Part 2 (1/2)

Hence the nature of brutes is simple--that of angels two-fold--that of men three-fold.

The third part of human consciousness, the body--its organic laws, powers, and properties, the philosopher must leave to the naturalist. It is only when it has reference to the higher parts of consciousness that its properties can be made the matter of his investigation. The soul and the mind form the fit and peculiar subject of his enquiries. To the mind belong the faculties of will and understanding--to the soul, those of reason and imagination. Schlegel observes it is remarkable that the three different species of mental alienation correspond to the three parts of human consciousness. Thus monomania springs from some error deeply rooted in the mind--frenzy is the disorder of a soul that has broken loose from all the restraints of reason; and idiotcy arises from some organic defect in the brain. The last is the effect of physical, the two former the consequence of moral, and frequently accidental, causes. The author lays it down as a general principle, subject, however, to many modifications and exceptions, that in man mind or thought predominates--in woman soul or feeling prevails. Hence in marriage, which is a sacred union of souls, the deficiencies in the psychology of either s.e.x are happily and mutually supplied. On this subject, Schlegel has some of the most touching and beautiful reflections, which a loving heart and a n.o.ble fancy have ever inspired.

Imagination (Einbildungs-kraft) is the inventive faculty--Reason (Vernunft) the regulative--Understanding (Verstand) the penetrative, or in a higher degree the intuitive--and the Will (Wille) the moral, faculty. To these primary faculties, or as the author styles them, these main boughs of human consciousness, four secondary faculties are subservient--the memory--the conscience--the pa.s.sions or natural impulses, and the outward senses. The memory is the intermediate faculty between the understanding and the reason--the conscience the intermediate faculty between the reason and the will--the pa.s.sions or natural impulses the intermediate faculty between the will and the imagination--and the outward senses form the connecting link between the imagination and the body.

Reason is the regulative faculty implanted in the soul. In real life, it corresponds to what we commonly call judgment, and is that faculty by which the transactions of men are regulated, and the resolutions of the will are brought to maturity, whether in sacred or secular concerns. In science, Reason is the dialectical or a.n.a.lytic faculty, by which the discoveries of Imagination and the perceptions of the Understanding receive a definite form--the faculty of a.n.a.lysis, arrangement, and combination. Reason in itself is not inventive--it makes no discoveries--it is rather a negative than a positive faculty--but it is the indispensable arbitress, to whose decision Understanding and Imagination must submit their various productions.

Imagination, on the other hand, is the inventive faculty in art, poetry and even science. No great discovery, says the author, can be made even in the mathematics, without imagination. This a.s.sertion may strike us as strange; but we must remember that Leibnitz declared he was led to his great mathematical discoveries by the aid of metaphysics; and that imagination necessarily enters into the composition of a great metaphysical genius, few will be disposed to question. Here, however, if I may be allowed to offer an opinion, Schlegel does not appear to me to have traced, with sufficient distinctness, the boundaries between imagination and understanding.

Understanding is the faculty of apprehension--it penetrates into the inward essence of things, and discerns the manifestations of the divine or human mind in their several revelations and communications.--Thus the naturalist, whose eye searches into the inward life of nature--the statesman, who can fathom the most deep-laid plans of a hostile policy--the theologian, who can discover the most hidden sense of Scripture, may be said to possess in an eminent degree, the faculty of understanding.

Will is the other faculty implanted in the mind of man--the faculty on whose good or evil direction that of all the other faculties of mind and soul essentially depends. Independently of the moral direction of the will, its innate strength or weakness, its steadiness or vacillation, proportionably augment or diminish the power of all the other faculties.

How far moderate abilities, when directed by a firm, tenacious, perseverant will can avail--to what a degree of success they may sometimes lead, daily experience may serve to convince us.

