When, however, the firm basis and sure principle of some real and actual fact is once given, then the further scientific development, derivation, and wider deduction from this first foundation may be carried illimitably onward. There exists no cause at all why we should wish to set bounds to its advance. For were we to do so, we should perhaps afterward discover that they had been drawn either too narrowly or too prematurely; as, indeed, has already been too often done in many a branch of mathematical science. And, even because it is exactly in mathematics that the illimitable procedure of scientific development manifests itself most signally and most brilliantly, and is at the same time not inconsistent with the greatest rigor of form and certainty, if only it originally sets out from a stable principle of actual reality, this science will furnish, perhaps, the most appropriate and pertinent illustration. And, indeed, the more so, as the prejudice still subsists in men’s minds, that the first foundation of mathematical science is an original invention of the reason—a pure product of the internal intuitions of the intellect, and that this science stands quite apart from all other so-called sciences of experience. But in its first development and acquisition, this is very far from being the case. If we could only observe in others, or could in our own case recall to mind how long it is before a child can actually count three, or clearly separate from itself the external objects it perceives, or learns to distinguish between any two objects, or between them and itself, we shall be forced to admit that the first basis of enumeration has an empirical origin, and that it is on such, consequently, that all mathematical science is built up and founded. Geometrical lines and figures are properly nothing more than numbers, or the fundamental arithmetical notions fixed in space and invested with a corporeal shape, and thereby become visible. It is, however, not unusual to regard the first principles of geometry—such as the point, the right line, the square, and the triangle, out of which all else is compounded—as independent of experience, and existing absolutely in and by themselves. But, in truth, these primary facts of geometry are, without exception, first furnished by experience. And even if, for the purposes of science, they are advanced in a degree of abstract purity and of notional completeness, which they do not possess in the external world of sensible things, where they are always combined with more or less of gross admixture or of imperfection, this is only what is the case, in exactly the same degree, with the first principles of all other experimental sciences.
Astronomy is one of the highest applications of mathematical science, which in it is carried to its highest limits of development. But here, too, the latter has grown together and in common with natural science. The complicated and elaborate calculations, the approximate hypotheses of mathematical astronomy, are intimately interwoven and mixed up with manifold sidereal facts and observations. Properly, therefore, and rightly understood, mathematical science forms no exception to the general principle that all knowledge is based upon experience, derived from inward, outward, or, it may be, higher perceptions. Consequently, it is not so much in kind as in degree that it is distinguished from other experimental sciences. We must not, however, forget that in very many cases of the application of mathematics to real life and natural history, it is not so much a material science as rather a mere organ and instrument for the advancement and further elaboration of the particular sciences to which it is applied. Viewed relatively to a higher physical science, mathematics do but form the mere outline and articulation of the whole structure of the inner skeleton of the whole body of nature; or, rather, it is the hidden key and rule of speech of the marvelous language of revelation, and of that otherwise hidden existence which is here brought to the light, and which we call nature—its inner grammar, in short, and higher symbolism.
In order to guard against this abuse of reason, to which every thinker must feel himself but too liable, and which is universally acknowledged to be possible, it has been thought sufficient to distinguish the perversion from the right application of it within its natural and due limits. With this view it has been maintained that the knowledge and certainty which are conceded to and are within the reach of man are restricted to the sensible world; while, on the other hand, in the suprasensible domain, all judgment is denied to reason, and absolutely all knowledge to man. But this position is very far from being justifiable. For if, as we maintain, all knowledge is really imparted, or, in other words, a gift or revelation, its measure and limits can not be determined by way of anticipation, nor do they in truth depend at all upon man. Such limits rest entirely with Him from whom all has proceeded, and who communicates or has communicated to His creatures severally whatever it is His will to communicate or impart to them, or absolutely to enjoin upon them. But this revelation and communication, on which all religion and science ultimately rests, being once given and received, reason need not by any means be excluded from the suprasensible domain. On the contrary, it may in a certain degree lawfully co-operate in the effectually working of it, and, to a certain extent and under certain limits, may even judge of it. Indeed, when the first foundation of actual reality is once given and established, and moreover acknowledged as such, then the use and employment of reason is no less legitimate here than it is in the domain of the sensible world, or in a special science of experience directed and confined to terrestrial things. What is meant hereby, and how it is to be understood, will best appear from what I am now about to add. Though theology, as little as religion itself, can draw exclusively from or rest entirely on reason—for this would be fatal to its very idea—still it is not only allowable, but even highly desirable, that theology, in its practical application and method, should be thoroughly rational. By this means alone will it be able to preclude not only a pernicious confusion of ideas and the mistakes of fanatical enthusiasm, but also all unprofitable disputes and the absurd bitterness of animosity. And thus, under the prevailing influence of reason, the spirit of love and concord will outlive all the violent attacks and deep wounds of controversial ardor.
