CONCORD LECTURES ON PHILOSOPHY COMPRISING OUTLINES OF ALL THE LECTURES AT THE CONCORD SUMMER SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY IN 1882 WITH AN HISTORICAL SKETCH COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY RAYMOND L. BRIDGMAN REVISED BY THE SEVERAL LECTURERS APPROVED BY THE FACULTY CAMBRIDGE, MASS. MOSES KING, PUBLISHER HARVARD SQUARE. Copyright, 1883, by Moses King. Wright & Potter Printing Company, Boston. Coxcord, Mass., August 22, 1882. The following abstracts are made from the Lectures delivered at the Concord Summer School of Philosophy during the Term of 1882. They have been approved by the several lecturers by whom they were delivered , and their object is to present in a concise form , convenient for the general reader , all the essential outlines of the Lectures , and especially to preserve the chief features of the courses of lectures upon philosophical subjects. A. BBONSON ALCOTT, Dean. S. II. EMEBY, Jr., Director. F. B. SANBOBN, Secretary. % 31156t Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/concordlectureso01conc THE ORDER OF LECTURES — 1882. FIRST DAY. PAGE Salutatory, by Mu. A. Bronson Alcott, 13 Poem, by Mu. F. B. Sanborn, 14 Socrates and the Pre-Socratic Philosophy, by Dr. W. T. Harris, 18 SECOND DAY. Premises, Predications and Outlines of Christian Philosophy, by Dr. H. Iv. Jones, . . 20 Present Aspects of Philosophy in Germany, by Prof. George H. Howison, ... 24 THIRD DAY. Personality, by Mr. Alcott, 31 State of Philosophy in Germany, by Prof. Howison .32 FOURTH DAY. Poetry, by John Albee 37 Aristotle’s “ De Anima,” by Dr. Harris, 40 FIFTH DAY. Scottish Philosophy, by President James McCosii, 43 Idols and Iconoclasts, by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, 47 SIXTH DAY. —THE EMERSON COMMEMORATION. Address, by Mu. Sanborn, . 53 The Nature of Knowledge, by the Rev. Dr. C. A. Bartol, 55 Ion : a Monody, by Mr. Alcott, 57 Emerson as a Poet, by Joel Benton, 60 Reminiscences of Emerson, by Mrs. Howe, 62 Dialectic Unity in Emerson’s Prose, by Dr. Harris, 63 A Visit to Emerson, by Mr. Albee, 66 Poem, — “ Consolation,” by Mrs. Martha P. Lowe, 69 Emerson as a Philosopher, by Dr. Alexander Wilder, 70 Reminiscences of Emerson, by Mrs. Ednaii D. Cheney, 72 SEVENTH DAY. Relation between Common Sense and Philosophy, by Dr. Jones 74 Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism, by Dr. Harris, 76 311561 6 Order of Lectures — 1882 . EIGHTH DAY. TACE Relation between Science and Philosophy, by Dr. Jones, . , 79 Hebrew, Greek, Persian and Christian Oracles, by Mr. Sanborn 81 NINTH DAY. Relation of Philosophy to Agnosticism and Religion, by the Rev. R. A. Holland, . . 84 Christian Mysticism : Bonaventura and Meister Eckliart, by Du. Harris, .... 85 TENTH DAY. Dr. Hickok’s Philosophy, by Prof. C. E. Garman, ........ 88 Man as Creative Power, by Dr. R. G. Hazard, 97 ELEVENTH DAY. Relation between Experience and Philosophy, by Dr. Jones, 101 Practical Utility of Metaphysical Pursuits, by Dr. Hazard, 104 TWELFTH DAY. The Ascending Scale of Powers, by Mr. Alcott, 109 THIRTEENTH DAY. Nature, by Mrs. Ciieney, 110 Philosophy of the Bhagavad Ghita, by Dr. Harris, 112 FOURTEENTH DAY. Genesis of the “ Maya,” by Dr. Jones, 114 Historical Epochs of Art, by Dr. Harris, . 117 FIFTEENTH DAY. Childhood, by Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, 119 Readings from Thoreau’s Manuscript, by Mr. Sanborn, ....... 124 SIXTEENTH DAY. Oracles of New England, by Mr. Sanborn, 12G Individualism, by Mr. Alcott, 129 SEVENTEENTH DAY. Philosophy of Religion and the Law of the Supernatural, by Dr. Jones, .... 131 Schelling’s Relations to Kant and Fichte, by Prof. John Watson, 134 EIGHTEENTH DAY. Landscape Painting — Turner, by Dr. Harris, 13G NINETEENTH DAY. Schelling’s Early Treatises, Transcendental Idealism and Philosophy of Identity, by Prof. Watson, 139 Alexandrian Platonism, by Dr. Wilder, 141 Order of Lectures — 1SS2. 7 TWENTIETH DAY. PAGE Community of the Eaiths and Worships of Mankind, by Dr. Jones 141 Immortality, by Mr. Alcott., . . < 148 TWENTY-FIRST DAY. Symbolism of Color, by George P. Latiirop, 149 Fichte’s “ Destination of Man,” by Dr. Harris 152 TWENTY-SECOND DAY. Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre — Theoretical, by Dr. Harris, 155 Schelling’s Later Philosophy and Transition to Hegel, by Prof. Watson, .... 158 TWENTY-THIRD DAY. The Symposium, by Dn. Jones, 160 Atomism, by Mr. Holland, 162 TWENTY-FOURTH DAY. Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre — Practical, by Dr. Harris 164 Valedictory, bj r Mr. Alcott 167 CONCORD SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY. FIFTH SESSION, July and august, 1883, So far as can now be foreseen, the lectures and conversations at the Summer School in 1883, will be given b\ - the following persons : — Mr. A. Bronson Alcott, — Four Conversations. Dr. H. K. Jones, — Four Lectures. Dr. William T. Harris, — Four Lectures. Mr. F. B. Sanborn, — Four Lectures. Prof. G. H. Howison, — Four Lectures. Rev. Dr. R. A. Holland, —Four Lectures. Should either of the above named lecturers fail to give his course, his place will be taken by Mr. Denton ,T. Snider, — Four Lectures. The subjects of all the courses cannot be announced as yet. Dr. Jones will lect- ure on “ The Platonic Philosophy,” under the four following heads : 1. The Platonic Idea of Deity. 2. The Platonic Idea of the Sold. 3. The Platonic Idea of the World , or the Habitation of the Sold. 1. The Platonic Idea of History. Mr. Sanborn will lecture on “ The History of Philosoplry in America,” under the following heads : 1. The Puritanic Philosophy : Jonathan Edwards. 2. The Philanthropic Philosophy : Benjamin Franklin. 3. The Negation of Philosophy . 4. The Ideal and Vital Philosophy : 11. W. Emerson. Professor Howison will lecture on “ Hume and Kant and the Philosophical Ques- tion as between them.” Mr. Snider’s subject is “ Homer and the Greek Religion.” Twelve other lectures or readings will be given, by the following persons, or some of them : — The Rev. Dr. C. A. Bartol, Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, President Noah Porter of Yale, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mr. John Albee, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, Mr. George P. Lathrop, Dr. Rowland G. Hazard, President James McCosh of Princeton, the Rev. Dr. J. S. Kedney, President J. H. Seelye of Amherst, Mr. David A. Wasson. Further announcements will be made in the early spring of 1883. For the Faculty, Concord, Mass., Dec. 1, 1882. F. B. SAKBORN, Secretary. INTRODUCTION. THE CONCORD SUMMER AN HISTORICAL AND TN the “Orchard House” in Concord, Mass., in the room now the study of Dr. William T. Harris, began on July 15, 1879, the first term of the Concord Sum- mer School of Philosophy. It was well attended and was received with much favor, more even than had been expected for so novel an enterprise. As a result, more ample accommodations were secured for 1880. Upon the hillside, only a few steps from the “Orchard House,” was erected the plain but convenient structure known as “Hillside Chapel.” For this purpose was taken a part of a fund of a thousand dollars given by Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson of New York City' for the gen- eral use of the school. An audience of a hundred and fifty can be accommodated in the chapel, and among the ornaments within are busts of Plato, Pestalozzi, Ralph Waldo Emerson and A. Bronson Alcott. A mask of Anaxagoras hangs upon the wall, and over the mantel is an engraving of the “School of Athens.” Other engravings and photographs, which are changed from time to time, complete the list. Upon a low platform, in a wide alcove, stands the table at which the lecturers sit. Movable camp chairs and unpainted wooden chairs, ar- ranged rather for comfort than in geo- metrical figures, furnish the seats of the audience. The “Orchard House” was for many years the home of Mr. Alcott. Here is the chamber where Louisa M. Alcott’s “ Little Women” was written ; here are the scenes haunted by the “Little Women” and “Little Men”; here is the chamber occupied by May Alcott with her sketches SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY. DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH. of Flaxman’s graceful figures, still sacredlj' preserved by Dr. Harris, as they cover doors, panels, window-sills and casings. Down-stairs is the room once used for her study, whose upper part was cut off for a room for the “ Little Men.” Under this roof are joined two houses, — one two hun- dred years old and the other one hundred and fifty. Next to this house comes, on the road to Lexington, the house which was for- merly the home of Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Wayside,” and is now occupied bi^ his son-in-law, Mr. George Parsons Lathrop. The officers of the school from the begin- ning have been Mr. A. Bronson Alcott, dean, Mr. S. H. Emery, Jr., director, and Mr. F. B. Sanborn, secretary. These three, with Dr. William T. Harris and Dr. II. K. Jones, constitute the faculty. Dur- ing the lectures the speaker sits at the table ; Mr. Emery calls the company to order, presides during the discussion which follows for an hour or more after the lec- ture, and declares the session ended. The discussion is in a friendly tone, and bitter argument is unknown. Opinions are of- fered and sustained by reasons, but no attempt is made to reach a verdict. In arranging lectures for a term the faculty endeavor to preserve, but within limits, however, which permit much free- dom, a unity in the philosophical courses. Single lectures are then introduced in order to show the connection of philos- ophy with literature, art and nature. No lecturer is supposed to conform his ideas to what may be said by others, and there is no “Concord School” of philosophy, IO The Concord Summer School of Philosophy except that the lecturers generally agree in an utter repudiation of materialism and in maintaining the existence of a personal, self-conscious, spiritual cause above the material universe. Each lecturer is re- sponsible for his own opinions only. During the four summer terms lectures have been delivered (or read for the author) by men and women, of not only local but of cosmopolitan reputation. Among the lecturers of previous years who did not lecture at the school in 1882 have been Ralph Waldo Emerson, Profes- sor Benjamin Peirce of Harvard Univer- sity, the Rev. Dr. Frederic H. Hedge, President Noah Porter of Yale College, Dr. Elisha Mulford, President John Bas- com of the University of Wisconsin, the Rev. Dr. John Steinfort Kedney of the Seabury Divinity School at Faribault, Minn., Professor George S. Morris of the Johns Hopkins and Michigan universities, Mr. Denton J. Snider, Mr. Thomas Went- worth Higginson, Mr. David A. Wasson, the Rev. Dr. Andrew P. Peabody of Har- vard University, Mr. Edmund C. Stedman (a poem), the Rev. Dr. John W. Mears of Hamilton College, the Rev. William H. Channing of London, England, and Mr. H. G. O. Blake, Thoreau’s friend and literary executor. The best indication of what the school has done prior to 1882 can be seen from a glance through the names of the lecturers and their subjects, which is shown in the following programmes of the courses in the three preceding years : — First Year’s Programme. Mr. A. Bronson Alcott. — 1. Welcome, and plan of future conversations. 2. The Powers of the Person in the descending scale. 3. The same in the ascending scale. 4. Incarnation. 5. The Powers of Per- sonality in detail. 6. The Origin of Evil. 7. 'Phe Lapse into Evil. 8. The Return from the Lapse (the Atonement). 1). Life Eternal. 10. Valedictory. Dr. William T. Harris. — 1. How Philosophi- cal Knowing differs from all other forms of Knowing; the Five Intentions of the mind. 2. The discovery of the First Prin- ciple and its relation to the Universe. 3. Fate and Freedom. 4. The conscious and unconscious First Principle in relation to human life. 5. The Personality of God. 6. The Immortality of the Soul. 7. Physi- ological Psychology. 8. The method of study of Speculative Philosophy. 9. Art, Religion and Philosophy in relation to each other and to man. 10. The Dialectic. Mrs. Ednaii D. Cheney. — 1. The general subject of Art. 2. Greek Art. 3. Early Italian Art. 4. Italian Art. 5. Michael Angelo. 6. Spanish Art. 7. German Art. 8. Albert Purer. 9. French Art. 10. Contemporaneous Art. Dr. Hiram K. .Tones. — 1. General content of the Platonic Philosophy. 2. The Apology of Socrates. 3. The Platonic idea of Church and State. 4. The Immortality of the Soul. 5. Reminiscence as related to the Pre-existence of the Soul. 6. Pre- existence. 7. The Human Body. 8. The Republic. 9. The Material Body. 10. Education. Mr. David A. Wasson. — 1 . Social Genesis and Texture. 2. The Nation. 3. Indi- vidualism as a Political Principle. 4. Public Obligation. 5. Sovereignty. 0. Absolutism crowned and uncrowned. 7. Representation. 8. Rights. 9. The Mak- ing of Freedom. 10. The Political Spirit of ’70. Professor Benjamin Peirce. — 1. Ideality in Science. 2. Cosmogony. Mr. Thomas W. Higginson. — 1. The Birth of American Literature. 2. Literature in a Republic. Mr. Thomas Davidson. — 1. The History of Athens as revealed in its topography and monuments. 2. The same, continued. Mr. Raleii Waldo Emerson. — Memory. Mr. Franklin B. Saniiorn. — 1. Social Sci- ence. 2. Philanthropy and Public Chari- ties. Rev. Dr. Cyrus A. Bartol. — Education. Mr. Harrison G. O. Blake. — Selections from Thoreau’s Manuscripts. Second Year’s Programme. Mr. A. Bronson Alcott. — Five Lectures on Mysticism: ,1. St. John the Evangelist. 2. Plotinus. 3. Tauler and Eckhart. 4. Belimen. 5. Swedenborg. Mr. Alcott also delivered the Salutatory and Valedictory. The Concord Summer Dr. Hiram K. Jones. — Five Lectures ou The Platonic Philosophy, and five on Platonism in its Relation to Modern Civilization : 1. Platonic Philosophy ; Cosmologic and The- ologic Outlines. 2. The Platonic Psy- chology ; The Dannon of Socrates. 3. The Two Worlds, and the Twofold Con- sciousness ; The Sensible and the Intel- ligible. 4. The State and Church ; Their Relations and Correlations. 5. The Eter- nity of the Soul, and its Pre-existence. G. The Immortality and the Mortality of the Soul; Personality and Individuality; Me- tempsychosis. 7. The Psychic Body and the Material Body of Man. 8. Education and Discipline of Man; The Uses of the World we Live in. 9. The Philosophy of Law. 10. The Philosophy of Prayer, and the “ Prayer Gauge.” Dr. William T. Harris. — Five Lectures on Speculative Philosophy, viz. : 1. Philo- sophic Knowing. 2. Philosophic First Prin- ciples. 3. Philosophy and Immortality. 4. Philosophy and Religion. 5. Philoso- phy and Art. Five Lectures on the His- tory of Philosophy, viz. : 1. Plato. 2. Aristotle. 3. Kant. 4. Ficlitc. 5. Hegel. Rev. John S. Kedney, D.D. — Four Lectures on the Philosophy of the Beautiful and Sublime. Mr. Denton J. Snider. — Five Lectures on Shakespeare: 1. Philosophy of Shakes- pearean Criticism. 2. The Shakespearean World. 3. Principles of Characterization in Shakespeare. 4. Organism of the In- dividual Drama. 5. Organism of the Uni- versal Drama. Rev. William H. Ciianning. — Four Lectures' on Oriental and Mystical Philosophy : 1. Historical Mysticism. 2. Man’s Fourfold Being. 3. True Buddhism. 4. Modern Pessimism. Mrs. Ednaii D. Cheney. — 1. Color. 2. Early American Art. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. — Modern Society. Mr. John Albee. — 1. Figurative Language. 2. The Literary Art. Mr. Franklin B. Sanborn. — The Philosophy of Charity. Dr. Elisha Mulford. — 1. The Personality of God. 2. Precedent Relations of Religion and Philosophy to Christianity. Mr. Harrison G. O. Blake. — Readings from Thoreau’s Manuscripts. Rev. Dr. Cyrus A. Bartol. — God in Nature. School of Philosophy. 1 1 Rev. Dr. Andrew P. Peabody. — Conscience and Consciousness. Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson. — • Aristocracy. Rev. Dr. Frederic H. Hedge. — Ghosts and Ghost-seeing. Mr. David A. Wasson. — 1. Philosophy of His- tory. 2. The same. In place of the expected lecture of Professor Benjamin Peirce, who was too ill to be present, there was a coirversation on Hawthorne. Third Year’s Programme. Dr. William T. Harris. — First Course, — Philosophical Distinctions. 1. Philosophy Distinguished from Opinion or Fragment- tary Observation; The Miraculous vs. The Mechanical Explanation of Things. 2. Nominalism of Locke and Hume; Panthe- istic Realism of Hobbes, Spinoza, Comte and Spencer as. the Realism of Christianity. 3. The Influence of Nature upon the Hu- man Mind ; the Emancipation of the Soul from the Body. 4. Sense-Impressions aud Recollections vs. Memory and Refiec tion ; Animal Cries and Gestures ts. Hu- man Language. 5. The Metaphysical Categories Used bj r Natural Science, — Thing, Fact, Atom, Force, Law, Final Cause or Design, Correlation, Natural Se- lection, Reality, Potentiality and Actuality. Dr. Harris. — Second Course, — Hegel’s Phi- losophy. 1. Hegel’s Doctrine of Psychol- ogy and Logic ; his Dialectic Method and System. 2. Hegel’s Doctrine of God and the World, — Creator and Created. 3. Relations of Kant and Hegel. 4. Hegel’s Distinction of Man from Nature; Two Kinds of Immortality, that of the Species and that of the Individual. 5. Hegel’s Doctrine of Providence in History ; Asia vs. Europe as furnishing the contrast of Pantheism and Christianity. 6. Hegel’s Theory of Fine Arts and Literature as reflecting the development of Man’s Spir- itual Consciousness. Dr. Hiram K. Jones. — First Course, — The Platonic Philosophy. 1. The Platonic Cosmology, Cosmogony, Physics and Met- aphysics. 2. Myth ; The Gods of the Greek Mythology; The Ideas and Principles of their Worship, Divine Providence, Free Will and Fate. 3. Platonic Psychology. The Idea of Conscience; The Damion of Socrates. 4. The Eternity of the Soul. 12 The Concord Summer School of Philosophy. and its Pre-existence. 5. The Immortality of the Soul, and the Mortality of the Soul; Personality and Individuality; Metemp- sychosis. Dr. Jones. — Second Course, — Platonism in its Relation to Modern Civilization. 1. The Social Genesis ; The Church and the State. 2. The Education and Discipline of Man ; The Uses of the World we Live in. 3. The Psychic Body and the Material Body of Man; The Christian Resurrec- tion. 4. The Philosophy of Law. 5. The Philosophy of Prayer, and the “Prayer Gauge.” Mr. A. Bronson Alcott. — Salutatory, Vale- dictory, and Pive Lectures on the Phi- losophy of Life. Mr. Denton J. Snider. —Five Lectures on Greek Life and Literature. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. — 1. Philosophy in Europe and America. 2. The Results of Kant. Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney. — 1. The Relation of Poetry to Science. Rev. J. S. Kedney, D.D. — Three Lectures on The Philosophic Groundwork of Ethics. Mrs. Amalia J. Hathaway. — Schopenhauer. President John Bascom. — Freedom of the Will. Mr. Edwin D. Mead. — Philosophy of Fichte. Mr. S. H. Emery, Jr. — System in Philos- ophy. Rev. F. H. Hedge, D.D. — A Lecture on Kant. Professor George S. Morris. — A Lecture on Kant. Mr. F. B. Sanborn. — 1. Roman Literature. 2. English and German Literature. 3. American Literature and Life. Mr. John Ai.bee. — 1. Faded Metaphors. 2. The same. Rev. Dr. C. A. Bartol. — The Transcendent Faculty in Man. Dr. Elisha Mulford. — The Philosophy of the State. Dr. Rowland G. Hazard. — Philosophical Character of Channing. Mr. H. G. O. Blake. — Reading from Thoreau’s Manuscripts. President Noaii Porter. — A Lecture on Kant. Professor John W. Mears. — A Lecture on Kant. Professor John Watson. — A Lecture on The Critical Philosophy in its Relation to Realism and Sensationalism. Although the press has reported the proceedings of the school from the begin- ing, its commendation of the work has been more general and its criticism less superficial this year than ever. The school is evidently regarded with more respect, and is certainly winning favorable consid- eration. “ Harper’s Weekly,” in the issue of August 19, said: “Exactly what we are about, what is the value of our civil- ization, and toward what ideals we are working, are things not so clear as they might be, and there is great need of keener analysis and more careful thinkers to prevent our drifting blindly — to prevent, that is, not by obstructive conservatism, but by progressive com- prehension. To educate for this purpose, then, is another object of the school. In order to know what to teach and what to receive we must seek through philos- ophy the one central principle on which the world, the universe, rests. Then we have to trace this back again from that, through all its manifestations in religion, government, literature, art, science and manners. This is manifestly a large job, and the Concord School does not expect to carry it out so that it will never have to be done again, but rather to set people in the right path, so that they can keep on doing it forever. At a time when Ger- many itself is overpowered by the in- fluence of Mill, Spencer, and Darwin, and the genius of materialism is getting so strong a hold everywhere, it is interesting to find that the Concord School reasserts with breadth and penetration the su- premacy of mind But it must not be supposed that the school is hostile to science : on the contrary, it approves and heartily sympathizes with it in its great work, which, properly regarded, it considers tributary to the highest ends of existence.” THE CONCORD LECTURES. First Day, — Jcjly 17. SALUTATORY ADDRESS TO THE SCHOOL. BY AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT. 1 ny/TR. ALCOTT for the fourth time de- -Ay-L livered the salutatory address at the opening of the Summer School of Philos- ophy. He welcomed the audience to the pleasant town and to the mental delights of Hillside Chapel. He spoke of the ab- sorbing beauties of divine philosophy, — a subject which embraces eternal truth, righteousness and beauty. These, he said, are universal, eternal and infinite, and so far as we partake of them we partake of infinity. It is because of our limitations that we cannot fully take in all these beauties which lie at the root of life. Beauty, truth and good are the same entities. All wise souls are lovers of these ; so we have a trinity in the sense of har- mony. Mr. Alcott said to his listeners that they were invited to attend to those who, it w r as hoped, would make it worth their while that they had come. There were but few ornaments at the chapel, for they believed that a holy life is the only true beauty, as the e 3 'e itself, not what it sees, is beautiful. The word philosophy in many minds, even in New England, has acquired a certain pretentious meaning, as if true philosophy were not humble and beauti- ful, and as if the child in its truth and 1 Amos Bronson Alcott was born in Wolcott, Conn., Nov. 29, 1799. He has long been noted for his conversa- tions and writings on transcendental topics. He was one of the principal contributors to “ The Dial,” and was prin- cipal for a few years of a children’s school in Boston which he conducted in connection with Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, His works include the “Record of Mr. Alcott’s School,” published in 1835; “ Conversations with Children on the Gospel,” in 1836; “Tablets” in 1868; “Concord Days” in 1872; “Table Talk” in 1877; “New Connecticut; an purity and holiness were not the truest philosopher. No one can enter the king- dom of heaven if he does not receive the truth as a child. For we know nothing save by inspiration. God is the true philosopher. He is philosophy itself. Hieroeles, a commen- tator of Pythagoras, said: “Philosophy is the purification and perfection of human nature — its purification because it delivers us from the temerity and folly that proceed from matter, and because it delivers our affections from the mortal body, and its per- fection because it makes it recover its orig- inal felicity by referring it to the likeness of God.” Philosophy is not what we hear from people who have thought just enough to imagine that they know everything. It addresses the intellect, the affections, the will. It has in its heart religion. A philosopher is a lover of truth. In this school narrow distinctions will not be made, but the broadest meaning will be given to the expressions of the best think- ers, and additions will be made if possible. Mr. Alcott read the words of St. Paul in relation to charity, adding that hospitality is another name for charity ; that it means an open, candid soul, which is ready to re- ceive all that purifies, ennobles and exalts. Autobiographical Poem,” in 1881; “Sonnets and Canzo- nets” in 1882; and “Emerson; an estimate of his Char, acter and Genius” in 1882. The Concord Summer School of Philosophy is the outgrowth of an idea con- ceived by him in 1842. Mr. Alcott is noted for his conver- sational powers, and has many times, in Boston and elsewhere, entertained large companies. In the autumn and winter of 1880-81 he made a seven months’ trip through the West, preaching every Sunday, and in pulpits of nearly every Protestant denomination. H The Poet's Countersign. THE POET’S COUNTERSIGN. AN ODE BY FRANKLIN BENJAMIN SANBORN. 