Originally all these faculties, will and understanding, reason and imagination, were harmoniously blended and united in the human consciousness; but since, at the fall of man, a dark spirit interposed its shadow betwixt him and the Sun of Righteousness, disorder and confusion have entered into his mind and soul, and troubled their several faculties. Thus the understanding often points out a course which the will refuses to follow; and the will, on the other hand, is often disposed to pursue the good and right path, were the blind or narrow understanding competent to direct it. Not only are will and understanding in frequent collision with one another, but each is at variance with itself. What the will resolves to-day it shrinks from to-morrow! How often does the understanding view the same subject in a different light at different times! How much do time, circ.u.mstance, and humour, place the same truth in a clearer or obscurer aspect! The same opposition is observable betwixt reason and imagination. Where fancy is the strongest in the house, how often doth she spurn the warnings of her more homely and unpretending sister--reason. Again, where reason has the ascendancy, what groundless aversion, and paltry jealousy does she not frequently evince at the superior nature of her brilliant sister! Or, to drop this figurative language, how often do we behold a man of lofty imagination very deficient in practical sense; and again, in your man of strong sense, how frequently dull and pedestrian is the fancy! In real life what a deplorable schism exists between poets and artists on the one hand, and men of business on the other! What mutual contempt and aversion do they not frequently exhibit! Well, this schism is nothing else than the external realization of the inward conflict between reason and imagination.

With respect to the four secondary faculties--memory--conscience--the natural impulses--and the outward senses--faculties, which, as the author says, cannot from their importance be termed subordinate, but should rather be called subsidiary or a.s.signed;--Schlegel shews that, as regards the first, the decay of the memory precedes the decline of the reason, and its sudden and entire loss brings about the extinction of the latter faculty. In the same way the deadness of the conscience argues the utmost depravity of the will. The conscience is the memory of the will, as the memory is the conscience of the understanding.

”The natural impulses,” says Schlegel, ”where they appear exalted to pa.s.sion, are to be regarded as nothing else but the motions of a will, that has been overpowered by the false illusions of imagination. The middle position of the impulses betwixt the will and the imagination, as well as the abused co-operation of those two faculties in any pa.s.sion or sensual gratification, become habitual, is apparent particularly in those inclinations which man has in common with the brute, and where the viciousness lies only in their excess or violence.”[22] ”Aspiration after infinity is natural to man, and belongs essentially to his being.

Whatever is defective or disorderly in his impulses, consists only in their unbounded gratification--in the perversion of that aspiration after infinity towards perishable, sensual, material, and often most unworthy, objects; for that aspiration, natural as it is to man, where it is pure and genuine, can be gratified by no sensual indulgence and no earthly possession.”[23] In the brute, the gratification of the natural appet.i.tes is regular, uniform, subject to no vicissitudes or excesses, and entails no injury on his nature, because undisturbed and unvitiated by the false illusions of imagination.

Lastly, with regard to the outward senses, there are, philosophically speaking, but three, sight, hearing, and touch--for under the last, taste and smell are included; and it is remarkable how these severally correspond to the three parts of human consciousness. The sight is pre-eminently the sense of the mind--hearing the sense of the soul--while the touch is peculiarly the sense of the body; the sense given to the body for its special protection and preservation. The loss of the first two senses the body can survive--but it perishes with the utter extinction of the last. Those expressions in common parlance, a good artist-like eye--a fine musical ear--prove the close connexion which mankind has always felt to exist between the outer senses and the higher faculties of man.

”Had the soul,” says the author, ”not been originally darkened and troubled--had it remained in a clear, luminous repose in its G.o.d--then the human consciousness would have been of a far more simple nature than at present; for it would have consisted only of _understanding_, _soul_, and _will_. Reason and imagination, which are now in such frequent collision with the will and understanding, as well as with each other, would then have been absorbed in those higher faculties. Even the conscience would not then have been a special act, or special function of the judgment--but a tender feeling--a gentle, almost unconscious pulsation of the soul. The senses and the memory, those ministrant faculties which, in the present dissonance of the human consciousness, form so many distinct powers of the soul, would, in its state of harmony, have been mere bodily organs.”[24]

So much for the author's psychology--let us now proceed to the ontological part of the work.

