores them to harmonious unity.

In the preceding Lecture I considered the notion of the truth in which
the supreme science and the divine faith coincide, and are at unison in
reference to their subject-matter--consequently, as the right notion of
Him who is truth itself. Viewing it thus from its objective side
principally, I designated it the sum and source of all truth. We have
now, in the progress of our speculations, met again with this notion in
its subjective aspect. It is chiefly in regard to its form that it is at
present to engage our attention. We have, in short, to answer the
question how the consciousness must organically be formed and fashioned,
and divided, but still harmonized in all its parts, so that in thought
and knowledge, in faith, love, and science, in investigating and in
learning, it may be well-grounded and find a stable resting-point, and
be no longer distracted by dissension and doubt.

Now the more the living faith becomes love the more does it, through the
immediate feeling and personal experience of life, attain to the
certainty of science. For whatever we experience in our own selves, or
whatever our own life brings as acquainted with, whatever we are
immediately sensible of, and feel that we also know and are certain of
it, that at least is a matter on which we are not likely to be led
astray by the seeming dialectical proofs of the opposite, or by all
skeptical attacks, or objections to the effect that such an immediate
sensation and knowledge of a higher object is impossible. Although we
are incapable of refuting them, we are, nevertheless, unmoved by the
doubts which are raised even against the possibility of our own life and
existence. We let them pass by and still live on in the world until, in
some unlooked-for moment, and some unhoped-for way, the true solution,
and the answer to these cavils which call in question the reality both
of man’s inner life and his personal experience, spontaneously suggest
themselves. And in the same way that the highest science, so soon as it
discerns and understands its own nature, also becomes conscious of
faith, and of its own dependence on faith, and being supported,
completed, and perfected thereby, comes into immediate and living
contact with it, so, on the other hand, the higher faith in the divine,
the more vivid and the more earnest it is in love, becomes a more
immediate conviction, and a science founded on the personal experience
of life.

Faith in the soul, as the center of man’s entire consciousness, may be
likened to the outspread canopy of the blue heavens, according to that
olden notion of it as a firmament, which perhaps in its figurative
investiture still contains much that is strikingly true. According to
this old but beautiful conception, the firmament was a definite limit
that divides the heaven from the earth. Above it the free ether of light
diffuses itself and stretches into the wide regions of illimitable
space; while in the lower sphere, inclosed by the firmament, the wind of
life [_Lebenswind_] now plays with refreshing motion, now descends to
the earth in quickening dews or fertilizing showers, or draws out of the
ground and to the light the hidden springs of life and mighty streams.
Faith, therefore, is, as it were, the heavenly firmament in the
consciousness that divides the streams of spiritual life and of external
and internal science that are above it, from those that are under it. If
this boundary be taken away, or violently broken through, the light and
the darkness are no longer held apart, but mingle together in one
confused and orderless mass. The true light grows darker and gradually
becomes extinct, while the darkness begins to shine with a false glare
and the glimmering twilight of pernicious delusion. The old chaos breaks
in again upon the human mind, and it becomes anew what it formerly was,
“without form and void.”

When, however, the triple consciousness preserves its beautiful order
and harmony, then the spirit, as the heavenly height above, the sensible
nature as the deep below, and the soul as the firmament between them,
are indeed divided, but not separated or hostilely opposed to each
other. On the contrary, the height as well as the deep, and the whole
circle of spiritual existence, are organically combined and united
together in this center of faith in the soul. Now this original
constitution of the mind being preserved, the further development and
progress of knowledge and truth may be regarded as the second step of
internal creation, wherein the light begins to shine more and more on
the mind and on science. The first clear insight, on the other hand, and
internal perception that the highest science and the divine faith are
not essentially distinct, but are fundamentally identical, must be
considered as the earliest entrance of the spirit of truth into the
heart of man.

Such is the right notion of faith, and of a mind wherein faith and
science are organically united and harmoniously concordant. But in order
to afford freedom of choice between faith and infidelity, it is
necessary to contrast this living image with the complete picture of a
mind involved in doubt, distraction, unbelief, and error. For all the
motives that can influence a decision must be furnished by a simple
comparison of the two, which, indeed, if made honestly and completely,
furnishes of itself the solution of the problem.

Now I have already more than once called your attention to the tendency
to discord, and to the disposing causes to error which subsist in the
natural constitution of the human mind with its four poles or members.
In particular I directed your notice to the fact that reason and fancy,
such as they now are in their present state of mutual alienation and of
hostile opposition to each other, can not be regarded as original
faculties of the human consciousness. Originally they were both in
unison in the thinking and loving soul so long as living and working in
faith and truth, it was on that account confirmed by the divine Spirit,
and preserved by union with Him. But when it had once lost this center
of unity, and, its light being obscured, it had become a prey to
dissension, it immediately fell asunder into these two halves or
faculties of thought. On the one hand stood the reason--as a mere organ
of reflection--one, _i.e._, which, in lifeless abstraction, thinks over
the objects previously presented to it, or as a mere directive faculty
of thought, without any originative powers of its own; while, on the
other, the fancy presented itself with a blindly-productive energy in
thought and invention, as a wild, but, nevertheless, living sense and
instinct of nature.

Reason and fancy, therefore--those two faculties of half truth, if it be
allowable so to speak--whenever, instead of seeking to escape from
dissension by reverting to a higher center of unity, they stand
isolated, and attempt each by itself to reign supreme, are the real
source and actual seat of all error. Now, one species of error to which
man has been most prone ever since his soul was rent asunder and lost
its unity, is the subjective shape which he gives to material phenomena.
For that fancy, even when most comprehensive, purest, and best,
invariably remains more or less subjective, is a fact which no man will
either wish or attempt to deny, any more than that the imagination takes
its beginning from the sensuous impressions of the material world. And
this subjectivity of the fancy may, I think, be taken for granted, even
without any reference to and without discussing the question of the
possibility of demoniacal influences.

Now, this subjective shaping of material phenomena forms the foundation
of all mythology; it is the general explanation of all the facts of
heathenism. It is, of course, implied in the very principle of its
explanation, that manifold and various shapes or forms and developments
are both conceivable and possible. And, in actual fact, it exhibits the
greatest diversity, from the rude objects of the grossest Fetischism up
to the exquisite creations of a refined and artistic mythology. In its
actual manifestations, however, and in its effects on practical life,
the latter still retains its affinity with the former; at least, it
rests on the same foundation of a poetical religion--some view of the
universe embodied in a real shape--in short, the deification of nature.

We have here taken the olden heathenism in a very simple light, and
quite generally as a materialism assuming a poetic form and expression,
but one, at the same time, in which, as soon as we pierce through its
poetical investiture, we discern many points of contact with Pantheism.
When, however, pursuing a searching historical inquiry into the heathen
modes of conception, we enter thoroughly and deeply into its details, we
meet therein with so many magical rites and usages, that, in spite of
any previous inclination to the contrary, we feel indisposed to deny the
possibility of a demoniacally-affected imagination having, in some
degree, influenced the character of heathenism. And, indeed, even in a
philosophical point of view, there does not exist any sufficient reason
for such a denial. This, however, as we formerly said, is a matter which
needs not to be taken into consideration at present.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that this error of a heathenish
deification of nature is confined to the ancient world, or to those
great and half-civilized primeval races of the remotest East, which,
however, remained, and still continue, as it were, a living monument of
an earlier epoch in the development of humanity. In the more
intellectual ages of the world, physical science, or the philosophy of
nature, may still be heathenish. It may be this, even while abstaining
rigorously from all symbolical language, it comes forward in the highest
elevation of the dynamical theory, and in pure scientific formularies.
This may be the case even when outwardly it appears to be highly
spiritual, or, at least, far removed from all the ordinary features of
materialism. And it is invariably such whenever it recognizes nothing
higher or superior to the infinite vital force and its dynamical play
and law, and, consequently, does but deify nature. Heathenish it must
ever remain so long as it does no more than this. This forms, as it
were, a relapse of science into heathenism, and here, under a different
form, fancy asserts her olden authority. For this purpose she does but
assume a geometrical shape, and, decking herself out with all the riches
of science, and moving with free dynamic action, speaks a thoroughly
mathematical language. The point of indifference, and the positive and
the negative pole of all existence, are now, so long as such a
philosophy recognizes nothing beyond them, the new gods which, in those
scientific fictions, whereof our own age has been profuse enough, may
receive a shifting rank and honor, but still hold a similar position
therein to that of Jupiter and Venus, or Mars and Apollo, in the ancient
mythologies.

When, however, in epochs pre-eminently devoted to science, and possessed
of a true or false scientific enlightenment, we look to the whole age
and its general tone, this philosophical error of an exclusive
materialism, and of a scientific deification of nature, does not appear
to be the most universally prevalent. It occurs rather as an episode and
an exception, and, in a certain limited degree, as an opposition to
another error, which, as it is received far more generally, so it
exercises a still more despotic authority over the minds of men. I mean
rationalism; this is properly the new heathenism of scientific times.
Here, in the infinity of dialectics, and the endless dialectical
disputes of an abstract and empty thinking, as well as in the false
semblance of a logical necessity which prevails in these logical
disputations, lies the source of the second leading error of philosophy.
All erroneous systems, whether of philosophy or religion, lie somewhere
between these two extremes of false thought. Every species of
theoretical or practical unbelief or erring faith, or even of a
scientific superstition, either approximates, on the one hand, to
naturalism, whether under the garb of a poetical symbolism, or the
scientific form of a dynamical theory, or, on the other, to the
absolutism of the reason, with its dead formularies. Every religious and
every philosophical error is either a subordinate or a distorted species
of one or the other--or, it may be, a mixture--a mean compounded of
both. Manifold, however, or, rather, innumerable, are the several
changes and combinations into which these two elements of infidelity and
an erring faith may, and, indeed, actually do, enter.

These, then, are the two principal elements out of which all the other
forms of error are produced. Reason, therefore, and fancy must be looked
upon as their true roots and sources in the human consciousness. They
spring either from the scientific productive faculty of imagination, as
the unpurified sense of nature before the Spirit of God has moved on the
face of these waters of infinite life, or from the mere subjective
reason, which, in its pursuit of the absolute, thinks only and knows
only its own Me. It is on this soil also that philosophical error first
assumes a systematic shape and development.

Our meaning will perhaps be made clear by an illustration from the
healing art. Confining ourselves to the simple facts, we might say
correctly enough, fever and gout, as two leading forms of human disease,
have their seats either in the organs and circulation of the blood, or
in the system of the bones and muscles. Still it would not be
inconsistent with such a statement to believe that the primary occasion
or cause of both evils has a deeper and more hidden origin in some
higher organ of life within the human frame, and in some derangement or
disturbance of its functions. In their outward effects, however, and
manifestation, these two diseases respectively seize upon these two
spheres of bodily organization, and there spend themselves. And the same
is true of those two intellectual diseases, rationalism and the absolute
system of nature, as regards the reason and fancy. The latter are their
principal seats: they form the domain wherein all the false productions
of erring systems are engendered and spring up, or, in other words, the
spot where the paroxysm of their internal enmity and strife comes to a
complete outbreak. Of course we do not mean that these two diseases
always present themselves simply and purely. In the morbid state of the
intellect, as well as in the similar case of organic affection, there
are numerous complications of disease which require a careful and
accurate treatment. The first cause of all intellectual disease, of
scientific error, or systematic infidelity, or generally of every
species of a false faith, may lie still deeper, or must be traced still
higher to some more remote and hidden cause. And, in truth, the primary
origin of all human error is to be found in the alienation of the mind
or spirit from God and His eternal light, and in its inevitable
consequences--the obscuration of the soul, and the blinding, and the
aberration and disorder of the senses--and especially of the higher
scientific sense for truth. And in order that the senses may be
gradually restored to their true state and order, and reopened--and in
order that the soul be also illuminated anew, the spirit must recover
its true luminous center in God. When this is once done, the whole of
man’s cognitive faculty will be restored to its original state.

