Lecture Ii.

When man is considered relatively to his external existence in the sensible world and nature, to which by his body he belongs and forms a constituent part, then the three elements of which, as regarded from this point of view, his whole being or essence appears to consist, are body, soul, and spirit. Now, not even from these are schism and conflict excluded. There is little or no harmony between the higher and spiritual principle of the inner man and the outer world to which properly his sensuous faculty belongs. The natural wants and the organic laws of our corporeal life are at issue with the moral law of the inward feelings--with the exalted requisitions of the soaring thought and the profound desire of the pure spirit. The struggle between these two distinct laws or ordinances of life, the higher and the lower, forms, perhaps, the chief problem which in his moral destination on earth man has to solve. At least it constitutes the first beginning and step thereof. No doubt, the external frame of the human body, with its wonderful organization, presents in the prime of its development the corporeal image of a more exalted and more spiritual beauty. In its highest and happiest expansion--in its noblest forms--in many a bright gleam, for instance, of animated expression on the countenance of youth--we read the graceful reflection of a more than earthly loveliness. The stamp of man’s heavenly origin is not quite extinct or completely defaced even in his frame. But on the other hand, it is exposed and subject to innumerable injuries, sufferings, diseases, and corruptions; so that we feel at once the truth of the Apostle’s words, in calling it the “body of this death.” Added, then, to the other two elements of man’s being, spirit and soul, the organic body forms the third constituent, in which, however, is contained the ground and occasion of conflict and strife. In the inner man, indeed, taken by itself, and in soul and spirit, as the two constituents of his higher life, there is involved no absolute element of discord. No doubt even here the harmony is liable to many disturbances, and perfect unison, perhaps, is very rarely to be met with; but still the discord has not its ground in the essential constitution of these two principles of soul and spirit. The contrariety between reason and fancy, understanding and will, though existing in the fourfold consciousness of man in its present state, prevails not there by any law of necessity. It is not a result of their essential constitution. Simply, the spirit is the more active faculty of the whole higher principle and of its internal life, the soul the more passive one. I have designedly employed the expression the more active, and the more passive, while thus speaking of soul and of spirit; for perfectly passive, and entirely devoid of liberty, the feeling and loving soul is not, as neither, on the other hand, is the spirit perfectly active and independent. The latter stands in need of the fellowship of the soul and of the life-giving feeling to kindle and to expand it. To a certain degree, both spirit and soul, or at least the preponderance of the one or the other, are dependent on the organization and organic differences of sex. In general, we may at least assert and admit this much: that, viz., spirit or thought predominates in man, but spirit or soul in the female sex. But even here (so incalculably great is the diversity of human character and disposition, so various are the methods and forms of education and moral culture) many exceptions, either by way of complication or deviation from the original simple relation, are found to subsist. In no case, moreover, can this preponderance of the reigning element be taken or understood as a total isolation or severance from the other. On the contrary, there are manifold transitions and fusions in the reciprocal action of soul and spirit. In the same way that there are peculiar modes of thought, a special kind of intellect, which, by a happy divination, goes infallibly to the point and the truth, and is entirely the judgment of feeling--the issue, in short, of the feeling soul; so, too, there are many impressions on the feelings (an ardent love, for instance, and a purely intellectual enthusiasm), which take their origin immediately out of some thought, or generally from the understanding. And, in fact, the very separation of the two generally does but lead to their more intimate union, and furnish a new bond of unity. Thought and feeling stand reciprocally in need of each other. As thought gains new life and animation from the rich feeling, with its facile, tender, and profound emotions, deriving therefrom its vital nourishment and sustenance, even so the feelings are not unfrequently first awakened, and very often strengthened and elevated, by the lofty flight of thought in its bold and searching investigations. It is even this that constitutes, in part at least, the attraction of social intercourse, the charm of love, and the happiness of a well-assorted union, which does but become more close by years--the one party finding in the other the intellectual or (if the term be preferred) the psychological complement of his own being and character.