1 “ I grant, sweet soul, tliy lovely argument Deserves the travail of a worthier pen; Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent. He robs thee of, and pays it thee again ; He lends thee virtue, — and he stole that word From thy behavior; beauty doth he give. And found it on thy cheek; he can afford No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.” — Shakespeare. I. A CROSS these meadows, o’er the hills, Beside our sleeping waters, hurrying rills, Through many a woodland dark and many a bright arcade, Where out and in the shifting sunbeams braid An Indian mat of chequered light and shade, — The sister seasons in their maze, Since last we wakened here, From hot siesta the still drowsy year, Have led the fourfold dance along our quiet ways,— Autumn apparelled sadly gay, Winter’s white furs and shortened day, Spring’s loitering footstep, quickened at the last, And half the affluent summer went and came, As for uncounted years the same, — Ah me 1 another unreturning spring hath passed. II. “ When the young die,” the Grecian mourner said, “ The springtime from the year hath vanished” ; The gray-haired poet, in unfailing youth, Sits by 5 * * * the shrine of Truth, Her oracles to spell, And their deep meaning tell ; Or else he chants a bird-like note From that thick-bearded throat Which warbled forth the songs of smooth-cheeked May Beside youth’s sunny fountain all the day ; Sweetly the echoes ring As in the flush of spring ; — At last the poet dies, The sunny fountain dries, — The oracles are dumb, no more the wood-birds sing. 1 Franklin Benjamin Sanborn is a graduate of Har- vard College, of the class of 1855. He is widely and best known throughout the country for bis connection with public charities and for his writings upon the man- agement of charities, the care of the insane, and kindred topics. He is secretary of the American Social Science Association, inspector of public charities for the State of Massachusetts, and has for a long time been literary cor- respondent at Boston of the 11 1 * * * Springfield Republican.” He is the present literary executor of Theodore Parker, the Unitarian preacher, and has many of his papers. In the present year (1882) he has written a biography of Henry D. Thorcau, which has been published in the “American Men of Letters” scries. He is a resident of Concord, and was for twenty-five years an intimate friend of Mr. Emerson. The Poet's Countersign. I 5 hi. Homer forsakes the billowy round Of sailors circling o’er the island-sea ; Pindar, from Theban fountains and the mound Builded in love and woe by doomed Antigone, Must pass beneath the ground ; Stout JEschylus that slew the deep-haired Mede At Marathon, at Salamis, and freed Athens from Persian thrall, Then sung the battle call, — Must yield to that one foe he could nqt quell ; In Gela’s flowery plain he slumbers well , 1 Sicilian roses bloom Above his nameless tomb ; And there the nightingale doth mourn in vain Bor Bion, too, who sung the Dorian strain By Arethusa’s tide ; His brother swains might flute in Dorian mood, The bird of love in thickets of the wood Sing for a thousand years his grave beside — Yet Bion still was mute — the Dorian lay had died. IV. The Attic poet at approach of age Laid by his garland, took the staff 1 and scrip, Bor singing-robes the mantle of the sage, And taught gray wisdom with the same grave lip That once had carolled gay Where silver flutes breathed soft and festal harps did play; Young Plato sang of love and beauty’s charm, AVhile he that from Stagira came to hear, In lyric measures bade his princely pupil arm, And strike the Persian tyrant mute with fear. High thought doth well accord with melody, Brave deed with Poesy, And song is prelude fair to sweet Philosophy But wiser English Shakespeare’s noble choice, Poet and sage at once, whose varied voice Taught beyond Plato’s ken, yet charming every ear, — A kindred choice w r as his, whose spirit hovers here. V. Now Avon glides through Severn to the sea, And murmurs that her Shakespeare sings no more; Thames bears the freight of many a tribute shore, But on those banks her poet bold and free That stooped in blindness at his humble door, Yet never bowed to priest or prince the knee, Wanders no more by those sad sisters led ; 1 Athenian iEschylus, Eupliorion’s son, Buried in Gela’s field these words declare: His deeds are registered at Marathon, Known to the deep-haired Mede who met him there. — Greek Anthology. i6 The Poet's Countersign. Herbert and Spenser dead Have left their names alone to him whose scheme Stiffly endeavors to supplant the dream Of seer and poet with mechanic rule Learned from the chemist’s closet, from the surgeon’s tool. With us Philosophy still spreads her wing, And soars to seek Heaven’s King, — Nor creeps through charnels, prying with the glass That makes the little big, — while gods unseen may pass. VI. Along the marge of these slow-gliding streams, Our winding Concord and the wider flow Of Charles by Cambridge, walks and dreams A throng of poets, — tearfully they go ; For each bright river misses from its band The keenest eye, the truest heart, the surest minstrel hand, — They sleep each on his wooded hill above the sorrowing laud. Duly each mound with garlands we adorn Of violet, lily, laurel, and the flowering thorn, — Sadly above them wave The wailing pine-trees of their native strand ; Sadly the distant billows smite the shore, Plash in the sunlight, or at midnight roar, — All sounds of melody, all things sweet and fair On earth, in sea or air, Droop and grow silent by the poet’s grave. VII. Yet wherefore weep? Old age is but a tomb, A living hearse, slow creeping to the gloom And utter silence. He from age is freed Who meets the stroke of Death and rises thence Victor o’er every woe ; his sure defence Is swift defeat ; by that he doth succeed. Death is the poet’s friend, — I speak it sooth ; Death shall restore him to his golden youth, Unlock for him the portal of renown, And on Fame's tablet write his verses down, For every age in endless time to read. With us Death’s quarrel is ; he takes away Joy from our eyes — from this dark world the day, When other skies he opens to the poet’s ray. VIII. Lonely these meadows green, Silent these warbling woodlands must appear To us, by whom our poet-sage was seen Wandering among their beauties year by year, — Listening with delicate ear To each fine note that fell from tree or sky, Or rose from earth on high : Glancing that falcon eye, In kindly radiance as of some young star At all the shows of Nature near and far, Or on the tame procession plodding by Of daily toil and care, — and all Life’s pageantry; The Poet's Countersign. l 7 Then darting forth warm beams of wit and love, Wide as the sun’s great orbit, and as high above These paths wherein our lowly tasks we ply. IX. His was the task and his the lordly gift Our eyes, our hearts, bent earthward, to uplift; He found us chained in Plato’s fabled cave, Our faces long averted from the blaze Of Heaven’s broad light, and idly turned to gaze On shadows, flitting ceaseless as the wave That dashes ever idly on some isle enchanted ; By shadows haunted We sat, — amused in youth, in manhood daunted, In vacant age forlorn, — then slipped within the grave, The same dull chain still clasped around our shroud. These captives, bound and bowed, He from their dungeon like that angel led, Who softly to imprisoned Peter said, “ Arise up quickly ! gird thyself and flee ! ” We wist not whose the thrilling voice, we knew our souls were free. X. Ah ! blest those years of youthful hope, When every breeze was zephyr, every morning May ! Then, as we bravely climbed the slope Of life’s steep mount, we gained a wider scope At every stair, — and could with joy survey The track beneath us, and the upward way ; Both lay in light— round both the breath of love Fragrant and warm from Heaven’s own tropic blew ; Beside us what glad comrades smiled and strove! Beyond us what dim visions rose to view ! With thee, dear Master, through that morning land We journeyed happy ; thine the guiding hand, Thine the far-looking eye, the dauntless smile ; Thy lofty song of hope did the long march beguile. XI. Now scattered wide and lost to loving sight The gallant train That heard thy strain ! ’Tis May no longer, — shadows of the night Beset the downward pathway; thou art gone, And with thee vanished that perpetual dawn Of which thou wert the harbinger and seer. Yet courage ! comrades, — though no more we hear Each other’s voices, lost within this cloud That time and chance about our way have cast, — Still his brave music haunts the hearkening ear, As ’mid bold cliffs and dewy passes of the Past. Be that our countersign ! for chanting loud, His magic song, though far apart we go, Best shall we thus discern both friend and foe. i8 Socrates and the Pre-Socratic Philosophy. SOCRATES AND THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY. BY WILLIAM TORREY HARRIS, LL.D. 1 l_>HILOSOPHIC knowing is to be dis- tinguished from ordinary reflection through the fact that it sets up one prin- ciple as the explanation of the world, while mere reflection is content to find subordi- nate unities, and to make classifications and generalizations. Ordinary science seeks unities and tries to piece together the fragments of experience and to trace facts to principles ; but philosophy is more ambitious, and undertakes to find one prin- ciple for all facts. Say what we will of the pride of the human intellect, and of the desirability of humility, we find, after all, that the deepest interest of the human mind lies in the question which relates to the ultimate principle. The subordinate principles are not so important, — we can appeal from them to the higher ; but the absolute principle of all, — that is some- thing that concerns the origin and destiny of all human beings. In this respect phi- losophy corresponds to religion, and both are conversant with the absolute principle. Any doctrine that teaches us something about the nature of the first principle, teaches us something that is both theo- retical and practical. We not only find in it our explanation of the world, but we 1 William Torrey Harris was born in North Killingly, Conn., Sept. 10, 1835. He studied at Woodstock (Conn.), ■Worcester (Mass.) and Phillips (Andover) academies. In 1854 he entered Yale College, and at the end of his junior year he removed to St. Louis, Mo., and entered the public schools. For eight years following 1858 he was principal of a public school in that city., For two years following he was assistant superintendent of schools. In 1866 he was one of the founders of the Philosophical So- ciety of St. Louis. In 1867 he began the publication of the “Journal of Speculative Philosophy,” and has been its editor ever since. The next year he was made super- intendent of schools in St. Louis and held the position for twelve years. In 1869 he received the degree of A. M. from Y^alc College, and in 1870 the degree of LL. D. from the State University of Missouri. In 1880 he removed to Concord, Mass., where he has lived ever since, in the Orchard House, which was formerly owned and occupied find in it also our guide of life. If the first principle is an unconscious, blind force, or matter of some sort, then the destiny of conscious being is not a high one. If the first principle is a conscious reason, then we, who are conscious reason too, find ourselves in its image, and we have the “ form of eternity,” as Spinoza calls it. The interest in the history of philosophy is due to the fact recited. The struggle of human thought with this problem has proved what the human mind can do. The study of its history is a study of this self- exposition of mind. It is possible for us to see some order of genesis or evolution if we look at the history of philosophy, just as we discover evolution in all things that have a history. If a first principle exists at all it must be an energy or ac- tivity, because it is the origin of all and that on which all depends. Without ac- tivity nothing can originate, and to de- mand a first principle implies that one has reached the idea of a self-active being. The principle contains all that flows from it ; its energy holds all in its potentiality. The principle must be creative, therefore ; and it must be self-determined. If it acts by Mr. Aleott. He has delivered many public addresses upon educational topics in the Eastern, Western and Southern States; and besides these, has given some lec. tures on art and social science. He edited the department of philosophy in “Johnson’s Cyclopaedia,” and wrote forty of the articles for it. In 1874 he wrote for the Bureau of Education a “Statement of the Theory of Education in the United States,” for use at the Vienna Exposition. He has been for years chairman of the educational section of the American Social Science Association, and has pub- lished articles bearing on social science in the reviews and magazines. In 1877 he was appointed University Professor of the Philosophy of Education in Washington University, St. Louis, and gave for three years annual courses of lectures on the “ History and Philosophy of Education.” He is one of the founders of the Summer School of Philosophy. !9 Socrates and the Fre- on something' else — if it creates a world out of some already existing material — then it is not the only first principle, but is one of two first principles. We maybe quite read}' to expect, therefore, that in the history of philosophy we shall find, at first, a very dim consciousness of what is implied by setting up an absolute principle, and that it will be left for subsequent philosophers to discover, one after another, what belongs to a first principle from the nature of the case. The history of philosophy may be epit- omized by saying that while ordinary ex- perience concerns itself with a world of dependent things, philosophy tries to dis- cover what belongs to the independent. The dependent is a fragment of something else on which it depends. The whole or totality includes the dependent and that on which it depends. One set of laws be- longs to the dependent — that is to say, the laws of the conditioned. Very differ- ent laws concern the totality. All de- pendent being is determined or made what it is by something external to it. But all independent beings or totalities must be self-determined. When in the history of philosophy thinkers have reached this insight, that the absolute is self-deter- mined, we find at once an arrival at the idea of a conscious creator, and philosophy comes into harmony with spiritual religion and with poetry. Thus in the history of Greek philosophy we find at first only material principles set up. Thales says that water is the origin of all. Anaxi- mander first used the word ho/rj or “ first principle.” He looked upon all things as arising from this first principle by differen- tiation, and he thought that the original principle was indeterminate and indiffer- ent. Anaximenes held that air is the origin of all things, while Heraclitus, in search of some material energy, appar- ■Socratic Philosophy. ently, set up fire as the first, and gave “becoming” as a general name to the entire process of creation. All things are “becoming” — that is, either rising to- wards fire (and life), or descending from it toward earth (and death) . Pythagoras and his followers do not set up a material principle, but a sort of nu- merical ratio, which remains the same amid all change. This is an important breaking off from the crude view pre- sented in the Ionian philosophers, who thought that the first principle must be a material one. The Eleatics take a bold step and set up the abstract thought of “pure being” as their principle. Then Anaxagoras announces reason as the high- est principle. One must not try to relate all of these schools one to another in time as if the later thinkers all labored on the work of their predecessors, although in many cases the work of the later is a further development of the preceding. But the doctrine of Anaxagoras did in many ways influence the teachers of Athens, and a school of sophists arose. Protagoras taught that man is the measure of all things, thus holding that the reason of Anaxagoras is the individual reason of each man. The consequences of this doc- trine were negative. Socrates came in at this point, and his great work establishes reason in its universal sense and discrim- inates what is transitory and arbitrary in the intellect from its insights into what is necessary and true. He defines the good as the highest principle. Dialectics, which had begun with Eleatic Zeno, henceforth have a great significance as the process of eliminating from ideas what is mere opinion, and preserving the truth. The remainder of the lecture was mostly taken up with a discussion of the life and doctrines of Socrates, and especially his idea that virtue can be taught. 20 Outlines of Christian Philosophy. Second Day, — July 18 . PREMISES, PREDICATIONS AND OUTLINES OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY. BY HIRAM K. JONES, M.D. 1 TDHILOSOPHY Anglicised may be said to be the knowing of truth, and its application in the relations and conduct of human life. And the natural history of knowing, or the searching after and find- ing of truth, embraces in its processes three stages, — (1) sensuous knowing, (2) scientifical knowing, (3) logical knowing. The comprehension of these approximat- ing stages of knowing as but the several aspects to the knower, of the reality" of the natures contemplated, is philosophic knowl- edge, or the knowledge of their truth ; their truth or reality being the sum total of their essentiality, their actuality, and their phenomenality as the knower. Of all knowledge there must be premised a knower and a knowable, a something to be known by the knower. In our case, man is the knower, and the world, and the soul, and God, severally and wholly, are the subjects of quest. In the preliminaries the knower is the foremost ; as from his points of view must be seen and said all that can be said of the knowable and of the knower and of knowledge. Let it then be premised that man is an essential form that feels, and thinks, and moves himself within himself, an exist- ing entity, — sentient, cognitive, motive, lie feels, he thinks, he moves ; in his fac- ulty of sentience he becomes conscious of 1 Hiram K. Jones, M.D., LL D., is a native of Virginia, and in early life removed to Missouri. He graduated at Illinois College, and subsequently removed to Jackson- ville, 111 , where he now lives. He is a trustee of Illinois College at Jacksonville, and received the degree of LL.D. all that is knowable to him in all the range of the knowable ; and in his faculty of thinking he sees all that he is conscious of, and in his faculty of motion he experiences, or experiments, all things whatsoever that he feels and thinks. And so in all the spheres or orders of the knowable, he knows by r means of feeling or consciousness and by r means of thought and by means of experi- ence all together. He knows phy’sics by' means of consciousness and of thought and of experimentation ; and he knows metaphysics, or actual entity", by" means of consciousness and thought and experience ; and he knows divinity by" means of feeling and thinking and experience. In all these subjects which he may know, feeling or con- sciousness, alone, is not a knowing of any- thing, and thought, alone or abstract, is not a knowing of anything, and experience alone is not a knowing of anything but by means of sensation and thought and experience all together he must know what- soever he knows — sensuously, scientifi- cally" and philosophically. A man cannot think or experience or know of any subject of which he is not conscious ; he cannot think concerning that of which he has no con- sciousness, nor can he experiment on that of which he has neither feeling nor thought ; and a man can have no feeling or con- sciousness of that of which there is not tact from that institution in 1881. He is president of the Plato Club in Jacksonville, and author of numerous papers on Platonic philosophy. By students ol Plato ho is regarded as the leading l’lutonist in this country. Outlines of Christian Philosophy. 21 and touch ; and hence the contents of consciousness of every sort are at once the range and limit of the knowable to man. But there can be no tact and touch, no sensibility and no sensation without cor- poreality. Essential form and corporeality must be distinguished. All corporeality is related to a somewhat, of which it is corporeality or bod}', as shadow to sub- stance. Man, the thinker, is a spiritual form. Only spirit feels, and thinks, and moves, and knows ; and man only by means of corporeality. And man feels and thinks and moves in view of and in relation to three aspects of reality, — physics, meta- physics and divinity — by means of three orders of corporeality — as instruments therein respectively of the three orders of knowing. These three orders of corporeality pred- icated of man’s existence are: (1) 2aun >. Vvaixov — a physical and material body affirmed of all mankind ; (2) t pv/i- y-6f — a psychic body ; (3) SCoua Hvbvuutl- xup — a spiritual body, affirmed by 7 the great apostle of Christian philosophy, and by others. Man’s consciousness therefore is distributed according to a tripartite nature in the constitution of his organic existence. In that he has physical cor- poreality, he has consciousness of physics arid outer nature ; in that he has psychic corporeality, he has consciousness of meta- physics, an inner consciousness of mind, of existing entity, actuality ; and in that he has a body pneumatic, he has conscious- ness of the forms of pure spirit. And here only do we behold face to face the veiled enchantress, the mystic presence in the miracle of all life and all knowledge, veiled in the aspects of the actual and the phenomenal. And it is exclusively by virtue of the touch of the images in these sensoria, and their reflections, respec- tively, — that man is conscious of na- ture, and of soul, and of Deity, without which consciousness it has been said he cannot think or experience or know any- thing of these subjects. And now in the second place concern- ing the knowable — that which man may know. First, man by means of his physi- cal organic sensorium feels and is con- scious of the images of the material world, or the material aspect of the world ; and by means of his psychical organic senso- rium he feels and is conscious of the impress, the image of the immaterial world, or the immaterial aspect of the world. And thus, in the outlook of the knower, the world is dualized as phys- ical and metaphysical, and these are as- sumed grounds of the knowing of matter and of mind. But again, all the ages of thought have premised — and it m y be said to be a necessity, a law of pure thought to premise — a third sensorium in the constitution and existence of man. As -a/tu v(riy.bv grounds a conscious- ness and cognition and experience ot nature — that which is without the knower ; and as Z5>,uu ifiv/iy.bv grounds a con- sciousness and cognition and experience of metaphysical entity — that which is within the knower ; so also does Z'w Jlvfv>tuTr/.by ground a consciousness and cognition and experience of divinity — that which is within and above the knower — pure spirit. And this consciousness is the ground of all Divine knowing and dis- course. In these three grounds — the three con- sciousnesses or aspects of consciousness of the three corporealities — arise the cogni- tion of three orders of knowable subjects — nature’s physical phenomena, existing en- tit} T or mental phenomena, and deity, or physics, metaphysics, and divinity. Now, in each of these three orders of knowable subject must be applied the three degrees or stages in knowing ; namely, man must know nature sensibly, and scientifically, and logically ; and he must know actual entity sensibly, and scientifically, and log- ically ; and he must know divinity seusi- 7 7 Outlines of Christian Philosophy. bly. and scientifically, and logically. And again, in this method and process of know- ing, neither of the above subjects of inves- tigation exists without the others — neither nature, nor soul, nor divinity — and there- fore nature cannot be known to man as an extant unrelated to man and to Deity ; and man cannot be known to man as an actual being unrelated to nature, and to self, and to Deity ; and Deity cannot be known to man as abstracted from, unrelated to, and unmanifest in man and in nature. And again, of the three degrees or stages of knowing, namely, sensuous, scientifical, and logical, in the three orders of know- able subject, physics, metaphysics, and divinity, and alike in the three subordi- nate and elementary processes of sensa- tion, intellection, and experimentation, the second does not invalidate, but can- cels and conserves the first, and the third does not invalidate, but cancels and con- serves the second. Thus thought does not supersede nor abrogate, but it resolves and conserves the import and witness of sensation ; and experience does not su- persede nor confute the witness of thought, but concretes and identifies the true im- port of sensation and thought. And so, also, scientifical knowing does not super- sede and abrogate the conclusions of com- mon sense, but it conserves and utilizes common sense ; and logical knowing does not supersede or reject common sense and science, but it comprehends them as accessory method and instrument. And, by the way^, it may be here noted that philosophic knowledge is the knowing truly these several subjects in their char- acteristics and unities and relations, as they are comprehended in their primal unity, their universality — known as one, and at the same time as several and many ; for, as before said, neither of the several or the many is, or is extant or knowable, alone and unrelated to the others, or to the primal whole in the first,, and the absolute source and idea of the universe. The annals of the human mind through all the historic ages are generalized as three orders of subjects knowable to man ; namely, nature, man and Deity ; and as three orders or aspects of > consciousness in the constitution of man, and these are physical, psychical and pneumatical; and these as the three grounds of three reflec- tions ; and these the grounds of three orders of knowing, namely : (1) the knowl- edge of physics, and matter from the im- ages thereof reflected in the physical sen- sorium ; (2) the knowledge of actual entity from the images and impressions thereof as reflected in the psychical sensorium ; and (3) the knowledge of divinity from the image and likeness thereof as reflected in the pneumatic sensorium. And each of these degrees of knowing or approx- imating truth is alike founded in sensation, and becomes knowing by the means and process of thinking and experiencing ; and a man cannot be conscious of that of which he has no sensorium and no sensation ; and he cannot know anything of that of which he lias no consciousness. Wherefore it is by means of the content of consciousness, that man the knower is related to the knowable; namely, to the world in its material and its immaterial aspects, and to its unity and source in the Deity, and the primal, archetypal ideas, which are contemplated as above the world ; and so the threefold aspect of the universe is apprehensible and cognizable to man by means of a tripartite conformation in his organic existence. It is affirmed that through all the ages of humanity man has existed on this planet in this tripartite organic relation — related to the three aspects of the system of the universe by means of the three corporeal conditions of consciousness ; and in all ages therefore man has been conscious of nature and of soul and of God, and has sought to know these natures which impress his sen- soi ia, and the means and process of knowing have been sensation and thought Outlines of Christian Philosophy. 23 and expei ience. Moreover, the faculty of sentience is prior, and the faculty’ of thought and motion posterior in logical order. Man does not first think tree or animal shape, and then fumble about till he finds one, but he is first sentient of these forms by their image and impress upon his physical sensorium, and there- upon arise the motion and form of his thought and science concerning those na- tures. And likewise in his psychical and spiritual sensoria man does not first think essence, soul, God, and then grope around in the limbo of ignorance and inex- perience until he has found one of these forms, but he is first sentient of their form by means of the impress and reflection of the images of these natures in his psychic and pneumatic sensoria ; and toward these impressions spring the motion and form of his thought and knowledge concerning super-physical and super-essential natures. And this is the rudiment and process of human knowledge, whether physical, met- aphysical, or theistical and spiritual ; and it has perpetually its beginning and proc- ess in the constitution of the soul ; and accordingly' there never was a human gen- eration on this planet that was not sen- tient of God and of soul and of physics and matter, and that did not think of these themes, and that did not experience these natures, from this same ground of thought and knowledge, namely, the sentient prin- ciple — consciousness, external and inter- nal — consciousness of the image, physi- cal, psychical, and pneumatical. And therefore in every historic age man has applied his faculties and powers in the pursuit of knowledge about the three as- pects of the universe to which he is organ- ically and vitally related, and has applied them as the successive degrees or stages of knowing, namely, sensational knowing, W’hich respects and cognizes the image, and scientifical knowing, which respects and cognizes a mental inference or induc- tion from the image, and logical knowing. which respects and cognizes the essential form, and philosophic knowing, which comprehends these aspects of phenome- nality and actuality and essentiality in their unity as the reality’. This process, through the sensuous im- age, and the scientific induction, and the logical dialectic, is a law of thought, a law of mind, the principle of the natural history of mind in this planet — in every historic generation the most ancient and the most modern alike — and especially’ so if the soul should be found to be a form immor- tal and eternal, as well as mortal and mu- table in its temporal apparitions, and hence only' the permanent and the tran- sient, the constant and the variable in the elements of all history’. For if there be no factor immutable and eternal in the soul, there can be no permanent element in the history of humanity. The race can then have no immortality’, no personal identity in the account of its successive ages. But what is our conception of the great historic age of humanity’? Alike, as our view point is within it, or without it, it transcends in its magnitudes and con- tents the easy comprehension and con- quest of the human intellect. As we must many times have crossed and surveyed the vast ocean ere the immensity of the expanse be conceived in the measures of the mind ; so, much speculation, much knowledge, much thought, and much sym- pathetic appreciation result in revealing to the disciple of wisdom, that the magnitude and content of the great historic age of human life, with its thought, its experi- ences, and its achievements, transcend the measures and comprehension of the indi- vidual mind. There are three forms or measures of history — that of the lifetime of the indi- vidual ; that of the lifetime of the nation- ality ; and that of the lifetime of the dis- pensation or faith. The lifetime of the commonwealth embraces many’ individuals, and the lifetime of the faith embraces many’ 2 4 Present -Aspects of Philosophy in Germany. nationalities ; and in each of these forms, and in their whole, their unity, exists the the idea of universal history, which is the comprehension of the two factors — human experience and divine providence. And in this world of the individual life, and the social life, and the religious life of man, conjoined as it ever is with the prov- idence divine, dissympathy and deprecia- tion are the folly and the vice of igno- rance and bigotiy ; and ignorance and bigotry are in all things antitheses to lib- erated thought or liberal culture. And accordingly, all opinion, all thinking, limited to conceptions of the experiences of the particular individual and the par- ticular nationality and the particular faith, must be partial and comprehensive of the idea and first principle of the his- toric movement of the world. The remainder of Dr. Jones’s lecture was a presentation of the complex civiliza- tion of ancient India, of its advanced intellectual development, and of its high standing in philosophy. This was to pre- pare the way for the use of India as illus- tration and proof of the antiquity of great human achievements which is made in subsequent lectures. He closed with the following quotation : “ This is the moral of all human tales ; ’Tis but the same rehearsal of the past — First freedom and then glory; when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption, barbarism at last; And History, with all its volumes vast, Hath but one page.” PRESENT ASPECTS OF PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. I. BY PROFESSOR GEORGE HOLMES HOWISON. 