Chapter XI: Preface (10)

But inasmuch as the fault and origin of the dissension has partly its foundation in human imperfection and finiteness, we must rest content, even if we can not all at once get rid of and remove it. We must be satisfied if in this ceaseless struggle with man’s hereditary and connatural fault of error, the progress though slow is sure. It is enough if in this surely advancing progression, each step, however short, brings us nearer to the truth, and to the perfect cognition of the unity of the highest science and divine faith. But this is a point on which even individuals, with the most perfect honesty of purpose and a sincere love of truth, too often go wrong. Unable, perhaps, to reconcile to their own minds some conflicting claim of science and of faith, and to see their way clear out of their perplexities, then to cut the knot of the problem to which they despair of soon finding a satisfactory solution, they precipitately adopt some partial and overhasty conclusion. But slow, extremely slow, is the advance of man’s mental enlightenment in the realm of truth. And if the course of Providence, according to the very gradual progression of divine order in this domain, must be counted by millenniums, then in the life of individuals, years and decades must be reckoned as days and hours. Even though some grave doubt, distracting the inmost feelings, but scarcely definable in express terms--some oppressive problem suggested by the peculiar mental temperament of the individual, can not be resolved in three hours, or even three days, still it may perhaps in three years; and if three years be too little, then thirty years may probably suffice. While in spite of this inward doubt we follow uninterruptedly our vocation in outer life, many a silent change is effected in our minds, and so at length with altered views and enlarged experience we attain to a calm and clear conviction on the points which at an earlier period had appeared to us obscure, had held us in suspense, and oppressed us with perplexing difficulties.

This is the only road that can be safely trod by those who desire above all things to retain a divine faith, but at the same time not to renounce the pursuit of higher science. And is not this the difficult position in the present day of every well-disposed person who is in any way connected with science, or whose pursuits in life require him to occupy himself with it? But now, in the case of physical science, we are all content to observe this law of tardy progress; indeed we think it quite natural, and hold it to be the only correct method. And it is only by following a similar course in the internal investigations of philosophy that we shall ever arrive at a stable position and the firm ground of eternal truth. By any other method, we shall most assuredly lose ourselves among the ever-shifting systems which change with the fashions of the day, or be carried away by the baseless hypotheses of this or that sect or school, which, like the sterile blossoms in the spring, fall fruitless to the ground.

In respect to this tardiness of progress, which most assuredly is at least not inconsistent with true philosophy, I can appeal to my own instance, which in such a case is, I hope, allowable. It is now nine-and-thirty years since I first read, with indescribable avidity, the entire works of Plato in the original; and ever since, amid many other scientific studies, philosophical research has been my principal and favorite avocation. In this pursuit many and various have been the systems of science--of discord and of error--that I have had to wander through. Satisfied neither with the opinions of others nor with my own views, I felt reluctant to come forward with a system of my own. In the mean while my view of philosophy has been in a state of inchoation and of tardy but progressive development. Slowly and incompletely, little by little, incidentally and fragmentarily, at different epochs, has some of its principles come to the light, or escaped me in my earlier literary works and compositions--an explanation which I do not consider superfluous, even for those who are best acquainted with them. But the more I held fast to the two poles of divine faith and of supreme science, which as such is also divine, the firmer footing did I gain in that point and that center in the everlasting Beginning, in which both are one and cease to be at issue, but rather intimately cohering, do but lend fresh life, strength, and elevation to each other. And now at length I believe I have attained to that point when, fully persuaded myself of this unity of science and faith as grounded in God, I may safely indulge the wish to impart to others this important truth, publicly to set it forth, and develop it to the whole world. And it is to me no slight cause of congratulation that I am to enter upon this task in the present place and in the present manner.

Besides those points of correlation already pointed out, between the highest science and faith, there is still another way in which the former, in its all-embracing notion of the triple life of the primal cause and force, is referred to faith, and even to its positive articles and its divine authority. It is obliged to appeal to this, in order to find and maintain its guiding rule and correct standard for the further application and development of this highest and fundamental notion, and to keep it dear of all erroneous and extravagant excrescences. The necessity of this will be best and most simply shown by a few historical instances.