But now a similar complement for the void and deficiency which, even in the most favored dispositions, enjoying the highest advantages of learning and culture, still remains in man’s consciousness and internal existence, may be found in yet another wise, and by a far superior method. We may, for instance, seek this consummation of our nature in that Being who contains in Himself the fullness of all might and of all existence--of all life and of all love--and out of whom both soul and spirit proceed and take their beginning. Now, if we should wish to form an idea of the heavenly state of supreme felicity, such, at least, as in forecasting hope we may suppose it to be, and indeed are justified in so doing, then we may doubtless think of it as such that in it both soul and spirit, sunk in the abyss of eternal love, will rest perfectly satisfied. Or rather, in a living communion of thought and feeling, they will most intimately sympathize in this ineffable majesty, being absorbed in the never-failing stream of the infinite plenitude of divinity. In this state of bliss, the body will be dissolved and no longer existent. At least transfigured and changed, it will remain nothing more than the pure, luminous veil [Lichthülle] of the immortal soul and the spirit, now totally and freely emancipated. For it will no longer be possible, with any propriety, to think of the body as separate and distinct from the soul and spirit, as in truth and fundamentally it will not be separate from them. Now, for this blissful state of perfect union with the supreme essence, no less than for those single and rare moments of mental ravishment, during which, even in this earthly life, man occasionally, though transiently, does, by vivid thought, transport himself to such a state, the third element, which as the connecting link must accrue to these two fundamental energies of man’s inward being and existence, in order to complete and perfect it, is God Himself. For it is here even as in the external world of sense; there must be a third element. There, however, it is the body, which, as no less essential than the other two, completes the existence of the total man. Merely psychologically regarded, and when we adhere and limit ourselves to the given sphere of the internal consciousness, the triple principle of man’s being is neither God, soul, and spirit, as in the higher blissful state, nor even body, soul, and spirit, as in this material world, but simply spirit, soul, and sense. These are the three elements of the mind, which as such immediately concern us at present, and form the essential basis of the following considerations.

Much is there that attaches itself to this principle, or follows from it. It would consequently only lead to confusion were we at present to take a full survey of all these cognate matters and consequences, and lay them before you at the outset. Many of them will arise much more naturally afterward. Even the treating, and the elucidation, of the relation in which the senses, as the third element of the human mind, stands to the other two, and the place which it holds among them, will hereafter come more appropriately before us. And this is especially true of a question which, however, has an important bearing on the matter before us--the question, viz., whether or not some particular faculty, either of soul or spirit, is to be regarded as an internal sense, a moral instinct, or an immediate perception and intuition of the highest and best. And, connected with this inquiry, is the remark, that even in the usual outward senses there lies a spark of higher spiritual perception--such, for instance, as the artistic eye for beauty of form and color, and for grace of motion, or the musical ear for lovely sounds and measures; so that even the senses are not so purely corporeal, so totally material and grossly sensuous, as at the first glance they appear. But there is another topic which here enforces itself on our consideration, and which, for the correct apprehension of the whole matter, is even still more important than that of the relation which sense holds to the other two elements of man’s consciousness. And this is to determine whether these two, soul and spirit, are really different, or whether it be not probable that, as the active and the passive powers and aspects of a higher principle in man, they are, on the whole, one and the same, and consequently ought not, in thought even, to be unduly separated and distinguished. But however this question is to be answered, even though in man they be really and necessarily united, still a relative distinction of them is justified by that preponderance of one or the other which manifests itself at different times and in different relations of life. But a weighty reason exists for supposing that they are essentially two elements. A fair presumption that, after all, soul and spirit are not perhaps one and the same under two several sets, arises from a comparison of man with other created spirits, if only it be allowed us to make a further application of a parallel which, on a certain hypothesis, we have already hazarded. For, however problematical at most the results of such comparisons may appear, still in such cases as the present they are often very useful. They tend, at least, to give a sharp and precise determination of the peculiar and characteristic features of man’s consciousness. Now, the free and pure spirits far surpass man in energy of will--in activity and power--and, secondly, in rapidity and clearness of apprehension, possessing as they do an intellect immediately intuitive. In these properties, as contrasted with the mutability and weakness of man’s vacillating will, the slowness of his groping and erring intellect, the angels have greatly the advantage of man. But, on the other hand, the human mind or spirit possesses in its peculiar creative fertility a vast prerogative, which can not--not, at least, in the same degree--be ascribed even to the pure creatures of light. And, in truth, it is on the soul, which is not merely receptive or sentient, but also inwardly productive, lovingly creative, and ever giving new forms and shapes to the old and common, that the creative faculty of invention, so distinctive of man, ultimately rests. At least, it forms the inner foundation and root out of which it springs and rises. Fancy, indeed, with its external shape and visible manifestion in art, is only one portion of it. But still the other part also of the soul, viz., the reason, when directed to its right end, and so long as it remains within its natural limits, is a faculty of endless intellectual development, infinite advance, and perfectionment. And, in truth, the position is by no means new, that perfectibility or the faculty of endless improvement (which, however, is associated with an equally great and no less infinite faculty of deterioration), is the essential and wholly peculiar prerogative of man. It is his characteristic property. With regard to the other aspect or portion of the same property, the productive fancy namely, and its creative productions, a similar view to our own--and, indeed, under the same parallel and hypothesis--is expressed in the poet’s assertion already quoted--