In its application, therefore, and external form, all science is, or, rather, to speak generally, ought to be, rational; even though it can not derive its subject-matter from reason, nor in any way depend upon it in this respect. For whenever she attempts to produce the latter out of herself, she invariably gives birth to the metaphysical phantom of absolute entity and of absolute knowledge, or that false illusion of reason which sets up an identical dualism and intrinsic unity of necessary being and necessary thought, as the two inseparably connected forms or species of the one eternal essence which, superior to and higher than both, contains in itself the primary ground of all existence and of all consciousness. Before this illusion, the idea of a personal Deity naturally falls to the ground. It is all too low and too mean for the lofty conceptions of this imaginary phantom of reason. Nowhere, I would observe by the way, has this illusory system, which is utterly fatal to the truth, been carried out with such rigor of consequence, or set forth with such masterly powers of exposition, as in the works of Spinosa. In this view of the world and things, however, we have two forms of a necessary thought, running, indeed, continually parallel to each other, but never becoming perfectly coincident. Accordingly, no system of it has ever been able to attain to a general recognition and reception. For, notwithstanding that perfect unintelligibility is essential to this view, being deeply inwoven in its whole system, and running through its most delicate threads, and reaching to its inmost corners, each new master of mathematical certainty in this method of negation and systematic nullity seeks the cause of the obscurity in some intellectual defect of his immediate predecessor in the exposition of it. Accordingly, he feels himself called upon to make some slightly changed turn and arrangement of the thoughts, and so to come forward as the inventor and founder of an entirely new fabric of truth; whereas, in truth, his new form and method are fundamentally the very same delusion of a mere rational semblance of logical necessity that formed the foundation of the old and condemned systems. However greatly the outward garb of language and phraseology may have varied in the course of centuries, still the error itself has remained identical and free from change.
And even if the necessary connection of these two worlds of objective existence and subjective consciousness, which run parallel with each other, should be conceived of, somewhat after the idea of Leibnitz, as a pre-established harmony, having, as such, its origin in a personal God, still, by this apparent recognition of the sovereign hand of omnipotence ruling and guiding the whole creation, it is only in the external form that it is relieved from the objection of dualism. For, fundamentally, this theory resolves itself into the mechanism of an intrinsically blind necessity, by means of which the two clocks, as it were, set originally together by the Supreme Artist, run on forever and agree, while otherwise they have no sort of connection or contact. Such a theory evidently furnishes no true solution of the difficulty, and leads to no satisfactory result. Quite different from this is the true inner unity, which, however, is no mere sameness—the true living harmony, which, however, is no pre-established one—between the external sensible world of nature and the inner conceptional world of the consciousness, as contemplated from the position of life, and of a philosophy which takes its source and foundation from life itself. According to this view, every thing in the outward reality of corporeal existence is truly and properly animated, ensouled, and even living. Or, at least, life is the source from which both the external object of material existence and the inner thought, life, or consciousness, alike take their rise—in this one common notion of life, that which exists and that which is conscious meet together and are fused into one. The whole of the supposed contrariety falls at once to the ground; and nothing remains but a certain difference of degree, steps of transition, and fluctuation from one state to another, similar to that between life and death, sleeping and waking. What we call existence is merely the visible appearance of a thought, it is the external expression, the corporeal shape of an inner life. No doubt this inner and hidden life of nature, when contrasted with the perfectly clear and free consciousness of man, or still more, when compared with a higher and superior being, appears perfectly unconscious. But, in truth, it ought not to be considered as being always and entirely such; at least, it was not so originally. We ought rather to explain it as a life and consciousness which have fallen into a state of slumber, dreaminess, or trance; and even if we must suppose it to be stiff and rigid with actual death, still it is not with that death which is eternal and everlasting. This, however, implies at the same time that we may look upon it as being in a commencing state of reawakening, though, indeed, it be very far as yet from being fully awake. And, in truth, in man’s most perfectly developed consciousness, do we not trace such or a similar reciprocation between sleeping and waking, dreaming and thinking, memory and oblivion—between the full, clear day of understanding, comprehension, and discernment, and that night of error and darkness that can not be dispersed, which conflicting opinions, with their passions and complications, cast over the human mind? In truth, no absolute line of demarkation, no impassable barrier, subsists. On the contrary, there are numberless points of contact and steps of transition easy enough to trace from the state of a living and wakeful consciousness into that of sleep, or of an apparently total rigidity and numbness. Strictly and accurately speaking, however, there is, according to this view of life, no such thing as death; there is only a fluctuation and variation of life through its several transitory forms. Still we must not forget that, relatively to the present state of things, all of these forms can not be regarded as transitory. In nature, death has no existence, i.e., death is neither essential nor from the beginning. It was brought in afterward, and incidentally, into creation. And indeed, for man especially, the immortality of the soul forms not only an article of the creed of a higher hope, but it is also a visible fact of nature, an indisputable truth of history, that every where plainly and loudly announces itself. This hypothesis of a real vitality, inherent in all the forms of existence, which we may very properly term the only hypothesis of feeling which the living truth admits of, was, in ancient times, the general creed of nature, enforced by the universal feeling of mankind, and originally held by all the nations of the earth. It is only in modern times that the one-sided sagacity of an elaborate and artificial science has drawn this strong line of demarkation between thought and entity, and thereby lead to a total deadening of both. No sooner, therefore, had existence and consciousness been torn from their common root of life, and thereby forced asunder from each other, than, with a view of filling up the great gap between them, the deceptive rationalism of an irrefragable chain of destiny, and a necessary predetermination of all things, took the place which life had formerly held, but from which it had been forcibly expelled.