But in the outward manifestations of consciousness, as it is now
entangled in and limited by the material, or sensible world, or
practical life, the absolute reason, and a fancy totally merged in and
engrossed by nature, form the two poles of philosophical error. In all
the systems hitherto so frequently alluded to, these two are essentially
the only sources of delusion, although, of course, innumerable
intermediate tints or chemical combinations of both are possible. The
understanding and the will--that is, a faulty sophistical intellect, and
a faulty unconditional or absolute volition--do, no doubt, essentially
co-operate in the formation and completion of both these erroneous
systems of science. There are, besides, certain passionate and personal
errors and prejudices of the understanding no less than of the will.
These, however, in their immediate effects, are practical, and confined
to actual life. At least, taken by themselves, and without the
co-operation of fancy and reason, they will never be able to create a
scientific system.

In order, however, more precisely to indicate the extent to which the
understanding and will co-operate in the production of philosophical
error, it is necessary to repeat my previous remarks, and also to add
some more precise determinations with respect to the form of aberration
peculiar to, and, as it were, inborn in, each of these faculties. As
concerns the will, we placed its proneness to err in its unconditional
or absolute volition, which manifests itself in life as a destructive or
disturbing force, where, however, its effects are variable, being
proportionate to the wider or narrower sphere of action. In all alike,
however, this principle of absolute willing retains its true character.
It shows itself, first of all, in the obstinacy of the child, where it
forms the greatest obstacle that education has to contend against. Its
action is, no doubt, but very weak here; still this apparently
insignificant phenomenon serves to prove--and for this purpose we
referred to it--that the fault has its root, and is, as it were, inborn
in the very nature of man, and in the present constitution of his mind.
As for the second degree, since the evil runs through all the various
stages of human life, and assumes manifold shapes, we are, therefore, at
no loss for examples. Whether we take our instance from the obstinacy of
the founder of a sect passionately adhering to and maintaining the
opinions he has once adopted, or that of the leader of some dangerous
political party, in either case the consequences of this pernicious
principle will appear to be, in the highest decree, extensive and awful.
But, lastly, it shows itself in its full and most frightful energy in
the reckless and unsparing lust of conquest, and in the unsatiable
thirst of absolute dominion which stimulates the conquering despot.

The second of the two similes, however, as it is most immediately
connected with, so it throws most light upon, the problem before us, the
explanation, viz., of intellectual error. For science, too, has its
sects, and even into the calm regions of philosophy (for such it surely
ought to be, as professing to be the satisfaction of our inmost longing
after a knowledge of ourselves and of nature in truth and in God), the
violent spirit of party finds too often an entrance. In the spirit of
system, and in the prejudices of a view or opinion once adopted, the
absolute and resolved will, which originally is rather a fault of
character than an error of the understanding, nevertheless co-operates
essentially to the establishment of a philosophical error, at least from
its formal side. When, however, as, under the influence of the spirit of
system, is easily, and indeed generally done by the founders of
scientific sects, the _absolute_ is itself adopted as the immediate
object, then it is the pursuit of this idea of the unconditional that
carries each of these two general forms of error to the highest pitch of
extravagance. Applied to nature and any positive view and particular
system thereof, it gives to it a character of exclusiveness and
definiteness, by which, separated from all that is higher and properly
divine, and made to rest entirely in itself, it is carried away to the
pantheistic self-sufficiency and deification of a false unity. Combined
with the egoistic or subjective reason, this pursuit of the absolute and
the idea thereof creates the idealistic delusion, or, at least, readily
gives rise to it, and this is the first step, or, at any rate, the usual
introduction, to scientific atheism.

As to the understanding--in one of the earliest of these Lectures, we
mentioned abstract thought as its peculiar form of error. It is
unquestionable that the understanding may lose itself in mere abstract
and dead thinking, so as, amid its mass of purely abstract conceptions,
to forget entirely all truly pregnant and vital cogitation. Such as
understanding, there can be no doubt, must either be defective in its
organization, or imperfectly and falsely developed; and so it goes on
deceiving itself and propagating error among others. Correctly speaking,
however, this abstract thinking does not belong to the understanding,
so much as to the reason, which is even the faculty of abstraction. And
indeed, apart from its great and manifold abuses, the latter, in its
right place and within its assigned limits, forms nothing less than a
natural requirement and an essential function of the human mind. As for
the understanding, it is based on intellection; consequently it supposes
that in this intellectual act the object is vividly seen through and
thoroughly penetrated by the mind. And this object may be either an
external one, taken from nature or actual life, or internal--a mere
thought or conception, and the word or name designating it. In the
latter case, the mental act of penetration is directed to ascertaining
the true and original sense of an idea, or the import of the notion, or
of the term by which it is designated. An understanding which has lost
itself among abstract ideas must, in such purely abstract thinking,
become eventually entirely extinct. Wholly, however, without life and
spirit, the understanding, according to its peculiar character, can
never be; it is therefore its total absence, or a very defective
condition of it, rather than its death, that is marked out and indicated
by such a state.

But if we wish to determine the particular fault or error that is
peculiar to any one faculty of the human consciousness, it is evident
that we must not seek for it in any defective state or imperfect
development; but, on the contrary, in the highest and fullest energy.
But now an extremely ingenious, clear, and vivid intellect may be
combined with what I have lately termed an evil genius--the false power
of genius. In such a combination, we have the true state of a perverted
understanding, or of that aberration which is peculiar to it, and for
which the term of a sophistical intellect seems the tersest and most
appropriate designation. And this sophistical understanding is ever the
working organ and instrument for the building and construction of all
false systems, and to which sooner or later the latter are all obliged
to have recourse.

With regard, then, to the co-operation of the sophistical understanding
in the formation of philosophical error, and its share and influence on
the spirit and the matter of any system of untruth, it furnishes an
opposition to the idealistic confusion which the absolute will produces
by its predominant idea of the unconditional. Here we have rather a
predominating tendency to a realistic view of the world, according to
the principle it adopts of the universal insignificance of all things,
not merely in reference to morals or practical life, and in the domain
of history, but also in nature and the whole creation. And with this
view is associated a skeptical contempt for all who dare to think
otherwise--all ordinary minds who can not rise to the height where the
consciousness of knowing and believing nothing sits enthroned. This
tendency, therefore, and this error of the sophistical understanding, is
most immediately related to, and associated with, the dialectical
confusion of the reason with its endless disputations. But as the
absolute volition and pursuit of the unconditional can not well be
thought of entirely apart from a certain perversion of the intellectual
powers, so the operation of the sophistical understanding is impossible,
without a certain admixture of an evil will and an intentional
determination to oppose the truth.

But notwithstanding this intrinsic connection between these two
intellectual faults, yet in their outward manifestation, and in actual
life, they often stand wide apart from each other. The true notion of a
sophistical intellect will perhaps be best illustrated in a few words by
recalling to your recollection the most celebrated writer of the
eighteenth century, who exercised so great an influence not only on the
minds of his countryman, but on the whole spirit of the age.[50] If,
again, it were necessary to employ instances in order to give you a
clear idea of the philosophical pursuit of the absolute, examples enough
might be found among the German schools and philosophers of recent
times. But to revert to the sophistical intellect: rarely has it been,
and rarely will it be, found manifesting itself in such fullness as it
did in this anti-Christian and worldly writer, who indeed worshiped the
age which worshiped him, but mocked and scoffed at all besides.

Now as to these two opposite systems of error and unbelief--rationalism,
viz., and a false idolatrous system of nature--in their inmost essence
they are both equally false and pernicious. In this respect there is
nothing to choose between them; they are alike utterly abominable. Even
in the judgment of theology, pantheism, as the one extreme of error on
the side of nature, can scarcely appear less false and abominable than
atheism as the other idealistic extreme. Both must be placed on the same
line; for the one no less than the other is a full and perfect refusal
to recognize the one Eternal Truth and the Living God.

Looking, however, to their external manifestation and effects--a
philosophy of nature which cloaks its thoroughly heathenish sentiments
beneath the bright and seductive attraction of beautiful and
highly-finished form--may perhaps appear more dangerous and more
pernicious than rationalism, especially when in the comparison the
latter appears under its more moderate, pliant, and skillfully modified
phases.

But it is not so much in and by themselves, and generally, that we have
here to consider these two kinds of error. In such a case the sentence
we must pass upon them would be, that they are equally fatal and
pernicious. At present we are rather concerned with them in their
reference to our own age, and to that struggle which it has to undergo
with them. In this respect I can not hesitate decidedly to pronounce
rationalism the greater and the more dangerous error of the two. For not
only has it struck its root more deeply in the spirit of the age, and is
far more widely diffused, but it is far more supple. Parasitically it
engrafts itself on the truth and its various systems, to prey upon them
the more successfully. It is ever ready to make concessions to and to
capitulate with its adversary, in order to triumph over it the more
completely in the end. And when it seems driven altogether from the
field, it still holds its ground beneath some new disguise. In short, it
is scarcely possible to determine the point, if indeed it is ever
reached, where it can be safely said that the evil is completely and
forever eradicated. It is only life itself--the higher spiritual life,
that is--and the true philosophy which traces and restores it in the
mind’s triple faculties of knowledge, that can extricate us from this
dilemma of conflicting errors, and provide the clew which shall guide us
out of the dialectical mazes of the reason. On the other hand, a false
philosophy of nature--and such is every system that stands in hostile
opposition to religion, or attempts to usurp its place--which is
conceived in a merely empirical spirit, will never prove dangerous.
After a brief and limited influence, it will soon fall into neglect and
oblivion. When, however, it is the result of a lofty and intellectual
effort--when a truly great and comprehensive spirit moves within
it--then will it soon become conscious of those limits, and feeling its
own false position, it will, ere long, find the passage to the divine,
which is beyond and above it. But it is not easy for a philosophy of
nature to be or at least long to remain strictly and absolutely confined
to its own limits of system, even because of the continual advance of
this science of life. And as soon as it recognizes its true place as
second and subordinate to a divine philosophy, then does it immediately
cease to be a false faith. It is forthwith reconciled to the truth, or
at least is already far on the road toward a complete reconciliation
with it. This milder judgment, however, can not in justice be extended
to that pantheistic science in which nature is as decidedly and
absolutely deified as in any of the old systems of heathenism.

We have now completed our comparison of faith and infidelity, and
sketched the picture both of man’s mind and of his science, to and from
which they respectively belong or issue. We, therefore, leave it free to
the judgment of every thoughtful mind that reflects upon itself and the
nature of things, and loves and desires the truth, to choose and decide
between them. This comparison is ever the proper problem of philosophy;
and even if the sketch and delineation of these two states of the human
consciousness be, from the limits to which we are confined, not
perfectly complete, still we may regard this problem as satisfactorily
solved. The struggle, however, between belief and unbelief is still to
go on in the world and time, but the victory of truth is reserved to
higher powers and forces than man’s.

As to the nature and conditions of that intellectual conflict, and its
several moments, a few remarks must be added, on its relation to, and
bearings on, philosophy. First of all, I think the previous remarks must
have tended to throw light on a phenomenon which otherwise is remarkable
and startling enough. The good cause, even when advocated by men of the
best intentions and the purest zeal for truth, with the greatest
acuteness and a thorough knowledge of the truth and its essential
principles, nevertheless is but little successful. At the very best, it
makes an extremely slow progress, while evil error advances with the
fearful rapidity of contagion. To account for this singular fact it is
not sufficient to appeal to the persuasive rhetoric which the latter has
at its command, or to any superior power of intellect in its advocates.
The cause lies rather in the miasmas of spiritual pestilence which are
spread throughout, and are suspended in the moral atmosphere.

We should err greatly were we to suppose that the cause of truth, and of
the refutation of error, could as easily be disposed of as any civil
process before a judicial tribunal. Here, to carry the day, it is enough
completely to refute the pretensions of one’s adversary, and to set
forth one’s own claim in a clear and irrefragable chain of legal proof.
But, in the matter of philosophy and the higher truth, how little is
gained by the refutation, be it ever so complete, of one written system
of error, when, in the mean while, two or three more spring up and call
for refutation no less than the first. The straight road, therefore, of
a calm, simple, and, at the same time, luminous and complete exposition
of the highest system of knowledge seems, to my mind, a far more
appropriate means for the establishment and diffusion of the truth than
the indirect course of refuting any false or erroneous system that may
reign in a particular age and throughout the whole world. For, in the
latter course, if the controversy be at all searching and complete, it
is necessary to enter into all its tortuous windings, at the risk of
being lost and entangled in them. And even in the most favorable case,
where the refutation is complete, nothing is ultimately gained by it but
a mere negative--the establishing the untruth of the refuted system,
together with the proofs of that negative.