“Thy knowledge thou sharest with superior spirits; Art, oh man! thou hast alone.”

Only the term “art” must here be understood in a wide and comprehensive signification, so as to take in language. Or, rather, language itself is the general, all-embracing art of man. For nowhere does art evince its peculiar, internal, and intellectual fertility, its creative faculty of invention, so striking as in this wonderful structure of human language, with its many compartments. Man, we might well say, in general terms, is a production of nature that has attained to the perfection of language. In other words, he is a spirit to whom, before all other creatures, the word explanatory and declaratory, the guiding, the communicative, and even the commanding word, is lent, imparted, committed, or conveyed, and even therein consists his original, marvelous, and high dignity, so far surpassing the ordinary standard of creation.

On this account, therefore, it is only natural and consistent, i.e., agreeable to man’s nature and dignity, that the comparative juxtaposition and parallel which is to lead to a more correct characterization of the human mind, with its peculiar faculties and properties, should, as I said, be directed upward, rather than, as is usually done, downward to the brutes, and to the animal consciousness, if, indeed, we may justly ascribe such to them. Now, in this method of comparison I would go a step farther, for by so doing I hope to promote the more perfect understanding of the whole, and also to arrive at a correct and accurate notion of the several faculties of man’s spirit and of the powers of his soul. Which, then, of man’s faculties or powers may be rightly attributed to the Deity, and which not? To answer this question, however, it is not my intention to enter into any very difficult and abstruse investigations, such as would neither be very apposite to this place, and perhaps (to speak generally) would be absolutely without and beyond the limits of the human understanding. It will be sufficient for my purpose throughout to take for granted what, according to the universal feeling of mankind, is generally admitted, and which is even as generally intelligible, as it is easy of apprehension and clear. But when I thus without hesitation take for granted a universal belief in the existence of a divine principle, notwithstanding the doubt which in the human mind springs up against all else, so also against the highest object of faith, I do so with a deliberate view and purpose. For I shall reserve the solution of this grave problem to a later period of my sketch and exposition of the thinking consciousness and of a true living science. It is there, in truth, that it will find its most natural and appropriate place. Here, however, for the purposes of our intended comparison, which, as the instance itself will prove, is likely to be highly instructive, it will be sufficient if I confine myself to a single remark. The little that we know or can with certainty predicate of God may be comprised almost in the few words, “God is a spirit.” It is by virtue of this proposition that we ascribe to Him an omniscient intellect and an all-mighty will. Both these attributes or powers of God, are, it is self-evident, in the most perfect harmony, and can scarcely be separated from one another; whereas in man they are frequently widely divergent, at times even hostilely oppose each other, and at best do but check and limit their mutual action. Here, however, arises the question whether in strict propriety we may venture to ascribe to the Deity any of the other mental faculties and powers which man is conscious of, though on a greater and different scale, and in a very extended sense?

Now, in the creative energy of God, there is, in truth, comprised the plenitude of all fertility, and, if it be allowable so to speak, an inexhaustible source of all invention.