To the Supreme Being, will and understanding belong in a supreme degree; in him they exist in the most perfect harmony--will is understanding, and understanding will. But with no propriety can the faculty of reason be ascribed to the Deity; and it is remarkable, says the author, that nowhere in Holy Writ, nor in the sacred traditions of the primitive nations, nor in the writings of the great philosophers of antiquity, is the term reason ever used in reference to Almighty G.o.d. It is only among a few of the later, degenerate, and rationalist sects of philosophy, the Stoics for example, that the expression _Divine Reason_ is ever met with. If such an expression is incorrect or unsound, with still less fitness and decorum can the faculty of imagination be a.s.signed to the G.o.d-head--the very term would shock the understandings, and revolt the inmost feelings, of all men.

The Deity reveals himself unto men in four different ways--in Scripture, (including of course its running and necessary commentary, ecclesiastical Tradition);--in Nature--in Conscience, and in History.

”Holy Writ,” says the author, ”as it is delivered to us, and as it was begun and founded three-and-thirty centuries ago, does not exclude the elder sacred traditions of the preceding two thousand four hundred years; or the revelation, which was the common heritage of the whole human race. On the contrary, it contains very explicit allusions to the fact that such a revelation was imparted to the first man, as well as to that patriarch who, after the destruction of the primeval world of giants, was the second progenitor of mankind. As the sacred knowledge, derived from this revelation, flowed on every side, and in copious streams over the succeeding generations of men, the ancient and holy traditions were soon disfigured, and covered over with fictions and fables; where, amid a mult.i.tude of remarkable vestiges and glorious traits of true religion, immoral mysteries and Baccha.n.a.lian rites were often intermixed, and truth itself, as in a second chaos, buried under a ma.s.s of contradictory symbols. Thence arose that Babylonish confusion of languages, sagas, and symbols, which is universally found among the ancient, and even the primitive nations. In the great work of the restoration of true religion, which accordingly we must regard as a second revelation, or rather as a second stage of revelation, a rigid proscription of those heathen fictions, and of all the immorality connected with them, was the first and most essential requisite. But in that gospel of creation, which forms the introduction to the whole Bible, that elder revelation, accorded to the first man and to the second progenitor, is expressly laid down as the ground-work; and in this introduction, we shall find the clue to the history and religion of the primitive world--nay, it is the true Genesis of all historical science.”[25]

Now with respect to the secondary or more indirect modes, by which the Deity communicates himself to men, the author observes that ”Nature, too, is a book written on both sides, within and without, in which the finger of G.o.d is clearly visible:--a species of Holy Writ, in a bodily form--a glorious panegyric, as it were, on G.o.d's omnipotence, expressed in the most vivid symbols. Together with these two great witnesses of the glory of the Creator, scripture, and nature--the voice of conscience is an inward revelation of G.o.d--the first index of those other two greater and more general sources of revealed truths; while History, by laying before our eyes the march of Divine Providence--a Providence whose loving agency is apparent as well in the lives of individuals as in the social career of nations--History, I say, const.i.tutes the fourth revelation of G.o.d.”[26]

We have next to consider the conduct of Divine Providence in the education of the human race. How do we educate the boy? We first endeavour to awaken his sense--then we cultivate his soul, or his moral faculties; while at the same time, we aid the gradual unfolding of his understanding. It is so with the divine education of mankind. In the primitive revelation, indeed, the first man received the highest intellectual illumination; an illumination which, though at his fall it was obscured by sin, still s.h.i.+nes with a shorn splendour through all the history and traditions of the primeval world. When, however, by the abuse he had made of his great intellectual powers, man was successively deprived of all those high gifts with which he had been originally endowed; when by the errors of idolatry, he had lapsed into a state of intellectual infancy; then it was necessary that his sense should first be awakened to divine things; and this was accomplished in the Mosaic revelation. But this revelation was only preparatory to another, destined to renovate the soul of humanity, and gradually illumine its intelligence. This regeneration of the moral faculties of man was achieved immediately and directly by Christianity; for, without this moral regeneration, any sudden illumination of the intellect would have been hurtful rather than beneficial to mankind. Under the benign influence of Christianity, the scientific enlightenment of the human mind has been wisely progressive; but it seems reserved for the last glorious ages of the triumphant church to witness the full meridian splendour of human intelligence. Then the great scheme of creation will be fulfilled; and the intellectual light, which played around the cradle, will brighten the last age, of humanity.