1 * * * * * TOROFESSOR HOWISON said, in sub- stance : I could not, in the space of two lectures, even had I the requisite knowledge of details, cover the vast field suggested by the title of my subject. I must only 7 attempt to describe certain as- pects of present German thought. But I hope these may prove typical, and that what I shall say may have some of the interest attaching to the words of a per- sonal observer. A conspicuous fact in German thinking today is the apparent reversal of the old historical relation. The philosophic tradi- tion in Germany used to be to assume a primacy in philosophy", to regard the Ger- 1 George Holmes Howison was born in Montgomery County, Maryland, Nov. 29, 1834, and was graduated from Marietta College, Ohio, in 1852, from which, also, after an intervening study of theology at Lane Seminary, Cincin- nati, he received, in 1855, the degree cf M. A. From 1864 to 1867 he was assistant professor of mathematics in Wash- ington University, St. Louis, at which time was published his “Treatise on Analytic Geometry,” a comprehensive work, presenting particularly the modern methods of reciprocals, man point of view as far higher than others, and especially to look down on English empiricism as a “standpoint quite over- won.” At present, however, nothing in “ Young Germany” is more striking than its almost eager anxiety to throw away r not merely the results but the methods of its past, and go diligently to school in those of England. The indispensable key to an understanding of the present move- ments is the philosophy of Kant, which has pervaded all German thinking, or at any r rate determined its direction, for now nearly a century. We cannot do better, then, than to spend the main part of this first lecture in a resume of that, with such trilinears, and tangentials, and the abridged notation. From 1867 to 1869 he was professor of logic and political economy in the same institution. In 1871 he was appointed professor of logic and the philosophy of science in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, and con- tinued in this office till the summer of 1879. During the year 1879-80,he was lecturer on ethics in Harvard Univer- sity. lie has recently spent two years in Europe, interesting himself in the state of philosophy, especially in Germany. Present Aspects of Philosophy in Germany. 2 5 preliminary notice of previous thought as is necessary to render it intelligible. The problem of philosophy has never been more comprehensively stated than by Kant, in his saying that it is summed up in the three questions : What can I know? TF7 lat ought I to do ? and What may I hope for ? Another question, How much can 1 rationally believe ? lies indeed back of these, embracing them all. You will recognize it at once as the engrossing question of our day, but it has been tacitly, if not explicitly, that of all thinkers from the beginning of modern philosophy. Indeed, the burning questions of philosophy have always been the questions of religion : Is there a God? Am I free and accountable? Is there an existence after death? God, freedom, immortality — these three, as Kant forcibly pointed out, make up the substance of all metaphysical dispute. Thus, just as mod- ern physics begins with Bacon, in a revolt against the scholastic tradition that hope- lessly fettered the study of nature, so, in Descartes and his followers, modern meta- pln'sics opens with an outbreak against the traditional basis for religion and duty. The Continental philosophy, as developed by Descartes, Spinoza and Leibnitz, was briefly the resolve to find God, duty and immortality, not in traditional dogma, but in reason, or else to have done with them. In the Continental, as opposed to the In- sular (or English) philosophy, resort was had, for the criterion of truth, to certain primitive ideas of reason , assumed to cor- respond to the realities distinct from us. The Insular, on the other hand, set up as the standard the facts of sense. Locke, following Hobbes, aspired to raise Bacon’s precept for the study of nature into a rule for the government of all inquiry whatever : experience was to be the sole source and the limit of knowledge. From his time, the question of the origin and scope of our ideas becomes paramount. Locke and his immediate followers held, with a strange inconsequence, that, in spite of our entire dependence on experience, the conviction of God’s existence could be reached, through the principle of causality and the argument from design, “ with all the certainty of demonstration.” But pres- ent]}' came Hume, to search the house of empiricism to its remotest chambers, and sweep them as with the besom of a Nem- esis. With inexorable rigor and remorse- less detail, he demonstrates, in his “Trea- tise of Human Nature,” the absolute limi- tation of experience to the sensation of the present instant. Our personal identity, as an abiding ground uniting the sense-impres- sions of the past and the present in an un- broken history of consciousness, is reduced on empirical principles to a mere deposit from association, — a mere notion , born of our fantasy, and hardened into a pseudo- necessity by the pressure of habit. Thus the soul, as an abiding reality, free, respon- sible, capable of immortality, fades into a conjecture ; and, by a like process, so does the world, as a reality underlying phenom- ena ; and so also God, as the transcendent Cause of the world. The entire fabric of religion and duty is shown to vanish from the sphere of knowledge and obligation, and to rest, if anywhere, on the ever-shift- ing basis of social convenience. Thus the outcome of philosophy down to Kant is this : that the question whether we can say anything decisive on the vital matters, God, freedom and immortality, turns on whether we can know otherwise than by experience. Moreover, by Hume’s showing, the favorable decision of this latter question is far less simple and ready than the Continental philosophers had sup- posed. They inferred our power to tran- scend experience and penetrate to knowl- edge of things eternal, from the supposed necessity and universality of certain prim- itive judgments. But Hume points out that such judgments are not real, but merely formal : they never concern matter of fact , but only relations of ideas ; they are merely hypothetical, asserting simply 2 6 Present Aspects of Philosophy in Germany . that if a certain notion be supposed, cer- tain consequences, which are likewise mere notions however, must always follow : as when we say that if there be a right angle in a triangle, the square on the side oppo- site to it must equal the sum of the squares on the other tw T o sides. Here there is no assertion of fact , no statement that there is any figure with its parts in the mentioned relation, but only that the idea, of such a figure involves the idea of the relation re- hearsed. But, continues Hume, the ques- tions of metaphysics — of God, and of a soul responsible and immortal — all con- cern matter of fact; it is futile, then, to essay their solution with judgments neces- saiy and universal, which never concern anything but relations of ideas ; and how can experience, on the other hand, which is the sole evidence competent to fact, grapple with questions of fact purporting to transcend all possible experience? In short, he concludes, the question hence- forth for the affirmative metaphysician is, How can judgments on matter of fact by mere reason be possible ? The answer to this seems to go without the saying ; the question has the air of a plain contradic- tion ; and it looks as if the basis for ra- tionalist metaphysics had suffered a final demolition. H ume’s views crossed the channel into Germany, and, to borrow Kant’s own phrase, “ roused him from the dogmatist slumber” in which he had been dreaming the dreams of traditional rationalism. But he awoke to discover, and to point out bej’ond the need of revision, the limitations of empiricism, and Hume’s lack of precision and compass in dealing with his topic. He had penetrated the ambiguity in the phrase “ matter of fact,” had found the accurate substitute for it as a test of realit}", and could now vindicate reality to those neces- sary judgments that Hume had stigmatized as merely formal, pointing out at the same time the higher sense in which the latter title was still to be retained. Judgments are real, he said, when they add to our knowl- edge , — when they add to the conceptions of their subjects elements that these do not themselves contain. As such, as com- bining the new with the old, they will be best described as synthetic; while judg- ments that merely take apart the elements already contained in their subjects, should in contrast be named analytic. A syn- thetic judgment, however, may be formal , not indeed as contrasted with real , but as distinguished from material: it may state, not the contents, but the form of a fact, — not simply that it exists, but that it exists (and universally) thus and so. To the con- tents of fact, said Kant, experience is the indispensable witness ; to their form , on the contrary, reason (and that, too, abso- lutely independent of experience) alone is competent ; in no other way can we ex- plain the strict universality of formal judg- ments, to which experience can, of course, by no possibility lead us ; and these judg- ments of pure reason, as thus wholly inde- pendent of experience, and therefore prior to it in logic, though not indeed in time, we shall fitly describe as a priori. Hume would have us believe, Kant con- tinued, that these formal judgments, which he misconstrues as unreal, are merely an- alytic ; they are, however, in fact synthetic, because sensation, though insufficient for their proof, is indispensable to it : thus we cannot determine a really unknown sum of two numbers without counting the separate units in sensible instants of some kind or other ; still less can we establish a theorem in geometry without the construction of auxiliary lines. The proper form of the problem of reason, then, is not Hume’s, but this : How are synthetic judgments possible a priori ? And here the whole emphasis falls on the How. Such judgments are possible, because they exist ; as witness the whole science of mathematics, and that of pure physics also, with its axioms, “Every change must have a cause,” “Action and reaction are always equal,” and other Present Aspects of Philosophy in Germany. 2 7 propositions of similar necessity. Our problem, then, proceeded Kant, is to ex- plain them ; and this How is threefold : it means, What must be (1) their nature, (2) the nature of the fact-world to which they refer, and (3) the limitations of their use in order not to render them impos- sible ? The answers to these three questions, to- gether with the arguments on which they are founded, form the contents of the epoch-making “Critique of Pure Reason.” To the first, Kant replies by showing that synthetic judgments, to be a priori, must he formal, never material; they are empty statements of universal law, and never at- testations of specific fact. But how can such law apply to such fact? how can that which springs from the mind a priori (i. e. independently of all expedience), possibly be true of that which comes into the mind only a posteriori (i. e. in the actual process of experience) ? It cannot be so, Kant answers, unless the objects to which it refers are tliemselces the product of the very faculty from which the laic arises. Thus he answers the second ques- tion with the theory that the world of ex- perience — the whole “ majestic frame of nature” — is the creature of our intellect- ual constitution. For cognition, he shows, is not a passive state, but an active dis- charge ( eine Function) of the mind, poured forth from the native constitution of rea- son — nay, the outpouring, rather, of the very elemental form of reason — -to be the form for a filling, or contents, likewise in the conscious subject, namely, sensation. Thus the living universe, matter as well as form, becomes the offspring of the the- oretical side of our faculty of consciousness. Bold and revolutionary stroke ! — by which Kant passed at once from a theory of knowledge to a new philosophy, the in- verse of all that had gone before him. The third question, Kant answers by essaying to prove that the theoretical faculty, in its a priori as completely as in its empirical judgments, is restricted to the world of sense. After a thorough-going analysis of the whole organism of cogni- tion, resolving it into the primal elements, Space, Time, Cause (as central among his famous Twelve Categories), and the Three Ideas (God, Soul and World), he pro- ceeds to show that in every attempt to apply these or their derivative principles beyond the limits of experience — as in ef- forts to prove God, freedom and immortal- ity — the reason necessarily falls into con- tradictions or else circles about in plausible ineptitudes. World-famous and world- shattering is the assault he now makes on the time-honored defences of Natural The- ology. One after the other, he batters down, into debris essentially beyond repair, the historic arguments for the existence of God — “ Ontological, ” “ Cosmological, ” “Teleological.” The current proofs for freedom and immortality fare but little better, especially the latter. In short, the theoretical part of Kant’s proposed ex- haustive “Critical Science of Reason” ends, as he well understood, by r corroborat- ing Hume’s doctrine of the futility of meta- physics. But not so, held Kant, ends that Science in its entirety. It must complete itself by a practical part. In this, first comes to light the core, the aim, the import of his whole philosophy : here the doubt cast by Hume on the immutable sanctity of duty shall find its lasting refutation ; here shall be recovered all that has been imperilled in past philosophy by forgetting that there is a practical as well as a theoretical reason ; here at length shall we reach the Everlasting Rock on which our faith in freedom, immortality and God is truly planted. For, he taught, it is not the whole, nor the chief, function of reason, to weave for us a world, as the scene of our physical existence ; far rather is the essence of reason the deliverance of the law of our action in that scene, that we may r build within the world of nature, and Present Aspects of Philosophy in Germany. 28 through and through it, a moral world, framed after reason’s supreme ideals. The inmost core of reason is the conscious- ness of obligation. That is to say : I find, on entering conscious life, the entire sphere of my volition preoccupied by a Supreme Will, — a practical judgment: synthetic, as declaring that I am to draw into my own being traits that are not there by nature, and to create in the world of sense conjunctions fit to be the symbol and the shelter of the law I am to serve ; a priori also, as unconditional. And in this practical sphere, reason finds in itself that unrestricted validity which was denied it in the theoretical ; for moral judgments must be absolute. The moral consciousness is such that it cannot do homage to any- thing less than the highest. Let us but once discover that there is a law higher than that delivered as law in us, forthwith our al- legiance transfers itself to that. Indeed, the primal law delivered by reason — the Categorical Imperative, as Kant names it — is precisely this : So act that the maxim of thy volition may stand for law universal. In the moral reference, then, reason must in certain of its insights be able to pierce the veil of phenomena, penetrate to the noumenal, the eternal, and bring back judgments that hold for all worlds, for all Intelligences ; otherwise it cannot fill its mere formal imperative with any contents, anj’ particularization, and so must be self- nugatory. In especial must this absolute- ness hold of those insights of reason that concern the indispensable conditions for fulfilling its law. Such conditions we pos- tdate — posit by a priori volition — in that Pure Will which is the consciousness of duty. And of such Postulates of Prac- tical Reason there are in fact three : free- dom, immortality, and God. Freedom is such ; for unless I can, in my noumenal self, veritably originate changes in my phenomenal sense-world, whether inner or outer, the imperative that bids me do so is annulled. Immortality is such ; for un- less an endless existence awaits me, I cannot fulfil that law whose infinite perfec- tion battles all the efforts of finitude, and leaves possible, at best, only the hope of approximating to it through endless time. And God is such ; for the goal of the prac- tical reason is the Summum Bonum — the realization of a universe in which happiness shall be proportioned to desert, and both shall be unbounded : but this is impossi- ble unless there is an Author and Gov- ernor of nature, at once all-holy, all-wise, and all-powerful. With the same uncon- ditional authoritativeness, then, wherewith, in my a priori will, I posit my owing allegiance to duty in general, do I in that very act posit it my duty to believe in freedom, immortality, and God. And therefore, with the same revering submis- sion with which 1 acknowledge the one, is it my duty to acknowledge the others. My belief in them is thus not an act of knowl- edge, but of faith ; not a seeing, nor through anything seen, but through a sense of duty , and itself a sense of duty. Such, in outline, is the system that has exercised so mighty an influence, attractive or repulsive, waxing rather than waning, since the close of its promulgation in 1790. 1 Its affirmative central conception, profound and astonishingly original, were it once consistently expounded, would doubtless prove imperishable. Such consistent ex- position at the hands of Kant himself, it failed, however, to receive. The undertak- ing to divide reason against itself, to res- cue the will at the sacrifice of the intellect, too perilously suggests the house divided against itself that could not stand. The repair of the gaps, the reduction of the contradictions, the rounding out of the in- completions, that show themselves not obscurely in Kant’s great work, has given 1 The date of the publication of the “Critique of Judg- ment. ” The contents of this part of Kant’s system are here purposely omitted, partly as not essential to our after topic, partly as not used by Kant himself to any real modifi- cation of his system as above presented; though such use would have brought it to a consistency that would have ren- dered the work of his three great successors unnecessary. Present Aspects of Philosophy in Germany. 2 9 abundant employment to German thinkers since his day, and forms even yet the oc- cupation of many ; while others, in oppo- sition, study to expose and exaggerate his defects. When I speak of this industry, I imply, however, that most of it is just now silent, and only mean that the great majority of present thinkers have come to whatever standpoints the}’ may hold, through exercise of this sort ; though many are still openly and chiefly engaged in it. The struggle now, as it was in Kant’s day and immediately afterwards, is to seize upon that phase of his doctrine which seems of the greatest value, and then to reconstruct the exposition so as to harmo- nize with that. There has thus grown up, besides the limited materialist school rep- resenting intense reaction from him — whose combat with the system that claims to have given materialism a final quietus is naturally mortal — a numerous school of so-called Neo-Kantians. Their aim may be described, in general terms, as the develop- ment of Kant’s theoretical view at the ex- pense of his practical. They’ construe his limitation of real knowledge to the world of experience, to result in a greatened empiricism as the veritable method of real knowledge in distinction from merely’ formal. They thus seek to interpret the so-called “Critical” final stage of Kant’s development into a proper continuation, instead of a surmounting, of the “ Pre- critical” earlier one, of which his “ Gen- eral Theory of the Heavens” may be taken as the type — a work in which he anticipates Laplace’s nebular hypothesis and indeed the entire conception of evo- lution. In this wise they come into direct sympathy’ with both the results and methods of English philosophy’ as expounded bv Hume, and particularly by Spencer and Mill. They’ find, too, a special satisfac- tion in thus standing on common ground with modern physical science, both in method and in conclusions. Here, too, they are able to strike hands with another remarkable section of their fellow-thinkers — the newest new; a group who may be described as the Slrict Empiricists, the pur- est product of the imported article, disci- ples in method of Mill and Spencer out right. For these two Englishmen, espe- cially as reinforced by the wide-spread prevalence of Darwinism in the natural sciences, are exerting an influence, partic- ularly in the German universities, whose future it is difficult to compute, but which is positive and penetrating. The Germans have taken the trouble to translate all the writings of Mill and the most important of Spencer’s, and the result is seen in various directions, not only’ in the increasing em- piricism, agnosticism and evolutionism, but in comprehensive attempts at the re- organization of logic itself, such as the recent works of Lotze, Sigwart, Wundt, and Lange. Thus on all hands, whether in the camp of the materialists, of the Neo-Ivautians, or of the thorough-going empiricists, who busy’ themselves mainly’ with researches in psychophysics and physiopsychology, with glowing hopes of “ inductions,” in some remote future, that are to uncover all the “ secrets of the soul,” supposed to be con- veniently hid away r in the nervous sys- tem, — on all these hands, there, is a remarkable concord in the new value given to English thought, in the paramount im- port attributed to experience, and in the great expectations from the newly invented “ logics of induction.” Nor is there want- ing, in abundance, that assured contempt for the philosophy’ of the past (now igno- miniously’ nicknamed “ biosse Construction ” — bare manufacture ), which is the sure concomitant, and indeed the sign, of all “cleariug-up” (Auf/rfarung) . Especially is this true with respect to the great succes- sors of Kant — Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. To mention these names, in fact, is nowadays the signal for raising in most German circles the image of mere vagary, — of romantic philosophic folly’. These great Present Aspects of Philosophy in Germany. 3 ° thinkers, feeling the weightiness of Kant’s practical view, and comprehending the danger threatening this from his theoreti- cal scepticism, set about cancelling the latter by an effort to develop the funda- mental principles of the “Critique” to their legitimate vindication of the absolute character of theoretical reason. This they sought to effect by the removal of his assumed “Thing in itself,” the supposed unknowable basis of the phenomenal world of experience. In this way, they grad- ually passed from the Relative Idealism of Kant — in result identical with the agnos- ticism now so familiar from the teachings of Spencer, Mill, and Comte — to that Absolute Idealism which was wrought to its completest form by Hegel, — the doctrine of a one and only Infinite Person, manifesting his eternal consciousness in an incessant system of persons, the com- | plete expression of whose conscious lives into definite and adequate particularity forms the sensible universe of experience and the world of moral order that is per- petually being inorbed therein. But this view of things, which is at present taking such a hold in Scotland, England, and America, is in Germany, if not dead, at any rate dormant. Beyond a few venerable men, on the frail verge of life, like Eduard Erdmann of Halle and Michelet of Berlin, the genuine influence of Hegel finds utterance perhaps onlj' at Heidelberg, in the voice of Kuno Fischer, and he is not a system teacher, but an historian. Zeller, the illustrious historian of Greek philosophy, Althaus, Adolf Las- son, all at Berlin, though indeed once ad- herents of Hegel in name, have long felt too heavily the strain of the “left wing’’ view of his s}-stem to keep the position with any hearty assent. Idealism, as a systematically defended theory, has degen- erated through Schopenhauer into the cum- brous empirical pessimism of Eduard von II artmann, its sole recent representative of note ; and he, however wide his in- fluence among outsiders of shallow culture, has at present no weight in the universities. The present situation, in short, is by every indication one of metaphysical non- conviction, of halt, of transition. In such times, men take refuge in the study of his- tory, in psychology and other empirical inquiries, and in biographical and in bib- liographical researches. A few figures, drawn from the most authentic sources, will serve to show how truly this is the case in Germany at the present day. Five years ago, in “Mind ’’for July, 1877, in an article on “ Philosophy in German}-,” Professor Wundt of Leipsic gave some valuable statistics, drawn from the well- known TJniversitdts-Kalender , edited annu- ally by Dr. Ascherson. For the five con- secutive years preceding 1877, out of three hundred and sixteen courses of lec- tures given throughout Germany in the department of philosophy, one hundred anil thirty-one were devoted to history, one hundred and fourteen to psychology, thirty-nine to logic and metaphysics, and thirty-two to ethics. Tims the historical and empirical branches had almost wholly displaced the creative and systemic teach- ing of metaphysics, which was once the chief interest in the universities. The most recent statistics, which I take from the same authentic source, confirm and even emphasize the same fact. In the recent winter semester of 1881-82, there were in the various branches of philoso- phy, about six hundred lectures each week throughout the German-speaking coun- tries. Of these, fifty-three per cent, were on history, rudiments, and the historical exposition of particular systems ; twenty- three per cent, on ethics and pedagogy ; twelve per cent, on psychology (mainly physiological) ; eight per cent, on logic ; and one per cent, on anthropology, leaving only three per cent, for metaphysics proper. A philosophic halt is clearly called, and men have taken to the history of the sub- ject, perhaps in the hope of finding, in the Personality. 