But still, as every one must at once feel, a productive faculty of imagination and a creative fancy can not on this account be ascribed to Him; for, were we to do so, we should step at once into the domain of mythology with its fabulous gods. And even as little, in strict propriety and accuracy of language, can we attribute to God the faculty of reason, which, in man, is the opposite of fancy. Reason is the connecting, inferring, discursive faculty of thought. But all this, with its graduated series of ideas or conceptions, is not applicable to the Deity, for in Him all must be thought of as standing at once and immediately before the divine mind, or, rather, as directly emanating from Him. Consequently, in a strict sense, and following a rigorous precision of a thoroughly correct designation, we may indeed ascribe to God an immediately cognizant and intuitive understanding, but not reason; since, by this term, it is only by a violent abuse of language and a total conversion of ideas that a faculty of intellectual intuition can be understood. One kind alone, or branch of reason, is immediately intuitive; and that is the conscience, or the moral instinct, for the appreciation of whatever is good or evil, right or wrong. This might not inaptly be called an applied reason; viz., a reason applied to the will and to its inmost motives, and to its just commencing, still inchoate determinations, out of which external actions ultimately issue. But even because conscience is an immediate perception of right and wrong, a moral instinct for good and evil, and, consequently, in form, wholly distinct from that function of reason which infers and deduces consequences, I am indisposed to give it such a name, and would rather regard it as a peculiar faculty of soul or heart, subsisting by itself, and intermediate between will and reason. In any case, it would be superfluous to observe how highly inappropriate it would be to designate by this name that warning or punitive judicial vision with which God looks through and penetrates the inmost heart, even though we must seek here the root and origin of the lucid oracles and simple revelations of the human conscience. As a property, however, it can only be ascribed to those beings who, like man, behold the law of God far above them, but by no means to that Being who is Himself the sum and source of all moral laws. But let us now revert to our first question of the predication of reason to the Deity. If, in our present reigning systems, and especially in the latest German philosophy, reason is, notwithstanding, ascribed to Him, or, rather, the eternal, unconditional, and absolute reason is itself called God, and rationality is made to be His essence; this is but the immediate consequence of the predominantly pantheistic tendency of these systems, in which the Deity is identified with the mundane All, and resolved into the universal essence. For, inasmuch as it was felt that it could not be merely the all-producing and all-absorbing--the all-bearing, infinite, vital power of the heathen systems of nature--and, since a more scientific designation was required, nothing remained for the totally abstract designation of the one All, but the name of that faculty which even in the human mind forms the principle of unity.

No doubt, in the preceding centuries, one or two great teachers have employed very similar, if not identical expressions, in reference to the Deity; still this, to my mind, appears an exception from the general rule, to be explained and justified only by individual terminology and points of view. And, at any rate, it is much safer to follow the ancient usage on this point. Accordingly, I have made it a law scrupulously to observe it throughout. But if people will at once subvert the ancient modes of speech, and completely interchange and confuse the ordinary signification of the terms reason and understanding, then all must naturally turn on the thing itself and the internal thoughts and the proper meaning which lies at the bottom of them. And then, by a due consideration of these, a mutual understanding may perhaps be eventually arrived at, notwithstanding the different modes of speech. With most of the writers and philosophers of the present day this, perhaps, is scarcely to be hoped for. The grave question, however, here (and which, as it lies at the bottom, must ultimately decide on this difference of phraseology), is this--whether philosophy in general is, according to the rationalistic way of thinking, a mere philosophy of reason, or a higher philosophy of the spirit and of spiritual revelation, or, indeed, of a divine experience.

Further, whenever, in the olden phraseology, there are ascribed to the Deity, memory and even desires, not to say impulses, which, viewed nearly in the same light as man’s appetites and passions, are designated by the same terms, all this is to be understood in the same way as the expressions concerning His all-seeing eye, His ear, and His mighty arm. They are merely figurative and symbolical phrases. In the use of them there is no pretension to scientific accuracy, with which understanding and will are universally and actually ascribed to Him. They are devoid even of that apparent probability which gives rise to the question, whether imagination and reason can, with the same propriety as the former two, be attributed to Him. With as little truth can a soul be ascribed to Him. For this is, exclusively, a passive faculty; whereas, in God, all is energy and activity. The expression, however, of a soul of God, is found, by way of exception from the general usage, in a few among ancient writers.

A more correct mode of indicating what is meant by this term would be to say that God is love, and that love is even His essence. Or the same idea would be well conveyed by speaking, under the form of a living force and property, of God’s fatherly heart as the center of His being, of His omnipotence and omniscience, and of the infinite love which results from the two. No doubt even this expression of God’s fatherly heart is merely figurative and symbolical. Still it is one of high significance, and, as such, it is not a mere figure without meaning. For, the higher and profounder spiritual philosophy, from Plato down to Leibnitz, has ever purposely employed such symbols and figures to indicate that which properly is inexpressible. In fact, it has always preferred them to the abstract notions employed by the rationalizing systems of our own lifeless metaphysics of naught, which, as they are void in themselves, so do they in reality say nothing.