It would be most erroneous to suppose that this controversy is either
entirely or in the main directed against books and leaves, propositions
and words. It looks rather to the soul and spirit, and seeks to drive
away, to remove, and banish from them, and utterly to extirpate, all the
deadly seeds of error and falsehood, replacing them by truth in all its
fullness and energy, so as to win the minds and souls of men to its
beneficent rule.

This, however, is only possible by an individual process and a personal
interchange of ideas. For error and the restoration of truth assume a
thousand different shapes, according to the different temperaments of
individuals, or to the different periods of life in each. If, therefore,
it be the wish or duty of philosophy to make this its principal aim, it
is only in the form of dialogue that it can successfully accomplish the
task, by suiting itself and closely conforming to the personal character
of individuals. In this sense, and on this account, Plato, and the other
disciples of Socrates, in their controversy with the Sophists,
invariably employed the dialogical style, and chose this form for the
exposition of their philosophical views. But even the written dialogue
can not do more than exhibit, as it were, a vertical section of the
whole infinite variety of individual views, convictions, and characters.
And what thereupon is to be done in order to set them free and
emancipate them from error, and to win them for, and to fill them with,
the truth?

The inner sense for the truth and the spiritual eye must be opened, and
the spirit of man must be led back and restored to its lost center. But
the soul must be won and attracted, totally converted and endued with
new life. But is this possible without some higher and divine power? Can
it be accomplished by man’s ordinary art of disputation, even though it
be perhaps sufficient for the ordinary transactions of a civil tribunal;
or by a logical train of proofs, or by the skillful terms of a
well-managed dialogue, in the absence of all profounder power to move
and actuate the soul?

And such a higher power and effectual word of truth does exist. In the
language of Scripture it is called the Sword of the Spirit, which
pierces to the very marrow and divides asunder the soul and the spirit.
A deep meaning is involved in this expression of the dividing asunder of
soul and spirit, and the very greatest of all the soul’s pains is most
appropriately indicated thereby. In death the immortal soul is separated
and departs from the body; but soul and spirit still continue together
in indissoluble union. These words, then, allude to some other and more
violent separation. And it is one, moreover, which is indispensable to
the triumph of truth in this struggle for life and death. For when error
goes to the inmost depths, and reaches to the very center of life, both
spirit and soul grow and adhere together, and the delusion can not
otherwise be dispelled than by the violent separation of the two. And
thus the light suddenly shines upon the spirit to show it the abyss on
whose brink it stands, while the soul is simultaneously set free from
all the chains which bind it to its false life, and is thereby
completely changed and converted. In this way is the triumph of truth
over error and infidelity effected. Only we must remember that the Sword
of the Spirit, “which pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and
spirit, and of the joints and marrow,” needs not always to be properly a
spoken or a written “word.” In some deeply-moving catastrophe of a man’s
life it makes a distinct and speaking manifestation of itself, working
in him a total change of his feelings and sentiments. But the Spirit’s
flaming sword of judgment may be turned not only upon individuals, but
also upon whole nations and ages, to divert them from error and
unbelief, and to lead them back to truth. Lastly, it may also be
directed toward the whole world and the whole human race; and to this
interesting topic, which in so many ways is brought so immediately home
to the present era of the world, we shall, in the course of the
following Lectures, have occasion to recur.

LECTURE XI.

OF THE RELATION OF TRUTH AND SCIENCE TO LIFE, AND OF MIND IN ITS
APPLICATION TO REALITY.

The union of profound knowledge with divine faith, and the recognition
and perception of their unity, is the mind’s first step within the
domain of truth and of the consciousness of it; or, rather, the first
step in that gradation by which the mind and consciousness advance
toward verity; and it is even the fundamental principle of truth itself
that constitutes this beginning. The judgment which discriminates and
decides between a simple universal belief in God, and the connection of
such a faith with all natural and sublimely true philosophy on the one
hand, and unbelief, false science, and the various systems of error on
the other, forms the second term or step in the gradual progress of
truth and the spirit of truth in the human consciousness, whether of
individuals, or of the whole human race, or of any particular period of
its development. These two subjects have already occupied our attention
in the two preceding Lectures. The third point which the mind must
attain to as the spirit of truth is more fully expanded, both in the
consciousness and in science, is the profitable application thereof to
actual life, or its real manifestation, and the practical carrying out
of its principles. For it is by this alone that the divine and
fundamental principle of truth, and that important faculty of judgment
which separates and distinguishes truth and true science from ignorance
and error, are realized, and attain to their full end and perfection.
The consideration of this subject will form the basis of the present and
all the following Lectures.

Before, however, I enter upon this new topic, or attempt to solve this
third problem of the actual application of science to life and of its
profitable combination therewith, I would wish to add here a few
historical remarks on the subject-matter of our last discussions, which,
while they serve to complete and to illustrate it, will at the same time
furnish a natural and easy transition to our present speculations. The
struggle and the alternate triumph of belief and unbelief, as they
gained in turn the ascendency over the minds of men, and gave the
dominant tone to different ages, or, rather, the contest of truth and
true science with the different systems of error in the several periods
of the development of mankind and of the history of the human intellect,
is at all times a subject of the highest interest for philosophical
observation. In historical applications like the present, it invariably
proves pre-eminently useful and instructive. I shall, however, confine
myself to a few examples, and select such as are most immediately
connected with our subject, or seem likely to lead to the most important
results.

From the whole history of the ancient world I shall adduce but two
illustrations: first of all, the twofold mental or spiritual state of
the primeval times; and, secondly, the highest reach of thought and
knowledge which Greece attained in her most enlightened days, which are
marked at once with the signs of first maturity and of earliest decline.
From both these instances it will be my object to prove that truth
invariably prevails in the beginning, and that it is always and every
where prior to and antecedent to error.

From the annals of modern history I shall in like manner bring before
you only a few particularly fruitful instances. From such periods of the
world’s history I propose to show that the problem of science, in its
reference to life and its profitable application, admits not of any pure
and complete solution; or that often after an opening of promise it
suddenly takes a wrong direction, and so misses its true aim, and,
consequently, the problem of the age remains unsolved. This examination
of the actual relation subsisting between science and life as it has
been, or still is, historically exhibited in this or that particular
epoch, together with the difficulties and the questions which it
suggests, will serve as an introduction to our entire theme. For this is
nothing less than the satisfactory exposition and correct theory of the
application of true science to life, and of their profitable
combination.

First of all, let us cast our glance back to the infancy of the human
race. In these primeval times, we every where meet with legends and
traditions of man’s divine origin, mixed up and interwoven with the
fables and symbols of heathenism. Now we are accustomed to regard
heathenism, or the religion of the Gentiles, as universally, and,
without exception, false and idolatrous, or at least absurd and
fabulous. But is this consistent with the natural course of things?--is
it not probable, or, rather, necessary, that, in its beginning at least,
this chaotic medley of symbols and legends must have had for its
foundation some very simple form of error, if we must suppose that it
was always, and even from the very first, nothing but error?

No doubt the heathenism of the first races, so far as we can trace it,
and the early legends and rites of the oldest times that we are
acquainted with, appear to be already involved in a perplexing confusion
of the strangest fancies. Nothing better are they than a chaos of
symbolical images of nature, mingled and interwoven with some vague and
shadowy outlines of truly spiritual ideas and thoughtful notes of a
higher strain, and also with ambiguous and enigmatical legends of
historical tradition. The whole medley, moreover, differently developed,
according to the peculiar varieties of national character, or the
hereditary feeling of tribe and family, assumes a particular hue from
the local colorings of these different spheres of life; or, moreover, as
is not unfrequently the case, is remolded and cast into new combinations
by the arbitrary caprices of the poetic fancy. Who can hope to find the
simple clew of such a maze? or who will give us the threads of Ariadne
to guide us out of its intricacies?

It is true, generally speaking, that our historical knowledge and
research do not reach very far back. The Flood, to which the traditions
of all people remount, and which all telluric sciences, whether
geography, or natural history, or geology, or whatever other name they
may bear, directly or indirectly confirm, forms an impassable gulf
between the modern and later family of man, and that first and gigantic
race of the antediluvian world. And yet careful criticism and historical
investigation are still able to distinguish in the chaotic congeries of
different mythologies the several strata and epochs, and can separate
the primary rock of the earlier natural legend from the later mythical
formations. But even this primary rock itself, amid the legends of
primeval times--this first, and oldest, and simplest basis of
heathenism, is itself but a fusion and the _debris_ of some earlier and
precedent convulsion. But now all legends, every mythology, and
universal tradition, agree in this one point. They concur in deriving
the origin of man from God, and assert that the first man, who, while he
proceeded immediately from God, was also the first-born son of earth,
in which he was placed, because it was of a nature nearest akin to his
and ours. Now this same first man, as proceeding and taking his
beginning from God, could not well be without some knowledge of Him. The
concurrent tradition of all nations leads us to the idea of man’s
possessing knowledge, and in truth an immediate and intuitive knowledge
of God in and out of nature, and indeed primarily and principally from
this source, and on the other hand also of his having an immediate and
intuitive knowledge of nature in God. And this exactly is the old and
true Gentilism of the holy patriarchs of the primeval world, if by this
term we understand the original religion of nature, among the earliest
families, and the pious patriarchs of the human race, as it is described
in the language and after the analogy of Holy Writ,[51] and also in the
ancient traditions which have grown out of and attached themselves to
it. Now, according to the simple progression of truth, which is also
that of God, and of the knowledge of Him, this revelation of nature was
the first and earliest that was imparted to man upon earth, and must be
carefully distinguished from that later or second revelation of God,
which is both of a positive nature and is contained in a written law, or
written word and book of the law. And in the written revelation this
distinction is most carefully observed throughout. The divine law, which
although not written on brazen tablets, unquestionably existed in these
primeval ages of a natural revelation, which was read and intuitively
understood in nature herself, or immediately in the hearts and minds of
men, was far simpler, and consequently also easier and less burdensome,
than the later law of the second revelation, which was designed for the
moral regeneration of a degenerate people, and for fitting them to be a
witness of the truth to other nations of the world still more degraded
and benighted than themselves. And in the same way this second
revelation was less stringent and less exalted in its scope than the
last law of later times, promulgated in the third age of the world to
all nations and kindreds of the earth. For the latter was not designed
for the first happy period of the infancy of mankind, but for his last
difficult, but decisive struggle, which is to end in the perfect
triumph of good, and in man’s total emancipation from the hostile and
oppressive yoke of original evil. For the wise and omniscient Father of
all has given to every age of man’s history a peculiar and appropriate
law. For the infancy of the race, He published an easy rule of
life--permitting the full expansion and the blooming development of all
his vital energies; but one of sterner preparation, of promise and of
expectation, for his youth. For his maturity, lastly, He has set forth a
law of determined struggle with evil, and of a predominant love of the
invisible, and even of perfection. And consequently a new application of
the same law, and a new strengthening for the same conflict, is to be
looked for in the last times of the final consummation. But not only was
the divine natural law, as promulgated to man in the earliest ages, far
different from that of later times, and the subsequent stages of a
further development of revealed knowledge. This immediate revelation,
and intuitive knowledge of nature, was likewise very dissimilar to the
artificially elaborate and complicated systems of physical science. For
these have principally to trace out and to revert to the original source
of life, and of the full truth of nature, although even on this right
road of return we are not always nearest to the end, even when we seem
to have made the greatest advance in that direction. But as the first
man recognized God in nature, and not merely understood, but immediately
perceived, and, as it were, saw, that He was there, therefore nature
also was, in a certain measure, transparent to his eye in God. And
although his knowledge of nature was in the highest degree simple, still
did it even on that account penetrate more deeply into its inmost
secrets. It was rendered thereby more thoroughly vital and endued with
power. One might almost call it a natural force within him, similar to
and akin to those without him. For generally in those early ages of the
world, man possessed many higher energies and living powers in and over
nature, which subsequently were entirely withdrawn from him, or which in
later times, as wonderful phenomena, formed singular exceptions to man’s
ordinary endowments.

