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

by Friedrich von Schlegel

The general idea of the inner life was, I said, the basis of all the previous development of ideas, and this was the only hypothesis which a philosophy of life stands in need of, or can venture to assume. An objection may, it is true, be here started. In the various digressions into which, in the further development of this one fundamental thought, I have been led by my wish to expand it to a full and complete idea of the consciousness, it may be said that much besides has been supposed or taken for granted, if not expressly, yet tacitly; not indeed arbitrarily, but still as the result of a merely personal conviction, however positive and deliberate. To this objection, so naturally to be expected, I can only reply, that if occasionally I may not have expressed myself hypothetically enough, it was, nevertheless, my intention so to do. Consequently all hypothetical positions, with the exception of the fundamental one of the inner thought and life, hitherto assumed by me, are to be regarded here simply in such a light. They are advanced only for the nonce, and provisionally, until they can receive a further and completer analysis, without in anywise anticipating the proof, nor, by a hasty decision, assuming the truth, as if it were independent of argument.

Now, since doubt is a necessary and inevitable property and an essential principle of the whole man in his present state, we are brought by the regular course of our analysis to the problem which is furnished by the thought at issue with itself. To this subject, which now forces itself immediately on our attention, we must devote an entire section of our labors. The object of the first portion was to advance the simple and general thought of the inner life (as being in this simple generality too vague and undefined), or to raise it, step by step, to a full, complete, and comprehensive, but at the same time rightly divided conception of the human mind. In the same way, in the next division of my speculations, the essential subject and proper aim will be to carry that feeling, call it as we will, whether of pure love, or inner life, or higher truth, whose existence we have, we think, clearly established, through the crisis of doubt, to a determinate judgment of profound certainty and unwavering conviction, or at least to a rigorous distinction between that which is certain and that which must forever remain uncertain.

Now, to render in any degree complete that characteristic of the human mind which it has been our object or endeavor in the previous Lectures to sketch in detail, we were obliged to take in also those higher elements which by many are called in question, and by some positively denied to exist. And herein lay the natural ground and the occasion for our introducing the mention of them, at least as facts of consciousness generally acknowledged by the common-sense of mankind. Not that we thereby meant to exclude them from a profounder investigation, or to guard them against the intrusion of that doubt which knows no limits to its skepticism. We only reserved them to their appropriate place in the natural course of our development of living thought. Some there are, we know, who hold even a higher and genuine sense of art to be a mere fancy either of genius, devoted to and displaying its excellence therein, or of the mere dilettanti. Others again, and even celebrated writers, have explained conscience and its still, small voice, by the acquired or instilled prejudice of education, or as the delusive effect of custom. How far more numerous, then, must be the doubts which such a system of abnegation of all that is good and exalted would raise against the Platonic doctrine of a recollection of eternal love, or that idea which I have labored to establish, of a pure longing after infinity! If, again, many question the freedom of the will, they deny, in fact, the will itself; for a will that is not free ceases to be will. If, moreover, others refuse to recognize in all human thought, fictions, and inventions, any thing creatively new and peculiarly original, seeing therein nothing but repetition or fresh combinations of external impressions, consequently denying to the human mind all power of invention, then must fancy be denied to be one of the mind’s fundamental powers. For, in truth, in such a case, it is nothing more than memory, or, rather, it is memory fallen into delirium. Others, again, would refer even reason itself and the essential rational character of man simply to a more delicate sensuous organization than is possessed by the most highly-endowed among the brute creation. All such special and eccentric opinions form but so many subordinate chapters of our second part, which has for its theme reason and doubt, and the state of doubt, which are natural to man. To it, therefore, they must be reserved for investigation. We can not anticipate the period of their discussion in the present place, where our first object is, by a development of the simple thought and the general ideas of the inner life, to sketch a perfect outline of the human mind, which shall take in all its higher elements and capacities, as well as the earthly and inferior ingredients which are blended with them.

The thought or conception, as the general manifestation of the inner life, is in its nature and form indefinite, but still a cogitation, which even at this step is already referred to a particular object, and so in its contents limited thereto. An idea or notion, however, is a conception mathematically proportioned by number, measure, and weight; i.e., according to the number of its several constituents it is carefully divided, and its subordinate genera enumerated; measured according to its extent, and according to its internal value and comprehension, and also its relation to other kindred notions of a higher or lower order carefully weighed and pondered; in short, a conception complete and perfect in itself. Hitherto, therefore, it has been properly but a single notion that has engaged our attention, and formed the subject-matter of our whole speculation—the notion, viz., of the human consciousness. For it is not merely philosophy to link together in a never-ending chain its own self-derived and arbitrary ideas, by some specious rule of necessary connection. The duty of philosophy is rather originally to combine facts—and, in truth, all the given facts of a certain kind, and within a certain range, in one clear, intelligible, and perfectly vivid notion, and it has generally to do with very few ideas. Two or three ideas, in short, such as that of consciousness, of science, or of man himself, are quite sufficient for its purpose of solving, if not fully and completely, yet at least to the full extent of what is not merely possible and allowable, but also wholesome and profitable, the three riddles of life, of the universe, and of a divine hope, which lie before the whole human mind, and thereby to arrive at some abiding conviction with regard to them.