Thus, then, has the very first step in this comparative psychology carried us, at once, to the utmost limits of what is knowable by man. Still it has tended, in passing, to place in an eminently distinct light many important matters and essential properties and faculties which belong to our present sphere of psychological inquiry. It is now, however, necessary for me to turn my regards back to the point from which we started. In order to commence our philosophy of life with the center of life and of man’s whole consciousness, we set out from a psychological fact, which immediately impresses itself on the awakening consciousness. This fact is the perception of the discord which reigns in our entire self, and especially of the deep-rooted dissension which, in their usual state, divides the four principal faculties of the consciousness, according to the twofold contrariety of understanding and will, and of reason and fancy. I will here merely add the remark, that further still, another essential property of man, and a state equally characteristic and peculiar to him, is closely associated with, and, indeed, is grounded in this internal discord, viz., the freedom of the will and the state of doubt. Now, this freedom of will which belongs to man is very different from the freedom of God, or even from that of the pure spirits who were first created. The notion of free will, however, is so deeply and firmly grounded in our inmost feelings, that man’s universal conviction of it can never be wholly undermined by any doubts of the reason, however subtilely advanced, and, in appearance, demonstratively urgent. No objection or difficulty can totally extinguish and annihilate the persuasion of its truth within our breast. For even after the greatest shock which our faith in ourselves may sustain, either from reflection or from subtilely refining on the subject--after what, apparently, is a complete refutation of its truth, this divine and inborn prejudice (if I may so term it) of our intrinsic freedom still springs up again. As the inextinguishable vital flame of the spirit, it rises anew from the expiring embers of those deadening doubts, which are themselves nothing more than the dead notions and null phantoms of a false semblance of thought. Now this freedom of will is a liberty of choice, i.e., a will long vacillating between two different series of ideas--of opposing grounds and reasons, and, at last, deciding for one or the other. This volition, however, is, by its nature, so little decided, and frequently finds so great difficulty in coming to a decision, that even when externally it has already concluded its deliberations, it often becomes again undecided and begins anew to hesitate. Or this freedom of choice in man may otherwise be described and thought of as a decision of the understanding, which compares together two different volitions, carefully weighs the conflicting grounds in favor of each, and, at last, in its final judgment, recognizes the preference to one or the other. Consequently, this free will and choice, so peculiar to man, depends intimately and essentially upon that controversy between understanding and will, which, if not inborn, has become, at least, a second nature to him. I have spoken of this freedom of will as peculiar to man, since it is not necessary, and rather would be a most arbitrary hypothesis, were we to go so far as to assert, that, assuming the existence of other free but created essences, our own special kind of freedom is the only possible and conceivable one. Still, for our present purpose, it is allowable to make such a purely hypothetical simile and comparison, if (a point on which the experiment itself must decide) it be likely to render our own peculiar form of consciousness more intelligible and conceivable. In this sense, then, we may go on to say, that we must conceive the liberty of the blessed spirits as being in its essence very different from that of man’s. As such it belongs to beings who have long passed beyond the probation of the still undecided choice, or who, at the very beginning of their existence, were, by the design of the Creator, withdrawn from it, and have, consequently, attained to eternal freedom, together with undisturbed and undisturbable peace in God, who is the sum and inexhaustible source, as well as the unfathomable, of all freedom, no less than of all life.