When we open any of the ancient writings of the Hindoos, whether it be their scientific systems, their books of laws and customs for practical life, or their merely mythological poems, we find them, in every instance, based on the notion of a divine trinity, and, in some cases, asserting it in express words and phrases. But inasmuch as, forgetting to maintain the unity together with the trinity, they abandoned the simple truth and made thereout three distinct gods, the metaphysical theory (which otherwise contains so many and distinct traces of ancient truth) and the trinity of the Hindoos has become a pure mythology, comprising as long a genealogy of gods as any other. But the retention, however, of this fundamental notion, their mythology has acquired a theistic hue and coloring, which forms a strong contrast between it and the better known mythology of Greece, notwithstanding that in other respects, and in its purely poetic portion, it exhibits many and strong features of resemblance and affinity. Thus, in this wonderful chaos of distorted truth, of monstrous error, and pure fiction, we meet with ten fabulous creations of men, instead of the single true one with which, only within the last three centuries, the Hindoos have formed a more thorough and permanently-based acquaintance. Moreover, in life and in practice there is exhibited a renunciation of the world, and a mortification of the body, which, far surpassing the rigorous self-denial of the early Christian solitaries in Egypt, is carried to an intensity and an extreme which it is almost incredible that human nature should be capable of. But co-existing with all this, we meet with immoral practices and licentious excesses sanctified by falsehood and superstition, similar to those we have already become acquainted with in the more sensual heathenism of antiquity, that, I mean, which prevailed among the ancient races of this our western portion of the globe. Into such a frightful abyss of error even the most spiritual system of metaphysics inevitably falls, or at least easily becomes associated with falsehood, whenever it is left entirely to itself, and is devoid of a divine rule for its guidance, and the simple standard of a higher and heaven-descended authority.

In the history, too, of the development of the Grecian mind we discover a similar doctrine advanced in one of its latest epochs. The Neo-Platonists were very well acquainted with this doctrine and idea of a divine trinity; as, indeed, it may also be traced in the still earlier writings of Plato himself. How far the expressions and formularies employed by the former writers scientifically to convey this idea were perfect and correct is a question which does not concern us at present to inquire. Moreover, the determination of it would carry us far beyond our proper limits, inasmuch as its exact solution would require a nice and accurate classification of the several writers and systems which belong to this school. It is, however, sufficient to remark that this profound metaphysical school of the Neo-Platonists, which reckoned among its adherents the Emperor Julian, stood in direct and hostile collision with Christianity. To adapt to the purpose of their opposition the old Grecian mythology, a faith in which had sensibly declined even among the masses, they attempted to mold it according to their own views and notions, into such a theological shape and direction as would make it more closely resemble the Indian. By this means they believed it possible to revive and reanimate the popular faith. But, even if their ulterior view and their whole object and actuating motive had not taken a direction so decidedly hostile to the truth, still their enterprise, even as such, could not but miscarry. No doubt the mythology of Greece, in its earliest times and original shape, did contain, in some of its less prominent and more hidden passages, esoterically interpreted, a few symbolical doctrines and somewhat theistic ideas, as many a profound examiner of it, in modern times, has recognized and demonstrated. But, notwithstanding all these traces, which we must regard as the remains of an older tradition of the primary knowledge and full revelation belonging to primeval times, still, in subsequent ages, the Grecian mythology had, on the whole, assumed exclusively and pre-eminently a poetic development and form, which even subordinated to itself that political tendency which in so many of its details is so strong. It was, therefore, nothing less than an absurd and inconsistent attempt to try, so late in the day, to metamorphose this beautiful world of fable into a factitious theory of metaphysics, and a colossal system of mysticism, after the manner and fashion of the Indian. Accordingly, like every other attempt that is fundamentally false and directly opposed to the spirit of the age, it passed away at last, without leaving a trace of its influence.

This inclination to the poetic aberration of polytheism and a deification of nature, so universally prevalent in the heathen antiquity of the West, renders it easily conceivable why, in the first and Jewish portion of written revelation, such great stress is laid pre-eminently and primarily on the oneness of the living God. All other expressions--such as that of the eternal creative Word, of the life-giving Spirit of God--are, as it were, but allusions full of hidden meaning for the more clear-sighted and profounder inquirers. How numerous, nevertheless, such indications are; how frequent the reference to three powers or persons--the time, energy, and property of the one Supreme Being--an allusion to which is contained even in the different Hebrew names of the Godhead, is known and acknowledged, even by those who would, if they could, deny it, both to themselves and others.