We are, perhaps, only too much disposed to imagine that the ancient race
before the Flood resembled in every particular a later and even the
present generation. Our conceptions of it, as regards both its virtues
and its vices, are in nowise great and wonderful enough. In the first
place, it is highly probable that the atmosphere of the globe was at
that period totally different from what it is in the present day, and
that consequently both the food and manner of living in those days were
also dissimilar from our own. If any reliance is to be placed on the
best and oldest historical testimonies on these points, we can scarcely
doubt that the primeval race--at least the generations immediately
preceding the Deluge--were of gigantic stature, and that their mental
powers and faculties were on a correspondent scale of magnitude. In
perfect conformity with these other proportions, the Scripture also
assigns to those antediluvian races a duration of existence, which, as
compared with our own standard of the average life of man, is equally
gigantic. And so little of antecedent improbability is there in this
statement, that to get rid of it commentators have been forced to have
recourse to the most far-fetched and arbitrary, and, in fact, most
untenable and groundless hypotheses.

Now, it is manifest that such corporeal advantages and length of life
which the first patriarchs of the human race enjoyed, must have been
highly favorable to the development of their intellectual gifts and
immediate intuition, as founded on a living natural faith, so long as
they were rightly used and directed toward God, as their proper object.
And in the same way their tendency to fearful corruption, under an
impious and sinful employment of their great mental endowments, must be
equally evident. At the same time we must confess our inadequacy to form
a conception of the height to which they attained in either state which
would be in any way proportionate to the truth. It is, however, an
invariable principle of development, confirmed by the observation of
nature, and a careful induction of historical facts, that all that is
greatest and noblest, if it once begins to degenerate and corrupt,
reaches in its corruption and degeneracy the worst and most fearful
extremes. And so it appears to have been with this gigantic and
gigantically endowed race of the antediluvian world.

In modern times, a great German philosopher, who flourished toward the
close of the seventeenth century, and was no less famous for his
historical learning than for his mathematical discoveries, made the
memorable remark, that the last sect in the whole development of
Christian revelation, and toward the close of modern history--the last
sect, and also the most prevalent and most fearful, would be that of
atheism. This dictum, at the time at which it was pronounced, which was
somewhere about the transition from the anxiety and oppression of the
seventeenth century to the enlightenment and self-complaisancy of the
eighteenth, must have appeared a perfect paradox. But now that its
fulfillment seems, both to our eyes and understanding, so close at hand,
we recognize with amazement, not to say with a slight feeling of horror,
its deep oracular truth.

Now, as the beginning and the end often bear a wonderful resemblance to
each other, it is not improbable that the first sect was of the same
kind and nature as it has been predicted that the final heresy will be.
A mere dead unbelief and purely negative atheism, it is true, can as
little have prevailed in those times as a symbolically degraded and
immorally materializing heathenism. For it was only after the higher
magical powers were withdrawn from man, that the fancy became in this
sense, and to such an extreme degree, symbolical and figurative. Or,
perhaps, we may more correctly say, that of all high endowments now lost
forever, a purely figurative fancy was all that remained; whereupon, in
opposition to it, the other erroneous extreme of abstract thought
gradually attained to a greater and undue development. And we may with
good reason assume, that with this fearful catastrophe the very
consciousness of man was essentially altered and changed. Of the wild
and lawless state of the generations before the Flood, we can not,
perhaps, form a juster conception than by regarding it as an open
rebellion and organized revolt of man against his Maker and benefactor,
a complete and visible supremacy of the evil principle and the wicked
spirits on earth, and an intimate union between man and the devil. It
must have resembled the description which we meet with in some old books
of the future reign of antichrist. Such a state of things may justly be
denominated atheism. But, however this may be, and whatever conception
we may form, and whatever historical shape we may give to particulars in
this domain (where, after all, we can not get beyond conjecture and
presumptions, or, it may be, hypothetical history, based on
probabilities), one general point is incontestable. Truly noble, in
those primeval times of a pure natural faith, must have been the
intellectual powers and development of the first ancestors of the world
and those great progenitors of the human race, and fearful, in the same
degree, must have been the fall and corruption which followed the abuse
of those high privileges. For man’s mental powers, still subsisting in
the plenitude of their productive energy, and his lordship over nature
being undisturbed, his corruption must have generated the wildest and
most monstrous excesses. Consequently, amid the universal reign of evil
and wickedness, the only course that remained was the total destruction
of the existing generation, and the complete renovation, or, rather, a
new commencement of mankind.

But the corruption of later times, though, in truth, on a less scale,
has likewise been very great. Rapid, too, has been the passage from good
to evil. Moreover, it is self-evident that in the primeval ages of a
vivid natural faith, and of a life according to nature, that separation
between life and nature that exists in these later times could not well
have taken place--nay, at such a period it is totally inconceivable. On
the contrary, science and life must have been in perfect unison. And
this is true, not only of the virtuous knowledge in the first happy
epoch of the world’s golden age, but also of the wicked ideas and the
demoniac efforts of error in the succeeding periods of gigantic
bewilderment and arrogant enmity to God. It is by reason of this unity
between life and knowledge that this instance belongs to that gradation
in the mutual relations of the two in the different ages of the world.

Quite otherwise, however, was it, in this respect, with Grecian
philosophy. In the most enlightened days of classical antiquity we
behold it either coming forward in direct opposition to life, especially
in its public aspect of politics and religion, or else as absolutely
esoteric, retiring altogether and estranged from active duties. Now, in
adducing the history of Grecian philosophy as my second instance, and as
an eminently important moment in the history of the intellectual
development of the ancient world, my object is to show that in the same
way that, according to all grounds of analogy, a simpler natural faith,
as the simple religion of the first patriarchs of the human race,
preceded the later form of heathenism into which the worship of the
Gentiles so wildly and so fearfully degenerated--so, also, in the
philosophy of Greece, its later systems and sects, which were so
thoroughly false and pernicious, were preceded by, at least, a
comparatively better and higher view--by a purer theory of science and
of truth.

For though the oldest philosophers of the Ionian school held water, or
air, or fire, to be the ground and principle of all things, and built on
such hypotheses their whole theory of nature, nevertheless we should, in
all probability, greatly err, were we, on that account, to charge them
with or to suspect them of materialism. They understood these elements,
not in the ordinary, but in a spiritual and living sense, as the
elements of universal life, and, at the same time, did not fail to
acknowledge a higher spirit operating in and above nature, and God’s
all-disposing intelligence. Of Heraclitus, who made fire the essential
ground and first principle of all things, we know, with historical
certainty, that, notwithstanding, his philosophy and view of the
universe was, in the highest degree, ideal and spiritual. And the same
is true also of Anaxagoras, the teacher of Socrates. Much, too, that
would do great credit to the general spirit of thought and science of
that period, might be adduced from the venerable founder of the valuable
art of medicine, and also from his school, were the present the
appropriate place. The simple fact, too, that Socrates proceeded from
out of this Ionian school, would alone dispose me to form a favorable
opinion of it in its earliest state; and it is greatly to be regretted
that our information concerning the oldest of these great thinkers is so
scanty, and its details so uncertain and so little to be depended on,
that it is impossible to form any settled and definite judgment on the
matter.

When, however, we proceed to examine the religious spirit and value of
Grecian philosophy in general, or any of its special branches, schools,
and epochs, we must adopt as the fundamental rule of our judgment the
universal dogmas of man’s pure and uncorrupted feelings or judgment.
Taking for our standard the natural belief in a living and personal God,
and in an everlasting and all-ruling spirit, in the immortality of the
soul, and in the freedom of the will, together with the immutable
principles and ideas of justice, honor, morality, and virtue, we must,
in this case, carefully exclude all the special doctrines of a positive
faith. We must not look for or require, in so early an age, that which
the further development of later periods brought to light. Far be it
from us to wonder at, or to urge it as a reproach against Pythagoras or
Plato, if among their doctrines we meet with ideas, which, strictly
understood, are not perfectly consistent with Christianity. Rather is it
a matter for surprise and congratulation that they knew and were aware
of, had anticipated and taught, so much that a later date first placed
in a fuller light, and made the common property of all men. This, at
least, was the opinion and conclusion on this subject entertained in the
first century by the greatest and best-informed of the fathers of
Christian doctrine and science.

This highly religious tendency and perception which we recognize in
Pythagoras, for instance, or in Plato--this anticipation by science of
the ideas of Christianity, of principles which, with this exception,
belong to the Christian era of the world’s history, could not have been
without God. We must, in short, recognize therein a higher providence.
We may accordingly justly regard Grecian philosophy, in its better
spirit and elements, as forming on its part a preparation for the
Gospel, and a scientific introduction to Christianity, of a special and
peculiar kind.

Now, among those whose observations, and sciences, and endeavors were
throughout directed Godward, the Pythagoreans stand highest and
foremost. We have already alluded to the fact, that in physical science
they were acquainted with the best and the most important of all that
our history of discoveries, within the last three centuries, is so proud
of. Here and there, perhaps, their knowledge even outran our own, and in
all probability they were not without some insight into those mysteries
of creation, about which our philosophy of nature has within the last
half century excited so much wonder and admiration. It is also probable,
we observed, that by their theory of numbers we are not to understand
the ordinary formulæ of mathematics, nor the usual arbitrary play with
them in which science so often indulges, but rather the development of
the intrinsic and divine law of nature and of life according to its
everlasting structure and immutable foundations, or according to the
vicissitudes of its critical times and seasons. But here it may be
asked--whence had they all this? how, without the telescope, and with,
at best, a very defective system of mathematics, and an imperfect art of
calculation, did they attain to a knowledge of the true astronomical
system of the universe? To start the hypothesis, that they learned and
borrowed it all from the Egyptians, would only be to remove the question
a step farther back, and not really to answer it. But even if we were
to admit the fact, such an assumption would only, as regards the
essential question with respect to the Pythagoreans and the origin of
their science, increase their merits and their glory. For in the same
way as we observed on an earlier occasion, with reference to Moses and
the Hebrews, it must have been by the exercise of a rare wisdom, that
while they selected all that was best and most valuable in Egyptian
science, they rejected so much that was pernicious, and laid aside so
much that was likely to lead them astray, and even the impious magical
superstitions that were to be found there.

In much later times, and even down to our own days, the name of the
Pythagorean school and science has been forced to serve as a cloak for
every noxious farrago of mysticism, as also that of the Neo-Platonists
has been made the symbol of every visionary extravagance. But even if
(what, however, I greatly doubt) an historical connection can be shown
to subsist between the so-called Pythagoreans of later times and the
earlier and genuine school, nothing further would follow from such a
fact, than a confirmation of my general position. It would but furnish
an additional proof that all that is greatest, noblest, and most
beautiful, when it once begins to degenerate and corrupt, invariably
reaches a proportionate depth of corruption and degeneracy, and assumes
the worst and wildest aspect of deformity.

As concerns the influence of this school of life, and its political aims
and tendencies, which were unquestionably part of the general design of
the Pythagorean doctrine: all this must be judged of in conformity with
Greek notions and habits, and with reference to the unsettled and
disordered state of the several Grecian communities. This being granted,
it will appear that a simple but lofty object was the basis of their
fraternity. By forming an enlightened aristocracy of highly cultivated
minds, of men of scientific attainments, and of pure and noble morals,
they hoped to establish a new and better polity, such as might check the
reigning anarchy and revolutionary spirit of democracy, which distracted
all the republics, whether smaller or greater, into which Greece was at
that time divided. But the evil had become too great, and its power was
irresistible. But the whole enterprise failed, and its failure entailed
the dissolution of the Pythagorean society.

