"Hence nothing can be further from true wisdom, than the mask of it assumed by men of the world, who affect a cold indifference about whatever does not belong to their own immediate circle of interests or pleasures." Guesses at Truth, 2nd Ed. 2nd Series, p. 200.
[164] "Try to conceive a man without the ideas of God, eternity, freedom, will, absolute truth, of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite. An animal endowed with a memory of appearances and of facts might remain. But the man will have vanished, and you have instead a creature, more subtle than any beast of the field, but likewise cursed above every beast of the field; upon the belly must it go, and dust must it eat all the days of its life. But I recal myself from a train of thoughts little likely to find favour in this age of sense and selfishness." Coleridge, Church and State. Note p. 50, Ed. 1839.
[165] Some people we may remark are unable to see any difference between sentiments and sentimentalities.
[166] It was by a reverse procedure that Kant shewed his greatness. He kept the two fields of thought apart, and applied to each a criticism unsparing, but appropriate. Nothing could be more decisive than the result, though darkened in some degree by the critic's peculiar technicalities. Moral truth was placed upon the most sublime of elevations. Speculative reason could never rise beyond the limits of conditioned truth; any attempt to extend its sphere issued in antinomy or blank negation. It left the human mind apparently oscillating between Idealism and limited Insight. But to this must be added a most important point too commonly forgotten. Though Speculative reason does not demonstrably prove, it renders conceivable by us those highest of all Ideas which our Practical reason shews to be necessarily and unquestionably certain for every one
of us. Moral Truth thus opens to Man's eye a clear vista into the Timeless
and the Absolute, to an immortal life beyond the grave, and to God the Sovereign both of Nature and of Man. It tells us the secret of true Causation, and with it of all that is most worth living for, the intrinsically greatest and Best of Humanity. And it binds every human being, as by golden links, to that ever present Divine throne, the shrine and oracle set up within his own breast. We ought always to remember that upon those grand truths which if practically certain cannot be ultimately false, Kant staked his all. They were the crown alike of his labours and his life.
Addition.—By these remarks the present writer does not intend subscribing to all the Kantian conclusions respecting pure Speculative Reason, much less to those that have been asserted by many of Kant's disciples. Difference of opinion on such conclusions cannot, however, effect an honest appreciation of the clear and elevated principles maintained by Kant on the subject of independent Morality, as contradistinguished from the scheme which used to be termed Selfish, but is now commonly called Utilitarian.—See pp. 93-6 ante.
[ah] "Thousands of years it may be before Homer and the Veda ... Dyaus did not mean the blue sky, nor was it simply the sky personified; it was meant for something else.... We shall have to learn the same lesson again and again in the Science of Religion, viz. that the place whereon we stand is holy ground. Thousands of years have passed since the Aryan nations separated to travel to the North and the South, the West and the East: they have each formed their languages, they have each founded empires and philosophies, they have each built temples and razed them to the ground; they have all grown older, and it may be wiser and better; but when they search for a name for what is most exalted and yet most dear to every one of us, when they wish to express both awe and love, the infinite and the finite, they can but do what their old fathers did when gazing up to the eternal sky, and feeling the presence of a Being as far as far and as near as near can be: they can but combine the self-same words, and utter once more the primeval Aryan prayer, Heaven-Father, in that form which will endure for ever, 'Our Father which art in Heaven.'"—Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Religion, pp. 171-2, 3.
[167] Compare the Indian phrase "the magical illusions of reality, the so-called Mâyâ of creation." Max Müller's Sanskrit Literature, p. 19. Also Ritter's Gesch. der Philosophie, I. 101 seq., and the account in both of the philosophy of Quietism. The attractive side of it is given by Max Müller, pp. 18, 19, and 29. The National results are elegantly painted, pp. 30, 31. He concludes: "It might therefore be justly said that India has no place in the political history of the world.... India has moved in such
a small and degraded circle of political existence that it remained almost
invisible to the eyes of other nations."
Few feelings are more deeply rooted, as in our individual, so in our collective human nature, than this same conclusion. Quietism culminates when Action appears useless because of a conceived Necessity or Unreality of Nature:—"Life is but a Dream—Let all sit still and fold their hands to slumber."
[168] Speculatively considered, what can the weapon commonly called argument do against Idealism? Both sides allow that man can neither cause nor annihilate sensible impressions. But they are supposably ideal phrases of susceptibility, which may be explained in more ways than one. On the inability of most men—(particularly Scotchmen,) to comprehend Berkeley's position, see Fraser's Ed., IV. 366, 7, 8, note. It gave rise to notably absurd rejoinders: "With the witty Voltaire ten thousand cannon balls, and ten thousand dead men, were ten thousand ideas, according to Berkeley. There is as much subtlety of thought, and more humour, in the Irish story of Berkeley's visit to Swift on a rainy day, when, by the Dean's orders, he was left to stand before the unopened door, because, if his philosophy was true, he could as easily enter with the door shut as open."
[169] "We cannot possibly identify the perception of expanded colour, which is all that originally constitutes seeing, with the perception of felt resistance, which is all that originally constitutes touching. Coloured extension is antithetical to felt extension. In fact, we do not see, we never saw, and we never can see the orange of mere touch; we do not touch, we never touched, and we never can touch the orange of mere sight." Ibid. p. 394.