The tradition of the Jews, which, lying without the strictly-defined body of Scripture, yet proceeds concurrently with it, while it possesses of itself no authority, is, nevertheless, a very useful though too much neglected source of illustration for the sacred volume. Now, in the Talmud the doctrine and notion of the divine trinity is expressed quite fully and distinctly, and without reserve; although in the mode and manner of conceiving it there is much that is both false and objectionable.

In that second portion of revelation with which our present era commences, together with the fulfilling and perfection of the object of faith, this supreme science is brought prominently and clearly forward. No doubt a certain caution and degree of reserve on this doctrine of the Trinity are distinctly visible in the earliest teaching and statements, so long as the preaching of the new faith was confined within the Jewish nation, on whose mind the idea of the oneness of God was still deeply imprinted, even though, like every other principle of their religion, it was ill understood and had long ceased to be embraced with a living energy, being taken merely in the dead letter. But ere long this thin veil was also removed from the All-holy One, and the great mystery of faith set forth as the introduction to the fourth and last Gospel. From the latter I have accordingly borrowed that designation of this great mystery which is even the most appropriate to science; of the supreme life which is itself omnipotence, of the eternal word which is ominisence, and of the uncreated light which is the All-holy.

Certain great thinkers, who, however, in many respects can not be classed among proper Christians, have indeed recognized and acknowledged the profound significance of this opening of the Gospel. Only they adopted a spirit of hostile analysis, which, as it attacked so many of the great works of olden time, did not spare even this divine monument. They lost themselves in all sorts of superfluous hypotheses as to the source from which this or that passage was derived, and with what object it was introduced. Much simpler were it, without having recourse to any such artificial explanations, to receive the divine truth in sincerity as it is offered to us. If we must ascribe some special design for its composition, it will be sufficient to suppose, that after the Evangel of Life and the new era commencing therewith had been sufficiently set forth as history in a triple narrative, it was requisite to add thereto this Evangel of the Beginning--as the Gospel according to the spirit of the highest science, in so far as this is fully identical with the divine faith, and henceforward was always to continue one with it. It was quite in the natural order of things that the word which was uttered at the beginning of the material creation, and is the basis of the first revelation, should also at the opening of the second revelation, and the spiritual creation of a new era, be repeated (though in a different and far higher sense) for the soul in the realm of truth:--“And God said: Let there be light, and there was light.”

LECTURE X.

OF THE TWOFOLD SPIRIT OF TRUTH AND ERROR IN SCIENCE; OF THE CONFLICT OF FAITH WITH INFIDELITY.

In the terrestial creation, in the realm of nature, no sooner did the behest go forth, “Let there be light,” than the accomplishment forthwith followed. Scarcely was this light and life-creating word spoken, than it was succeeded, spontaneously and immediately, without let or hinderance, by the second word of the joyful conclusion: “And there was light.” Quite otherwise, however, is it in the life and in the world of free-created man, in the progression of his intellectual development, in the history of his mind [_geist_], in his now advancing, now retrograding thought and knowledge. Here, indeed, the first call to light and divine truth does not pass over even man’s stubborn and taciturn heart altogether unheeded and unanswered, and without eliciting some faint response. But lasting is the struggle between light and darkness, between knowledge and ignorance, between faith and infidelity. Ever wavering from side to side, and fluctuating from one extreme to another, the victory long remains undecided. And centuries often, nay, thousands of years, pass away ere with perfect truth that word of fulfillment and completion can be uttered, and we can go on, undoubtedly, to say, “And there was light.” Even when the true end is pursued along the direct road, the right track is often lost amid the endless strife and controversy of men, while a long train of useless discussion raises so thick a cloud of dust as shuts it entirely out of sight, and so a new route has to be sought and opened from quite an opposite quarter.

