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.
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.