Chapter XII: Preface (11)

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.