Many similar views and political designs, which Plato subsequently
ingrafted on his own philosophy, in like manner remained nothing more
than ideas, and led to no practical result. A far more considerable
influence on life and its relations was exercised by the Sophists.
Considered in a political point of view, they were truly and properly
pernicious demagogues, and, in the fullest sense of the term, the
flatterers of the populace. Not only did they undermine the outward
national worship, with its poetical and hereditary associations, but
also overthrew the inward religion of good principles and of moral
sentiments. In short, they practically taught a true moral atheism, and
succeeded in making it the prevailing and ruling principle in the
conduct of life.

At this stage of Grecian philosophy, we witness, for the first time, a
remarkable phenomenon. The true and good science which directs itself to
the Godlike and divine, is unable to attain to any lasting or pervading
influence on the lives of men: on the other hand, we see a false and
evil sophistic gradually gaining a complete ascendency amid the general
demoralization of society, and the growing anarchy of the political
community, which, thoroughly corrupt and degenerate, only rose out of
one revolution to fall immediately into another. Or, rather, this false
sophistic, and this moral and political anarchy, were perfectly one
together, so far at least as two destructive principles can ever be or
be brought in unison.

The complete alienation which now existed between the better science and
life, and especially public life, is most distinctly manifested in the
case of the greatest among the Grecian philosophers of later times--in
Aristotle, and the position he occupied in his own age and nation. This
acute thinker, with the utmost care and diligence, collected together
all the most eminent results of the science, and the most remarkable
thoughts of earlier times. Examining and analyzing them with great
critical acumen, and with a comprehensive survey, he formed them into a
new whole, and arranged them into a system of his own, completer and
fuller than had ever before been attempted or accomplished.

We can not, perhaps, estimate too highly or admire too much this great
master of human subtilty, whether for his intellectual powers and extent
of learning, or even as a writer. Still we must not forget that in his
system were contained the germ and evident tendency to the two chief
forms of philosophical error--naturalism on the one side, and
rationalism on the other. And so we find that in the later times of the
following centuries, each of these false systems, according as the
occasion favored the one or the other, were drawn out from the
Aristotelian doctrine, to receive a further and a distincter
development. In his doctrine on the Godhead, he can least of all stand a
severe and rigorous criticism. And in many points, as, for instance, in
his notion of the absolute self-sufficiency of the reason, he
approximates but too closely to the idealistic view which we have
already designated as the transition to scientific atheism.

It was only in a very remote and distant age that Aristotle attained to
a very great importance and authority. In his own day he did but form a
very inconsiderable school, which exercised far less influence on public
life than two other sects, in whose history the development of Grecian
philosophy finds its close.

The system of the Stoics, with its stern and, consequently,
impracticable theory of morals, its doctrine of absolute necessity and
blind fatalism, announces itself at once as identical with an austere
rationalism. At the same time, under the teaching of the Epicureans, a
soft and effeminate naturalism became almost universally prevalent. And
while, in another and newer form, it gradually assumed the place of the
old mythical heathenism, which daily fell more and more into neglect and
disrepute, it still retained the old heathen sentiment, and a careless
and undisturbed indifference in inactive bliss and self-enjoyment, as it
was even ascribed and imputed to the gods, was introduced into life, and
extolled as the true wisdom. Thus, then, while on the one hand the
foundation was laid for that insensibility with which the wide-spreading
and growing corruption and the approach of the general ruin were
contemplated, so, on the other hand, the apathy of the Stoics was not
exactly the right kind of sentiment to furnish a check or counteractive
to this sybaritic indifference.

As concerns the relations of public life, the social community, and the
state, the Stoical doctrine appears, no doubt, in a worthier and a
better light. On this account it numbered among its adherents almost all
the great statesmen that lived from the last times of the Republic down
to the later centuries of the Empire. Considered, however, in
themselves, and scientifically regarded, both systems must be looked
upon simply as the last chemical decomposing process, or the initiatory
putrifying state of all higher science and philosophical reflection
among the Greeks. On the whole, then, we conclude that Grecian science
and philosophy have exercised no influence at all on life, or at least,
either a very inadequate, or such as has proved radically baneful and
pernicious.

But now, in the very center of man’s history--in the transition-point
between the ancient and the modern world--science and life were again at
unison, as at the beginning. And this was effected by the appearance of
a new science in another form. For most assuredly we shall not err in
giving this name to a new living and spiritual power, which, totally
changing and giving an entirely new direction to the arbitrary views,
sentiments, and principles of public and private life, and also to the
modes of thinking prevalent in the age and in the world, was strong
enough to triumph, not only over heathenism itself, but also over the
science and philosophy of its most enlightened nations. Now this new
mode of thinking, which came forward in the full certainty of the most
undoubting faith and the highest internal illumination, had, so far as
it is right and allowable to call it a science, a very different form
and scope from all that has previously and usually been so called. For
it issued out of the very depths of life, and received from love--a
divine love, that is--its first diffusion and establishment.
Consequently, it was a thoroughly living science, or, as being perfectly
clear and certain in itself, a new scientific life, which, moreover,
proceeded from this its first starting-point, was able to penetrate into
all the other forms of public life and of the anterior systems of
science, and by adopting or remodeling them, give to itself therein a
further and more universal development.

But here, also, the divine impulse from above encountered the usual
partial or entire resistance from below. Accordingly, this new living
wisdom, which, in its essence, is one with life, and which, therefore,
the more it is developed only unfolds this unity the more universally
and the more immutably, was not, at the first, universally adopted, or
did not become every where predominant. Moreover, even where it was
received, and its authority acknowledged, its reception was often little
more than external. It was not admitted as a living principle into all
the depths of the soul, or impressed on all the habits and tendencies
of the mind [_geist_]. And even where, in some degree at least, it was
adopted in the inner man with full and sincere love, it was often
nothing more than an undeveloped germ of the future and of a higher
life. Isolated by itself, and standing apart, it remained shut up within
the inmost bosom, without at the same time penetrating, reanimating, and
giving a new life and shape to all the other life-elements of the
consciousness and the productions of human science.

Thus, then, it was only too possible for error to find its entrance even
here also. And it is remarkable that both its principal forms, such as
in varying shapes the history of philosophy is constantly presenting to
us in the different epochs of its progress, here again most distinctly
present themselves with all the features of their intellectual
physiognomy plainly marked, and with the still more obvious contrast of
their intrinsic diversity. A philosophy of nature more or less visionary
and fanciful was the common basis of the various Gnostic sects. With
their long series of imaginary emanations from the Deity, resembling in
no slight degree the old heathen genealogies of the gods, they would,
had they triumphed, have converted Christianity into a similar
mythology, though of a more philosophical character. In the Arians, on
the contrary, and other kindred sects before and after them, we
recognize rather the spirit of rationalism, which, dwelling on some
point of life, or theory, with a show of rigor and accuracy, while,
apparently, it disputes only about words, is, in fact, undermining the
foundation of the most essential ideas.

All these parties, however, as they originated, so they also
disappeared, within the first five or eight centuries of our era. It
was, therefore, impossible for their pernicious influence to gain a deep
hold of life. At least it was neither universal nor permanent. Yet by
them the ardor of a first love was cooled. And sad, indeed, has been the
loss as regards the fullness of living energy, and even in respect of
profounder wisdom.

The history of the middle ages again presents a rare and singular
phenomenon. One great mind and writer of antiquity, whose influence in
his own day was far from extensive, became at this date, in a most
remarkable manner, the problem and center of scientific inquiry. For
several centuries the human mind was laboriously engaged in disputing
about the philosophy of Aristotle. And although men did not understand
it--not, at least, its deeper meaning, for they lacked the first and
most essential qualifications, and also the requisite means for such a
purpose--this apparently aimless disputation, and this unsolved problem,
was, nevertheless, not without great and manifold influence on their own
and the following ages. It has had a permanent effect on the whole frame
of man’s life and being.

Of the two wholly different aspects which, as we have already so often
remarked, the philosophy of Aristotle presents, it was probably not its
fruits of rationalism (for, at this period, such were generally regarded
as forbidden) that throughout the great part of the then civilized world
excited so incredible a fondness for this all-absorbing and
all-understanding system. Its attraction lay rather in some great and
mysterious knowledge of nature. And the desire for these intellectual
treasures was not a little heightened by the fact, that, in general,
they were inaccessible.

In the little intercourse subsisting, at this period, between distant
nations and lands, and the almost total separation of the East from the
West, it was only through the Arabic versions, or Latin translations
molded again upon these, that any knowledge of this philosophy could be
drawn. This must have led, it is obvious, to a wide deviation from the
true sense and critical spirit of the author. Its original aim must have
been generally missed. For, however highly we may be disposed to
estimate the intellectual merits of the Arabians, as writers of their
native history, or in poetry, or in any other science, they are
notoriously deficient in the true critical spirit. Their total and
universal want, in this respect, is especially evident when they are
compared with the Greeks, among whom this critical acuteness, whether
false or true, sprung up and reached its greatest height.

Strange, no doubt, and singular is it at first sight, to view this old
master of philosophical thought and science, who, on the whole, is so
perfectly heathen, suddenly received among the medieval theologians, and
taking, as it were, his seat, and giving his voice among them. Still, if
men of great mental powers and authority sought to make themselves
masters of the whole matter--both of the much-disputed works of this
writer, this Aristotle, so strangely disguised in his new motley dress
of Arabic Latin, and also of the voluminous labors bestowed upon
him--we must look upon this procedure as analogous to that of the
thoughtful physician, who, in the midst of a wide-spread pestilence and
inevitable contagion, prefers to inoculate it himself, in order the more
safely to treat and to cure it. In short, as the case really stands, we
must look on these illustrious men in two distinct lights. On the one
hand we must see in them the Church’s venerable teachers, and the
sagacious and discriminating theologians of the day; on the other, the
scholastic interpreters of Aristotle, who had now become a necessary
evil for the Christian middle ages.

This, however, and whatever else was the matter and object of such
subtile disputes, was too soon forgotten. In these scholastic contests,
after the fashion of the day, the combatants, horse and man, were armed
_cap-a-piè_, incased and disguised in logical coats of mail, composed of
countless rings of thought and chains of ideas. With this heavy panoply,
the great object was to heave their antagonist out of the saddle. Often
they recoiled from the shock without advantage on either side--so
equally matched were they in their good lances and the weight of their
armor--and often they swerved from the charge. Mostly, however, both of
the philosophical knights found themselves, at the end of the strife, at
their old station in the lists, or driven back, perhaps, to their
original entry. This scholastic philosophy, in the form it now took, of
a highly elaborate art of logical tourney in the philosophical schools,
was, undoubtedly, an abiding evil in the age that immediately followed,
and furnished an important element to the party disputes of later, and
to the rationalism of these latest times.

The overthrow of the Grecian empire and the discovery of the new world,
suddenly and at once introduced into Western Europe vast and varied
treasures of historical, physical, and philosophical knowledge. In this
brilliant epoch of the fifteenth century, a new world of thought was, as
it were, laid open. A new era of science would have been founded, and a
veritable reformation of the whole Christian life must have ensued, had
not the moral corruption and the political disorders of the period been
gross beyond description. But for all this, how much is there to admire
in the Platonic writers of the fifteenth century, among whom Germany,
after Italy, produced the most famous and the greatest number? When we
take up, even now, any one of their works, and contemplate therein
their comprehensive liberal pursuit of science, their mild, antique
spirit, their noble form, and their quick recognition of the beautiful,
we can not turn from them without regret to that new state of barbarism
into which, during the sixteenth and part also of the seventeenth
century, science was plunged by the rampant spirit of party and
controversy.

At last, however, peace and quiet returned again to Christian lands and
states, and slowly, and by degrees, to the minds also of men. And now
was it, in the eighteenth century, and especially toward the middle of
it, that out of this apparent and superficial peace, a new science, or a
new light, or at least a new diffusion of it, seemed ready to arise.
Simply regarded in a scientific point of view, this philosophical
endeavor of the eighteenth century, and the most memorable of the
systems to which it gave rise, occupied our attention in the very
opening of these Lectures. Here the immediate object of our
consideration is not this new science itself, whether true or false, but
rather the influence on the age, and on life in general, of this modern
mode of thinking, as generally diffused and prevalent.