How deeply was the Gentile world sunk in wild and cruel superstition, when the Great Prophetic Spirit and the Disperser of that Egyptian darkness, which hung over it, repeated or wrote down those first words of light for the spiritual no less than the material creation! Assuredly he had in view thereby a new genesis for his people--a new life and a new beginning of light. Then followed fifteen centuries of probation. And what was this long period but one ceaseless though alternating struggle between light and darkness? At the end of it, in spite of its great and noble gifts and superior knowledge, the whole nation had fallen into the lowest depths of luxury and corruption, on the one hand a prey to the wilder passions, on the other spiritually dead and rotten. But, the shadow of its former self, it dragged on a miserable existence, oppressed by a foreign yoke and torn by intestine sects and parties. The one claiming to be the only legal sect (and as concerned the letter of the law, and the outward ritual, it was so in fact), and arrogant and obstinate, closely adhering to the dead letter, was widely estranged and alienated from the spirit of love and mildness. And thus the very name of Pharisee has become odious and hateful, having passed into a proverb and a by-word. Wholly mistaking the meaning of the revelation imparted to them, they misunderstood the future to which it referred, no less than the immediate fortunes of their nation and their own condition. Consequently they went totally wrong in the interpretation of the former, as well as of the problem of the present which was laid before them. For they took it in the narrow and perverted spirit of party. No doubt the Pharisees reckoned among their members many truly pious, well-disposed, and right-thinking individuals--men, who in the beginning of the new era of the world, as appeals from the simple history of those times, acknowledged the truth, and recognized the hand of God pointing and leading onward to the future. These men mourned in silence over the revolting pride and stiffneckedness of their cotemporaries. But though endued with great learning and talents, and burning zeal for right and truth, they did not venture openly to oppose and to teach differently from their brethren, even because in reality the law, the dead and external law, was on their side.

But the other party was that of the Sadducees. Quite different in principle, these were the innovators among the Jews. Explaining away the theological creed of their nation, they went so far in this direction as to throw into shade, and to question, or, rather, absolutely to deny, the immortality of the soul. In civil matters and questions of law and policy, they were the liberal free-thinkers of their day.

From amid these two dark clouds, which, if they shone at all, glimmered only with the deceptive halo of the false light and hue of party, broke the new dawn and sun of Truth--at first unobserved, nor understood by any, so thickly had these mists overspread the horizon. But this new genesis, and this full illumination, was no longer destined exclusively for a single people. Accordingly, it gradually spread over the ten or twelve great nations who occupy two parts of the habitable globe, and also possess and govern the greatest portion of the third and the most ancient. And it is, in short, by means of that intellectual superiority and civilization which they owe to this springing of a new era, and this first light, that the former bear rule in the remotest regions of the earth.

Since the dawning of that day-spring eighteen centuries have elapsed, and sadly torn and distracted is the present aspect of Christianity. We should, no doubt, give a very distorted picture of the state of Christendom were we anxiously to trace its resemblance, through every minuter trait and nicer shade, to the old world at its close and at the end of those fifteen centuries of Jewish preparation. Such a minute parallel would be false, whether we were to compare it to the moral state and character of that nation, mentally blinded and hurrying with hasty steps toward its ruin, or even to the old heathen world of Rome, already condemned by anarchy and infidelity. Still it is generally true. For it is undeniable that man is perpetually relapsing into dissension and party quarrels, even while the hand which sways the destinies of the world, in ever-recurring epochs of renovation, is continually presenting to him anew both truth and life, health and peace. And every one can answer for himself the question whether this new proclamation of light and truth, this divine message of peace and salvation, has yet reached its full accomplishment. Has the Sun of Righteousness yet penetrated, and cast its bright beams on all the relations of life, to the very inmost joints of soul and spirit? Can it with perfect truth be said, relatively to the whole human race, “And there is light”--that light, at least, which alone is good, even because it shall remain forever? For those meteoric sparks which flash across the universal night and darkness, from the systems of man’s wisdom, which, crossing and recrossing each other’s path, are soon again extinguished forever; or those clouds of public opinion, charged with electric fluid and with pestilence, which, for the most part, is but the public outburst of some party passion; these emit no lasting, no salutary, and, therefore, no true light. Dark and gloomy, too, perhaps, in its future prospects, appears the long struggle between divine truth and human discord, between light and darkness, between faith and infidelity. But the more difficult and intricate the problem is which forms the theme of our present disquisition, the more diligently and the more conscientiously ought we to seek out and dwell upon every bright and quiet spot. For such alone can cheer us on our way along the rugged path that leads to the blissful goal of internal and spiritual peace, which will essentially contribute to give a solid basis to the public and social tranquillity, and to insure its permanence.