3 1 light of what has hitherto been thought, some hint to a system not j - et thought of; perhaps in a sceptical indifferentism, or a dilettante interest in whatever is human : Homo sum et niiiil humani a me alienum puto. If it be asked whether all this indi- cates a fatal decline in originative philoso- phic power, and a permanent loss by Ger- many of her philosophic leadership, to continue in the humbler role of pupil to English empiricism and agnosticism, the answer of course is uncertain ; but we have always encouragement to anticipate the final victory of insight in a people, provided its political and social conditions are such as to promise it a lasting career. These conditions in Germany seem on the whole eminently favorable, and we may therefore hope that her thinking classes will yet agaiu come to an understanding of the great affirmative successors of Kant, and earn' still further towards its desired completion that Science of Reason in which they achieved so much. Third Day, — July 19. PERSONALITY. BY MR. ALCOTT. nV/TR. ALCOTT said he wished to speak in as plain terms as he could com- mand. Even Plato, the master-mind of the Greeks, when translated by the best trans- lators, is often unintelligible ; and how can one expect to understand him unless he lives purely, ideally, like him? By per- sonality Mr. Alcott said he meant that which is universal and common to men, — all that is central and absolute in each one. By individuality he meant that which is particular and special, which distinguishes one person from another. The former is universal, the latter is special. He did not use instinct in the sense of the natu- ralist, as a blind force. It is the first motion of spirit, the force or life b}^ which spirit manifests itself, blindl}' at first. Finally it opens out through all the facul- ties. In intuition the mind has direct insight into the essence of things. Insight is a less clear form of intuition, not so general. Inspiration comes when the spirit through instincts reveals itself in all the faculties. Revelation is not final unless manifested through inspiration ; revela- tion takes possession of all our faculties. It is the whole of that which can be mani- fested, the whole of the possibilities of expression. By mind Mr. Alcott said he meant that which thinks, reasons, apprehends, com- prehends ; in other words, intellect. By soul is meant that which feels, loves, has passions and affections. The will is the power of choosing or refusing. The in- tellect, thinking, aims at thinking the truth absolutely. The soul, loving, seeks to find the good, and will, willing, seeks the right. Rightfulness, truthfulness and goodness constitute the trinity we are. Reason, conscience and affection consti- tute our personality. No animal is three- fold ; and man, as an animal, is only dual. Conscience is the sense of right. Spirit is immanent in the conscience, command- ing us to do right and holding us respon- sible for what we do. There are several stages before we may be said to sin ; for instance, the mistake maj' be in our judg- Present Aspects of Philosophy in Germany. ment ns to what is right. A three-twisted strand is our personality, dropped down from the Godhead into matter. Actors formerly wore masks and spoke from behind them, and in like manner is the body our mask, and the soul, which speaks through us, is the personality, the immanent Godhead. The soul, mind and will are one, manifested in a threefold aspect. Unless there were this threefold- ness to our personality, the Christian doc- trine of the Trinity could never have found expression. God is the Creator, and being in his likeness, we are persons as such, not individuals. The trinity runs through everything, because God is in everything, though not everything attains personality. No animal is a person, or says “ I.” All animals are under the sway of fate, and man also, in so far as he is the victim of his senses and appetites. The sum total of animal, man, transcends all animals, being a person, a responsible creature. An animal is not self-conscious ; it cannot sin. “ The distinguishing mark,” says Aristotle, “between man and the lower animals is this : that he alone is endowed with the power of knowing good and evil, justice and injustice, and it is a participation in this that constitutes a family and a city.” To affirm that brute creatures are endowed with freedom and choice, and with the sense of responsibil- ity, were to exalt them into spirituality and personality, whereas it is plain that the}’ are not above deliberation and choice, but below it, under the sway of fate, as men are when running counter to rea- son and the right. The will bridges the chasm between the human and divine ; thus distinguishing person from individ- ual, man from brute. With choice begins our personality proper. “ If men be worlds there is in every one Something to answer in a fit proportion, All the world’s riches, and in substance this, Person his form’s form, and soul’s soul is.” Perhaps the dul^uv of Socrates was the Spirit, in the conscience, forbidding him to do certain things. The Oriental relig- ions may have arrived at pure personality. Our personality is a birthright from the Godhead. Men possess all their faculties in embryo when they wake up in this life. First born into the outer world of the senses, the infant man is slowly delivered into the mind, the world of thought and personality. Thus unsensualized, and plumed, he mounts aloft, and overlooks the dusty suburbs of his former-residence, whose thoroughfares he had traversed hitherto as the mere servant of his animal wants. Baby, underneath the sky, Solves life's riddle presently, Finds itself an “ I am I,” Feels itself in all it sees, Loveliest of mysteries, Yet wondering why its real age So blotted is on Time’s strange page, And all life long one ceaseless fret, Conning the puzzling alphabet. PRESENT ASPECTS OF PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. II. BY PROFESSOR IIOWISON. t I TIE lecturer said : We come this eve- ning to the details and the personnel of the more prevalent and typical views. In ol der to give a clear picture of the facts, it will be advantageous to consider them in two principal groups : first, the philosophic influences at work in German society at large ; and, second, those operating in the universities. • I. With respect to the former, there are noticeable in the total stream of present German thought three main currents — the idealistic, the materialistic, and the agnostic. Each of these has a leading Present Aspects of Philosophy in Germany. 33 representative ; and thus there are three men who challenge our attention, as being in their several ways typical — Eduard von Hartmann, Eugen Duhring, and Fried- rich Albert Lange. The first stands for the current degenerate idealism ; the second, for materialism ; and the third, for agnosticism, with the additional and peculiar interest of being the Neo-Kantian par excellence. In opening the study of Hartmann, and of his large circle of readers, we come upon the locus of Schopenhauer’s influ- ence, the vast reach of which in the general “Enlightened Public” of present Germany it is impossible to overlook. Hartmann is generally recognized as the direct heir of Schopenhauer. His so- called system, however, is far inferior in intellectual quality to his master’s. He differs from Schopenhauer in substituting the empirical method for the a priori , and in his doctrine concerning the nature of the absolute. The former trait expresses his deference to the “ stupendous achieve- ments ” of recent modern science ; the latter, his ambition to frame a system that should blend in one higher unity whatever of preceding theory he knew. His prob- lem has the look of being this : — Given misery as the sum of existence, what must be presupposed in order to account for it? The method and the contents of his solu- tion both show what a weight the empirical method has with him, in contrast with the dialectical. He seizes on a striking and mysterious class of facts in our psychologi- cal history as the explanation of his prob- lem and the r’eal basis of life. There is in our very experience, he says, the manifest presence of an unconscious agency ; and he refers here to all that class of experiences nowadays commonly grouped under the term “reflex action” — facts of somnam- bulism, trance, clairvoyance, and instinc- tive knowledge. The Unconscious, then, is here with us, he holds ; there is beneath our consciousness a something that per- forms for us, even when our consciousness is suspended, all that is most characteristic of life, and that too with a swift and infalli- ble surety and precision : what less then can we do, than to accept this Unconscious as the one and absolute reality? So is founded the “Philosophy of the Uncon- scious.” Hartmann first addresses himself to the refutation of the Kantian thesis that knowl- edge is only of the phenomenal. He makes his Unconscious the common source of two parallel streams of appearance — the one objective, the sensible world itself ; the other subjective, the stream of our conscious perceptions of the world. These two streams, as both flowing from the one Unconscious, under identically correspond- ing conditions, are in incessant counter- part and correspondence. Thus knowledge, though not a copy of natural objects, is an exact counter-image of them. Existence is thus clhubled throughout ; space, time, and the causal nexus are duplicated too, as well as the units that they contain or connect. In the light of the knowledge thus vindi- cated, the Unconscious so far reveals itself, I that we know it is something infallibly and infinitely intelligent. Strictly, it is not the unconscious, but rather the sr<5conscious- the unbeknown ( das Unbewusste ) . In its infallible infinite-swiftness of percep- tion, however, as experience testifies of it, there is a transcendent type of the flashing inspirations of genius. It is thus not self, conscious ; its intelligence is clairvoyant. As intelligent energy, it has the two constituents that we find present in all intelligent activity within experience — will and representation, or will and idea. And here is the juncture for Hartmann to correct and complete Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the absolute. Not ivill is the absolute ; for will as well as representation is part of conscious experience : will is itself phenomenal. Rather are will and representation the two co-ordinate and Present Aspects of Philosophy in Germany. 34 primal manifestations of the one Uncon- scious. But Hartmann is now well ashore on the familiar coasts of Schopenhauer- land. The world-child of Idea and Will is no product of far-sighted love, endowed with an exhaustless future of joy ; it is the offspring of chance, and its future carries in its very core the germs of ever-expanding misery. This gloomy theme Hartmann pursues through all the provinces of experi- ence, seeking to prove that suffering every- where outbalances happiness, that “ he that increaseth knowledge inereaseth sorrow,’’ the pitch of anguish rising ever higher and higher as nature ascends in the scale of consciousness. There is but one plain moral in the drama of life — that of the utter worthlessness of existence, and ethics thus sums itself into the single pre- cept, “ Make an end of it ! ” Neverthe- less, ethics ma}' have the important prac- tical part of settling the question, How shall we make an end of things the surest and soonest? There is indeed here no duty ; there is no such thing as duty, there is simply a possible satisfaction of desire ; but there may be an alter- native of means. For ethics is the doc- trine of the fulfilment of the will, and will is in its essence only wild unrest. Both metaphysics and experience therefore teach that its proper means of satisfaction is pacification : it must be brought to still- ness. Hasten then the day when the pitch of misery shall have risen to the frenzy of despair, and mankind in united delirium shall by final self-immolation end the tragedy of existence forever ! Apart from the revolt from such results which minds of any vivid moral life would promptly feel, the intellectual lack of fibre betrayed in adherence to this mesh of con- tradictions is a telling evidence of the decline of the German ‘ ‘ cultivated classes ” in theoretical tone. Limp as this “ sj'stem ” hangs, with its preposterous attempt to construe the absolute by mere image-think- ing) by adjustments of components placed side by side, by a temporal antecedence to the world of nature, in short, by strictly mechanical categories flung on the screen of space and time — to say nothing of its bald ignoring of the chasm between con- sciousness and the Unconscious, its abso- lute at once unconscious and conscious, its deduction of the reality of knowledge from the assumed derivation of duplicate worlds from the Unconscious and its then using this realitj' to establish this very deriva- tion, — flimsy as all this is, there seems to be a sufficient multitude to whom it gives a certain satisfaction. It is true, however, that this class of minds makes only a por- tion of the German public. The higher and more thorough order of culture has had insight to see the bubble, and has pricked it without pity. When we turn to Diihring, we find our- selves at once in the opposite extreme of the emotional climate. Diihring is mate- rialist, but he is optimist still more. He names his system the “ Philosophy of the Actual.” This title sounds almost like a challenge to Hartmann’s, as much as to say, “ No mystical sub-conscious or incog- nizable Background here ! ” To have this so is Diihring’s first and last endeavor. The absolute, for him, is briefly and frankly “ matter.” As we perceive it and think it, so it is ; and it may be called, in short, a variable constant. This conception of an indissoluble polar union between permanence and change is, according to Diihring, the vital nerve of the Actual and the key to its entire philosophy. This union is possible only by the Actual’s con- sisting of certain primitive elements, subject to definite laws of combination and change of combination. The permanent in the Actual is thus (1) atoms , (2) types , or the primitive kinds of the atoms, the origin of species in nature, and (3) laivs, determining the possible combinations of types. The variable, on the other hand, is the series of changes as they actually occur, which amount simply to a change Present Aspects of Philosophy in Germany. 35 in the form of the Actual, in its parts aud in its whole. If we were to analyze Duhring’s system in detail, we should end at his position, that to deny the worth of life is to put ourselves in conflict with the elemental forces of our being, which will subdue us in spite of our struggles. Nevertheless, Diihring holds, though life is essentially good, there is real evil in it, and one condition of its good is, that we shall rise to higher good by the spring from over- coming the evil. In this principle we pass from theory to practice, finding in it the basis of ethics. The highest practical pre- cept is, “ Act with supreme reference to the whole.” But as we are members, not only of the absolute whole, but of the lesser whole called society, we can only act in and through that. Duhring makes his system end, however, in a moral atomism, as it began in a physical — in the mere self-dissolution of society. Its root of irrationality is identical with that of Hartmann’s — undertaking to construe the absolute with the categories of the relative, to think the eternal in relations of time and motion. The resistless beat of such a theory is either to despair, or else to illusions of reconstructing the future in behalf of capricious desire. We can consider the philosophy of Lange onty briefly. His “ History of Materialism ” — a philosophy buttressed b} T history, aiming to expose the deficien- cies of materialism — has made a deep impression on the younger men at the German universities. He seeks a higher point of view than is afforded by either materialism or current idealism, and is convinced that it is to be found in Kant. We are henceforth to understand, once for all, that knowledge is limited strictly to fact — to fact of experience. “ And yet,” he adds, “man needs a supplementing of this by an ideal world created by' himself and in such free creations the highest and noblest functions of his mind unite.” His position may be described, most generally, as the “Standpoint of the Ideal.” He speaks of the Ideal, not as a philosophy, but only as a point of view, because he wishes to include in philosophy not only the means for satisfying the craving after ideality, but that for closing with the de- mand for certainty. The aim of philoso- phy, he holds, is not a doctrine, but a method, and it is itself, when precisely defined, simpty the critical determination of the limits of the main tendencies in oar faculty of consciousness. These tendencies are two — the investigation of phenomena, and speculation upon assumed realities beyond them. Philosophy has a twofold function — a negative, whose result is the critical dissolution of all the synthetical principles of cognition and the stripping them of *all pretended competence to the absolute ; and a positive, affirming the right and the uses of the free exercise of the speculative bent, when taken no longer as knowledge, but as a species of poesj r . The doctrines advanced by Lange are carried out to practical conclusions that challenge an anxious attention. On the religious question he aims at a purely ethical position. It must be borne in mind above all, however, that he has, and as an agnostic, can have, no real basis for ethics whatever : to talk of duty towards what we know to be mere fantasy, is a hollow mockery. One religion is with him as good as another, provided and so long as it does the work of consecrating the Ideal and giving it practical influence with men. As for rationalizing religion, let it be done, he saj r s, if it must be done, in the interest of culture and taste, but beware of dreaming that in this way you aie getting at truth ! The Christian religion, for instance, we may retain in spirit, but in letter, no. A thoroughgoing review of Lange’s successive positions would bring us to this point : Lange has, in fact, unwit- tingly completed the demonstration of the absoluteness of human knowdedge, aud, Present Aspects of Philosophy in Germany. 3 6 at the same time, demonstrated the nec- essary falsehood of materialism, — not simply the permanent impossibilit}' of proving it, but its absolvte impossibilit}’, for he has removed the basis for even its hypothesis. He has shown (1) that a thing-in-itself does not exist; (2) that, as notion, it involves a self-contradic- tion, — an element whose sphere is solely within consciousness putting itself, as it were, beyond it ; (3) that, in spite of this, we must continue to accept this illusion, which compels us to limit our knowledge to experience and renounce all •claim to its being absolute. That is, the sole cause of our doubting the rigorous validity of our knowledge and reducing our cognition to the mere idiosyncrasy of one species out of an unknown number of pos- sible orders of intelligent beings , is an illu- sion ivhose genesis we know — a contradiction that we distinctly detect. Then, beyond all controversy, our discrediting and limitation of our cognitive faculty is an error , and ice are to correct it by disregarding the cause. The illusion may continue to play upon us forever, but being detected, it is com- pletely in our power, so far as its affecting our judgment is concerned. And as a further conclusion, after closer analysis, it becomes plain that Lange has finally abandoned the Kantian standpoint, and, without intending it, gone really back to that of Locke, where he and his followers may be left to the thoroughgoing surgery of Hume. II. [The remainder of the lecture was devoted to a statement of the philosophic movements in the universities, where the most interesting phenomenon is that pre- sented by men who have abandoned a priori ground altogether, and are laying the foundation for an empirical metaphys- ics. It is singular that this endeavor took its impulse from one of the most intense metaphysical movements of the old-fashioned kind that Germany ever knew, — the philosophy of Herbart. The aim is to establish a mechanics of mental experience, to do for psychology what physics has done for natural philosophy. The labors of these men are at present, therefore, expended on physiological psy- chology and psychophysics. Professor Howison referred, in closing, to the philo- sophical situation at the university of Berlin, in the winter semester of 1881-2, mentioning particularly the venerable Michelet and his refutation of the charge of being a ut he had beeu for half a century our leader. In vain for us to say what thou hast been To our occasion — This flickering nation, This stock of people from an English kin,— Ami he who led the van, The frozen Puritan, We thank thee for thy patience with his faith, When thou must teach him what God’s spirit saith. So moderate in thy lessons, and so wise, To foes so courteous, To friends so duteous, And hospitable to the neighbors’ eyes ; Thy course was better kept, Than where the dreamers slept; Thy sure meridian taken by the sun, Thy compass pointing true as waters run. The smart and pathos of our suffering race Bore thee no harm ; Thy muscular arm The daily ills of living did efface ; The sources of the spring Prom whence thy thought took wing, Unsounded were by lines of sordid day-; Enclosed with inlaid walls thy virtue’s way. The circles of thy thought shone vast as stars ; No glass shall round them, No plummet sound them, They hem the observer like bright steel-wrought bars ; Yet limpid as the sun, Or as bright waters run From the cold fountain of an Alpine spring, Or diamonds richly set in the King’s ring. Out of deep mysteries thy goblet fills; The wines do murmur That nature warmed her, When she was pressing out from must the hills, The plains that near us lie, The foldings of the sky ; Wliate’er within the horizon’s bound there is, From Hades’ caldron to the blue God’s bliss. It is not given to us, and to few men can it be given, to measure the height and depth of Emerson’s genius, either as poet or as philosopher. But there is an aspect of his philosophical character which we cannot too often dwell upon — his flowing, unfailing courtesy to all men, his hospitality to everything that bore the upright face of thought, his deep sympathy and fellowship, beneath an exterior some- times cold, with all that was human and aspiring. His friend Jones Very once said, in an essay on poetrj' too early for- gotten : “ The fact is, our manners, or the manners and actions of any intellectual nation, can never become the representa- tives of greatness. The}' have fallen from the high sphere which they occupied in a less advanced stage of the human mind, never to regain it.” But this remark, like almost everything in daily American ex- perience, found its constant contradiction in Emerson ; whose manners represented nothing else than greatness, and that not in a dazzling, overpowering way, but with the sweetness of sunlight. Let me not detain you longer with these words of mine, but present to you those who will carry forward your thoughts toward the poetry and the philosophy of our towns- man. 1 From William Ellery Channing’s “Ode,” written about 1817. The Nature of Knowledge. 55 THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE — EMERSON’S WAY. BY THE REV. CYRUS AUGUSTUS BARTOL, D. D. 1 T FEEL the magnetism from the name of one never accounted unbelieving save hv such as he had soared out of sight of, into the heaven of faith. If I can bring back for a moment that light of our day which Emerson was, it will be a sober joy ; for to have lived in the same time with him, to have been his friend and shared his love, not demonstrative because loath to ask any return, is a memorable privilege. He is not dead nor in the past tense. Is it for being old and forgetful that we sometimes ask after the health of those w'ho, we know, are gone ? No particular favor from an ac- quaintance with” Emerson would it become any of us to dwell on. The fire of Emer- son’s genius was love for all. But we are not over his coffin. I think the genius of Emerson, the fresh mint of his imagery as of gold, the power that made his words like coins used for the first time, eveiy syllable’s edge bright and un- worn, was an offspring of the wedding of matter and mind. He had a foregleam of the unity of these two in all organized things. But he did not find the secret in the shape, nor were the outward and in- ward to him of equal worth ; the unappar- ent, invisible, eternal power and Godhead were prior in his view as much as in the Apostle Paul’s, and as though he were writing the Epistle to the Romans. He was inspired, influenced, sent. In the exe- cution of his orders he w r as not an artisan, but an artist, always seeing the One who makes the unity and the universe. 1 Cyrus Augustus Bartol, D.D., was horn in Freeport, Me., April 30, 1S13. In 1832 he graduated from Bowdoin College, and in 1835 from the Harvard divinity school at Cambridge. In 1837 he was settled as colleague of the pastor of the West Church, on Cambridge Street, in Boston, and has had no other settlement. He still continues to He was offended at the hint that spirit might be the result of matter made very “ thin.” He gazed at or after the unap- parent, as a sailor or fugitive slave for the North Star. He liked Bonaparte’s w r ord, “ History is a fable agreed upon,” and wrote : “ Time dissipates into shining ether the solid angularity of facts.” He saw, like a spiritual homoeopath, the highest potency in the largest dilution, and tre- mendous forces in the least space. This is nature’s law ; the large is made of the little. It is not the quantity, but what we get under the skin that affects us. The agnostic, that most refined speci- men materialism gives birth to, — the “ know-nothing ” in the intellectual world, — considers impertinent all curiosity beyond phenomena and their laws. But suppose the circle of appearances and reconciliation complete. Yet every important question still remains. Whence, how, what, where- fore, whither ? Is igneous vapor the source? Tell me the source of that. Are we blown from the nebulae? Who blew that huge bubble, and how did you step from or to it? It is wicked to brand as useless a curiosity of which nature in and out of us is the prompter. On this ever- lasting ground rest philosophy and relig- ion, which are more than science,— on this supersensible, supersolar, supernatural, not in the sense of miracle or violated laws. How steadily by Emerson it was taught ! “ Let who will wrangle, I will wonder.” If this is to be an idealist, and not a material- discharge all the duties of pastor, and is one of the best- known of Boston preachers. His published works include “Discourses on the Christian Spirit and Life” (185o), “Discourses on the Christian Body and Form” (1854), “Pictures of Europe” (1855), “Radical Problems” (1872), and “The Rising Faith” (1873). 5 6 The Nature of Knowledge. ist, such he was. He may have made strong statements which, unqualified, look the other way, as when he says, “A man is part of the landscape.”