Much, undoubtedly, has been discovered or newly learned in the natural
sciences and in the domain of history; many too have been the bold
ventures, at least, and novel essays in philosophy. This new wisdom,
moreover, was taught and disseminated far more universally than ever
before had been the case; while even the agreeable feeling produced by
the moderation of the intellectual spirit now prevalent, greatly
promoted its wide and rapid diffusion. But at a later period this
enlightenment, so rapidly and so widely diffused, which, moreover, was
taken only in a negative sense, was soon recognized to be unsatisfactory
and superficial, while also the theory of popular liberty and
independence which was grafted thereon, and claimed, or at least wished
to be rational, bore the bitterest and worst of fruits.

In short, to speak most leniently of it, the whole was nothing less than
the undigested scheme of an immature and imperfect knowledge, brought
into the world before its time. Accordingly, its rash and precipitate
course in the last age, whose history is unparalleled in the annals of
the whole world, together with the fearful catastrophe which it has
brought about, opened the eyes of men to the fearful abyss to which such
a precipitate abuse of science had hurried them. And, in consequence,
thinking men of the highest endowments and the richest intellectual
gifts among different nations, have in many ways nobly devoted
themselves to the work of restoration in sentiment, in thought, and in
science.

But on the one hand, the first elements of the former destructive
principle appear to be still existing, even though it be in less obvious
and more pliable and disguised forms. On the other hand again, the
corrected mode of thinking, and the better tone of sentiment and
science, is for the most part confined merely to a more chastened
outward form. Scarcely any where as yet is it carried far enough back,
up to the profoundest sources of spiritual life, up to the primal origin
and veritable foundation of the divine and of the eternally good.

And yet this is exactly the problem of our age, and herein alone shall
we find the solution of the great enigma of the times. For from this
hasty review of the whole course of the intellectual development of
humanity, from its beginning to its close, the result, for the sake of
and with a view to which alone I ventured so cursorily and in such faint
outline to sketch all the leading epochs of the history of philosophy,
must at least be evident. As in the beginning, and in the center
thereof, science and life lovingly co-operated together and were fully
in unison; and as in the intermediate epochs and intervals among the
Greeks in civilized antiquity, and in the middle ages among ourselves,
they became more and more estranged, so at the end will they be at one
again. And already, even in our own days, every thing is tending to
bring about such a consummation. But who shall say whether it shall be
in a good or an evil sense? Ere long, life shall either, under the
influence of the true and good and divine knowledge, be again restored,
permanently regulated, and receive a new shape and fresh vigor, or, by a
false and delusive science, be completely destroyed, and involved in
eternal ruin.

Having, in this hasty review, considered, under its historical aspect,
the problem of the relation of science--the true and divine, as well as
the false and delusive--to both private and public life, it now remains
for us to examine and to answer this same question from the side of
theory. Regarded from this point of view, it would appear that whenever
science fails to exercise an influence on life, or when they withdraw
and are estranged one from the other, the fact may be always accounted
for and explained by accidental causes and purely local influences, such
as have their origin in the several periods of the world’s history, or
flow from certain imperfections on one side or the other. For,
considered in itself, science in general is nothing but this unity of
thought and life, and consequently its living operation and influence
are involved in the very idea of a higher science, provided only it be
true and properly regulated. Either, therefore, science is life elevated
into a thought, and consequently transformed into a thinking, or else it
is a thought carried into reality, that has passed and been transmuted
into life, and therein fully attested and certified by life
itself--consequently a thinking become life.

Now, according to this view, that science consists in the mutual
approximation to, and the final attainment of, a perfect unity between
thought and life, there are three degrees of it, according to that
triple gradation and threefold principle which exists in the human
consciousness. The first of these, then, is reflection. And this,
understood in a somewhat profounder acceptation than ordinarily, is an
internal feeling, hearing, or seeing of one’s own thinking. Consequently
it is a perception similar to that of the senses, by means of which the
unseen thought is in some degree projected and introduced into external
reality. But this act of reflection is nothing more than a passive state
of the soul in its internal observation of itself. So long as it remains
confined to this narrow sphere, it perpetually revolves in the same
orbit, and, properly speaking, produces no ulterior results of a
knowledge fruitful and applicable to actual and outward life.

The second degree or moment of science is abstraction, by virtue of
which, from the complete sum of all the criteria and characteristics of
an object, or, rather, of a thought, some one is prominently set forth
as the most essential, and for the sake of communication designated by a
name. For all communication and language is based on this faculty of
abstraction, which is itself an arbitrary act of the free will. But
although by this naming, generalization, and communication, the internal
thought is advanced a step farther into the external world and the
living reality among and with others, still the reality of the thought
is by no means satisfactorily established thereby. For this very liberty
in the choice of name, of combination, and of general classification,
opens a wide field for caprice. This is evident enough from the
countless multitude of terminologies, so needlessly invented and so
rapidly thrown into oblivion, which form so many remote and mutually
unintelligible philosophical dialects, in the ever-repeated attempt to
build methodically the Babel tower of philosophical system. For these
designations of abstract thoughts, even when they are most felicitous,
fail to win the concurrence of others, and do but open a door to endless
dialectical disputation.

Thus, then, neither reflection, which is eternally revolving within the
narrow orbit of our inward self, nor empty abstraction, though it strays
at pleasure over the spacious realm of the possible, can lead us to the
desired end of perfect certainty or veritable science. It is alone the
practical carrying out into real life of a speculative thought, that can
bring it to the conclusion of perfection of certainty, and to a complete
and true science. Now I should prefer to designate this its highest
grade by the notion and name of _consequence_. But by this term, I must
be understood as meaning not merely a correct logical enchainment of
ideas, but pre-eminently a faithfully-worked-out _consequence_ or
consistency of sentiment and life, _i.e._, a perseverance in good. At
the same time, it must ever be remembered, that the evil principle,
although it often makes a boast of possessing this quality, does so only
in appearance, and never in this true sense. On the contrary, torn to
pieces by conflicting passions in its inmost being, it is really in the
highest degree inconsequent, as acting in direct opposition to its
beginning and origin, which, like all other created beings, it took and
received from God.

Truly consequent or consistent a man can not be except in the truth,
_i.e._, in Him out of whom all truth, and from whom all existence is
derived and flows--in other words, in God. Science, therefore, is an
_applied_ thinking, _i.e._, one that has passed into life, and thereby
become real and certain; and it is only on the road of practice, by its
actual carrying out or _real_ manifestation, that it can attain to its
highest degree, and that the truth of an idea or speculative thought can
be satisfactorily attested.

The ideas, according to the original sense of the term, are even the
self-existing thoughts of a higher life, as distinct both from the
simple facts of the consciousness in the domain of reflection, and from
the arbitrary forms of thought set up by empty abstraction. And though
even here as elsewhere, a false, sickly, or a null and illusory life,
may be substituted for that which is true, still this applies only to
the form of the living idea, as contrasted with the sensuous semblance
or the dead notion. For, that an idea is truly divine, can only be
proved by this quality of consequence--by its divine influence and
effect on life.

On the other hand, many philosophical thinkers have somewhat erroneously
indicated the intrinsic certainty of philosophical thought by the name
and under the form of an intellectual intuition, and thereby given
occasion to manifold misconceptions. But if in all the fullness of the
conception already advanced of the eternal truth, and of Him who is its
sum and source, we were really able to be sentinent of and to feel the
divine life--to hear and audibly to perceive the eternal Word and
actually to see the holy Light, such a spiritual intuition of God’s
glory and majesty would be far more appropriate for the future than for
the present world. And even though we may and can admit it to be
conceivable, as given from above, still a communication of it would be
impossible, and, consequently, could not be available for the ordinary
purpose of giving a philosophical foundation to any human system. Under
this form, then, of a so-called intellectual intuition, if it be really
such, and not rather a mere form of abstract thought under another and
an assumed name, speculative science would consequently assume the
character of a questionable vision, and a possible mental delusion. For
a full internal satisfaction and certainty--so far at least as these are
attainable by man--even in the case that they are the sign and the proof
that this intuition, or perception of the divine light actually took
place, can only be furnished by that quality of consequence already
described as belonging to every thought and cognition which is founded
in God. And to this character of consequence or consistency, the
condition of agreement with every other idea or revelation already
acknowledged to be divine, belongs naturally as the irrefragable law of
judgment and of life.

That full and correct conception of eternal truth which has been
developed by us in the ninth Lecture as the living _idea_ of the Supreme
Being is unquestionably the fundamental speculative notion and the
internal spiritual basis on which every other higher science, that has
any pretensions to the qualities of permanence and consequence which
belong to right-thinking and to immutable truth, is subsequently
raised, or, in other words, it is the source from which it abidingly
flows. In the three subsequent Lectures, however, the subject has been
mostly scientific, speculative, and metaphysical, though throughout
accompanied with historical illustrations drawn from the development of
the human mind. And here, accordingly, a reference to the science or
discipline of logic is every where supposed.

Now, in the form in which this science or discipline has come down to us
from the Greeks, there is much that is rather an accident than a part of
its essence, and whose presence must be accounted for by some special
and local necessity. With no people before or since has rhetoric enjoyed
so commanding an influence as with the Greeks, and with none also has
the sophistic art produced such great and such pernicious effects.
Accordingly, they found it necessary to devote to the analysis of all
its arts, delusions, and tortuous windings, and also to the development
of the dialectical means for their detection and refutation, a
disproportionate degree of attention, which is neither necessary for us
nor practically useful.

The Hindoos, likewise, have from the most ancient times possessed a
scientific system of logic. Indeed it has even been said, that
Aristotle, having received from Alexander the Great some of their
logical treatises, borrowed from them his own system, or, at least,
molded it after them. But from the reasons just adduced, I am disposed
to think that, in all probability, the Hindoo logic was much simpler
than the Grecian, where the simple end of truth, and the great
desideratum of a correct standard thereof, was lost sight of amid an
overminute analysis, and the mazes of an endless subdivision of notions.

In the routine of our school education logic might, perhaps, be made a
highly profitable study if only it were combined with and made to bear
upon the history of the gradual development of human thought, and
especially the theory of language. And then, since thought and speech
are so intimately allied to and dependent on each other, it would be
advisable to go a step farther, and extend our logical studies to the
theory of imagination, symbolical language and its fundamental rules.

In a scientific education, too, a logic of the memory (if we may be
allowed the expression) would in all probability be highly useful. For
an established law and disposition of our thoughts would greatly
facilitate the exercise of memory, and as furnishing rules for the
practice, or generally as an exercise of that faculty, would form an
excellent basis for scientific education. For the conduct of life,
indeed, there is nothing so important or so desirable as a right logic
of the conscience, which should detect all the internal delusions of
egoism and the still more subtile sophistry of selfishness in every
point where the question lies between the righteous truth and a latent
falsehood. And this is intimately connected with, or at least leads
directly to, the notion of the sound reason which requires before all
things a conscientious susceptibility of the truth.

But a logic applicable to this higher science must be understood in a
far more comprehensive sense than is ordinarily done. And this is even
what we have here attempted to furnish. Logic in general is conversant
about three objects: the notion, the judgment, and the conclusion. But
it ought also to possess a general fundamental rule and regulative
standard of truth, so far as this is attainable. But inasmuch as in this
domain the eternal is simply one, so also for this higher science one
notion properly is sufficient; as also one judgment which comprises all
others, and one conclusion which completes the whole, is sufficient. The
act of understanding has been explained to be the completion of the
notion; and the full and complete apprehension of the eternal truth, or
of Him who is the sum of all verities, was the subject-matter of our
ninth treatise. The act of discerning was explained to be the completion
of the judgment; and this perfect judgment, which decides and
distinguishes between truth and error, was the theme of our tenth
disquisition. Science, however, is the perfection of all thinking, and
in its actual operation, as applied to life, and in itself carried to a
conclusion, is one with it. Now this was the end to which the present
discussion and development was intended to lead; while the further
prosecution of it and its reference to the several spheres and domains
of existence must be reserved to the following discourses.

LECTURE XII.

OF THE SYMBOLICAL NATURE AND CONSTITUTION OF LIFE WITH REFERENCE TO ART
AND THE MORAL RELATIONS OF MAN.