LECTURE IX.
AMONG the widely-diversified forms and ever new applications under which the rational system of absolute knowledge and necessary connection is wont to exhibit itself, from time to time, some are occasionally found in which the first foundation is not established in that mathematical form and that rigor of demonstration which marks all the subsequent steps of the systematic edifice. In a few systems, at least, reason, as the faculty of the subjective Ego, is expressly assumed to be an intrinsic fact of the consciousness. And this is done, apparently, in the very same way that in the philosophy which sets out from life itself, the theory of the consciousness, or the development of the notion thereof, commences with some such fact of the inward cogitation, as a first principle given and established by internal experience. But the question, whether in any rationalistic system this assumption be really meant—in which case the whole system would be to be regarded as purely a science of experience—or is only apparent, being adopted for some secondary object, will be quickly determined as the development of the entire system proceeds. A few characteristic remarks, both simple and easy to be understood, will soon enable us to decide. If, as regards the form, with a pretended mathematical form of demonstration, it immediately introduces the old ontological confusion of unintelligible abstractions, we may assume it as highly probable, nay, set it down as certain, that, in spite of its different form and bearing, it is essentially the same invariable error of identical thought and unconditional being that is set forth in such a system. But the token by which such scientific fatalism most surely and infallibly reveals itself, is the subject-matter of the system. We can have no doubt of its presence wherever the present state of life and consciousness, which is merely accidental, and by no means its original one, is proved, or, rather, by a pretended demonstration, is set forth as its necessary condition.
On the contrary, that incessant alternation between life and death, such as the latter exists at present in nature, and which, in all its various forms, coming and going like night and day, sleeping and waking, ebb and flood, affects not the individual only but the whole human race, must, according to truth, be ever regarded as a perpetually changing event, assuming manifold different shapes, and being variously modified by the influence of human freedom. And not even for the purposes of science is it allowable to see, in what is but a transitory state of the present constitution of things, an eternal and immutable law; nor in its application to the individual cases of actual life, to assume a necessary predetermination resulting from some indissoluble chain of destiny.
Moreover, this illusory phantom of the unconditional—that peculiar error of the reason whenever it is unduly applied and left wholly to itself—and the semblance of rationality which arises thereout in a predetermined and indissoluble enchainment of all events and phenomena, is not confined to the domain of science and its inner world of thought. In poetry, under the notion of destiny, it holds a prominent and remarkable position. In the tragedy of the ancients especially, it comes before us in peculiar splendor and majesty, as the blind fate of an iron necessity. Since, then, this notion, though in itself and originally nothing but a mere delusion, has yet, through an almost universal belief in its reality, acquired and exercised for centuries a fearful power over the minds of men, it can not, of course, be omitted or refused a place in a truly artistic view and portraiture of life. This view of the general constitution of things, thoroughly and deeply tragic as it is, must ever remain intrinsically and essentially heathen. But even the most perfect creations of tragic art stand a full degree below, or, at least, hold a somewhat subordinate position to, the epic songs and lays of the oldest foretime. For this rich and copious stream of primal and eternal recollections is the source from which every other form of poesy branches off and derives its inspired waters; the living play of its billows, as they sweep along with full and undivided flood, bears with them all the magic treasures of fancy; and like the world-encircling ocean, with its ever-changing undulations, it flows around all the ages and epochs of nature and humanity. The epos, in short, is poesy itself. In it pre-eminently the very essence of poetry is present, and there, also, are its truest manifestations. Every other form of poetic art constitutes but a special kind, and, as compared with this pure original, is, so to speak, a mixed or applied poetry. For in the same way that music is an art of longing, while the arts of figure are the channels in which the highest enthusiasm for visible beauty expresses itself; so poesy is the bright reflection of the world as it is mirrored on the ever-flowing love-stream of eternal recollection. But enthusiasm invariably attaches itself to something positive. On this account it is that the plastic arts are intrinsically of two kinds essentially different in character. While a heathen beauty predominates in the statuary and buildings of ancient times, a spirit of Christian inspiration is no less decidedly and visibly