. But he modifies his own extravagance. Our objections to him are mostly answered on his own pages ; his critics arc like dogs that bark at a man on his own premises. Formed for the ad- miring of beauty in nature, he yet per- ceives the peril that nature herself with her ideas and forms may seduce. She is a sorceress with whom the soul commits adultery if she withdraw its worship from God. Emerson beheld both sides, and from the heart of God he derived the , sacred drops of life. Emerson had no code or system or creed ; no comprehensive, practical view of principles, but only keen, single percep- tions, fatally certain within whatever field he surveyed and brought his perfect in- strument or brain-theodolite to bear upon. He was an insulated soul, as were Milton, Dante, Wordsworth ; an island rather than a star ; and as Homer, Shakespeare, and Goethe were not, and the mighty Brown- ing is not. His style is crisp and insular ; he himself is a robe without seam, all of one piece ; his leaf is a carcanet. His thoughts are a selection of beads to be strung, all belonging together, by their perfect shape and hue. But the best lines are like a succession of rockets, with their fierce sallies, shining trains and handsome curves, opening wide glimpses of the sky. His poems and essays are songs, not sym- phonies, odes, not dramas. But there was a tune in his mind so con- stant and sweet that he cared not for chords and pipes. Emerson delighted in a good voice, and no man had a better ; this sage was a bard, too, supreme on this side the sea, and destined to survive all the rest. His strains are gifts, chimings of nature, sounds of the wind “blowing where it listeth,” tidings from some far-off celestial shore, articulated but not created with any cunning ventriloquism. He rides and converses with the Lord ; he pitches his key, as he listens, to repeat some se- raphic strain ; and so to receive and com- municate is the highest reach of the human soul. It is possible that the scientific statements of our time will pass away be- fore new lights or be made trivial by a deeper discernment ; but so long as our language lasts, those real entrances of God which we call poetic will display that “ house of many mansions” in which they are practised and to whose spacious felici- ties the} T lead. There is but one edge of battle in mod- ern thought ; all other controversies are trifles to this — whether we come of the un- conscious, unalive and unaware, or of a Liv- ing One. Is self-made substance and blind essence all? Is what we call soul an ex- pression, accident, incident only of that? I resent, repudiate the conceit. But if it be so, let me go accidentally as I came, I care not how soon. I am not grateful that I exist, and there is no blasphemy in so saying, as, by supposition, there is none for me to blaspheme. Nobody’s feelings are hurt : nobody is there ! But we are not at the end. In a score of years the whole now popular form of knowledge may change. God may show His face again, but He will not do it through a development theory. My friends, He has not withdrawn from us the light of His countenance. But that religion may be a power, there must be some common con- fession or church. Emerson feared the ex- cesses of radicalism, and went to meeting regularly in his last days. I count it a spiritual ascent in him, and not an intel- lectual decline. To Emerson’s school of character who would not belong ! Did any one know him and not take a lesson in nobility? What rebuke did envy need but from his look? No courtesy to others but he owed to himself! Could manners finer than his bloom on the genealogic tree of earls and kings? His tongue tuned every other; Ion : A Monody, 57 his presence ranked all companies. “Where Macdonald sils is the head of the table.” It was not to boast, but to bow. Emerson was one of those with the power of draw- ing from the upper atmosphere, occupied by the Unseen from whom such as he are but bj r flesh detained. Only this fellowship, surmised, hoped for and enjoj'ed, makes it worth while to exist at all. “ If there be gods, it is good to live ; if there be none, it is pleasant to die.” ION : A BY MR. MONODY. ALCOTT. I. \7Hf, oh, ye willows, and ye pastures bare, ’ ’ Why will ye thus your blooms so late delay? Wrap iu chill weeds the sere and sullen day And cheerless greet me wandering in despair. Tell me, ah, tell me ! Ye of old could tell Whither my vanished Ion now doth fare — Say, have ye seen him lately pass this way, Ye who his wonted haunts did know full well? Heard ye his voice forth from the thicket swell, Where midst the drooping ferns he loved to stray? Caught ye no glimpses of my truant there? Tell me, oh, tell me, whither he hath flown — Beloved Ion flown, and left ye sad and lone, Whilst I through wood and field his loss bemoan. II. Early through field and wood each Spring we sped, Young Ion leading o’er the reedy pass; How fleet his footsteps and how sure his tread ! His converse deep and weighty ; — where, alas ! Like force of thought with subtlest beauty wed ! The bee and bird and flower, the pile of grass, The lore of stars, the azure sky o’erhead, The eye’s warm glance, the Fates of love and dread, — All mirrored were in his prismatic glass ; For endless Being’s myriad-minded race Had in his thought their registry and place, — Bright with intelligence, or drugged with sleep, Hid in dark cave, aloft on mountain steep, In seas immersed, ensouled in starry keep. III. Now echo answers lone from cliff and brake, Where we in Springtime sauntering loved to go, — Or to the mossy bank beyond the lake, On its green plushes oft ourselves did throw : There from the sparkling wave our thirst to slake, Dipped in the spring that bubbled up below Ton : A. Monody. Our hands for cups, and did with glee partake. Next to the Hermit’s cell our way we make Where sprightly talk doth hold the morning late. Departed now : ah, Ilylas, too, is gone ! Hylas, dear Ion’s friend and mine, — I all alone, Alone am left by unrelenting fate, Vanished my loved ones all, — the good, the great. Why am I spared? Why left disconsolate? IV. Slow winds our Indian stream through meadows green, By bending willows, tangled fen and brake, Smooth field and farmstead doth its flow forsake : ’Twas in far woodpaths Ion, too, was seen, But oftenest found at Walden’s emerald lake, (The murmuring pines inverted in its sheen,) There in his skiff he rippling rhymes did make, Its answering shore echoing the verse between. Full-voiced the meaning of the wizard song, Far wood and wave and shore with kindred will, Strophe, antistrophe, in turn prolong: — Now wave and shore and wood are mute and still, Ion, melodious bard, hath dropt his quill, His harp is silent and his voice is still. V. Blameless was Ion, beautiful to see, With native genius, with rich gifts endowed, He might of his descent be nobly proud, Yet meekly tempered was, spake modestly, Nor sought the plaudits of the noisy crowd When duty called him in the thick to be. His life flowed calmly clear, not hoarse nor loud ; He wearied not of immortality, Nor like Tithonus begged a time-spun shroud, But life-long drank at fountains of pure truth, The seer unsated of eternal youth. ’Tis not for Ion’s sake these tears I shed. ’Tis for the Age he nursed, his genius fed — Ion immortal is ; he is not dead. VI. Did e’en the Ionian bard, Maonides, Blind minstrel wandering out of Asia’s night, The Iliad of Troy’s loves and rivalries, (In strains forever tuneful to recite,) His raptured listeners the more delight? Or dropt learned Plato ’neath his olive trees, More star-bright wisdom in the world’s full sight, Well garnered in familiar colloquies, Than did our harvester in fields of light ; Nor spoke more charmingly young Charmides, Than our glad rhapsodist in his far flight Across the continents, both new and old ; His tale to studious thousands thus he tokl In summer’s solstice and midwinter’s cold. Ion: A Monody. 59 VII. Shall from the shades another Orpheus rise Sweeping with venturous hand the vocal string? Kindle glad raptures, visions of surprise, And wake to ecstasy each slumberous thing ? Flash life and thought anew in wondering eyes, As when our seer transcendent, sweet, and wise, World-Wide his native melodies did sing, Flushed with fair hopes and ancient memories? Ah, no! his matchless lyre must silent lie. None hath the vanished minstrel’s wondrous skill To touch that instrument with art and will. With him winged Poesy doth droop and die, While our dull age, left voiceless, with sad eye Follows his flight to groves of song on High. VIII. Come, then, Mnemosyne, and on me wait As if for Ion’s harp thou gav’st thine own, Recall the memories of man’s ancient state, Ere to this low orb had his form dropt down, Clothed in the cerements of his chosen fate Oblivious here of heavenly glories flown; Lapsed from the high, the fair, the blest of late, Unknowing these, and by himself unknown : — Lo ! Ion unfallen from his lordly prime, Paused, in his passing flight, and, giving ear To heedless sojourners in weary time, Sang his full song of hope and lofty cheer, Aroused them from dull sleep, from grizly fear, And toward the stars their faces did uprear. IX. Why didst thou haste away, ere yet the green Enamelled meadow, the sequestered dell, The blossoming orchard, leafy grove were seen In the sweet season thou liadst sung so well? Why cast this shadow o’er the vernal scene ? No more its rustic charms of that may tell And so content us with their simple mien : — Was it that memory’s unrelinquished spell (Ere men had stumbled here amid the tombs,) Revived for thee that Spring’s perennial blooms, Those cloud-capped alcoves where we once did dwell? Translated wast thou in some rapturous dream ? Our once familiar faces strange must seem Whilst from thine own celestial smiles did stream ! X. I tread the marble leading to his door, (Allowed the freedom of a chosen friend,) He greets me not as was his wont before, The Fates within frown on me as of yore. Emerson as a Poet. 60 Could ye not once your offices suspend? Had Atropos her severing shears forbore, Or Clot ho stooped the sundered thread to mend! Yet why dear Ion’s destiny deplore? What more had envious time himself to give? Ilis fame had reached the ocean’s farthest shore. Why prisoned here should Ion longer live? The questioning Spliynx declared him void of blame; For wiser answer none could ever frame; Beyond all time survives his mighty name. XI. Now pillowed near loved Ilylas’ lowly bed, Beneath our aged oaks and sighing pines, Pale Ion rests awhile his laurelled head; (How sweet his slumber as he there reclines!) Why weep for Ion here? He is not dead, Nought of him Personal that mound confines ; The hues ethereal of the morning red This clod embraces never, nor enshrines. Away the mourning multitude hath sped, And round us closes fast the gathering night. As from the drowsy dell the sun declines, Ion hath vanished from our clouded sight. But on the morrow, with the budding May, A-field goes Ion, at first flush of day, Across the pastures on his dewy way. EMERSON AS A POET. BY JOEL BENTON. 1 A FTER Mr. Alcott finished, Mr. San- born introduced the Rev. George W. Cooke, who read a paper upon “Emerson as a Poet,” written by Mr. Joel. Benton of Ameuia, N. Y., who was necessarily ab- sent. Onl}' a portion of the essay was read, but it will be produced entirely in 1 Joel Benton was born in Amenia, Dutchess County, New York, where he now lives. He fitted for college at Amenia Seminary, but ill health prevented liis taking a college course. He was editor of the Amenia “Times” when nineteen years of age, and at intervals has filled that position for thirteen years in all. He has been prominent in politics, and was a strong supporter of Mr. Greeley in the presidential campaign of 1872. He has been a constant contributor to periodicals, and the “ Literary World ” says of him: “Among our minor poets he occupies an en- viable place. His prose contributions to the magazines and weekly journals have been welcomed and widely read. His poetical tribute to Mercedes which appeared in the ‘Inter- national Review * elicited an autograph letter of thanks from book form. An abstract is given below. In the essay the author assigns Emerson a very high rank, not only among the poets of his own time, but among those of all time. He does not think a poet can be perfectly described or limited by his adher- ence to or dissent from academical rules. Alfonso.” In late years he has heen a contributor to the “ Galaxy,” the “ Independent,” the “ Christian Union,” and “ Scribner’s Magazine.” The article above quoted also says : “ Mr. Benton belongs to the Concord school of writers, Emerson being a sort of immediate poetical ancestor, while in his choice of prose themes Thoreau is suggested. His style is notable for its clearness and polish, and in this re- spect suggests Matthew Arnold more than Thoreau.” Mr. Benton contributes to nearly all the departments of the modern newspaper, and to periodicals that have a special field. His oriental and anecdotal poems are especially numerous, and very many of his pieces have appeared in book collections, and very widely through the press. Emerson as a Poet. He makes in a measure his own way and form. Mr. Benton quoted, on this point, Emerson’s lines where he says : “ I hold it of little matter Whether your jewel be of pure water, A rose diamond or a white, But whether it dazzle me with light.” Landor says, in his “Imaginary Con- versations,” that “ a rib of Shakespeare would have made Milton ; the same por- tion of Milton, all poets born ever since.” Something of this largeness and inten- sity — this supremacy of genius — be- longs to Emerson. So dense and pervad- ing is his peculiar and individual force, that it might, if properly distributed, be made to equip and light a literary con- stellation. We must go back to Shakes- peare and Milton among English names to find an equally enormous endowment. But this is not so much an assertion of his versatility as of his altitude. The author said : Among his contemporaries we may have, to be sure, notable men of a more composite order, but no personality at once so compact, so essence-like, so opu- lent, so strong. One need not go far, of course, to see why Emerson’s poetry is not accepted and popular in the waj' that Longfellow’s or Whittier’s is ; for he does not aim to me- diate to the average mind and will not address the careless and irresolute thought. He shuns the dramatic form, omits the shining thread of narrative, and cannot stoop to tickle an ephemeral and idle fancy. His lack of recognition as a poet is, after all, curious ; and it will not do to say that this is all owing to his depth and ob- seu rity, for Browning is even more subtle and complex, and yet a whole body of literary criticism either endows him with praise, or wdth the most complimentary fault-finding. But we must remark a difference even in opacities. Emerson’s dimness seems more directly a necessary incident, and 6 1 less an invention. It is not so wilful- appearing as the English poet’s. If he exploits new idioms in his speech, he is not so full of incessant syntactical con- tortions ; nor is there such a conglomera- tion of broken sentences gluing together fragments of thought which he begins to utter and then drops, as Browning uses, leaving you to pursue your way out of darkness into light as best you may. Em- erson’s opacity relates more reasonably to the magnitude of his thought. Apart from it all, however, he has abun- dant fluid beauty, which ought to be fa- miliar aiid accessible to any reader to whom the best of poetry has anything to offer. He uses “thunder words,” as the German phrase puts it, which fill with lightning all the circuits of the sk}' ; but they are there for a purpose. Oftener than anything, I suspect, which troubles the average mind that approaches this incomparably fine body of verse, is its unremitting, tremen- dous coudensation of thought. If Emer- son were to touch a trifle, the blow would be delivered with the weight of a trip-ham- mer ; yet, as that instrument is sometimes successfully used to crack a walnut, so his reserve force, alwa3's apparent and dominant, gives weight to the most airy expression. One can best understand the nature of Emerson’s poetry bj 1 noticing the perspec- tive he employs. He says in “Merlin” (and further extracts are applicable) : “ The trivial harp will never please Or fill my craving ear; Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, Full, peremptory, clear. No jingling serenader’s art, No tinkle of piano’s strings Can make the wild blood start In its mystic springs.” Emerson is poetically related to Hafiz and Firdusi, and the Oriental muse. He not onl}’ takes an Oriental freedom in his measures ; he employs, as the Asiatic bards do, all the machinery of subtle, 62 j Reminiscences. unexpected, and fantastic conceit. His sensitive harp catches in the air man|| tones. You find echoes of Marlowe, Chapman, Milton, Marvell, Herbert, Her- rick and Donne, and of all schools, chords which go round the world and through the centuries ; and notably that rich, that prodigal, luxurious and quintessential attar which Hows from the realm of the rising sun. I am perpetually impressed with the high majesty and solemnity of Emerson’s muse. If it touches anything trivial or commonplace, it does not leave it so. “ When we speak of the poet in any high sense,” he says himself, “we are drawn to such examples as Zoroaster and Plato, St. John and Menu, with their moral burdens.” Our delight in Emerson springs from his altitude of vision. No writer I know of soars so high. A proverb-like fullness, magnetic force, perpetual surprise, charac- terize his writing. The ZEolian harp and the pine-tree fitly express his genius. Emerson’s poetry is alive with moral pur- port and motive. He never revels in art for art’s sake. His poetry is the mouth- piece of the moral sentiment, the breath of the “oversoul.” Emerson reports the correspondence between the soul and mate- rial things. He reminds one of Sweden- borg, or, again, of Wordsworth. The sea and the mountains spoke to him. He con- stantly surprises us by crowding unex- pected meaning into his words. If we speak of his mode of composition, with what pure selection he chooses every word. His whole lifetime has gone into the making of a few volumes ; but what wit and strength and beauty and eloquence they uphold ! What a supreme, audacious splendor ! In all that Emerson offers — in the prose no less than the poetry — you find a con- stant relation to the breadth of some endless horizon. Each line is an arrow, swept across, or into the centre of the universe ; and it is not a common divinity that has drawn the bow. The stimulus and inspiration which inhere in Emerson’s words are matchless. Their melody is not only unique but supreme — “ a melody born of melody, Which melts the world into a sea; Toil could never compass it, Art its height could never hit, It came never out of wit.” [The foregoing gives but a partial view of Mr. Benton’s essay, the largest part of which will not readily enter into a brief synopsis. Mingled with the argument were a multitude of illustrations, some of which contain lines from Emerson not to be found in his published books ; and one of which has never been printed in any form whatever, and was given to Mr. Benton, many years ago, by Mr. Emerson himself.] REMINISCENCES. BY MRS. JOI.IA WARD HOWE. T FIRST remember Emerson as the au- thor of “Nature.” When I first saw the little book, which had no external at- tractions, I thought nothing of it ; I said to myself, “ Here is some American preten- der. Have we not the great thinkers in Eng- land and can we rival them in America?” I next heard of Emerson apart from his book. 1 heard him spoken of as a heretic, a man nobody could understand. I thought him an irreligious man. At a later day I was introduced to him by a Boston friend, but shrank from the acquaintance. I next saw him in a waiting-place where all of us Dialectic Unity in Emerson' s Prose Writings. 6 . 3 , were shivering with the cold. In the com- pany was a child two years old, whom he put on his shoulders and presented to me, saying in his original way, “This is a young traveller.” The steamer we were to take was belated and we had most of our journey by da3 T . Mr. Emerson sought me out. I was charmed by his manner, but still I thought that he was only a more charming personation of Satan in the world than I had before seen. He asked me if I knew Margaret Fuller. I told him I thought her an ugly person. He then dwelt upon her mind and conver- sation. I was still impressed b3 r what he said and the sweetness of his manner of sa3’ing it. I next heard him deliver one of his lectures, and the voice and words brought their own explanation. I then understood how a man’s previous reputation may fail to explain him to the public. He was uni- versally laughed at then in high society', and it is not pleasant to remember that ridicule now. I was pleased to hear him called Christ-like by Dr. Bartol. He had a look of power that did not show itself in the garb of power. Who can give us that that look of inward meaning again ? Even in his serenity, what a charm ! He had genuine honesty’ of speech. Had he been St. Peter, so just was he that he would have administered exact justice at the gate of heaven, and if he had not liked the company he had admitted there, he would have escaped to a heaven of his own. Mr. Emerson has given us sunshine. Once, very weary, after a long western journey, and going to a cheerless hotel at an earl3 r morning hour, the only refuge from weariness I could find was a stray volume of his that happened to be at hand, and then I was truly’ warmed and fed by him. He had power to take peo- ple into realms of thought and life. It is a pleasant thing that most of us have seen and known him, but to others who have not, the legacy of his thought will be per- manent. The lessons he taught will be kept and understood and appreciated more and more. DIALECTIC UNITY IN EMERSON’S PROSE WRITINGS. BY DR. HARRIS. [First of the afternoon exercises was Dr. Harris’s paper upon the “ Dialectic Unity in Emerson’s Prose Writings.”] OPEAKING of the complaint that Em- ^ erson’s essay’s lack unity, that the sentences could be read in airy other order as well as that in which they are printed, Dr. Harris said that in the prose essay’ we cannot expect organic unity’, but we may expect rhetorical unity and logical unity. There need be no formal syllo- gisms; the closest unity of the logical kind is the dialectic unity’ that begins with the simplest and most obvious phase of the subject, and discovers by’ investiga- tion the next phase that naturally follows. It is an unfolding of the subject according to its natural growth in experience. Em- erson has furnished us many very wonder- ful examples of dialectic treatment of his subject. But lie has been very' careful to avoid the show of ratiocination and the parade of proof-making. The object of his writing was to present truth, and to pro- duce insight, and not to make proselytes. Dialectic Unity in Emerson's Prose, Writings. 64 The student of literature who wishes to learn the dialectic art, and, at the same time, to become acquainted with the gene- sis of Emerson’s view T of the world, should study the essay on “ Experience ” in the second series of essays. In this wonder- ful piece of writing we have a compend of his insights into life and nature arranged in dialectic order. Master his treatment of the topics and you will discover what constitute real steps of progress in experi- ence, and at the same time you will learn how T the first grows into the second, and that into the next, and so on to the high- est view of the world that he has attained, or to the final view reached by men of deepest insight, called seers. He names these steps or stadia in experience, illu- sion, temperament, succession, surface, surprise, reality and subjectiveness. The first phase of experience, according to him, brings us to the consciousness of illusion. This is a great step. At the first start in culture, long since begun even among the lowest savages, there appears the conviction that there is more in things than appears at first sight. Things are fragments of larger things ; facts are frag- ments of larger facts. Things escape us, and thus “dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be manj’-colored lenses which paint the world their ow r n hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.” What experience comes next after this one of illusion ? Evidently the perception of conditioning circum- stance, the perception of fate or external influence, which may be called tempera- ment. Structure or temperament “ pre- vails over everything of time, place and condition, and is inconsumable in the flames of religion.” When experience has exhausted the view of temperament it finds that it has learned the necessity of succession in objects. Temperament is no finality, for it produces no ultimate state or condition, but succeeds only in making a transitory impression. We pass out of this stadium of experience and enter on the theory of the world that sees change and succession according to some law or other. We look now for that law. When we see the law we shall understand the order of sequence, and can map out the orbit of life and things. This view of the necessary order of sequence is a view of the whole, and hence a view of the fixed and stable. Emerson calls the view of the law of chaiige “ surface,” as if the seeing of a line as a whole were the seeing of a sur- face. We think today that we have taken in all the metamorphoses of the object of investigation, but tomorrow r we discover new ones and have to enlarge our descrip- tion. “Surface” expands and we make new theories of the law. Emerson calls the next form of experience “ surprise,” because it begins with the insight made in some high moment of life, when for the first time one gets a glimpse of the form of the whole. The whole does not admit of such predicates as w 7 e apply to the part or fragment. The dependent has one law, and the independent has another. The dependent presupposes something, it is a relative existence, and its being is in another. The independent is self-con- tained, self-active, self-determined, causa, sui. By these moments of “ surprise,” therefore, we ascend to a new plane of experience, no longer haunted by those dismal spectres of illusion, temperament, change and surface, or mechanic, fixed laws. Things are not fragments of a vast machine, nor are men links in a cosmic process that first develops and then crushes them. Things do not exist in succession, as it before seemed to us, but the true, real existence that we have found is always the same. We enter through the mo- ments of surprise into the realms of in- sight into reality. Hence reality is Emer- son’s sixth category of experience. “ By Dialectic Unity in Emerson's Prose Writings. 