[Footnote 316: In R.L. Nettleship's Remains.]
[Footnote 317: In addition to passages quoted elsewhere, the following sentence from Luthardt is a good statement of the symbolic theory: "Nature is a world of symbolism, a rich hieroglyphic book: everything visible conceals an invisible mystery, and the last mystery of all is God." Goethe's "Alles vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss" would be better without the "nur," from our point of view.]
[Footnote 318: Récéjac, Essai sur les Fondements de la Connaissance
Mystique.]
[Footnote 319: In the Edinburgh Review, October 1896. The article referred to, on "The Catholic Mystics of the Middle Ages," is beautifully written, and should be read by all who are interested in the subject.]
[Footnote 320: This is Kant's use of the word. See Bosanquet, History of Æsthetic, p. 273: "A symbol is for Kant a perception or presentation which represents a conception neither conventionally as a mere sign, nor directly, but in the abstract, as a scheme, but indirectly though appropriately through a similarity between the rules which govern our reflection in the symbol and in the thing (or idea) symbolised." "In this sense beauty is a symbol of the moral order." Goethe's definition is also valuable: "That is true symbolism where the more particular represents the more general, not as a dream or shade, but as a vivid, instantaneous revelation of the inscrutable.">[
[Footnote 321: Or rather of power and dignity; for in some early
Byzantine works even Satan is represented with a nimbus.]
[Footnote 322: Emerson says rightly, "Mysticism (in a bad sense) consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.">[
[Footnote 323: The distinction which Ruskin draws between the fancy and the imagination may help us to discern the true and the false in Symbolism. "Fancy has to do with the outsides of things, and is content therewith. She can never feel, but is one of the most purely and simply intellectual of the faculties. She cannot be made serious; no edge-tool, but she will play with: whereas the imagination is in all things the reverse. She cannot but be serious; she sees too far, too darkly, too solemnly, too earnestly, ever to smile…. There is reciprocal action between the intensity of moral feeling and the power of imagination. Hence the powers of the imagination may always be tested by accompanying tenderness of emotion…. Imagination is quiet, fancy restless; fancy details, imagination suggests…. All egotism is destructive of imagination, whose play and power depend altogether on our being able to forget ourselves…. Imagination has no respect for sayings or opinions: it is independent" (Modern Painters, vol. ii. chap. iii.).]
[Footnote 324: Cf. Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. ii. p. 144: "What we nowadays understand by 'symbols' is a thing which is not that which it represents; at that time (in the second century) 'symbol' denoted a thing which, in some kind of way, is that which it signifies; but, on the other hand, according to the ideas of that period, the really heavenly element lay either in or behind the visible form without being identical with it. Accordingly, the distinction of a symbolic and realistic conception of the Lord's Supper is altogether to be rejected." And vol. iv. p. 289: "The 'symbol' was never a mere type or sign, but always embodied a mystery." So Justin Martyr uses [Greek: symbolikôs eipein] and [Greek: eipein en mystêriô] as interchangeable terms; and Tertullian says that the name of Joshua was nominis futuri sacramentum.]
[Footnote 325: So some thinkers have felt that "the Word" is not the best expression for the creative activity of God. The passage of Goethe where Faust rejects "Word," "Thought," and "Power," and finally translates, "In the beginning was the Act," is well known. And Philo, in a very interesting passage, says that Nature is the language in which God speaks; "but there is this difference, that while the human voice is made to be heard, the voice of God is made to be seen: what God says consists of acts, not of words" (De Decem Orac. II).]