Let us now proceed to consider Nature in herself, and in her relations to G.o.d, to the spiritual intelligences, and to man.

Nature was originally the beautiful, the faultless work of the Almighty's hand. But the rebel angel in his fall brought disorder and death into all material creation. Hence arose that chaos, which the breath of creative Power only could remove. Thus, according to the author, a wide interval occurs between the first and second verse of Genesis. ”In the beginning,” says the inspired historian, ”G.o.d made heaven and earth,” that is, as the Nicene Creed explains it, the visible and invisible world. ”And the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” But that void--that darkness--that chaos proceeded not from the luminous hand of an all-wise and all perfect Maker--but from the disturbing influence of that fiend whom Holy Writ hath called, with such unfathomable depth, the ”murderer from the beginning.” Hence Schlegel terms him in his sublime language, ”the author or original of death”--(Erfinder des Todes).

On a subject of such vast importance, I presume not to offer an opinion: but I must merely content myself with the humble task of a.n.a.lysis. It may be proper to observe, however, that this opinion of Schlegel's would seem, from a pa.s.sage in the work of the great Catholic writer--Molitor, to be consonant with the tradition of the ancient synagogue. ”The Cabala,” says he, ”was divided into two parts--the theoretical and the practical. The former was composed of the patriarchal traditions on the holy mystery of G.o.d, and the divine persons; on the spiritual creation, and the fall of the angels; _on the origin of the chaos of matter, and the renovation of the world in the six days of creation_; on the creation of man, his fall, and the divine ways conducive to his restoration.”[27]

”Death,” says Schlegel, ”came by sin into the world. As by the fall of the first man, who was not created for death, nor originally designed for death, death was transmitted to the whole human race; so by the preceding fall of him, who was the first and most glorious of all created Spirits, death came into the universe, that is, the eternal death, whose fire is inextinguishable. Hence it is said: 'Darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the earth was without form, and void'--as the mere tomb-stone of that eternal death; 'but the Spirit of G.o.d moved over the waters, and therein lay the first vital germ of the new creation.'”[28]

But if such is the origin of Nature, how is its existence perpetuated, and what will be its final destiny?

Nature, as was said above, is a book of G.o.d's revelation, written within and without. The outer part of this sacred volume attests the supreme power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator in characters too clear and luminous to be unperceived or misread by the dullest or the most vitiated eye. The inner pages of this book comprise a still more glorious revelation of G.o.d--but their language is more mysterious, and much which they contain seems to have been wisely withheld, or rather withdrawn from the knowledge of mankind. It was this acquaintance with the internal secrets of Nature, derived partly from revelation, and partly from intuition, which gave the men of the primitive, and especially the ante-diluvian, world such a vast superiority over all the succeeding generations of mankind. But it was the abuse of that knowledge, also, which brought about in the primeval world a Satanic delusion, and a gigantic moral and intellectual corruption, of which we can now scarcely form the remotest idea. But this key to the inward science of Nature, which was taken away from a corrupt world, that had so grossly abused it, seems now about to be restored to man, renovated as his soul and intelligence have been by a long Christian education.

The physical researches of the last fifty years, especially in Germany, lead the enquirer more and more to the knowledge of this important truth, stamped on all the pages of ancient tradition, and never effaced from the recollection of mankind, to wit, the action of spiritual intelligences on the material world. The nature of this action is briefly adverted to in the following pa.s.sage (among many others to the same purport), in the Philosophy of Life. ”It is especially of importance,” says the author, ”for the understanding of the general system of Nature, to observe how the modern chemistry mostly dissolves and decomposes all solid bodies, as well as water itself, into different forms of elements of air, and thereby has taken away from Nature the appearance of rigidity and petrifaction. There are every where living elemental powers hidden and shut up under this appearance of rigidity.