But even irrespectively of this freedom of choice for actual life and its particular objects and motives--irrespectively, also, of the freedom which is conversant about external actions, and of the inward moving causes of the will which contain the first ground and hidden germ of the former, and of that state of uncertainty which follows therefrom, and which not unfrequently long vacillates between one side and another--there are, also, in pure thought, simply as such, a similar state of internal hesitation or doubt--i.e., of a thought hostilely attacking, undermining and destroying, denying, and annihilating even consciousness and cogitation itself. Left wholly to ourselves, when, closing our regards to the external world, and without any definite object, we calmly commit ourselves to the stream of purely internal thought, we soon become sensible of this fact. On the one hand, there crowd on the mind the impressions of the outward senses, and the manifold creations of the peculiar, never-resting faculty of cogitation, seeking to gain the mastery over and to carry it along with them. On the other side, the distinguishing and discerning reason comes in with its questions and doubts, and chemical analysis, to resolve every thing finally into naught, and to explain all the conceptions of the mind as groundless and unsubstantial, as so many pure illusions of the senses, conceits of caprice, prejudices of a limited understanding, and mere pictures or creations of fancy. Thus, then, the ever-swelling flood of thought in man’s inner being and cogitation is not any calmly-flowing stream, in which wave quietly follows and succeeds to wave, as through rich and fertile plains it pursues its course from some distant source to the wide and open sea. The fearful conflict of thought is rather some double current, where, amid the crags and rocks, the pent-in waters, confining one another, beat up into foaming breakers--or, still more dangerous, beneath their apparently calm and smooth surface, they form the tearing whirlpool with its bottomless abyss, which, at the least incautious approach, hurries, irresistibly, into its vortex the tossing little boat of man’s brief existence. For the most part it is only in natures originally, at least, highly endowed and noble, that doubt and this internal struggle of thought rise to the height of despair. These alone are finally driven, by the rejection of all belief in themselves, into utter ruin both of soul and spirit. The tendency, however, to a state of struggle and doubt is universal. It seems to be nothing less than a characteristic property of human nature, and to have its foundation in the dissension subsisting between reason and fancy, which has so firmly established itself in the mind of man. It may happen, no doubt, that in a mind whose opinions are settled both in theory and practice, no instability will be found to subsist in the plans which guide and regulate life, but that, on the contrary, they are, on the whole, followed out with fixed resolution and decided energy. And yet, even in such a case, particular doubts will occasionally arise affecting many matters (which, although subordinate to the fundamental laws of life, are, nevertheless, far from being unimportant), so as to force upon us the remark, or even to extort the confession that, in general, such a state of immovable determination does not belong to human nature, and that this internal conflict forms one element of that warfare of life to which man is called. The predisposition to this I have referred to the discord between reason and fancy, and, for brevity’s sake, I have employed, throughout, the latter designation for it. I must, however, avail myself of the present occasion to observe, that fancy is not limited merely to poetry and the fine arts, and their respective creations, but inasmuch as all productive thought belongs to the imagination in the same way that the negative does to the reason, it also co-operates more or less with science. It is, therefore, chiefly in this latter and larger sense that we here employ the term, since it is from the contradictions of the productive and negative thought that the struggle and state of doubt arise.

The first truth, then, that psychology arrives at, is the internal discord within our fourfold and divided consciousness. Having commenced with a slight characteristic sketch of this fact, I have attempted to give a further and deeper grounding, and to invest it with a higher and profounder significance. To this first perception we appended, as the second member in the series of our philosophical investigation, the idea of a triplicity of consciousness as restored to its perfect and living action. According to this view, the simple division of the mind is into spirit, soul, and sense. And this will, in all our subsequent Lectures, form the basis of our psychological reflections on the human mind. It will also serve as the transition from the ordinary state of the consciousness in discord with itself, and with its fourfold division, to the reunited triple consciousness. We shall make it the starting-point and first step in this philosophy, which, as it sets out from life, is also to lead to a higher life.

But now, even in the mind’s ordinary state there are many such beginnings of a higher order of things--many moments of a more concentrated energy, which bespeak a joint operation of the otherwise divided faculties and powers of soul and spirit, and have for their result a partial restoration, at least, of harmony to this otherwise dismembered whole. Among these I would mention, first of all, that inner fixity of character, where thought, will, and conduct are consistent throughout; secondly, a true artistic genius in the creations both of poetic and plastic fancy. Lastly, there is that ardent and disinterested love, with its magnanimous self-sacrifices, which, though it surpasses all the limits of reason, can not, nevertheless, be looked upon as a mere imagination or illusion of fancy, forming as it does a profound and natural energy of the human soul, and constituting in truth its true and proper essence. No doubt the external phenomenon and effect of this elevated principle of the soul is often tarnished and lessened by the dull admixture of earthly ardor, and the bewilderment of passion. A true and perfect manifestation of the feeling, consequently, is no less rare than the truly felicitous creations of real artistic genius. Still it is to it that we must look for the first principle of a higher living thought and the true science thereof. The truly loving soul needs only the excitement and guidance of a mind or spirit ripened and matured in divine experience. Accordingly, the consciousness thus restored to unity and completeness of perfection becomes actively operative in its triple energy. And in the same manner the spirit striving with most ardent aspiration after the divine, requires nothing but such an animating contact with the loving soul, in order to attain fully and effectually to its desired end.

