The philosophy of life, and philosophy of language, in a course of lectures

by Friedrich von Schlegel

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.