The Philosophy of History, Vol. 1 of 2

by Friedrich von Schlegel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nature, as was said above, is a book of God's revelation, written within and without. The outer part of this sacred volume attests the supreme power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator in characters too clear and luminous to be unperceived or misread by the dullest or the most vitiated eye. The inner pages of this book comprise a still more glorious revelation of God—but their language is more mysterious, and much which they contain seems to have been wisely withheld, or rather withdrawn from the knowledge of mankind. It was this acquaintance with the internal secrets of Nature, derived partly from revelation, and partly from intuition, which gave the men of the primitive, and especially the antediluvian, world such a vast superiority over all the succeeding generations of mankind. But it was the abuse of that knowledge, also, which brought about in the primeval world a Satanic delusion, and a gigantic moral and intellectual corruption, of which we can now scarcely form the remotest idea. But this key to the inward science of Nature, which was taken away from a corrupt world, that had so grossly abused it, seems now about to be restored to man, renovated as his soul and intelligence have been by a long Christian education. The physical researches of the last fifty years, especially in Germany, lead the enquirer more and more to the knowledge of this important truth, stamped on all the pages of ancient tradition, and never effaced from the recollection of mankind, to wit, the action of spiritual intelligences on the material world. The nature of this action is briefly adverted to in the following passage (among many others to the same purport), in the Philosophy of Life. "It is especially of importance," says the author, "for the understanding of the general system of Nature, to observe how the modern chemistry mostly dissolves and decomposes all solid bodies, as well as water itself, into different forms of elements of air, and thereby has taken away from Nature the appearance of rigidity and petrifaction. There are every where living elemental powers hidden and shut up under this appearance of rigidity. The quantity of water in the air is so great that it would suffice for more than one deluge; a similar inundation of light would occur, if all the light latent in darkness were at once set free; and all things would be consumed by fire, if that element in the quantity in which it exists, were suddenly let loose. The salutary bonds, by which these elemental powers are held in due equilibrium, one bound by the other, and kept within its prescribed limits, I will not now make a matter of investigation; nor now examine the question, whether these bonds be not perhaps of a higher kind than naturalists commonly suppose."

The great apostle of the Gentiles represents all Nature as sighing for her deliverance from the bondage of death. "Every creature groaneth and travaileth in pain, even now." Some chapters in the Philosophy of life may be considered as one luminous commentary on that text. My limits will permit me to cite but one passage.