How difficult it generally is for man to express his internal
conceptions, to bring out the indwelling idea and to realize its perfect
external manifestation, is shown, for example, among other instances, by
the fine arts, or the art of the beautiful. For this reason the theory
of the latter, the so-called æsthetics (which, however, might far more
correctly be termed symbolism), forms the natural pendant and
accompaniment to logic, if the latter, instead of being limited, as is
usual, to the mere art of distinguishing the different kinds of notions,
is understood in a far higher sense, and referred to eternal, and,
consequently, divine truth, and to its intrinsic and equally divine
standard. For when the question no longer involves a purely material or
simply subjective verity, but that which is more exalted and heavenly,
then beauty (that, namely, about which art is conversant, and which, far
surpassing all that is merely human, pretends and really ought to be
divine and supernatural) forms the other and symbolical aspect of one
and the same eternal truth. And indeed it is neither separable from it
nor opposed to it, so long as art maintains its high standing and
employs the sensual charm which it requires for the lively expression of
vitality, and its outward manifestation, only as a symbol and for the
sake of that higher significance which she herself lends to it, and does
not seek nor admire it for its own sake, nor sees therein the
fulfillment of its own true end and aim.

But by far the greater number of the productions of art are only
repetitions or copies of some previous realization. And I use this term,
not in its usual depreciatory sense, but rather in one that is
applicable to what are truly artistic productions but still only
successful formations at second-hand. Extremely rare, indeed, are the
original expressions or impressions of an indwelling, unborrowed idea
And even among these very many are nothing more than the first faint
outline and commencement, which only at a subsequent epoch of art, and
after long and repeated essays, attains to complete perfection and a
really successful and veritable outward exhibition of the indwelling
idea. For we must ever consider as an idea that inward object which art
in its external manifestations strives to realize, and which in its
creations ought to stand out, as it were, bodily before us.

Even in music (as the expression of the emotions of the soul in their
flow and change, and in the struggle with inharmonious discords, till at
last they finally dissolve in harmony) it is not so much the immediate
feeling--for this would be no more artistic than the mere cry of
passion--as rather the idea of it that the artist has in his mind, and
that forms the subject of his representations. The musician strives to
represent the whole idea--the beautiful and the marvelous in the whole
progress of its development. Following the inmost life-pulse in its
alternate rising and falling, he labors to give its unexpected
transitions up to their sudden harmony or its repetitions of still
increasing pitch up to a full and soothing close, or (if this is
designedly to be left unattained) up to the abrupt and painful breaking
off or gradual dying away and cessation of the plaintive note or the
tone of ardent longing.

And the same is the case with sculpture. But here we would premise the
remark, that the principle with which we set out, of the triple nature
and division of man’s being, is confirmed by the existence of a
corresponding order and diversity in the fine arts. Among the arts,
accordingly, whose object is the manifestation of the beautiful, music
is pre-eminently the art for the soul, while sculpture is for the most
part corporeal.

Now, in sculpture it is not any actual figure or the body itself that
the artist has in view. It is the general idea thereof that constitutes
the subject-matter of his representations. He seeks to portray its most
perfect structure, its full organic development, its exquisite
correctness of symmetry and sublime beauty of form. And to all this even
the expression of character and passion is in a certain degree
subordinate. And exactly because the external medium which it employs,
because the material mass on which its internal conceptions are to be
stamped, or, rather, out of which they are to be worked, is the
inanimate stone and cold marble, therefore does true sculpture aim at a
higher excellence than the uniformity and death-like repose which
characterize the Egyptian statues of the gods. It seeks rather to
triumph by copying with the most marvelous truth and fidelity the living
frame in its most rapid movements, and life in its most violent
struggles, and by seizing its fleeting graces to fix them forever in its
own imperishable creations.

In truth, the imitation of actual reality, however difficult and in
itself worthy of admiration it may be, does not constitute the aim or
object, or generally the principle of sculpture, any more than of any
other art. A remarkable proof of this is afforded by the fact that
color, with all its charms, is excluded from the plastic art and its
embodied manifestations as too meretricious and too closely allied to
reality. For by such an expedient, not less than by the use of ingenious
mechanism to give motion to the limbs, the artistic ideal, or the images
of the gods, would have degenerated into the puppets of children.

Reality, therefore, with its actual shapes and the delusive imitation
and servile copying of them, is in nowise the proper or immediate object
of the plastic art. Even beauty of form is not always, not at least
solely and exclusively its aim; it is only so accidentally and
relatively, as a condition of the expression of character, of external
states, and of the total significance. Always and universally it is a
thought, the _idea_ of some subject or form as the inner sense and
significance thereof, that constitutes the essence of a work of art, and
with which art in general is concerned. In other words, art is
symbolical. And this may be predicated with equal truth of every higher
art, as well as of sculpture, whatever may be the medium of its
manifestations, whether a statue, or tone as in music, or words as in
poetry. It is exactly this that constitutes the difference between high
art and every other which, however closely allied to it in appearance,
has some ulterior and practical object, and which therefore can not be
symbolical.

Of this kind, for instance, is the difference between rhetoric (which
most assuredly is an art, or at least was exclusively treated as such by
the Greeks) and poetry. And it is of the utmost importance to keep this
distinction constantly in view. For exactly in the same degree that it
is neglected is the proper character and true excellency of the higher
art of the beautiful lost sight of. And a right estimate of the other
arts which have an ulterior and practical object would also be
endangered. An orator who with the greatest command of practical and
imaginative language is nevertheless devoid of convincing logical power
to sway the minds of men by his arguments, and to bend them irresistibly
to his purpose, would exercise but little influence; while no heavier
censure can be passed on one who sets up for a poet, than to affirm of
him, that he possesses and understands nothing but the rhetoric of
passion, without--though such further qualification is evidently
superfluous--true poetry.

Of the fine arts, therefore, which, employing a material medium for
their representations, possess an ideal and symbolical significance,
music is the art of the soul, and sculpture is that of corporeal form,
and of the manifestation of the true idea of organic beauty. But among
the three sister arts, painting is the true spiritual one. As the light,
with its ceaseless variety of tints and hues, is the most spiritual
element of nature, and as the eye is the most spiritual of man’s senses,
so painting, as concerned about these, is the most spiritual of the
arts, and the one with which the symbolical spirit readily associates
itself. Painting directs itself wholly to the eye, whereas sculpture
appeals indeed to the eye, but only as the necessary medium for
satisfying the corporeal sense and feeling.

But painting, in its manifestations, does not confine itself to abstract
beauty (if we may so say) or the perfect structure and symmetry of form.
It embraces all the eye can reach in the visible phenomena of the world,
with all its wonderful play of light and shade and magical splendor of
coloring, where not only the whole, but the several parts--in a word,
all that in many and various ways is charming to the senses, attractive
to the eye with ever new wonders, and all that to the mind or spirit is
full of deep spiritual and symbolical significance. And for this reason
the wonderful art of painting is even the most appropriate, shall I say
to exhibit, or rather to suggest, the high mysteries of divine love in
religion and revelation. No wonder, then, if, in modern Christendom,
music and painting, the art or symbolism of soul and spirit, have been
chiefly cultivated, and attained their highest development and
perfection, whereas the art of the perfect development of organic form
and corporeal and sensual beauty, reached its height of excellence in
the sculpture of classical antiquity, which in the same way and degree
will never again be paralleled, or at least will never be surpassed.

It appears sufficient if we assume that there are only three symbolical
arts for the higher manifestation of the beautiful. For architecture,
although in various ways bound and modified by the conditions of some
ulterior design, is, nevertheless, in its principal features closely
related to sculpture, and stands on the same line with it. For beauty of
structure, correctness of proportion, and grace of symmetry, which form
the fundamental laws of the plastic art, constitute also the ideal of
architecture. Accordingly, among the Greeks and Romans, where the latter
attained to its highest and richest cultivation, its principles,
relations, and forms approximate to those of organic figure, to which
they are not indeed outwardly in their structure, but in a certain
degree and according to their internal constitution, similar and
correspondent, or at least related.

Egyptian architecture, with its predominantly mathematical character,
and the tree-like Gothic aspiring to heaven, with its slender shafts and
floral decorations, form the two extremes of this organic character
which belongs to architecture, and which constitutes it one and the same
art with sculpture. For the structures of the former environ and
surround the creations of the latter. And it is only consistent that
that which supplies the legitimate sphere and the natural medium for the
other properly exhibitive art of sculpture and its statues of the gods,
should even possess or acquire a similarity of character with it. As to
the Egyptian and Gothic architectures, the remark readily suggests
itself that the symbolical character displays itself predominantly in
them: purity of form, however, is the prevalent feature of the _antique_
(or Grecian), but even here in its proportions the symbolical principle
may be traced, although it is more recondite, not to say concealed.

Even poetry is no fourth art alongside of the other three. It does not
stand on the same line with and form, as it were, the complement of
their number. It is rather the universal symbolical art which comprises
and combines in different mediums all those other exhibitive arts of the
beautiful. In its rhythm and other metrical aids it possesses all the
charms of a music in words; in its figurative diction it maintains an
endless succession of shifting pictures in the vivid coloring of
diversified illustration; while in its entire structure (which must be
neither purely historical, nor logical, or even rhetorical) it strives
to attain, by a beautiful organic development and disposition of its
parts, to an arrangement of the whole both architecturally great and
correct.

Poetry owes in every instance its first creative beginning to some great
and singular ray of light from symbolical tradition, which, at the same
time, illuminates the noble and memorable past, and points forward to
the dark and mystical future. For it would be difficult to produce one
among the great epic poems of antiquity that does not contain this
poetico-prophetic element, and does not touch upon the profound
mysteries of both worlds. The next and middle step is occupied by the
poetry of sentiment and feeling--that music of the soul or poesy of song
in which the calm deep longings and the wild tearing passions of the
moment, once plunged and glorified in that immortal element, become
eternal. But the height of perfection in the organic development of
poetry is marked by the drama. This third and highest form of poetical
art has for its subject-matter the whole struggle of human life, which
in its vivid representations it aims to realize, and, as it were, to
bring bodily before our eyes.

There exists an obvious analogy between the several constituents, as
well as the different species or kinds of poetry and the three
_material_ arts of the beautiful. As the latter are symbolical
throughout in the subject no less than in the manner and design of their
manifestations, so also, but in a far higher degree, is poetry, as the
art which embraces all the three in its own sphere. And this was the end
to which I wished to arrive, inasmuch as the symbolical significance of
the whole of life is the very point which at present claims our
attention. For it bears intimately on the conclusion which I attempted
to establish in my last Lecture. It was there my endeavor to prove that
the supreme science, which is essentially identical with a divine faith,
may be actually applied to life, be really brought in unison with it,
and become transformed into a living and real existence. But this can
only be accomplished by a symbolical process, or in other words, the
symbolical signification of life is either itself the basis, or else an
indispensable condition of, and inevitable transition-point toward, such
a union and its accomplishment.

But in the arts which portray the beautiful, this symbolical
significance and property is most distinctly prominent; here it is most
easily understood and most universally recognized. On this account I
have chosen this subject, as forming the natural transition and
connecting link between the previous and the following Lectures. No
doubt the æsthetical portion of man’s constitution and life is in itself
sufficiently remarkable and attractive, and rich and important enough in
its effects and consequences, to vindicate for itself such an episode,
and to claim for it a place in philosophical speculation. For it shows
that that fundamental law of psychological science and triple principle
of division of the human consciousness into spirit, soul, and sense,
admits also of application in this domain also, and may serve to confirm
the whole theory and way of thinking. The further prosecution, however,
of this elementary view or sketch of art would carry me beyond my
present limits. For the aim of that philosophy of which I am attempting
to give an exposition is directed to life itself--as well the inner life
of the individual as the public life (and in the present place, also,
its symbolical relation or signification)--which is so inseparably and
intimately connected with the investigation into the divine foundation
of life and the divine direction which ought to be imparted to it.