6 5 persisting to read or to think, this region gives further sign of itself, as it were, in flashes of light, in sudden discoveries of its profound beauty and repose, as if the clouds that covered it parted at intervals and showed the approaching traveller the inland mountains, with the tranquil eter- nal meadows spread at their base, whereon flocks graze and shepherds pipe and dance.” One more step experience takes — it identifies the deepest reality as of one nature with itself. The absolute is mind. Emerson names this step of insight “ sub- jectiveness,” because in it we arrive at the conviction that the absolute is subject and not merely unconscious law or power. At this highest point of experience we reach the station of the seer, the culmination of human experience. The seer as phi- losopher sees the highest principle to be reason ; the poet sees the world to be the expression of reason ; the prophet and law-giver see reason as the authoritative, regulative' principle of life ; the hero sees reason as a concrete guiding force in society. In a certain sense many others of Emerson's writings are expansions and confirmations of some one of these phases of experience. The essaj r on ‘"The Over-Soul” treats of succession, surface, and reality, under other names ; that on Spiritual Laws, on reality and subjectiveness ; that on Fate treats of temperament and succession ; those on Worship, History, Gifts, Hero- ism, Love, and such titles, treat of sub- jectiveness. His treatises on concrete themes use these insights perpetually as solvent principles — but always with fresh statement and new resources of poetic expression. There is nowhere in all liter- ature such sustained flight toward the sun — “a flight,” as Plotinus calls it, “ of the alone to the Alone ” — as that in “ The Over-Soul,” wherein Emerson, throughout a long essay, unfolds the insights, briefly and adequately explained under the topic of “surprise” in the essay on Experience. It would seem as if each paragraph stated the ideas of the whole and then again that each sentence in each paragraph reflected entire the same idea. In those essays in which Emerson has celebrated this doctrine of the highest reality and its subjectivity or rational na- ture, its revelation to us, he writes in a style elevated above dialectic unity and uses a higher form of unity — that of ab- solute identity. To give one specimen of this Dr. Harris offered a very short analy- sis of the contents of the essay on “ The Over-Soul.” He saj-s in substance that man has some moments in his life when he sees deeply into reality ; what he sees then has authority over the other parts of his life. He sees principles of justice, love, freedom and power, — attributes of God. This seeing is the common element in all minds, and transcendent of the limi- tations of particular individuals. Just as events flow down from a hidden source, so these ideas and insights descend into the mind. He calls this the “ over-soul,” a “ unity within which every man’s being is contained and made one with every other. Although we live in division and succession, and see the world piece by piece, yet the soul is the whole, and this is the highest law.” These glimpses of the eternal verity come on occasions of conversation, reverie, remorse, dreams and times of passion. We learn that the soul is not an organ, but that which animates all organs ; not a faculty, but a light, and the master of the intellect and will. Indi- vidual man is only the organ of the soul. These deeps of the spiritual nature are ac- cessible to all men at some time. The sov- ereignty of the over-soul is shown by its independence of all limitation. Time, space and circumstance do not change its attributes. Its presence does not make a progress measurable by time, but it pro- 66 Reminiscences and Eulogy. duces metamorphoses causing us to ascend from one plane of experience to the next, — as great a change as from egg to worm, or from worm to fly. Society and institu- tions reveal this common nature, or the higher person or impersonal One ; for, in order to prevent the confusion of attrib- uting to the over-soul the passions and imperfections of human personality, Em- erson sometimes speaks of Him as imper- sonal (using Cousin’s expression) . The thought of the revelation of the soul in man and nature is the idea that forms the unit}' of all that Emerson has written, whether it be in an essay like “ The Over- Soul,” or in historical and critical studies like “English Traits” and “ Representa- tive Men,” or in poems of nature like “ Monadnoc.” One will find everywhere, though under slightly^ different names, the elements of experience which are named in this sublime poem prefixed to the essay on Experience : — The lords of life, the lords of life, I saw them pass In their own guise, Like and unlike, Portly and grim, Use and surprise, Surface and dream, Succession swift and spectral wrong, Temperament without a tongue, And the inventor of the game, Omnipresent without name; Some to see, some to be guessed, They marched from east to west ; Little man, least of all, Among the legs of his guardians tall, Walked about with puzzled look. Him by the hand dear Nature took, Dearest Nature, strong and kind, Whispered : “ Darling, never mind! Tomorrow they will wear another face, The founder tliou ; these are thy race ! ’ REMINISCENCE AND EULOGY . 1 BY JOHN ALBEE. nHHERE was perhaps more congruity in the presence and conversation of Emerson with the ideal one naturally formed of him than usually happens. I think this is partly the cause of the powerful impression he has made upon his contemporaries. His manner of life, the man himself, was at one with his thought ; his thought at one with its expression. There were no paradoxes, none of the supposed weaknesses of genius, to wonder at or to be forgiven and forgotten. He spoke of Nature not as an elegant ornament of his pages, but because he lived near to her. In meeting him, the disappointments, if any there were, one found in himself. For he meas- ured men so that the}' became aware of their own state ; not oppressively, but by a flashing, inward illumination, because he placed something to their credit that could not stand the test of their own audit. After I had read in Emerson for some time I had the boldness to write to him and the good fortune to be answered. In my note I had solicited his opinion in re- gard to college education. I will quote so much of his reply as is not personal : “ To a brave soul it really seems indiffer- ent whether its tuition is in or out of col- lege. And yet I confess to a strong bias in favor of college. I think we cannot i TliE paper by Mr. Albec was punted in full in the “New York Tribune.' Reminiscence and Eulogy. 6 7 give ourselves too many advantages ; and he that goes to Cambridge has free the best of that kind. When he has seen their little all, he will rate it very moder- ately beside that which he brought thither. There are many things much better than a college ; an exploring expedition, if one could join it ; or the living with any great master in one’s proper art; but in the common run of opportunities and with no more than the common proportion of en- ergy in ourselves, a college is safest, from its literary tone and from the access to books it gives : mainly that it introduces you to the best of your contemporaries. But if you can easily come to Concord and spend an afternoon with me we could talk over the whole case by the river bank.” [In May, 1852, the year following that in which the invitation was given, the visit to Concord was made.] Thoreau w r as already there. I think that he had ended about that time his experiments at Walden Pond. Thoreau was dressed, I remember, in a plain, neat suit of dark clothes, not quite black. He had a healthy, out-of-door appearance. He was rather silent, but when he spoke it was in either a critical or witty vein. I did not know who or what he was ; and I find in my old diary of the day that I spelt his rare name phonetically, and heard afterward only that he was a man who had been a hermit. I ob- served that he seemed to feel much at home with Emerson ; and as he remained through the afternoon and evening, and I left him still at the fireside, he seemed to me to belong in some way to the house- hold. I observed also that Emersou con- tinually deferred to him and seemed to anticipate his view, preparing himself obviously for a quiet laugh at Thorenu’s invariably negative and biting criticisms ; especially in regard to education and edu- cational establishments. He was clearly fond of Thoreau ; but whether in a human way, or as an amusement, I could not then make out. I find set down in my diarj' of the day two or three things which a thousand ob- servers have remarked : that Emerson spoke in a mild, peculiar manner, justify- ing the text of Thoreau that “ you must be calm before you can utter oracles ; ” that he often hesitated for a word, but that it was the right one he waited for ; that he sometimes expressed himself mys- tically, and like a book. This meant, I suppose, that the style and subjects were novel to me, being then only used to the slang of school-boys and the magisterial manner of pedagogues. He seldom looked in the eye the person addressed, and seldom put direct questions. I fancy this was a part of his extreme delicacy of manners. As soon as I could I introduced the problem I came to propound : What course a young man must take to get the best kind of education. Emerson pleaded al- waj’s for the college ; said he entered himself at fourteen. This aroused the wrath of Thoreau, who would not allow an} T good to the college course. And here it seemed to me Emerson said things on purpose to draw Thoreau’s fire and to amuse himself. When the curriculum at Cambridge was alluded to, and Emerson casualty remarked that most of the branches were taught there, Thoreau seized one of his opportunities and replied : “ Yes, indeed, all the branches and none of the roots.” At this Emerson laughed a long time. So without conclusions, or more light than two strong men’s asser- tions can give, I heard for an hour the question I desired agitated. In his conversation with me, Emerson spoke more of men and books than of nature. He commended Adam Smith’s “Moral Sentiments;” also J. St. John’s volume on “Greek Manners and Customs.” Doubtless he conformed himself to his vis- itor and became a bit of a pedagogue. Then 68 Reminiscence and Eulogy. he talked of Chaucer with great enthusi- asm, and quoted a couplet in a tone and modulation which sounded the perfect or- gan of the lines. Of Plato I remember his saying that it was a great day in a man’s life when he first read the “ Banquet.” lie brought forth some souvenirs of men and literature ; among them a daguerre- otype of Carlyle. He spoke of his physiognomy, his heavy eyebrows and projecting base of the forehead, underset by the heavy lower jaw and lip, between which as between millstones, he said, every humbug was sure to be pulverized. The brow pierced it, the jowl crunched it! His under lip, Emerson said, Channing called “ whapper-jawed.” I asked him something about Carlyle’s manner of speech, remem- bering to have read somewhere of a pecul- iar refrain in his conversation ; then he good-naturedly imitated it for me. He said the conspicuous point in Carlyle’s stjde was his strength of statement. I amused myself iu looking over the bookcases ; and Emerson took down a vol- ume which he requested me to read and keep for a year. It was George Herbert’s poems. When I returned the book, say- ing how much I had made it my own, Emerson wrote me a welcome letter in which he said, speaking of Herbert, “ I am glad you like these old books ; or rather glad that you have “ Eyes that the beam celestial view Which evermore makes all things new.” He went on to say : “ There is a super-Cad- mean alphabet, which when one has once learned the character, he will find, as it were, secretly inscribed, look where he will, not only in books and temples, but in all waste places and in the dust of the earth. Happy he that can read it; for lie will never be lonely or thoughtless again. And yet there is a solid pleasure to find those who know and like the same thing, the authors who have recorded their inter- pretation of the legend and, better far, the living friends who read as we do, and com- pare notes with us.” George Herbert recalls to me Emerson’s remarking, in regard to the proper part of the day for study, that we must be Stoics in the morning ; that it would do to relax a little in the evening ; and his quoting in illustration a somewhat Orphic proverb from George Herbert’s “ Jacula Pruclen- tum “In the morning, mountains ; in the evening, fountains.” Besides these fragments out of the hours I spent with Emerson, I find in my memo- randa that he held a light opinion of things this side the water ; that we Americans are solemn on trifles and superficial in the weighty ; that there is no American lit- erature. Griswold says there is ; but it is his merchandise— he keeps its shop. Had Emerson also forgotten the Rev. Cotton Mather’s three hundred and eighty-two works? He said we needed some great poets, orators. He was always looking out for them, and was sure the new gener- ation of young men would contain some. Thoreau said he had found one, in the woods, but it had feathers and had not been to Harvard College. Still it had voice and an aerial inclination, which was pretty much all that was needed. “ Let us cage it,” said Emerson. “That is just the way the world always spoils its poets,” re- sponded Thoreau. Then Thoreau, as usual, had the last word. Emerson’s hope and generosity were the source of his intellectual power. Not a descent through seven generations gave it, but an ascent through the long but broken lines of loftiest genius of all ages. “Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend ; And being frank, she lends to those are free.” Since the days of Socrates no young men have been more fortunate than those who came into the circle of his influence and acquaintance. But there were others who wished to gather some marketable fruit from this elm. There were those who The Consolation, 69 wished to subsidize him to some school, part}', or sect. I think that Emerson knew his interlocutor, his man, very well. He had not packed your trunk, but he divined its contents. lie did not resist too much ; he did not waste his force in vain disputation, but obeyed the Greek verse : “ When to be wise is all in vain, be not wise at all and I have heard of him going to bed to escape argument. He punished the West- ern men who pressed him too hard with question and objection, by reporting that the St. Louis logicians rolled him in the mud ! He knew his man well. His kindness and tact were never at fault. Some one has related that calling on him, he fumbled about his room for — a ripe pear ! Well, he understood when to proffer pears and when ideas. The Pythian oracle was am- biguous when the suppliant came upon a trivial errand. When men came only to have their fortunes told, or to know how their peddling would prosper, the response became confused and diminished. it did not know what to say. Then men accused it of obscurity and prevarication. They silenced what should have silenced them. Emerson refused to dogmatize about what is necessarily obscure at present. So some thought him on that account obscure. To all that man has achieved, and to all man’s hopes, he was vividly responsive, and maintained no doubtful station. In poetry and nature, wherein he was great- est, it is to be considered that the most per- fect imaginative expression is so identified with objects themselves as necessarily to share in their mystery, and to be capa- ble of their own manifold interpretation. He discovered a new method of thinking about man and nature ; he endeavored to report what they said to him in their inmost being. Others have used them as symbols of life ; he tried to penetrate the symbol itself. This gave an elevation to his st}ie, so that error was glad to be vanquished by such a serene voice, and fell down without noise or commotion. “A gentle death did Falsehood die, Shot thro’ and thro’ with cunning words.” THE CONSOLATION. BY MRS. MARTHA P. LOWE. 1 rj^lIE world is very lonely now That our dear sage has gone away, We cannot, in our grief see how It is worth while for us to stay; Yet this, our poet-preacher would not say. 1 Martha A. Perry was born in Keene, N. H., Nov. 21, 1829. She spent her childhood in Keene, and afterward was sent for education to the school of Mrs. Charles Sedg- wick at Lenox, Mass., and then to Boston. At the age of nineteen she spent a winter in the West Indies, and later, passed a winter in Spain with her brother, Mr. H. J. Perry, then secretary of legation to Spain. On Sept. 16, 1857, she was married to the Rev. Charles Lowe, a prom- inent preacher and leader in the Unitarian denomination. A year after her marriage she published a small volume of poems called “ The Olive and the Pine,” being scenes in Spain and New England. A few years later she published another volume called “Love in Spain, and Other Poems.” She went a second time to Europe, and, after the death of her husband, she was placed on the editorial staff of the “ Unitarian Review,” a periodical established by Mr. Lowe. She has continued to work in this department, and also to furnish prose and verse for various journals and magazines. The last year, she published a little illustrated book called the “ Story of Chief Joseph,” being a poetic version of that chief’s story as told by himself, and reported by Bishop Hare in the “North American Review.” Emerson as a Philosopher. But every true and loyal soul Is setting sail for happier zone, And we have left us here the whole Wide empty earth, to call our own; With God, he says, we cannot be alone. llis spirit, delicate and fine, Was blended with the heart of things In rhythmic harmony divine, Which from the fount of nature springs, And so again to those who hear he sings. For he was with the heavenly powers, While he abode with us below, And, though we fondly called him ours, We knew not whither he would go, Nor half the mysteries he learned to know. He seemed a shining part of all The starry realms of space above, And yet in homage he did fall Before this lower sphere of love; He soared afar, but came back like the dove. So he will find this dwelling-place, Even now that they have claimed him there, And wear the morning on his face, A presence from the upper air, As soft as sunbeams, and as light as prayer. EMERSON AS A PHILOSOPHER. BY ALEXANDER WILDER, M.D. 1 A GREAT writer, one of the world’s seers, has demanded: “Is life in us, or are we in life?” The answer de- lines our errand here today. If life is simply in us, then Emerson has indeed gone, ceasing to be with us ; but if we all are in life, he is here still, and we are rather exchanging our felicitations than seeking to preserve a memorial. Unlike the others who have spoken, I did not know Emerson. I am not pre- pared, therefore, to speak in elegy or eulogy. I did not enjoy his personal acquaintance, never took him by the hand, never saw a word traced by his pen, never received any word of commendation, en- couragement or benediction from him. When I knew Emerson it was in the 1 Alexander Wilder, M.D., was Lorn at Verona, N. Y., Repository ” and New York “Evening Post” from 1858-71, May 13, 1823. He was for some years a teacher; was also to the “ Medical Review ” and “ Medical Eclectic ” and editor of the Syracuse "Star” in 1852 and of the “Jour- was president of the Eclectic Medical Society of New nal ” in 1853; was in the New York State Department of York in 1809-70. He is now Professor of Psychological Public Instruction in 1854-5; editor of the New York Science in the United States Medical College in New York “ Teacher” in 1855; of the “ College Review ” in 1856; was city, and is author of numerous papers on metaphysical a contributor to the “Anglo-American,” “New Church and mythological subjects. Emerson as a Philosopher. 7i Foreworlcl, where we all in common par- ticipate in the knowledge of the Infinite. Never did he whollj’ leave that region. But little of him was ever fixed to the body, or even to that countenance so familiar to J'ou, so beloved by all who are now present. That great transcendent spirit reached out — extended; was even back beyond genesis and the changeable, among the fire-breathing, eternal stars. It had no lapse or departure away from its God. We do not dismiss him thither. He rnerety ceases to tenant a house of earth ; but, meanwhile, he is present and abiding here, a spirit mingled with us. It was said that he who invokes Brahma in sacred chant has Brahma at that very moment responding in him. So those here to honor Emerson are acting and speaking with Emerson’s voice and in- spiration. I remember well wdien I first heard his name. It was when I had just begun to cherish a faith which no formulated credo expressed, seeking to apprehend the Unit3' beyond diversity, and the divine sonship which overleaped the limits of religious bond-service. In an eager moment, I was listening to a conversation between two persons, older and more skilled in that culture for which New England affords opportunity. They were speaking of Car- lyle. I had read a little of his story of Kobespierre, the Gironde, and the French Revolution. One of the speakers, a lady, suggested that Mr. Emerson was imitating Carlyle. I have read both, since that time. It may seem from the title that “ Heroes and Hero-Worship” had been copied in the “Representative Men.” Yeti am at a loss how to trace the rugged Norse utter- ances, at times almost grotesque, of the Scotchman, in the careful Grecian sen- tences, with their glorious cadences, of the New England philosopher. I admire both these men, as we admire the rugged pioneer who hews down the forests and subdues the soil, and with him also the refined horticulturist who comes after and con- verts that soil into a garden abounding with every beauty, the fruit in its season after the gorgeous flowers. If I am to praise Emerson, I can do it no better than by comparisons which he has already suggested. In his inimitable description of Plato he has represented the great philosopher as having collected and included in himself all the former wisdom of the world — the lore of Eleatic and Italian, the cunning knowledges of the priests and hierophants of Egypt, and the Cyclopean Rephaites of Idumea and Pales- tine, the thaumaturgic skill of ancient Babel and Shekel Minar, and the divinest inspirations of the Farthest East. Plato, he says, embodied all these in his own idea, and rendered them into a language and form of speech which Europe could understand and receive as a wisdom and science of its own. Since that daj T , all who think are more or less the followers of the Great Sage of the Akademe. This is a description which well fits Emerson himself. Of those who read Plato, few understand him. The true Platonist reads between the lines, and takes cognition of the arcane sense which is often purposely hidden from the sciolist and profane. Thus did Emerson. Then, again following the great Master, he moved away the rubbish which had laeen accumulated and gave us our Platonic Lessons in our own language and with the surroundings of the Nine- teenth Century. Thus he made it prac- ticable for neophytes to learn of the diviner Wisdom : aye, and for you to establish here in Concord — the place where hearts are at one — the School of Philosophy, a worthy reminder of the old cloister where Socrates was represented as discoursing to the young men of Athens. I hope m3' comparison is not too ob- scure to be comprehended, for I wish to extend it a little further. One of Plato’s interlocutors compares the discourse to a Dithyramb, — to a sacred chant with mys- Reminiscences. tic import, such as worshippers employed at the Mysteries. Does not Emerson de- serve a like testimony’? He embodied the Old Wisdom, — or Philosophy, if we must so call it, — in a diction which tempts collectors to place his works in private and public libraries, as belonging to the imperishable classics of the English tongue. We need not stumble over the hard-got, un-Anglican books of Thomas Taylor, whose language often obscures what he would saj - , now that we have the eloquent utterances of Emerson, so easily procur- able and so fascinating. This work has made his name immortal. I do not ask or care whether he was “ original.” I have often noticed that writers who were realty the most original were the best reporters and utterers of other persons’ inspired words — not imitators, but rein- carnations. This Plato of America was the most original of our authors, and among the very wisest. It is because he uttered his lessons so well, and enforced them by living them, that we are here today at Concord, with hearts moving to- gether, to commemorate him ; I trust to embody in ourselves what he so eloquentty wrote, and thus to do honor to his name. REMINISCENCES. MRS. EDNAH DOW CHENEY . 1 TT seems to me that those of us who heard what Mrs. Howe said, must agree that the age owes a sacred debt to the coming generation to preserve for it, as far as possible, the influence and the mem- ory of the wonderful life that has been lived among us. As we look back over forty j'ears, to the time when I can remem- ber Mr. Emerson as the strongest, most spiritual, and most intellectual influence of my life, and know wdiat he rvas to me, and what he was to every hungry, earnest and true heart which came near him, I feel a sense of pity and responsi- bility to all young people who are grow- ing up, who cannot know him as we knew 1 Ednah Dow Littleliale was born in Boston, June 27, 3824, and married Seth W. Cheney, the well-known artist, May 39, 1853, who died Sept. 10, 1856. Her published works include “Faithful to the Light,” “ Sally Williams,” and “Child of the Tide,” — all of which are stories for young people, — also “Gleanings in the Fields of Art” (most of the chapters being in substance lectures delivered at the School of Philosophy), “Memoirs of Susan Dimock, M.D.,” a memorial of Seth W. Cheney, and the article on him ; who cannot hear that voice which pen- etrated so to the very portals of the soul ; who cannot look into those eyes, which always seemed to look into infinity and eternity. Though that life has been lived here among us, in the midst of us all, yet there has never been breathed upon it a spot of blame. There is no tarnish on it. I regret very much that you could not have heard today the eloquent words of Mr. James, such as he used to speak while Mr. Emerson was living. I wish you could have heard what I suppose he would have spoken, for, although not agreeing with him in many points of doctrine, yet he recognized Mr. Emerson as a representa- Women of Boston in the Memorial History of Boston. She was one of the founders of the New Engl: n 1 Hos- pital for Women and Children, and has been secretary of it for twenty years. For about ten years she was engaged on the Teachers’ Committee of the New England Freed- man’s Aid Society. She is a leading member of the New England Women’s Club, and is an officer of the Free Re- ligious Association, of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Society and of the School Suffrage Association. Reminiscences. 73 live, unfallen man; a man inspired with earnestness and purity, tempered with wis- dom, sanity, strength and manhood. One of his most remarkable qualities, that quality of temperance, of moderation com- bined with enthusiasm and power, was one great charm and power, which he preserved always the same. He was ever the same to us. Those who sat at his feet once really sat there all their lives. As the prophet, when he came down from the mountains, having been fed by the birds of God, lived in the strength of that meat forty days, so those who had really eaten of that feast which he furnished us, could live in its strength all their lives. That temperance, that common sense which never allowed him to be extravagant, never allowed him to pass beyond the bounds of moderation, reason and sanity, was one cause why we can never fail to find wis- dom in his words, and health and strength in his acts. His bearing in the anti-slavery cause has been spoken of today. He published years ago a lecture on slavery, in the darkest hours of the struggle. He spoke then from the highest point of view — that of the right of every man to free- dom. Yet he said also: “I must not disdain to say to the slaveholder that his cotton and his sugar will be safe even when the slave is free.” It seems to me this truth has not been sufficiently recognized — that he did not despise the common things of life. He did not refrain from using all those arguments which would be worthy of his cause. He came down from his high plane of poetry and philosophy to use statistics, to use any lawful argument by which he might win in the great cause of anti-slavery. And, al- though many fancied that his life was one of mere thought, — mere poetry and philos- ophy, — yet there never has been a single good cause or a single battle that we have struggled through in these years, in which his voice has not sounded like a trumpet, while he was in the van, the bravest and purest of leaders, working in liis own way, but working earnestly. One of his most remarkable addresses was at the time when Sumner was stricken down by the South- ron Brooks. At that time Mr. Emerson came to a meeting held in Boston, and he spoke of the outrage in such words as changed the whole aspect of the case. The man who struck him down, he said, was only, as it were, an accident of mere brute force. The man Sumner, the patriot, would rise above it all, — and he showed how even that brutal assault was an in- cident, and that nothing could touch the immense influence of Sumner’s name or destroy his power. Mr. Emerson had even forgotten those brave words when Sumner came to die. But at a memorial Southern meeting the words were brought forward which Emerson had forgotten. In South Carolina a colored man had remembered them as they were reported in the news- papers of the time, and he told how they had been an inspiration and a streugth to him ever afterward. One thing that has given him such a constant and persistent influence is that he did not rest in dogmas. It has been questioned whether he believed in imtnor- talitj*. He did not speak about it; he lived in it. We do not talk about our homes, the shelter of the mother’s arms and the father’s love which has surrounded us all our lives. We live in them and grow strong in that love and protection. So he believed in immortality with his heart. Every line and every thought of his writings presuppose it, if they do not state it. Mr. Sanborn has handed me a short let- ter he wishes me to read at this point, and it endorses what I have said. Miss Sarah E. Chase of Worcester writes : “ Tlie last time I saw Emerson was in Rome, and our last conversation was on immortality. And, though I have listened to the arguments of many eminent men in the old world and the 74 The Relation between Common Sense and Philosophy. new on this subject, beside reading all I could Hud in ancient and modern literature, I found him more convincing than all others. How liis countenance glowed, as he triumphantly concluded : ‘ I am so sure that the hereafter will be so much better than the possibility of imagining that the manner does not occupy my thought, so wonderful is the goodness and wisdom of the ordering of the hour.’ ” It was here, it was now, it was in this life that, like Michael Angelo, he found immortality. So with our acquaintance with his religious thought and life, — if we could cherish those words and read them in their depth, we should find that we could not be beyond the faith and trust which his life so richly presents to us all. It was astonishing, in all these many years, to see how Emerson always had the same audience around him. The last time I heard him speak in public was in the Old South Church in Boston, w r hen entertain- ments were given there for the sake of in- creasing the fund for its preservation. Old, gray-headed men and women were there who used to listen to him in middle age, whom I had not seen in public for years. But they must come out to hear Emerson. Some of them felt that they must hear him every time they had an opportunity'. When we were young girls, nothing in our list of entertainments was to be compared with Emerson, — no party, no singing, no theatre. To hear him was pure and perfect delight. His pleasure in young men has been spoken of. His de- light in persons was one of his great joys. He noticed young men and women who lis- tened to his lectures, and came to know them before he ever spoke to them. After Mr. Alcott started the Town and Country- Club, I remember the eagerness with which he would turn and look at each speaker. Nothing was found uninteresting by him. He found something good in every one who spoke. It was that which made him so near to all and to each one. And so to every one who has lived with him, and to those who have known him so intimately', it is that which makes him so infinitely dear and so infinitely precious. When Mr. Al- cott’s poem was read, I thought of Goethe’s tribute to Schiller, and he was ours. But of Emerson we say “is,” not “was,” as Goethe does. It seems as if he were alway s in the present and future. He is with us now, and it is for us who had the blessing of his presence and influence to preserve them for those who come after us. Seventh Day, — July 24. THE RELATION BETWEEN COMMON SENSE AND PHILOSOPHY. BY I>R. rPIIE aim and sum of all human think- ing and experience is acquaintance with the contents of consciousness of every sort, the characteristics of these contents, their constitution and their relations to one another and to the thinker. In the history or process of this thinking there are three degrees or JONES. stages. The first in the order of time of these contents of consciousness is that of the sensuous image, whether physical or psychical or pneumatical, in which the thought does, not distinguish between the image and the thing imaged, — mere sen- suous perception. This knowing, more or less methodized and prudently applied, is The Relation between Common Sense and Philosophy. 75 called common sense, with common sense judgment and common sense understanding predicated of it. The second in the order of time of these contents of consciousness is that of the rational inference from the image, the stage pf inductive science, in which the image of sense is discredited as reality and the independent existence and character and definition of the object are inferred rationally and experimentally from the sensible manifestations. In this attitude and exercise of the thinker, thought dis- tinguishes between the actualit}' and the phenomenality of the world, and actualit}" is postulated as ultimate reality. These forms of the inductive science are the con- ceptions of the analytical understanding. They are thought-formed ; they are mental pictures reflected in the psychic seusorium, — so-called ideas, — forms having an actual, but no essential consistence. Here thought distinguishes between the actual and the phenomenal, but not between the actual and the actor which is the essential, the ideal. This thought is the metaphysics of the analytical understanding. The third stage in the order of time of these contents of consciousness as the ground of thought and its cognition of reality, is that of the logical order. This order of thought has its point of view in the pneumatic or spiritual corporeality. The pneumatic reflections are images of the essential, of the substantial, as the sensible and the scientifical were respec- tively reflections of the phenomenal and of the actual. Pneuma is spirit. Spirit is pure substance and essence, and like to like, only spirit can cognize spirit. The pure thought, thought seeing and knowing in the degree of spiritual and essential forms, thought cognizing the actor which acts in the actual and appears in the phe- nomenal, is the thought of the true, or true thought, the ultimate knowing of the real, of which the sensible and scientific know- ing are but scenic and dramatic, — mere aspects of the true. Dr. Jones then took up the first of these three stages of knowing, showing that in it matter is the onlj’ substance and essence and form, and hence the thought of the universe, the understanding and the beliefs must all be materialistic. But this esti- mate of the world, of the soul and of God, cannot be the fountain of the history of a great age of humanity. The stream cannot rise above its fountain. The idea and first principle of human history must be found indigenous in the primal essence and form of mind and soul. The intellect of man and the will of man constitute the human factor in all history. The entity man is the one substance and generic form of all social history, and this form is immortal and eternal. Yet the identity of the per- sonal soul abideth forever. The move- ment of humanity in temporal measures is history. Humanity is the permanent form that moves, and the processes, the actual- ities of this motion, are the variable, the different, the transient. We have no record of an age and no rational concep- tion of an age when man w r as not conscious of the world and of self and of God, and did not think and construct sciences of the world and of the soul and of God. In the clear light of truth one need not dive to the bottom to see that mankind in the different and remote ages are more akin than the novice can believe, the likeness extending even to its philosophic specula- tions. For if the discovery aud identifica- tion of the Father and Creator of all be a necessity and law r of all truly logical proc- ess and philosophic conclusion, then the theistic ideas of the race in each and any generation constitute at least an approxi- mate test of the value of their speculations. A people ignorant and uninstructed were never known or supposed to have instructed the world. On the other hand, a people whose language and literature and arts Gnosticism and Jtfeo-Platonism. 7 6 have p:\ssecl into the life of the then world, and into all subsequent ages and coun- tries, must themselves have been once the centre and power of the world. Each and every great age, or historic cycle of humanity, has its spring and rise in a divine faith, and every faith divine has its root in the incarnation and oracles of divinity ; and without this quickening the earth yieldeth not her treasures, nor is human society founded and constituted. This splendid and magnificent glory, this stupendous scene of human society, with all its sciences and arts, rural, mechani- cal and liberal, this incomprehensible and amazing concentration of all that is most perfect in art, adapted in surpassing ex- cellence and unrivalled richness and splen- dor to the most powerful influences upon the manners, the tastes, the thoughts, the character of hundreds of millions of souls, daily and hourly moving in its order and beauty and use, is not previded nor pro- vided nor constituted without a divinity and a controlling divine providence, and this a divinity not hidden, unmanifest, undeclared and unconscious in the race, but divinity declared and manifest through incarnation and oracle and inspiration of the spirit. The identification of deity as the all-creating, all-containing, all-sustain- ing and all-controlling, is the first principle of philosophy and the crucial test of all philosophic systems of thought. Hereof, moreover, philosophy is arraigned to an- swer, not what think we of some abstract principle, formulated in the speculative ratiocinations of intellect ; but what think we of the concrete, the manifest, the de- clared divinity, “ in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily ?’’ In recog- nition of this declaration must a Christian philosophy find its first principle and chief corner-stone. Christian philosophy will comprehend all philosophy, because it recognizes God as the prime factor in all history ; it will recognize man as immu- table, eternal and self-identical form ; it will establish the fraternity of man in all ages. The idea of the progress of the race is that of its unity of eternal same in the form with perpetual change in the transient conditions. In all his becomings man becomes not something else than what he is. The latter portion of the lecture was devoted to a consideration of the attain- ments of India in philosophy and civiliza- tion, in which she held the highest place. Dr. Jones dwrnlt upon the essential simi- larity r of thought in these very ancient times with modern thought in its contem- plation of the highest truth. GNOSTICISM AND NEO-PLATONISM. BY DR. HARRIS. rpHE study of the history of the first centuries of Christianity is of very great interest, because it shows to us the struggle of a new principle supplanting the old, and leading in a new civilization. What was its character, and what the character of the old that passed awa}’, we may Well inquire if we would understand the heri- tage w r e have come into possession of, and learn rightly to prize it. How did our Christian principle look eighteen hundred years ago, and in what respects did it find other principles hostile to it, and through what stages of error did it pass on the way to a correct definition of itself ? In these days of free investigation and the desire Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism. 77 for intellectual clearness in matters of religion, when there is a tendency to leave the authority of the church and find another author^ based on the mediated certainty of science, or experience, or pure reason, we may find many people glad to consider with us the history of the begin- nings of that system of thought long since grown into the structure that we call our civilization. If we discover confirmation of our inherited convictions, we shall be stronger, and have two authorities where we had one before. If our study leaves us in doubt, still it is a doubt founded on an honest study of history, and we sup- plant a dogma by a truth. Dr. Harris said that the view which seems to explain the philosophic systems and the theological reactions of those early ages, is the one which makes a broad dis- tinction between Orientalism and Chris- tianity, and defines the Christian system to be that which asserts the divinity of the nature of mau, or the possibility for each individual of becoming divine by putting off his animal nature and assuming an ethical and religions nature. According to this view, the Oriental religions do not find God to be divine-human, but conceive him to transcend utterly all human attributes so as to be not absolute reason, but above reason ; not to be good, but above the good. In short, the Oriental absolute transcends all form and all quality, and is indifferent to human attributes and to all other at- tributes. “This is certainly not the view of a large and respectable company of read- ers and admirers of Oriental literature, but it is the view of the only thinkers that 1 am able to follow in this matter.” Chris- tianity seems to furnish the only view that we as moderns can accept, because it is the oidy view that justifies our civilization and holds up over it an ideal and that points out for us a goal toward which we may advance indefinitely and never surpass. It gives us a principle by which we may criticise ourselves, and our institutions, and even the church itself, as being but a poor realization after all of the ideal very plainly set up in the Christian doctrine. It represents to us ourselves and the world as proceeding from an infinite reason who reveals himself in and through the world and through us, and is essentially a re- vealed God and not an abstract One who cannot be revealed without destroying his perfection. Sextus, the Pythagorean, said : “ Do not investigate the name of God, because you will not find it. For everything which is called by a name re- ceives its appellation from one who is more worthy than itself, as it is one per- son that calls and another that hears. Who is it, therefore, t hat has given a name to God? God, however, is not a name to God, but an indication of what we con- ceive of him.” In the same style we are told that to think is to limit, and to think God is to limit, and thus to think him incorrectly. Thus Philo of Alexandria, perhaps the original mover of the schools of thought called Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism, held that there must be a higher principle than the Creator — a God who is unrevealable and above that God who can reveal himself as Demiourgos or Logos in a creation. A revealed God was necessarily a finite being to such thinkers as Philo and Plu- tarch of Cheromea. The church has de- clared heretical this principle whenever it has appeared. It is clear that this doc- trine was most dangerous in the earliest times — those of the apostles. The gos- pel of Juhn may have been written to oppose the doctrine that had been urged by some followers of Philo. Gnosis meant the allegorical interpreta- tion of any Scripture. It might be a more profound knowledge of Christian truth, and it is spoken of in Corinthians (I., xii., 8) in this sense. Gnosticism did not begin as a heresy. But it became such. There was in the new doctrine the theory of sin and evil, the falling away or lapse Gnosticism and Neo- Platonism . 73 of the finite from the infinite. How did the finite come to exist, or bow did the All-Perfect make the imperfect? How could there be any redemption for fallen beings? This question forced itself on the intellect. The Greek philosophy, as Plato and Aiistotle had left it, had found a theory of the creation of a world by an all-good being who “ was in no wise pos- sessed of envy.” But it had no theory of sin as sin. After Alexander had con- quered the world, Greece had come into contact with Orientalism in Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, the states of Asia Minor, and elsewhere. What can be done, said the Greek sages, to interpret those Oriental views and explain them by Greek theories? The attempt to solve this problem of creation gives rise to Gnosticism, and next to Neo-Platonism. The most famous of the Gnostics were born in Alexandria, or in Syria, Pontus or Mesopotamia, and went to Rome. Val- entinus, Marcion, Basilides, Bardesanes, Saturninus, Cerinthus, are the most fa- mous names out of a great number. These hold that matter is antagonistic to God and a limit to the power that made it. Hence God did not make it. God is indeterminate, and hence possesses no attributes through which reason may' com- prehend him. Creation is, therefore, the work of a Demimirgns. These are the very doctrines of Philo and will reappear among the Neo-Platonists. Some Gnostics held the curious theory that the Demiourgos was opposed to the highest principle, and was a power that had created and ruled this world as its prince, but now should give way before the new dispensation brought by Christ, who came as a divine messen- ger to end the rule of the prince of this world. All agreed that Christ assumed a human nature as a merely deceptive appearance. Thus there were some who tried to make the distinction between Christianity and preceding religions as wide as possible, while others tried to remove this distinction. The lecturer next discussed the details of the system of Valentinus, and offered an explanation of the system of iEons, and of the fall of the last iEon, Sophia, or Wisdom, and her sufferings and redemp- tion. The rise of spiritual pride through the intellect was suggested as the root of the theory, and as identical with the doc- trine of Lucifer’s fall. Intellect must be free in order to see truth ; but its indepen- dence begets pride, and hence sin. Error is one thing and sin another. Error is a small affair. But sin is selfishness, the setting up of a duality in the universe, the sundering of the self from harmony with the all, and hence .the creation of hell and the entrance of it by? the one who sets up self as his object. The doctrines of rea- son, truth, depth, silence (the four root iEons) and of Logos and life descended from reason and truth, and of man and church descended from Logos and life, these other iEons were described and identified with Aristotelian categories and Persian religious principles. Then the lecturer took up the doctrines of the Neo-Platonists as a continuation of the same species of speculation in the arena of pure philosophy?. The systems of Plotinus, Jamblichus, Proclus, and Ammonias Saccas were treated. Plotinus held that the absolute is one elevated above reason, but he still accepted Plato’s appellation of “ the good ” for the one. Jamblichus was not satisfied with this identification of the good with the one above reason, but insisted that the abso- lute was a unity above the good. Pro- clus went a step further, and affirmed a supreme essence above the unity. The wonderful insights into mind which Plotinus and Proclus gained from their profound study of Aristotle and Plato were mentioned and discussed, while the error which made the division of subject The Relations between Science and Philosophy. 79 and object in consciousness a necessaiy connection with finiteness and imperfec- tion was pointed out and refuted. Sub- ject and object become one in self-con- sciousness, and consciousness is not de- stroyed. Aristotle claims for reason {Nous) just this character as what makes it absolute. In it thinking and thought are the same, and hence it is its own other, and has the form of infinitude. Much service was claimed for Neo-Platonism in reaching the true conception and definition of personality. Eighth Day, — July 25. THE RELATIONS BETWEEN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. BY DR. JONES. “ Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused.” HETHER we look before or after, into the ages past or the ages to come, man is self- identical, “made of such large discourse” and “ godlike rea- son” and capability, invariable in form, in type, because formed after the image and likeness of the Creator. Hence, also, it obtains universal belief of all the great aces that divinitv is manifested in form of man, and gods, and heroes, and arch- angels, and angels, and spirits are but purer men. Accordingly the better we know purer and the purest and noblest men and women, the better ma}' we know the angelic and the divine orders. Man in his senses merely is in the immediacy of the image only, and is not in a true knowledge of anything, physiological, metaphysical, or spiritual. But the soul moves ; the experimental test convicts the witness of sense of inva- lidity. Science dawns, and belief must recti fj 7 its knowledge. Science is physi- cal, metaphysical and theological. Reason — Shakespeare. is thought pioneering, the thinker pioneer- ing and exploring beyond the boundaries of sense. and sense-knowing. Pneuma is the thinker ; only spirit thinks. In the processes of the analytical understanding, the whole world of image is “ maya.” It is a camera whose images are void and a reversal of the truth. Scientifical know- ing is inferential, inductive. The object is a thought-form, and this thought-form is constituted of the rational inferences from the observed characteristics of the image in the sensorium. These inferred matters are transferred to the subject, and imposed upon it as its own characteristics and qualities and definitions. This proc- ess of scientifical thinking and reasoning is applied alike to the contents of all the sensoria, and hence arise physical sci- ence, metaplysical science and theistic science. Dr. Jones discussed the inferential proc- esses of the mind in scientific knowing, saying that in them the mind makes 8o The Relations between Science and Philosophy. acquaintance with its own forms, and occu- pies the middle ground between the sensi- ble and thelogieal cognition. Of the ma- terial of this induction is constituted all so-called science, or the physics, meta- physics and theology of the understand- ing. These inducted forms are ranked as ultimate ideas and principles, and an- nounced to be the absolute nature, the reality of things. Because these cogni- tions are not grounded in and comprehen- sive of the essential form of knowable subject, therefore, abstract and scientifical ratiocination has this indeterminate char- acter, that anything whatever may be proven of anything whatever by reason- ing. But the noumenon of inductive science, the “ thing in itself” of inductive science, its rational object, is confessedly the unknown and the unknowable. Inductive science essays only the distinction be- tween this unknown and unknowable somewhat, and the phenomenon in which it occurs to sense. The human mind within the range of its inventive and con- structive powers, affects not to know absolutely the essence, the cause, the source, the reality of either the outer nature, or the soul, or the deity. These natures in their truth are the despair of inductive science. But whence come we ? Whither go we ? The question dies away without an answer, without even an echo from the infinite shores of the unknown. Let us follow matter to its utmost bounds. Cast- ing the term “ vital force ” from the vo- cabulary, let us reduce, if we can, the visi- ble phenomena of life, to mechanical attrac- tions aud repulsions. Having thus ex- hausted physics and reached the very rim, the real mystery still looms before us. We have made no step towards its solution. To mind, in the world of nature, there are three gates to the sanctum sanctorum. They are sensation, induction and logical dialectic, and these are the ways and processes respectively of intellect in the results of common sense, and science and philosophy ; and the mystic problem of vital force is the pons asinorum of induc- tive science. Inductive science fails to effect the rational and logical connection between the molecular motions and a gore- gations of insensate atoms and plasms of whatever sort, — and the facts of sensa- tion, feeling, consciousness. Hitherto, thought has arrived by a legiti- mate and royal highway, but at this station it must change cars. Philosophi- cal knowing, as knowledge of truth, of knowable nature, is discretely differen- tiated from the thought of inductive science (1) in that the relation of the knower and the subject is logical, (2) in that the method of the knower is logical. In the logical relation, the life-form, the spiritual form, not seeable in sensible light, nor divinable by rational inference, is immediate and immanent in the cog- nition of the pneuma , Ihe spirit. Here spirit feels, secs, experiences and knows spirit in the relation of an immediacy, face to face. Hence, knowing spirit as in and of itself, life-form and essence, it is cognitive of vital force in its fountain in the energy of spirit. And from this view-point alone does the thinker think through, see through phenomenon and nonmenon, as mere existence and mani- festation of the one spirit, — and this is dialectic. Pneuma is spirit. Only pneuma feels, thinks and moves. Whatsoever is felt by means of sensation to be and to exist, thought speculates and experiments in or- der to know and to use. In order of time thought begins with the image or phenom- enon, but in logical method, thought begins with the essential and vital form. Only spirit thinks, and spirit thinks sen- suously, and scientifically, and logically. Sensational thinking is spirit seeing the phenomenal aspect of the world. Scien- tifical thinking is spirit seeing the actual Oracular Poetry among the Hebrews, Greeks and Persians. 81 aspect of the world, and logical thinking is spirit seeing spirit, spirit cognizing the actor, of which the former, the actual, and the apparitional are predicates. Logical relation a*nd process are the relation and process of the Logos or Maker. The logi- cal view-point of the system of the universe is the relation of the maker to what is made, and the logical method is the method of the creator and maker in what is created and made. To discover and follow this method, as spirit seeing spirit, in the relation and process of producer and produced, of creator and created, is the only logical thinking. Logic is the relation and method of the Logos. “ The Liogos was in the beginning and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God. All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.” Again: Whence and what is vital force ? Of what do you predi- cate it? “ In him [in the Logos ] was life , and the life was the light of men,” — the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. In all philosophi- cal knowing the mind begins with the logi- cal order, or the order of the Logos. In the latter part of his lecture Dr. Jones dwelt upon the truth that the Logos does not exist alone in unapproachable light, but “was made flesh and dwelt among us.” He also gave considerable time to Indian philosophy and literature, showing that the great minds of the world have always thought upon these lofty truths of God, and that as far back as we have any knowledge men were as culti- vated and intelligent, and as familiar with the great problems of philosophy as they are today. He asserted that instead of man’s being developed from lower crea- tures, the best and most ancient history proves exactly the reverse, and that savages are the “fag-end,” not the begin- ning of civilization. He read from Indian writings, four thousand years old, to show that belief in immortality was as strong- then as now, that love of nature was as keen and appreciative, and tliat the poetry upon nature was as good as any modern writing. ORACULAR POETRY AMONG THE HEBREWS, GREEKS AND PERSIANS. BY MR. SANBORN. "A/TR. SANBORN began by defining poetry, in the words of an old Per- sian saying, ascribed to Zoroaster (whose name signifies “ best of poets”), in which poets are called “standing transporters whose employment consists in producing apparent imitations of unapparent na- tures,” — or as Mr. Sanborn said in other words, “Poetry is the alternate inscrip- tion and deciphering of symbolism on the visible universe, by means of that crea- tive and piercing imagination, in virtue of which (next to love) man stands nearest to his Maker.” This symbolism, again, is what Emerson meant when he wrote to Mr. Albee, in 1852. as quoted at the Emerson Commemoration: “There is a super-Cadmean alphabet, which, when one has learned the character, he will find, as it were, secretly inscribed, look where he will, — not only in books and temples, but in all waste places, and in the dust of the earth. Happy he that can read it ! for he will never be lonely or thoughtless again. 