Will is the other faculty implanted in the mind of man—the faculty on whose good or evil direction that of all the other faculties of mind and soul essentially depends. Independently of the moral direction of the will, its innate strength or weakness, its steadiness or vacillation, proportionably augment or diminish the power of all the other faculties. How far moderate abilities, when directed by a firm, tenacious, perseverant will can avail—to what a degree of success they may sometimes lead, daily experience may serve to convince us.
Originally all these faculties, will and understanding, reason and imagination, were harmoniously blended and united in the human consciousness; but since, at the fall of man, a dark spirit interposed its shadow betwixt him and the Sun of Righteousness, disorder and confusion have entered into his mind and soul, and troubled their several faculties. Thus the understanding often points out a course which the will refuses to follow; and the will, on the other hand, is often disposed to pursue the good and right path, were the blind or narrow understanding competent to direct it. Not only are will and understanding in frequent collision with one another, but each is at variance with itself. What the will resolves to-day it shrinks from to-morrow! How often does the understanding view the same subject in a different light at different times! How much do time, circumstance, and humour, place the same truth in a clearer or obscurer aspect! The same opposition is observable betwixt reason and imagination. Where fancy is the strongest in the house, how often doth she spurn the warnings of her more homely and unpretending sister—reason. Again, where reason has the ascendancy, what groundless aversion, and paltry jealousy does she not frequently evince at the superior nature of her brilliant sister! Or, to drop this figurative language, how often do we behold a man of lofty imagination very deficient in practical sense; and again, in your man of strong sense, how frequently dull and pedestrian is the fancy! In real life what a deplorable schism exists between poets and artists on the one hand, and men of business on the other! What mutual contempt and aversion do they not frequently exhibit! Well, this schism is nothing else than the external realization of the inward conflict between reason and imagination.
With respect to the four secondary faculties—memory—conscience—the natural impulses—and the outward senses—faculties, which, as the author says, cannot from their importance be termed subordinate, but should rather be called subsidiary or assigned;—Schlegel shews that, as regards the first, the decay of the memory precedes the decline of the reason, and its sudden and entire loss brings about the extinction of the latter faculty. In the same way the deadness of the conscience argues the utmost depravity of the will. The conscience is the memory of the will, as the memory is the conscience of the understanding.
"The natural impulses," says Schlegel, "where they appear exalted to passion, are to be regarded as nothing else but the motions of a will, that has been overpowered by the false illusions of imagination. The middle position of the impulses betwixt the will and the imagination, as well as the abused co-operation of those two faculties in any passion or sensual gratification, become habitual, is apparent particularly in those inclinations which man has in common with the brute, and where the viciousness lies only in their excess or violence."[22] "Aspiration after infinity is natural to man, and belongs essentially to his being. Whatever is defective or disorderly in his impulses, consists only in their unbounded gratification—in the perversion of that aspiration after infinity towards perishable, sensual, material, and often most unworthy, objects; for that aspiration, natural as it is to man, where it is pure and genuine, can be gratified by no sensual indulgence and no earthly possession."[23] In the brute, the gratification of the natural appetites is regular, uniform, subject to no vicissitudes or excesses, and entails no injury on his nature, because undisturbed and unvitiated by the false illusions of imagination.
Lastly, with regard to the outward senses, there are, philosophically speaking, but three, sight, hearing, and touch—for under the last, taste and smell are included; and it is remarkable how these severally correspond to the three parts of human consciousness. The sight is pre-eminently the sense of the mind—hearing the sense of the soul—while the touch is peculiarly the sense of the body; the sense given to the body for its special protection and preservation. The loss of the first two senses the body can survive—but it perishes with the utter extinction of the last. Those expressions in common parlance, a good artist-like eye—a fine musical ear—prove the close connexion which mankind has always felt to exist between the outer senses and the higher faculties of man.
"Had the soul," says the author, "not been originally darkened and troubled—had it remained in a clear, luminous repose in its God—then the human consciousness would have been of a far more simple nature than at present; for it would have consisted only of understanding, soul, and will. Reason and imagination, which are now in such frequent collision with the will and understanding, as well as with each other, would then have been absorbed in those higher faculties. Even the conscience would not then have been a special act, or special function of the judgment—but a tender feeling—a gentle, almost unconscious pulsation of the soul. The senses and the memory, those ministrant faculties which, in the present dissonance of the human consciousness, form so many distinct powers of the soul, would, in its state of harmony, have been mere bodily organs."[24]
So much for the author's psychology—let us now proceed to the ontological part of the work.
To the Supreme Being, will and understanding belong in a supreme degree; in him they exist in the most perfect harmony—will is understanding, and understanding will. But with no propriety can the faculty of reason be ascribed to the Deity; and it is remarkable, says the author, that nowhere in Holy Writ, nor in the sacred traditions of the primitive nations, nor in the writings of the great philosophers of antiquity, is the term reason ever used in reference to Almighty God. It is only among a few of the later, degenerate, and rationalist sects of philosophy, the Stoics for example, that the expression Divine Reason is ever met with. If such an expression is incorrect or unsound, with still less fitness and decorum can the faculty of imagination be assigned to the God-head—the very term would shock the understandings, and revolt the inmost feelings, of all men.
The Deity reveals himself unto men in four different ways—in Scripture, (including of course its running and necessary commentary, ecclesiastical Tradition);—in Nature—in Conscience, and in History.
"Holy Writ," says the author, "as it is delivered to us, and as it was begun and founded three-and-thirty centuries ago, does not exclude the elder sacred traditions of the preceding two thousand four hundred years; or the revelation, which was the common heritage of the whole human race. On the contrary, it contains very explicit allusions to the fact that such a revelation was imparted to the first man, as well as to that patriarch who, after the destruction of the primeval world of giants, was the second progenitor of mankind. As the sacred knowledge, derived from this revelation, flowed on every side, and in copious streams over the succeeding generations of men, the ancient and holy traditions were soon disfigured, and covered over with fictions and fables; where, amid a multitude of remarkable vestiges and glorious traits of true religion, immoral mysteries and Bacchanalian rites were often intermixed, and truth itself, as in a second chaos, buried under a mass of contradictory symbols. Thence arose that Babylonish confusion of languages, sagas, and symbols, which is universally found among the ancient, and even the primitive nations. In the great work of the restoration of true religion, which accordingly we must regard as a second revelation, or rather as a second stage of revelation, a rigid proscription of those heathen fictions, and of all the immorality connected with them, was the first and most essential requisite. But in that gospel of creation, which forms the introduction to the whole Bible, that elder revelation, accorded to the first man and to the second progenitor, is expressly laid down as the ground-work; and in this introduction, we shall find the clue to the history and religion of the primitive world—nay, it is the true Genesis of all historical science."[25]