Slowly and gradually is it that the individual mind, distracted and vacillating between God and a divine faith on the one hand, and a higher, or even the highest, science on the other, advances in its progress toward the perfect truth. Arriving, step by step, at fuller and better convictions, it attains at last to a clear discernment that, properly and fundamentally, these two apparently-conflicting objects are not distinct, but in their inmost essence are perfectly one. But for the final attainment of this end, the most important condition to be observed is that scientific patience to which I called your attention in the last Lecture. The chief thing to be guarded against is a precipitate and over-hasty decision. For by such we should incur the great danger of sacrificing the sacred deposit of faith to science, or of foolishly rejecting the treasures of true science, which as such is indispensable to the higher life, and even necessary and useful for the confirmation of faith itself. And why, in the pursuit of truth--that proper spiritual theme and highly interesting matter of the otherwise flat and insipid drama of life--should we feel indisposed to such a scientific patience, as I called it? Why should we be unwilling to recognize it as what it really is--both salutary and indispensable to human frailty, and, as an intellectual virtue, no less necessary than even moral patience? And the latter is even the fundamental condition of every great or little business, and almost every pursuit of life, if it is to attain to a happy result, and is not to fail of its true end and aim. For patience is, as it were, the indispensable portion which their earthly existence brings to all men. Not only is it needed by the invalid on the bed of sickness, in the long and tedious observance of his physician’s precise and rigid prescriptions--not only is it wanted by the teacher in his troublesome task of giving the first development to the intellectual powers of the child--not only is patience requisite for the judge who has to settle the complicated quarrel of two litigants, of whom each claims his sympathy, each desires to win him to his own side and to bias his judgment--but it is also indispensable to the warrior whom ambition hurries forward in the pursuit of honor for himself and his country. For numberless are the hardships and privations, and many, too, are the miseries which the soldier must undergo before he can gain the object of his hopes, the hard-fought battle and the glorious victory. The statesman, too, with his wide sphere of influence and authority, stands eminently in need of patience. How watchful and comprehensive must be his vigilance, how deliberate his precautions, lest the organic course of his administration should come to a check or stop, in consequence of his having neglected, or failed to provide for any single member of the great body, or any regulating-wheel in the complicated machinery of the state.

But, on the other hand, there are also moments in human life where the final issue turns not so much on a steady and uniform perseverance in continuous activity, as on a decided resolution and firmness of purpose. Among these we may place foremost, perhaps, in an intellectual relation, the dissension between faith and infidelity, and the choice at the point where the two branch off forever.

It is not here my design to set up, to commend, and to extol faith, nor to decry, to attack, and to make war upon infidelity. For the former would take me beyond my present limits; the latter would lead me into a boundless field of details, and require me to take an exhaustive survey, not only of all actually existent, but also of all conceivable, prejudices and delusions. My principal object is rather to sketch a true and exact picture of both, comprising, at the same time, all their historical manifestations, and explaining their psychological causes, in order to exhibit them both in their true light, so that man may choose for himself and decide between them.

Now the apparent--or it may be real, but still only accidental--schism between science and faith is, in the first place, internal. It is often, indeed, profoundly hidden and concealed in the inmost depths of the heart. It is therefore inwardly only that it admits of being adjusted and finally reconciled. When this task is once accomplished in the heart of an individual, and the choice is at least made one way or the other, then this decision manifests itself outwardly, either as the triumph of truth in the unity of science and faith, or as infidelity and skepticism, shows itself in the form of a determined opposition to this unity, or to faith itself. And the latter is the form it also assumes in the intermediate case when the schism between science and faith is declared to be irreconcilable. Openly expressed, therefore, these two views go far beyond the original dissension, and pass into the second schism and conflict between faith and infidelity. And although this problem be itself an original and internal one, still it reveals itself pre-eminently as a practical schism in actual life, and it is as such, also, that it develops and manifests itself in history.

But it is our object to make this comparison and parallel between faith and infidelity, in the full practical meaning of the words, useful and historically applicable to life. For this purpose we must not regard infidelity as founded exclusively on caprice, aversion, or obstinacy--consequently on ignorance--but consider it rather as enjoying every intellectual advantage, and commanding all the resources of learning and science. For a purely personal, and merely negative unbelief, without any deep foundation, and without even an apparently scientific confirmation, is neither very dangerous to the community, and, above all, presents little if any interest to philosophy. But, on the other hand, if faith is successfully to cope with such an adversary, furnished with all the armor and expedients of science, it must be able to stand the comparison with it in this respect. It must, in short, be conceived and set forth in its natural relation to true science, and, taking its proper place and position, must act in union and co-operation with it.