apparent in modern painting and architecture. And, in some degree, this remark applies, to dramatic poetry; for, in its inner spirit and character, encroaching, as it were, into the domain of the plastic art, it forms a peculiar species of mixed poetry. But in epic poetry, in the same way that all streams flow into and commingle in the ocean, all contrasts are softened off and dissolved, and, in a true and genuine epic poem, the ancient mythology must not impress us as heathen—or, at least, this character must not there be so decidedly apparent as it is in Grecian tragedy. Every age that enjoys a high civilization, and a rare degree of intellectual enlightenment, even though it has not lost all relish for noble and original poetry, applies itself, first and preferably, to those mixed forms which allow the freest development of art, and in which it frequently attains to the height of excellence. When, however, during the reign of the cold poetry of the head, the tragic view of the world and things manifests itself no longer in the grand style of free invention, but interweaves and works itself up with some artificial and elaborate picture of prosaic reality, the impression it leaves is doubly painful, conveying but the closing reflections of a destructive skepticism. And in the place of that genuine poetical truth which marked the deep and pregnant feelings of ancient poesy, of which scarce a trace is here to be found, we have, on the whole, nothing but the scientific illusion of some empty notion in the deep but bitter feeling of universal negation.
In the whole series of the essential errors of science—of which some one form or other is peculiar to each of the four great faculties of the mind, and which, though not as an inevitable and irremediable limitation of it, yet still, as a defective tendency and an hereditary germ of deviation, is there indigenous and domesticated—among all these various forms of error, the deceptive phantom of the unconditional, the seeming identity of necessary being and absolute thinking and knowing, has been shown to belong especially to the reason whenever, quitting the right road, it refuses to confine its operations within their due limits. In consequence, however, of that close concatenation and mutual influence which pervades all the different forms and species of man’s intellectual development, I deemed it any thing but superfluous to call your attention to the fact, that this system of necessity, or, in other words, this scientific fatalism, plays a very essential part in the poetical view of things, and to notice the shapes it there assumes. And just as this delusion of the reason, which has given rise to so many false systems (which, however, are but one, since they do but repeat, in different forms, one and the same error of the absolute), has had a powerful effect even on poetry, having exercised a great and decided influence on the internal constitution of the tragic drama, so, in a similar manner, there is a peculiar species of scientific error which owes its origin to the faculty of imagination. Now, as might well be expected, wherever this inventive and productive faculty directs itself exclusively to the side of prosaic reality and to palpable corporeal phenomena, this error, and the erroneous scientific system to which it gives rise, have, above all others, a dry, meager, and grossly material character. Those lovely illusions of a fancy innocently sporting with emblems and figures, which most immediately occur to our mind while speaking of an error peculiar to that province of the imagination, although purely scientific—I am alluding to the fabulous world and imaginary deities of ancient mythology—these furnish but little, if any, obstacle in the way of science and of the acquisition of physical truth. Considered, therefore, in this light alone, they would scarcely demand a place in our present disquisitions. For, for us, the whole of them possesses only a certain poetical truth—or, at most, perhaps, a deeper and most penetrating search may discover in them a symbolical signification, which is, undoubtedly, full of deep meaning, and therefore is, in so far, also true. But the case was very different with the ancients themselves. And, on this account, when heathenism was the prevailing faith, a lively opposition was raised against them. A stern law of morals and philosophy, with indiscriminating censure, would have swept away the whole of the national mythology. Right and just as this censure may appear to us, so far as it was directed against the arbitrary fictions, or grossly sensual features of these fables, still it is impossible to concur with it totally and entirely. Occasionally, the point of view is taken too narrowly and too exclusively. Moreover, it is undeniable, that these ancient objectors did not sufficiently recognize the symbolical meaning of their own mythology. And, in fact, they were far from being in a position to take a survey of the whole cycle of legends among different nations, and so to trace the historical connection of them all; and even if, in some single points, they understood and gave due weight to this symbolical significancy, occasionally making use of it themselves, it was only as a mere intellectual amusement, or with the narrow object of illustrating some occasional ethical discussion of limited interest.