Now, in concluding our development of the human mind, and adding to it all that is still wanting to its completeness, I shall observe the same method of exposition as I have hitherto followed. Leaving for the nonce unmooted, the grave questions whether there be any such thing as truth—and, if so, whether man is capable of recognizing and attaining to it in any degree—and reserving them to their appropriate place where they will naturally arise, I shall adopt into the outline of the general notion of the consciousness all those facts of it which are acknowledged by the common-sense of mankind. I shall, as such, allow them all and no more than their due weight. Occasionally, however, when any such phenomenon appears somewhat questionable, I shall add a word or two of explanation, in order to guard against the possibility of misconception, or an overhasty inference, setting down the facts purely as such, and so far as they are already apprehended, for further investigation and inquiry.

The four opposite poles or extremes of man’s divided and discordant consciousness are, I said, its four fundamental faculties or powers, understanding and will, and reason and fancy. With regard to the two first, every one may, both from internal experience of his own self and from observation of his fellow-men, easily arrive at a conviction that they seldom work together in perfect harmony, and that the discord is often the most violent when either one or both of these two faculties possess more than ordinary strength. The marked opposition between reason and fancy reveals itself but too plainly, both in private and public life. The men of mere taste and imagination, artistic and poetical natures (to which category, in a somewhat loose sense, very many really belong, though the happy exceptions of true genius be indeed rare), on the one hand; and on the other, the men of practical reason—the utilitarians, who limit their views, more or less, to the public advantage to be derived from this quality of practical reason, and look with distrust to every higher flight of fancy or feeling, form two hostile classes of men, who with difficulty comprehend each other. At least they are seldom in a position to understand one another’s feelings, and rightly and fairly to appreciate them. Still more rare are the exceptions, where both these faculties and mental characters are found united in one and the same individual.

After these four fundamental faculties of the first order, come certain accessory functions of the second order, derived from or compounded of the former. Of these, conscience and memory, and after them the instincts and passions, have been described as movements of the will, passing over into the illimitable region of the fancy, and consequently holding an intermediate place between will and fancy. We have now to add a word or two concerning the external senses, and therewith to complete our sketch of the human consciousness in its present divided and distracted condition. But previously to entering upon this topic, I would, with reference to this last-mentioned characteristic of instinct, call your attention to a particular species of it, which is not unimportant, but rather belongs essentially to a complete picture of this part of the human consciousness. It will, moreover, furnish a new instance, to show how in nature herself there lies a cause, or at least a first occasion for many parallels of comparative psychology, similar to those which have already presented themselves. I am alluding to the artistic instincts displayed by some of the more sagacious animals, and especially some of the industrious members of the insect tribe. These present a remarkable affinity to human art, in which all, at least, is not the effect of teaching. In the lower but still beautiful degrees of artistic talent, there is much that seems instinctive in its operation, and, as it were, unconscious and innate. True and lofty genius of art can not be here included. It belongs, on the contrary, to a different sphere. For in it the unconscious creative faculty is not narrowly restricted to one rigid path or definite form, but has rather for its essential basis a productive power of imagination, of universal range and fullness, and which, as it were, travails in birth with the infinite.

Now this notion, thus borrowed from natural science, for the purposes of a comparative psychology, seems well applicable to that pure feeling of infinite longing which is the most exalted of all man’s aspirations. According to that idea of it which I have labored to establish, we can name this profound inward longing, which nothing earthly can ever satisfy, man’s instinct of eternity—an instinct which often long remains, and at the first always is perfectly unconscious of a higher vocation and divine destiny.

The external senses are in one respect the faithful organs and instruments of the understanding in the material world, with which it makes its experience or observations therein, and draws therefrom its experimental science. In another point of view, they may not improperly be termed an applied or practical fancy, which for a definite direction exercises itself on the individual phenomena of the material world, for the copying and reproduction of external impressions on the organs, as, e.g., of the visible form or reduced image in the eye, is in any case nothing but an inferior species or a collateral branch of the general faculty of productive imagination. But that new and spiritual sense of higher potency, which in the purely material can only develop itself as an exception, or may appear to be veiled therein—I mean the keen appreciation by the ear of musical tones, and the eye for picturesque beauty of form in the plastic art—can only be regarded as a lightning-spark of fancy passing along and operating through this external medium and conductor.

One remark seems of importance in connection with our whole subject; at any rate it will not be superfluous, as confirming our assertion that the threefold principle of human life in general is found repeated in its single members; and though on a smaller scale, is still manifested in the same relation. We observe, therefore, that whatever physiological, or, it may be, anatomical reasons physiologists may have for counting five senses—and they may be perfectly sufficient and adequate for the requisitions of physical science, still, psychologically, it is far more accurate and also simpler, in a philosophical sense, to limit their number to three. No doubt, in the sensation of taste, not only a mechanical contact occurs, but there is also a chemical decomposition of the tasted matter, by which the sensation of sweet or bitter is produced. So, too, in smell, although no visible evaporation takes place, still it is a fact that aëriform floating particles are thrown off from the sensible body, and actually taken in by the sentient. Still these are far from being adequate grounds for making of them two independent senses. Even in the inner organic perception of one’s bodily health and ease, and in the opposite case of pain, it is something more than the mere mechanical contact from without that is therein sensuously perceived. But are we disposed on this account to agree with those who propose to divide still further the single sense of material touch, and increase the number of the senses? We feel at once that this would be superfluous, since all these proposed divisions are, at least in a psychological point of view, to be regarded simply as modifications—as branches or lower species of one and the same sense. And by the same analogy, then, we may reckon all these material senses for one. Thus, then, we have in all but three senses, presenting in this smaller and meaner sphere an accurate correspondence to the triple man, and the three elements which make up his whole being—body, soul, and spirit.