“All light is at some point condensed into a flame; likewise every epoch is condensed in a man. The man dead, the epoch is concluded: God turns over the leaf. Dante dead, a period is placed at the end of the thirteenth century: John Huss may come. Shakspere dead, a period is placed at the end of the sixteenth century. After this part, who contains and epitomizes all philosophy, may come the philosophers—Pascal, Descartes, Molière, Le Sage, Montesquieu, Diderot, Beaumarchais.”
CHAPTER III.
THE PROVISION FOR THE INTELLECTUAL NATURE OF MAN.
Truth and reality stand for the same thing. Reality is truth out of the mind, and truth is reality in the mind. Reality is objective truth, and truth is subjective reality. But all reality is in relation to mind; objective reality to the divine mind, and subjective reality to the human mind. Objective reality is the realized thought of God; subjective reality is the realized thought of man. The correspondence of thoughts to things is called scientific truth. Objective reality is truth, because it corresponds to the thought of God. Knowledge in the human mind is truth when it corresponds to objective reality or the expressed thought of God. When words and conduct correspond to knowledge, we have truth in the domain of morals.
In saying that objective reality is the realized thought of God, we denote its unity. This is not to destroy the particulars of which it is composed, or to swamp their individuality in an inarticulate mass, but simply to indicate their oneness.
When the observer looks out into the universe, which includes and shuts him round, he is impressed by the infinite varieties and diversities which everywhere meet his gaze. No two things are alike. No two leaves, no two drops of water, no two snowflakes, no two apples, no two faces. Every particular thing seems to be persistently determined to differ, in some respect at least, from everything else. The history of true knowledge begins, however, with the observation of resemblance and similarity—just beneath the surface of difference and variety. The lightning that appears on the bosom of the cloud, like the writing of some awful fiend, is seen to be the same with the gentle sparks emitted when a tag of silken ribbon is drawn briskly between the fingers. The power that pulls the ball to the ground is seen to be the same as that which keeps the sun in his place.
The plant lifts itself up as but a sum of organized varieties; but every part, corolla, petal, and stamen, is known to be only modified leaf. Keeping to their silent and lonely rounds since the dawn of time, are the stars in the heavens, differing in color, orbit, and size, but we now know that to understand the elements of which they are composed, we have only to lift our foot and see what the constituent parts of the earth beneath it are. Were objective reality one amorphous mass, it would not be intelligible. It is one and many, particular and universal, singular and manifold, concrete and discrete. All things cohere in a centrality that includes and commands them.
So true is it that unity underlies all difference, that no single variety can be understood, only as it is considered in relation with the whole of which it forms a part.
No one could ever get a correct notion of a particular star by directing his entire attention to the study of that star. To understand it, he must study it through the system of which it forms a member, and in connection with all laws and forces related to it. Oxygen separate and distinct from other elements has no meaning. It gets its definition and significance from the things to which it is related. What it is for rocks and water and trees and globes, that it is in itself. But it must be seen in connection with these before we can know what it is in itself. What an acid is for an alkali and for other things, that it is in itself. Alone, out of relation, we could know absolutely nothing of it. Society is the organism that reveals to each person the nature of his own life. Out of contact and touch with other human beings, no one would ever know anything concerning himself.
Objective reality embraces manifold variety, but it is the unity that presides over it that makes it intelligible. Difference provokes questions and unity answers them.