I must here, however, premise a second preliminary remark. I can not bring myself to follow a very general opinion, and look upon faith as a true and duly moderated medium between superstition and infidelity. On the contrary, I join superstition with infidelity, and can not but class them together. If by this term of superstition nothing is meant but some exaggeration or other, some over-excitement of the moral and religious feelings in individuals, then such a purely-personal case admits not of being raised to a general rule, nor elevated into a universal principle. And in any case it does not fall within the range of philosophical speculation. For the care of the spiritual health and healthy diet of the believing soul, which draws both life and love from the deep sources of faith, belongs to a wholly different province from that of philosophy. But by this word and notion of superstition there is often understood a very childish error, which does not duly separate and distinguish the figurative language and figurative forms of fancy from the substance of the true intrinsic meaning. This error, which thus confounds the figurative expression with reality, and takes it to be something real, may justly be called childish, inasmuch as it is universally peculiar, almost natural, to the intellect of children. Now, in and by itself, and simply understood, such an internal _optical delusion_ results from nothing but a psychological imperfection, or a mere semblance of intellectual nature. But when this error is carried out into a system, and applied, on a large scale, to the sum and essence of faith, then, undoubtedly, it possesses a profounder origin and significance. This species of superstition belongs to one of those classes of error which I am about to describe. When, for instance, an actual positive error is comprised in and understood by this name, then it belongs to infidelity, which, in general, is rather a false faith than any mere absence of belief. Infidelity, in short, is an erroneous belief. And such, also, is every species of superstition, and this designation of it by the name of erroneous faith, if generally adopted, would be more correct and accurate, or, at least, less liable to be misunderstood than its ordinary title.

For, to adhere to the usual term, every species of infidelity is either a material deification of nature and a worship of the sensible powers of life, or it is an abstract deification of the absolute subjective Me, and the pure reason, with its endless thinking and knowing. Even when it is conceived in a purely skeptical light as an absolute _not-knowing_, still even in this case it is the understanding that is deified. Standing apart from, and thinking itself superior to, the weak prejudices of other men--in its negation feeling and fancying itself to be instinct with genius--it is regarded and set up as the highest object of existence, and thereby in a certain intellectual sense is made an idol of. Even the evil power of perverted genius--for such we may well call it when it ventures to contemn both law and right, and fancies itself to be raised high above the voice of conscience and the moral duties of docility and humblemindedness as belonging to ordinary minds--even such a perverted genius may be made the idol of a man who has once turned his back on the simple truth and on God, and has arrogantly set himself in opposition to both. We may, in short, without hesitation, advance it as an invariable principle and an unerring rule, that the man who has lost or abandoned--not to say rejected--the idea and belief in the one good and righteous God, has enshrined within his breast and cherishes some more or less dangerous idol, whether it be the subjective Me or some fearful passion, or, it may be, some firm and well-finished system of deified reason or nature.

The complete notion or ideal scheme of pure faith, in its organic union, co-operation, and true relation with all higher and with all natural or earthly science, must be conceived of and sketched in agreement with the triple principle of the human consciousness, according to which it is divided into spirit, soul, and sense. At least it is in this way that it can most easily be made clear, and being accurately apprehended in its essential properties and nature, is kept distinct from all foreign elements and adscititious matters. But infidelity, and that doubt and absence of harmony from which it takes its rise, as well as that error which results from it, have their seat in the fourfold consciousness. These all owe their origin to that disunion in which the mind was involved by the Fall, and which manifests itself principally in the dissension which subsists between Fancy and Reason, and eventually destroys all harmony and co-operation between the Understanding and the Will. For this twofold schism in the human consciousness is the source of all philosophical error and of its various false systems. And this scientific error again, so soon as it attains to a practical utterance, and in a living form enters into or interferes with life, becomes infidelity.

Originally, however, the consciousness was not thus rent by dissension. Throughout, in its triple principle of sense, soul, and spirit, prevailed one living, harmonious action. Now, in this its natural state, the soul must be regarded as the principle of faith. And this is a point especially to be borne in mind. It is, however, too often forgotten. And consequently the faith, or, rather (for we are not speaking at present of the subject-matter so much as of the mental act), the believing, is in an external manner derived very incompletely and unsatisfactorily from the divided and quadruple consciousness. For generally the act of believing and its essence is made to consist in a certain internal reserve on the part of both understanding and will, and a similar control of the fancy, and even of the reason, as well as in the recognition of these limits and of such limitation.