In the series of combining elements or principles of union for the otherwise divided consciousness there is yet another phenomenon, both great and comprehensive in itself, and which also reveals itself as such in actual life and experience. And this phenomenon is furnished by language, with its wonderful variety and yet truly artistic uniformity. For it is the vital product of the whole inner man. All the faculties both of soul and spirit, however discordant generally, combine each, in their full share and measure, to perfect this their conjoint production. And yet, after all, many traces of inherent imperfection are visible therein. It is only in the highest creations of artistic genius, manifesting itself either in poetry or some other form of language, and then only in the brightest and happiest moments of inspiration, that we meet with the perfect harmony of a complete and united consciousness, in which all its faculties work together in combined and living action.

In language, all the four principal powers have a nearly equal part and share. The grammatical structure, the rules for the changes and declensions of words, and their syntax, are furnished by the reason. From the fancy, on the other hand, is derived whatever is figurative; and how very far does not this reach, extending as it does into the primary and natural signification of words, which often no longer exists, or at least is rarely traceable? Lastly, the clear and distinct arrangement of the parts, the nicely-finished and beautiful shape of the whole of any composition, whether poetical or rhetorical, civil or scientific, are the contributions of the understanding. And so, also, whatever is truly characteristic--whatever, in short, goes beyond the mere instinctive cry of animal nature, and the childlike, oft-times childish imitation of external sounds--in short, that deep and spiritual significance, that characteristic meaning which, in the original stem-syllable and radical words of some rich old language, invariably is regarded as a beauty, must be ascribed to the understanding, which so profoundly seizes and precisely designates whatever is peculiar, unless, perhaps, it is preferred to assign it to an immediate feeling, which wonderfully harmonizes with or responds to it. Moreover, the magic force of a commanding will, which carries all before it by its intrinsic energy, is at least noticeable in those few brilliant passages of highest inspiration or perfect poetic delineation, from whose clear and perspicuous language, the apparently ineffable, shining forth like an electric spark, kindles and influences every sensitive and kindred mind.

But before I go deeper into the question of the origin of language, and examine the correct idea of this all-embracing and wonderful faculty of speech, as man’s most remarkable and peculiar property, I would call your attention to the intimate connection subsisting between thought and speech, which is throughout reciprocal. For as speech must be regarded as a thinking, outwardly projected and manifested, so, too, thinking itself is but an inward speaking and a never-ending dialogue with one’s self.

Judging, from all appearances, the consciousness of animals, so far as we are justified in ascribing it to them, is perfectly simple, but sadly defective and limited. But even here, however, the several melodious courses of irrational and seemingly unconscious sounds appear like so many echoes of a better foretime--lost traces of ancient memory, and which, together with the moving and mournful cry of deep, painful longing, seem to make tolerably clear to us the notion of the creature waiting and groaning for its emancipation. Highly simple, too, but in quite a different respect, is the consciousness or thought of the free spirits in their pure activity, such as we may and ought to represent it to ourselves--like the ray of light which in its rapid descent penetrates all space. But marvelously intricate, on the other hand, and highly complicated, is the so manifoldly rich, and, at the same time, so versatile and changeable consciousness of man. Such, at least, is the impression which a serious and searching glance into the unfathomable depths of our inward man enforces upon us. And, indeed, just as in the triple operation of the consciousness, when restored to the full perfection of life, we may trace a certain faint signature of man’s pristine likeness to the Creator, so also a slight vestige of the same kind is, we might fancy, discoverable in its unfathomable depth, which, however, now reveals itself in quite a different form from its original nature, and appears to be converted into its opposite. How often does the thought that seeks to penetrate the mysteries of nature--the hidden thinker within man--believe that he has completely solved the riddle of existence, and is able to explain and rightly interpret the many-meaning but obscure words of the sphinx within us! And even then, when he most flatters himself with his own ingenuity, this miserable Œdipus of his own destiny is stricken with even more fatal and incurable blindness than the old Theban, and can not discern the abyss of error into which his whole life has been hurrying, and into which it is at last plunged headlong and precipitated. Ever laboring to seize the changing Proteus of its own self, our Ego may, perhaps, often arrive at a rare amazement at the enigma of existence, and also is even seized many a time with a light terror. Never, however, by itself, let it think and seek as it may, will it be able, without some other guide, to find the object of its longing, and, in its tragic blindness, to discover the clue of the labyrinthic mazes of its own thoughts, and at last to arrive at harmony with itself.