It can easily be shown that education as well as art is essentially
symbolical. Such, indeed, must be the character of the education,
whether public or private, of the whole rising generation, unless it is
to degenerate into an ordinary mechanical system. And it is even in this
quality principally that we are disposed to place the distinction
between an unspiritual education, which, even though in the sternness of
its morality it may defy censure, yet eventually proves barren and
mortal, and one more solid and more conformable to human nature, which,
less pretending in the outset, is even the more lasting in its effects.

The ready susceptibility of the youthful mind for every thing symbolical
that lies within its reach, and its vivid perception of its meaning,
might be clearly enough shown by instancing some of the ordinary
amusements of boyhood and youth. How commonly, in these years, are the
various occupations, pursuits, and circumstances of real and, to them,
still future life, childishly, perhaps, but still ingeniously imitated,
or, rather, anticipated! And how lasting an influence does this
frequently make on their little society! What various but lasting traces
does it often leave on their minds, more perhaps than many hours of
study, especially if in the latter the usual system of overloading the
young mind defeats its own end. Play, indeed, must not become the mere
pastime of idleness, for it is only by its alternation with labor and
the sternness of discipline that it continues to be a recreation and a
pleasure.

And, indeed, the earnestness, the labor, and the sterner part in this
whole business and matter of education, as mixed and composed of two
opposite elements, of the serious and the sportive, is highly capable of
receiving so spiritual a reference and vital a significance. And if all
education be nothing else than a preparation for the future, and the
state of this preparation, then it must be self-evident that too many or
enough of such vivid references and spiritual allusions to a future
life, either generally or to any particular phase of it that may chiefly
be had in view, can not be introduced into education and its serious and
sportive elements and pursuits. For it is only by this method that the
susceptibilities of youth and the youthful fancy can be vividly excited
and thoroughly impressed with the fundamental design and significance of
the whole of life--a result which no mere dry definition of the future
state, or generally of any “destination of man” on the dusty road of
logic, will ever attain to.

It is nowise singular if this symbolical property and disposition of
human nature announces itself as distinctly in the earliest development
and in the most perfect of the productions of artistic genius, whether
we take into consideration the whole existing state of mankind, or his
original and essential constitution relatively to the world and to God.
We have already remarked, on more than one occasion, that man, as soon
as he was deprived of those higher faculties which he had abused to his
ruin, fell thereby more entirely than would seem originally to have been
the case, under the dominion of figurative fancy, and that,
consequently, his whole nature and consciousness became greatly changed
from what it was at the beginning. If man did at the very first possess
the faculty and the power to communicate his thoughts to others inwardly
by a mere operation of his will, and without having recourse to the
external medium of words, he no longer enjoys this privilege; and if any
wonderful phenomena in any way resembling thereto be now found, they
only form so many remarkable exceptions, instead of making the rule of
human life and consciousness as they now are. As at present
constituted, man feels that his state is pre-eminently symbolical: he
sees in symbolism a necessary requirement for his earthly pursuits--a
substitute for those immediate powers of cogitation which he has lost.
And all this is true, independently of any use he may freely choose to
make of symbols for the higher purposes of spiritual life.

Man, at the beginning, was placed on this earth as its first-born son,
in the midst of the telluric universe, or, in other words, in the center
of a planetary world akin to and similar to his own. Now, whatever may
be the case, or whatever it may be allowable to think of any other of
the starry spheres--though in the invisible world of spirits all perhaps
is more immediately full of and instinct with essence, and is not veiled
in material emblems, this is not the case with this earth. Terrestial
nature, in all its organic productions and warring elements of life, is
throughout symbolical. Man, therefore, viewed from this position of his
earthly habitation, is surrounded by a symbolical world of sensuous
emblems. And if we can, or, rather, if we will, believe the grand
intimation with which revelation opens, the first and highest
destination of man is even symbolical--to be the Divine image.

If, now, all the natural wants and properties of man are symbolical--if
such be his present state in the midst of creation--his whole position
in the mundane system, and his high and heavenly destination, can we,
or, rather, ought we, to wonder if even religion presents itself for the
most part clothed in a symbolical garb? For this is the case, not merely
with that which was the wild upgrowth of a poetical and purely
imaginative heathenism, but also the old, original, and pure religion of
nature--as the first love devoting itself for sacrifice--the second
revelation of God. And so we find it to have been in the old world, or,
as it is otherwise called, the old covenant. Here the first twilight of
faith was yet studded with all the starry splendor of the whole
symbolical creation, as it were with the brilliant diadem of nature’s
most glorious images. And even the new era of the ascending and
brightening dawn still bears on its front the glittering morning-star of
art.

But now, if still retaining the same figure, or, rather, borrowing from
it a contrast, we proceed to designate art in and by itself, we may
justly compare it to the moon, which illumines with its vague but
marvelous _half-light_ the domain of night and the dark realms of
creative fancy. Even here it is but a borrowed splendor from the true
sun, a reflection from another and a higher luminary, that lights up the
darkness. And while all the wonderful starry types of the spiritual
world, which retire in the full day, come out in this magical twilight,
so also deceptive phantoms, airy forms of gigantic magnitude, may mingle
with the hovering and misty troop of shadows to which the earth-born
vapors alone give birth and shape. And yet, notwithstanding this earthly
intermixture, the art of the beautiful, whenever it retains its true
nature, is in its essence directed to the divine. Consequently it not
only lends an external charm to religion, but in its origin, in all
times and peoples, it was intimately related to it, and bound to it by
the strictest ties of affinity and association. And this is not the less
true, even though to the eye of a severe criticism most of its
productions, in the ages of its decline, may appear utterly remote from
its first source and aim, and perfectly vain, worthless, and sensual.

The divine origin of art is easily proved by its history every where,
and indeed is so manifest that it can not well be doubted. High art,
indeed, can not and never will surrender its claim to a divine power and
sanctity: it must insist upon the recognition of this its high sanction.
If we could conceive an age or country where religion should entirely
cease and be forgotten--where not only all positive faith and
revelation, but even the universal belief in a Divinity above them,
should die away and perish among men--the light of all higher and
heaven-directed thoughts and aims should become extinct--that echo of
eternity and of eternal love which the inmost feelings of the human soul
spontaneously gives back, should be hushed forever--then and there at
the self-same moment would all high art be withdrawn and disappear.

In our own age the state of things is the direct contrary to that which
we have been supposing. While from the universal prevalence of
freethinking in politics--a natural consequence of the reign of
religious skepticism--the whole of life, and especially public life, has
ceased to be regarded and understood in its symbolical character and
dignity; while the little of religious sentiment that still survives is
more or less distracted and secularized by sectarian controversy, and
scarcely one inviolable sanctuary is left for a simple and undoubting
faith to shelter in--art and the beautiful are for a certain portion of
the educated classes the only fresh oasis of divinity amid the
surrounding desert of worldliness. It is the last treasure left to them,
and, indeed, prized by them as such, and regarded as the true palladium
of a higher intrinsic life; but this, in its isolated state and by
itself, it never can be.

In this respect the present age may be likened to a noble house, fallen
from its primitive wealth and magnificence into decay and ruin. Its
revenues dissipated by misfortunes, mismanagement and extravagance; its
mansion and domains mortgaged or encumbered with debt, nothing remains
to it but the family jewels. These time-honored heirlooms of better days
are all that it still retains of its former opulence. And even in these
many a false stone has been introduced among the old genuine diamonds;
much spurious metal has been substituted for the sterling gold of
antiquity. Apparently, however, the whole are still preserved as the
last relic of a former splendor, and of a wealth which once seemed
inexhaustible. In the same way the present generation supports its inner
and higher life on the mere external treasures of art, while the great
capital of ancient faith, to which among other excellent fruits that
ornament of beauty owed its existence, has by the great majority been
long squandered on the “_spirit of the age_.”

But the symbolical dress that religion every where assumes constitutes
but one half of its external form. The other consists in the vital and
intrinsic union of all the members and professors of the common faith.
Religion can not by any means be isolated and solitary. It is impossible
to think of it as existing only for the individual. In a word, there is
no such thing as religion in a proper sense without a community. Two or
three must at least be united in a common faith, that its power and
efficacy may be visible among them. And this association is one vital
throughout--an inmost bond binding souls together by a spiritual
attraction, and, as it were, enchainment of the several members.

As the electrical shock traverses instantaneously the entire chain of
the connected links, and the spark which enters at one extremity flashes
the next moment at the other--as a single loadstone will by contact
convert any number of needles into magnets, and elevate them into a new
and higher relation to the whole globe--so is it also in religion. A
living communication from the first origin runs through the whole
community. As in the voltaic pile, composed of alternate layers of two
different metals, one chemical element of the telluric energy or of the
vital principle of the air or atmosphere is emitted or set free on one
side and the other on the opposite; so is it here also in the spiritual
chain of faith and in its living reciprocal action of the different
members of this soul-chain--between those who are active ministers and
conductors, or instruments by which it works, and the others, who in a
somewhat passive relation only imbibe the invisible life. By the one the
divine blessing of sanctification and holiness is set in action and
brought to light--developed and confirmed; while by the others grace is
received as the effectual power and gift of salvation.

One remark, however, seems particularly called for in this place. It
appears, from what has been already said, that even revelation and the
true religion itself invariably puts on and is invested with that
symbolical garb which is so consonant and agreeable to the state and
nature of humanity. This being the case, it becomes extremely difficult
to form a general standard by which we may unfalteringly determine what
symbols are not essential, as only serving for the external garb of
religion and an intelligible vehicle of its communications. For this, it
is evident, must be governed by the diversity of individual wants and
peculiarities, and must consequently assume a variable and personal
character. If, however, a symbol proceeds immediately from God, then it
must necessarily be essential. It is not only a type, but an actual
substance. To suppose otherwise would be even almost parallel to
presuming to regard the eternal Logos, who is the source of light and
life, of all knowledge and of all being, as a word merely, without
innate energy and substance.

Most natural, therefore, is it (that is to say, most consistent with the
nature of the thing, which however in itself is supernatural,
incomprehensible, and surpasses all conception), that the highest symbol
of the faith, that which forms the principle of communion and the living
center of unity of all Christendom, should have such a character as to
be at once a symbol and also the veritable reality of the thing itself.
For inasmuch as on the altar of this religion of divine love, since the
one oblation has long ago been perfected, no other fire shall again be
kindled but the flame of prayer and of a will directed to and in unison
with God; therefore, the act by means of which that communion of souls
which constitutes the essence of all religion, is maintained and carried
on, consists simply in this, that the essential substance of the divine
power and of God’s love to man is given and received as the wonderful
seal of union with Him.[52]

As to the altar itself, how rich or how simple its ornaments ought to
be, is a question which I have already remarked, does not easily admit
of any general solution. If, however, we should attempt to think of
Christianity without an altar, or desire and attempt to establish such a
scheme--what indeed among the vast variety of human conceits and
religious theories has only occurred to a very limited number, and never
has and never will exercise any lasting and decided influence--a
Christianity thus divested of symbols and mysteries would be degraded
into a mere philosophical view and opinion--or at the very best, a
school of the kind--any thing, in short, rather than religion. Even the
study of the Bible, if in spite of so sad a state of things it should
still survive, would sink into a mere matter of erudition, on a level
with any other favorite pursuit of antiquarian lore and research. And
if, on the other hand, rising perhaps somewhat higher than a mere
philosophical opinion or the favorite pursuits of erudition, a religious
community, having no altar at all, should pretend to rest entirely on
prayer and spiritual teaching or preaching, such a scheme must
presuppose an immediate inspiration, communicable to all and continuous
throughout time. But such an hypothesis invariably proves the easy and
natural transition to the most frightful fanaticism, of whose pernicious
and evil effects those only who are acquainted with the domestic history
of Mohammedism, among whose modern and ancient sects this idea is
rampant, can form a clear and adequate conception.

In religion, therefore, and that entire union of the inner man and soul
with God which it demands, or at least hopes and desires to bring about
as essential and necessary, and which the higher philosophy of
antiquity, no less than revealed religion, strove and longed to attain,
there lies a something inconceivably sublime and beautiful. Nay, we
might almost call it an impossible result, similar in some degree to
that which is involved in the higher and more intricate of algebraic