We must, no doubt, admit that there may be very much which the human intellect can not fathom nor see through. This it would by no means be difficult to prove. And still more easy were it to show that man’s will can not always give the law, but must often submit to and recognize a higher and more universal authority. And as regards the fancy, every one will be ready--not to say forward--to make a somewhat similar admission. The faculty of imagination, sensuous and material in its origin and in its operation, and always remaining in the highest degree subjective, is liable to innumerable illusions, to which we ascribe no value, or, rather, which we carefully endeavor to dispel from our minds, whenever we attempt to penetrate into the inmost essence of the highest truth which it is the object of faith to embrace. That, moreover, the reason, no less than the fancy, has its peculiar--one might almost say, its innate--optical delusions, must be but too well known to every one who has made the slightest progress in the art of logic, and advanced beyond the mere elements of a philosophical examination of this faculty.

All this, however, is only a negative nature. The mere recognition and acknowledgment of the fact that we can and ought to restrain our reason and reserve our judgment whenever a higher act of faith comes into question--or, in other words, that in such a case the absolute reason, with its logical processes and laws of thought, is not alone qualified to decide, but meets with limits which it is unable to surmount--such concessions do not lead to any positive result. They do but establish the possibility of a faith which may transcend and is not confined within these bounds. While, however, they lead to the inference that such a faith is thoroughly conceivable, and that while it transcends the reason is, nevertheless, rational, and capable of being brought into perfect unison with the sound reason, they do not by any means establish at once its reality. All this is rather the preparatory step to believing, and not the true living faith itself.

A true living faith (and we are here speaking of the function of believing, rather than of the particular details of a positive creed), is nothing else than the reception into the soul of the truth given unto us by God. And inasmuch as the soul is in its origin loving, and, indeed, the very faculty of love, a true living faith can not be thought of or exist without this accompaniment of love, which is even its distinctive characteristic.

In the case, for instance, of a special form and positive rule of faith, the incompetency of the reason and understanding to pass a definitive judgment on such high and divine matters may be acknowledged, and even the external will may sacrifice its own inclinations and submit to the requirements of a positive law. But so long as all this remains, as it were, external to man, so long as the soul within does not concur therewith--a fact which may be infallibly discerned by the want or absence of love--then in this case it is but a dead faith, even though outwardly, and in the judgment of others, it may pass as legitimate and orthodox. Then only is it a true living faith when it is wholly received into the entire soul, as manifested by its internal fruitfulness in spiritual thought and moral action. For it is the soul that believes--that same thinking and loving soul which we have already designated the center of the collective consciousness of man and of his moral life. In this state, however, the soul has undergone a change; is this higher act of believing its cogitation has become steady and uniform, and its love perfectly pure and abidingly permanent in God.

But now, if in the triple consciousness the soul be the principle of faith, then is the spirit or mind [_geist_] that of higher science, of free thought, of a full and complete discernment, and of the final and supreme act of distinguishing and deciding. And by this higher science I mean that which has for its exclusive object the eternal truth, and Him who is the sum and source of all immutable verities. But, thirdly, the sensuous faculty is the principle of all lower sensible, terrestrial, and natural knowledge. And this comprises all human history, and together therewith all language and art, and every branch of learning that is occupied therewith. But besides the physical sciences, mathematics also belong to this department, for these are dependent on the sensuous conditions of number, weight, and measure, and consequently on time and space, and on those material properties which fill space, viz., gravity and solidity.

Now there is nothing, however hidden--nothing, however profound--into which this sensuous principle of knowledge, which investigates all that is earthly, natural or human, and historical, may not attempt at least to penetrate. Only the inquiring senses must not quit their true center. In other words, they ought not to make a hostile attack on the center of the consciousness, which is even the believing soul. They must not, by breaking through it, or passing by it, attempt violently and unduly to ascend to the highest. For in such a case, attempting to create a supreme and highest object of their own, raising it on their own soil, and drawing its materials from their own sources, they will produce nothing but absolutely false and mere nature-gods, or else some historical phantoms, or idols of national recollections and patriotic enthusiasm, such as were enshrined in the heathen worship of antiquity. For even, without material images and altars, such an idolatry may be 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.