So profound, moreover, and lasting is this our intrinsic dualism and duplicity--(and I use the term here, not in its usual moral sense, but in a higher signification, which is purely psychological and metaphysical)--so deeply is this dualism rooted in our consciousness, that even when we are, or at least think ourselves alone, we still think as two, and are constrained, as it were, to recognize our inmost profoundest being as essentially dramatic. This colloquy with self, or generally, this internal dialogue, is so perfectly that natural form of human thinking, that even the saintly solitaries of bygone centuries, who, in the Egyptian deserts or the Alpine hermitages, devoted a half life to meditation on divine things and mysteries, were often not able otherwise to indicate the result of such meditations, to invest it in another dress, to bring it into any other form of exposition than that of a dialogue of the soul with God. And in all religions, what properly is true prayer but a kind of dialogue, a confidential opening of the heart to the universal Father, or a filial solicitation of His benevolence?

But to pass over at once to the directly opposite aspect of the matter: even in the classical works of cultivated antiquity, at a time when these depths of a loveful feeling were not yet so widely developed, nor so completely revealed and unveiled, we meet with this same phenomenon in another form, and one indeed of the highest intellectual clearness and brilliancy--in the graceful ornament, viz., of a truly exquisite diction. I am alluding to the characteristic distinction of the discourses and teaching of Socrates--that peculiar irony, such as it is found in the Platonic dialogues, and of which only a very slight trace is to be found in the works of some of the earliest poets. For what else is this scientific irony of the inquiring thought and of the highest cognition, than a consciousness which, while it clearly perceives the secret contradictions which beset the mind, even in its most earnest pursuit of the highest aim of life, has attained, nevertheless, to perfect harmony with itself.

I must not, however, omit to remind you that this term in modern phraseology has fallen very far below its primary meaning, and is often so taken as to designate nothing more than a mere playful mockery. In its original Socratic sense, however, such as it is found in the whole series of the thought and the internal structure of Plato’s dialogues, where it is developed to its fullest measure and proportion, irony signifies nothing else than this amazement of the thinking spirit at itself, which so often dissolves in a light, gentle laugh. And this light laugh again oftentimes beneath its cheerful surface conceals and involves a deeper and profounder sense, another and a higher significance, even the most exalted seriousness. In the thoroughly dramatic development and exposition of thought which we meet with in the works of Plato, the dialogical form is essentially predominant. Even if all the superscriptions of names and persons, all forms of address and reply, and, in short, the whole conversational garb, were taken away from it, and we were merely to follow the inner threads of the thought according to their connection and course, the whole would, nevertheless, remain a dialogue, where each answer calls forth a new question, and the eddying stream of speech and counter-speech, or, rather, of thought and counter-thought, moves livingly onward. And unquestionably this form of inner dialogue is, if not in every case equally applicable and absolutely necessary, still it is all but essential, and at least highly natural and very appropriate to every form of living thought and its vivid enunciation. And in this sense even the continuous unbroken speech of a single person may also assume the character of a dialogue. Yes, I must confess that as it is my first object to attain to the greatest possible perspicuity of a vivid development of ideas, I should then most confidently believe that I had gained my end, if the present Lectures should in any degree make the same impression on you as a dialogue would--if they should appear like a series of questions, to which some of you, if not throughout, yet here and there, should in your heart give a tacit answer and assent--or even (and in this case still more so, indeed) if, in the whole context of these Lectures, you should find and believe to discover for many questions which your own hearts, your own reflections and life itself suggested, if not a full, satisfactory answer, yet at least one directly meeting the difficulty, and full of suggestions for its solution.