82 Oracular Poetry among the Hebrews, Greeks and Persians. And yet, there is a solid pleasure to find those who know and like the same thing, — the authors who have recorded their inter- pretation of the legend; and, better far, the living friends who read as we do, and compare notes with us.” Emerson’s poem called “ Berrying” was read, in which he hints at this same secret language of na- ture : — “ Caught among the blackberry-vines, Feeding on the Ethiop sweet, Pleasant fancies overtook me, I said, ‘ What influence me preferred, Elect, to dreams thus beautiful?’ The vines replied, ‘And didst thou deem No wisdom to our berries went? ’ ” In this poem, of course, said the lec- turer, Mr. Emerson was thinking of this secret of the world, uttered in the arrowy writing of the blackberry- thorn. Passing on to the Greek oracles (whose divine ambiguity has so impressed the common mind that the word “ oracular ” has “ ambiguous” for its secondary mean- ing), the lecturer cited several examples from Herodotus, and quoted from Plu- tarch’s essay, “ Why the Oracles Cease to Give Answers,” the quaint story told by the Spartan Cleombrotus in a small school of philosophy at Delphi, A.D. 100 or there- about, how the gods of Greece began to die when, in the reign of Tiberius, Christ appeared. Thus it runs in Plutarch’s version : — “ Epitherses was my townsman and a school- master. who told me that, designing a voyage from the Peloponnesus to Italy, he embarked on a vessel well laden with goods and passen- gers. At evening the vessel was becalmed about the islands Echinades, whereupon they drove with the tide till near the Isles of Paxi; when all at once a voice was heard by most of the passengers, who were then awake and tak- ing a cup after supper, calling unto one Tha- mus, and that with so loud a voice as made all the company amazed ; which Thamus was a mariner of Egypt, whose name was scarcely known in the ship. He returned no answer to the first calls ; but at the third he cried, ‘ Here, here, I am the man.’ Then the voice said aloud to him, 1 When you are arrived at Palodes, take care to make it known that the great god Pan is dead.” Epitherses told us this voice did much astonish all that heard it, and caused much arguing whether this voice was to be obeyed or slighted. Thamus, for his part, was resolved, if the wind permitted, to sail by the place without saying a word : but if the wind ceased and there ensued a calm, to speak and cry out as loud as he was able what he was enjoined. Being come to Palodes there was no wind stirring, and the sea was as smooth as glass. Whereupon Thamus, stand- ing on the deck with his face toward the land, uttered with aloud voice this message, saying, ‘ The great Pan is dead.’ He had no sooner said this than they heard a dreadful noise, not only of one but of several, who to their think- ing groaned and lamented with a kind of as- tonishment. And there being many persons in the ship, an account of this was soon spread over Rome, which made the Emperor Tiberius send for Thamus. After further citations from Plutarch, the lecturer passed on to Hesiod and quoted the verses cited by Socrates in Xenophon’s Memorabilia about the broad road and the strait gate, as seen by the Boeotian poet, who was proverbially oracular, and taught the Greeks as Franklin taught America : — “ Easy the choice of Evil, — her abode, With all her train, is near, and smooth the sloping road; But sweat and toil the gods exact, before We traverse the long lane that climbs to Vir- tue’s door; Rugged and steep at first, but when with pain The summit we ascend, ’tis all at once a plain.” From the Pythagorean comedian, Epi- charmus of Sicily, Socrates also quoted a like sentiment in iambic verse : — “We can buy All things for labor of the gods on high.” Mr. Sanborn went on to say: “The sweet lyric poet, Simonides, who carried to its highest point the beauty and melody Oracular Poetry among the Hebrews , Greeks and Persians. 83 of Greek verse, had little that was oracu- lar in his poetry, unless it be the tone of pathetic moralizing, which we might expect in a land where the oracles were uttered bt^ a woman, as were those of Del- phi. In these elegiac verses, Simonides, taking for his text the famous line of Homer, “ Like leaves on trees, the race of man is found,” thus preaches his metrical sermon : — “ No mortal lot stands firm and fast for aye ; Most beautiful that Chian poet’s sigh, — ‘ The life of man is as the life of leaves ; ’ Rare among men is he that treasures well Those weighty words which his dull ear receives ; For in the hearts of all fair hope doth dwell, And evermore our breasts exultant swell ; And while our hands hold fast Life’s prim- rose flower, The rash soul broods not on the fatal hour. Man thinketh not to grow old or to die, Nor feeleth coming woe when death is nigh. Blind — blind are they whose souls are thus elate ! Brief is the time assigned to Life by fate; These know it not, but ye who know this thing, May Zeus your souls to Life’s short limit bring ! ” Mr. Sanborn then read several of the Hebrew psalms, as translated by Sir Philip Sidney long before King James’s version of the Bible was made. Several of these were not oracular, though solemn and stately, but as a sample of Hebrew poetry truly oracular in thought, he read Psalm 139, in the common version, and then Sidney’s metrical translation as follows : — “ O Lord, in me there lieth naught But to thy search revealed lies ; For when I sit Thou markest it, — - Nor less thou notest when I rise; Yea, closest closet of my thought Hath open windows to thine eyes. Thou walkest with me when I walk ; When to my bed for rest I go, I find thee there And everywhere, — - Not youngest thought in me doth grow, — - No, not one word I cast to talk But, yet unuttered, thou dost know. If foi’th I march, thou goest before ; If back I turn, thou com’st behind ; So forth nor back Thy guard I lack ; Nay, on me too thy hand I find. Well I thy wisdom may adore, But never reach with earthly mind. To shun thy notice, leave thine eye, Oh, whither might I take my way? To starry sphere? Thy throne is there ; To dead'men’s undelightsome stay ? There is thy walk, and there to lie Unknown, in vain should I assay. O sun ! whom light nor flight can match ! Suppose thy lightful, flightful wings . Thou lend to me, And I could flee As far as thee the evening brings ; Even led to west he would me catch. Nor should I lurk with western things. Do thou thy best, 0 secret night ! In sable veil to cover me ; Thy sable veil Shall vainly fail ; With day unmasked my night shall be ; For night is day, and darkness light, 0 Father of all lights, to thee ! ” In conclusion Mr. Sanborn read the song of Seid Nimetollak of Kukistan, translated by Emerson from the Persian, and the dying words of James Nayler, the English Quaker of Cromwell’s time ; and then directed the conversation to the sub- ject of Pythagoras and the Neo-Platon ists of Alexandria. 84 Rhilosoyrfiy in its Relation to Agnosticism and Religion. Ninth Day, — July 26. PHILOSOPHY IN ITS RELATION TO AGNOSTICISM AND RELIGION. BY THE REV. ROBERT AFTON HOLLAND . 1 TAELIGION and philosophy both tend to agnosticism. Thought, and not feeling, must be the foundation on which religion rests ; for otherwise, as feelings differ in intensity only, fanaticism would be the only religion. A religion which abandons reason must have a reason for not reasoning. If it yields to authority, it is because it has reason to believe tint its reason is better than its own. Mr. Hol- land related the old fable of the race between the hare and hedgehog, and said it was a fable showing faith in its at- tempt to outrun reason. The requirement that religion become philosophic, and that philosophy become religious, together with the wide, extent of radical questioning, are the most hopeful indications of the times. The doubt which is so frequently expressed in philosophy, religion and common life, must have some reason in the mind of man, and the radical reach of the doubt gauges the importance of the faith it anticipates. Only by thought can the mind know whether what seems to be knowledge is true or false. All ages have in their thought assumed the absolute. Individual thinkers may have puzzled themselves about it, but pop- ular thought has not. The mind must have an absolute standard. Knowledge must be absolute in order to know that special objects are but parts of a great 1 The Rev. Robert Afton Holland is a native of Nashville, Tetin. He lived in Louisville during his youth ; married the daughter of a wealthy Georgia planter, and lived in Georgia till the outbreak of the civil war. Then he came northward and was subsequently settled over St. George’s Episcopal Church in St. Louis, Mo., where he succeeded in building up a strong congregation and in erecting one whole and are related to each other. The antinomies of all special objects of knowl- edge are but failures of the part to include the whole. To deny one God is to assert many. Can space, a part, account for time, which is also a part? Can either account for causation ? They cannot stand the test of absoluteness. Make space ab- solute and it changes into time. Make time absolute and it changes into eternity. Make causation absolute and it must cause itself, and so be its own effect. Thought is the absolute, the all. Absolute form must contain reality. That is absolute form which entains within itself all real- ity', that is, God. To know that the infi- nite is, implies knowledge of infinite being, and this means infinite personality, or God. Nature is not inherent being. It is al- ways in change. Toward unity all things aspire. God cannot know himself correct- ly 7 unless the self-known is in every 7 respect the same as that which knows. Hence the complete form of consciousness is not sub- ject, but subject-object. The absolute is tri-personal. God appears in personality, — the knowing is Father, the known is Son, and the recognition is the Holy Ghost. In religion, philosophy and religion meet. Knowledge is relative as related to an ab- solute beyond its reach, and in this sense is relative only because imperfect. The most perfect knowledge must be the knowl- of the finest of the local church edifices. He is now rector of Trinity Church, Chicago, and member of the Chicago Philosophical Club. He is author of many articles on the philosophy of religion and kindred subjects, one of which is an article on the “Real Presence” in the “Journal of Speculative Philosophy ” for January, 1882. Christian Mysticism. edge of relation. But this knowledge can- not be called relative in the sense of im- perfect, because it does not know the unrelated. It is the test of reason that it cannot think what contradicts its nature. The unthinkable is the absurd, not the absolute. Mr. Holland then spoke of the absurd- ity of the popular proofs of the existence of God. Symbols reveal, but do not define God. The3' have a place in worship, but not in argument. The argument from de- sign to prove the existence of God is held to prove an all-wise designer. Nature is regarded as the stufif which God has taken and turned to good account. But who created nature so? God, of course. Then the proof of his wisdom from design proves simply that his wisdom consists in repairing the blunder of his first creation. The argu- ment from design proves God to be all-wise only by proving him to be all-foolish. All finite representations of God as cause bring him into the categories of physical science, and that science is true when it says that nature has no place for such a God. He belongs to a higher category. He is absolute mind. He is not first cause, because he is also last effect, the effect of his own causing. Only as essential reason can he be rationally demonstrated. The demonstration of God is not from finite nature, but from deduction. There is another method of demonstra- tion, and the church followed it with halt- ing steps in the Middle Ages. It is the method of philosophy which the post-Kant- ian thinkers have followed to the end. It shows that things have no substantial being of their own, that they are parts of a whole in an organic unity, and this unity must be self-determining, and, therefore, infinite reason. Hence, all natural appearances are revelations of infinite reason. Reason culminates in Christianity, which compre- hends all religious symbols in its own per- fect symbol. It identifies the divine w r ith * the human mind in Christ. After this is popularly demonstrated, doubt will give way to a faith better than any yet seen, a faith which shall be knowledge, and shall bring heaven to earth, whose silence shall seem harmony, and whose songs shall seem audible echoes of the voice of God. CHRISTIAN BY DB. “I AR. HARRIS began by saying that in his last lecture he endeavored to show the relation of Gnosticism to Neo- Platonism ; that they had essentially the same solution for the problem of the ori- gin of finite existence and imperfection. Gnosticism tried to make a solution which would agree with Christianity, while Neo- Platonism sought to make a sufficient ex- planation of the existence of dependent, imperfect beings on the basis of Platonic philosophy without reference to Chris- tianit}’. Both systems agree in adopting MYSTICISM. HARRIS. Philo’s doctrine of a God exalted above virtue and above knowledge, and even above good and evil, while Plato identified him with the good. From God as One there emanates, according to Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism, Nous as its image, and then the soul as the image of the Nous , and then body or the material world, from soul as the soul’s creation. The systems agree in these four great cardinal thoughts, but disagree only in the intercalation of intermediate steps and in naming them. Gnosticism likes to use the S 6 Christian word “iEon ” where Platonism likes the word *• Idea,” meaning thereby a complete cycle or process, like, for example, animal or vegetative life, or like the political state, or the social community of productive in- dustry and exchange of productions. The state, as we might say, is organized on the idea of justice, and has an organism for discovering and defining laws that limit the individual to doing only what will con- serve society ; this is called the legislative power ; then it has another organism, the executive, for apprehending persons who break these laws and for otherwise adminis- tering the laws ; lastly there is the judicial, which examines the question of the correct application of the general law to the indi- vidual case. These three organisms make up the TEon of justice — its complete cycle or process. There may he many ideas or vEons placed between the Nous and the soul — there are twenty-eight in the sj'stem of Val- entinus, and in Proclus there are many unities issuing from the primal essence, all exalted above life and reason and the power of comprehension ; then there are many triads corresponding to ./Eons between reason and matter. Marcion of Pontus has no iEons, but retains the Demiourgos, or soul, that makes the world and who is opposed to the most high and his Christ. Altogether, therefore, we must conceive Neo-Platonism essentially the same world-theory as Gnosticism, both being emanation-theories having the prin- ciple of lapse as the principle of method, and not the principle of self-determination, which is the true principle of method. The principle of lapse finds only a de- scending scale while the principle of self- determination shows us an ascending scale, and is the only principle in theology that can furnish a ground for the world as a revelation of reason, or for the perfection of man. In the later forms of Neo-Platonism there is a return toward the pure doctrines Mysticism. I of Aristotle and Plato. The pupils of Plutarch of Athens seem to have learned from him that Aristotle agreed with Plato in his view of the world. Syrianus and Ilierocles of Alexandria, the former the teacher of Proclus, both recognize this truth, and Hieroeles tells us that even Am- monias Saccas proved this substantial agreement, while Hegel in modern times thinks that the name for the whole move- ment ought to be New Aristotelianism instead of Neo-Platonism. Proclus, how- ever, in his great work on the theology of Plato, treating chiefly of the dialogue “Parmenides,” has undertaken to show that Plato himself holds the doctrine of a primal essence above reason, in several of his works. Proclus lived a century and a half after Christianity had become the state religion. Ilis works exercised a great effect on Christian mysticism through the so-called “Dionysius the Areopagite’s ” writings, which must have been written after the middle of the fifth century, and for the purpose of introducing the philos- ophy of the Neo-Platonists into the service of Christian theology. There was a certain authority given to the work of Dionysius on account of the respect paid it by popes of the early church. Scotus Erigena trans- lated the work for Charles the Bald in 843 A. D. Long afterward the work was discovered to be spurious and not written by the Dionysius mentioned in Acts (xvii.) and supposed to be the first bishop of Athens. Scotus Erigena developed his doctrine of four natures or orders of being : (1) that which creates, but is not created ; (2) that which is created and creates ; (3) that which is created and does not create ; (4) neither created nor creates. The last is God as the end of all things, and is identical with the supreme essence of Proclus. God’s essence is unknown and unknowable for men, and even for angels. Yet his being can be seen in all things, his wisdom ap- pearing in orderly classification, and his Christian Mysticism. 87 life in the constant succession of events in the world. Here is a mingling of Neo- Platonism and Christianity, a revealing of what is non-revealable. He says further that the highest cannot be expressed bj T a name, but that God may’ be called symbolically, goodness, truth, light, justice, sun, star, water, lion, etc. The fourth nature is really above truth and above any expression whatever. But the first nature creates eternal arche- types of things, and these are in the Divine Logos , the unbegotten son, and, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, create the world of nature. The materiality of the world, he holds, is merely apparent, but not real. “Our life,” says he, “ is God’s life.” Men and angels know of God by the same revelation that he makes in them of himself. And yet Dionysius makes the first and fourth nature to be one. All things created return to the uncreated and repose eternally in God. Athanasius holds the Logos to be part of the original essence, and not secondary, and this is the doctrine of the gospel of John. Dioitysius wavers between Lhe or- thodox doctrine and Neo-Platonism, and therefore it happens that his work was re- ceived as sound philosophy, and exercised a powerful influence on the contemplative minds of the church. Hugo and Richard of St. Victor seem to have profited by his work. The faculty of mystical con- templation was regarded by them as the highest. John Fidanza, called “Bonaventura” by St. Francis, was one of the greatest of mj'stics. He died the same year with Thomas Aquinas. His doctrine is based largely on that of Dionysius, and modi- fied by the influence of Bernard of Clair- vaux, the St. Victors, and St. Augustine. The influence of the last appears in his opposition to Aristotle for making the world eternal, and for denying existence to Platonic ideas, and for setting up doc- trines regarding civil society, the state, and ethics that do not agree with the Fran- ciscan code of poverty and obedience, interpreting the same to justify mendi- cancy for industiy, celibacy for marriage, and responsibility to the church instead of the state. Bonaventura’s three stages of imitation of Jesus make eternal blessed- ness to consist in contemplation and divine illumination, while mere obedience to law and participation in gospel coun- sels remain respectively to the devotee of the first and second stages. Science leads to understanding of what is received through faith. The world is created, says he, by God, not to increase his glory, but to reveal and communicate it, and in re- ceiving this revelation the highest well- being of his creatures consists. Thus God’s glory is the good of his creatures, and everything proceeds from the love of God, since he makes all things tend toward himself. In all creatures there is an tin- conscious revelatiou of God, but human reason is the only image of God. God is highest light and supreme goodness, and imparts himself to all created beings, but the perfect revelation takes place only to rational beings who can understand it, and hence all lower beings exist for man. He understands the principle of evil to be selfishness, just as Gnosticism made the self-seeking of the soul to be that which produced matter. Self-love must be subor- dinate to love of God, and its highest form is found in charity, which looks toward the divine ideal of man. Meister Eckhart seems to have attended the lectures of Albertus Magnus at Paris, and possibly may have known Thomas Aquinas. He was a Dominican, too. His significance as philosopher is found in his bold attitude against ecclesiastical and dialectical elements, preferring symbolical statements of speculative doctrines based on a mystical treatment of the dogmas of the church. He desired “ to find a short and true road to God.” But while Bona- ventura was canonized as a saint, Meister 88 Dr. Hickoh's Philosophy as Bearing on -Agnosticism. Eckhart’s doctrines were condemned as heretical. All mysticism undertakes to express itself by symbols, and all symbol- ism lias the fundamental defect that it con- fuses the general and particular, or the species and the individual, and thus ren- ders its expressions regarding man liable to be seized in a sense that denies the at- V tainment of divine life lyy the individual person. Eckhart is influenced by Diony- sius, and distinguishes the fourth nature uncreated and uncreating from the Creator, as a divine essence distinguished from God. The former works, the latter does not, and is incomprehensible even to him- self, inexpressible and not to be revealed. But this abstract Godhead is the begin- ning and end of all things, for they are completed in it and come to repose in absolute perfection. This abstraction is only an abstraction, for in the Trinity, Eckhart tells us, God is a living light- that reveals himself. The world was original- 13 ' in the Father as uncreated simplicity, but on emerging from God it took on mul- tiplicity. God’s goodness caused him to create. In creation, God has external- ized his inmost essence. All things strive after likeness to him as their good. God communicates himself to all things accord- ing to their capacity to receive them. All things were created for the soul. In Christ all creatures are one man, — and this man is God. The rest of the lecture was taken up with further illustration and criticism of Eckhart. He was stated to be the prime mover in what became Protestantism. Tenth Day, — July 27 . DR. HICKOK’S PHILOSOPHY AS BEARING ON AGNOSTICISM. BY PROFESSOR CHARLES EDWARD GARMAN. 1 LIAHE discussion of Agnosticism is rele- gated by Dr. Hickok to the depart- ment of empirical psychology. “ Science or nescience” is a question of fact, to be 'Charles Edward Garman was born in Limington, Me., December 18, 1850. He graduated from Amherst college in 1872. For several years he taught the Ware (Mass.) high school and then studied for three years in the Yale theological seminary, graduating in 1879. Taking the Hooker fellowship, with its provision for two years of study at Yale or abroad, he remained another year at Yale, engaged in the study of philosophy, devoting much of the time to Herbert Spencer. The second year of the fellowship was resigned in order to accept a position on the Amherst college faculty. At the meeting of the trus- tees at Commencement, 1882, he was made associate pro- fessor with President Seelye in the department of mental and moral philosophy. This lecture is printed entire and has the approval of the Rev. Dr. Hickok. Laurens Perseus Hickok, D. D., L L. D., a part of whose philosophy is the subject of Professor Garman’s lecture, was born at Bethel, Ct., Dec. 29, 1798. Ho graduated from Union college in 1820, became pastor of the congregational church in Kent, Ct., in 1824; pastor at Litchfield, Ct., in 1829; professor of theology in Western answered, not by speculation based upon certain hypotheses, but by a strictly em- pirical investigation of the knowing fac- ulty. With the hope of presenting his Reserve college in 1836; in Auburn theological seminary in 1844; professor of mental and moral philosophy and vice-president at Union college in 1852; president of Union college 'in 1866. Since 1868 he has lived in Amherst, Mass., devoting himself to his favorite study of philosophy. His published works on philosophy are “ Rational Psychology ” (1848), “System of Moral Science” (1853), “Empirical Psychology” (1854), “Creator and Creation” (1872), “Humanity Immortal” (1872), and “Logic of Reason” besides the new edition of his work on “Empirical Psychology,” which is the subject of the present lecture. He has also been a prolific contributor to periodicals, in- cluding the “Presbyterian Quarterly,” the “Bibliotheca Bacra,” the “Christian Spectator” and the “Biblical Re- pository.” His system of philosophy is taught at Amherst and other colleges in the regular study of philosophy in senior year. The treatise which is the subject of Professor Garman’s lecture must not be regarded as devoted mainly to the discussion of agnosticism, for that topic is quite subordinate. Dr. HickoMis Philosophy as Bearing on Agnosticism. 89 views in such a form as to commend them to modern scientific thought, he has recently revised his work on psychology with the co-operation of President Seel} T e of Amherst College. The former edition was a clear and exhaustive presentation of the subject from the standpoint of common consciousness, but at present it fails in two respects to appeal strongly to scientists. In the first place, since its pub- lication, twenty-eight years ago, an epoch has been produced by the appearance of the works of Darwin, Spencer and others. The result is that the authority of common consciousness is no longer admitted, and instead, material evolution is made the nnv a 1(0 in all discussions of life and mind. This leaves the physicist of today little in common w r ith metaphysicians. He deals only with material phenomena — things of sense — and receiveth not the things of the spirit, for they are foolish- ness unto him ; neither can he know them, because thej” are spiritually discerned. Secondly, its philosophical form is the occasion of much misunderstanding. It is a well-known fact in the physical world, that eyes well adapted for seeing in one medium are nearly blind in another of very different refractive power. Thus it seems to be in the world of thought. They who are accustomed to the methods of physical science can make little sense out of the simplest statements that have a philo- sophic form. The aim of this revision is to meet both these difficulties ; (1) to face squarely all issues raised by the hypothesis of evolu- tion, and determine what changes, if any, it maj r logically demand in the treatment of this subject; and (2) to present psy- chology strictl}’ on a scientific basis, sub- jecting all conclusions to the test of rigid scientific experiment ; in short, to incar- nate psychology in the scientific form, and thus to meet the materialist on his own ground. It is impossible in this brief space to give any adequate idea of the success with which this is accomplished. A review, however carefully prepared, must necessa- rily bear the same relation to the living words of the author that a photograph does to a landscape ; i. e., represent in two dimensions what really exists in three. Fortunately, psychology is such a subject that by determined effort the reader may use his own inner consciousness as a “stereoscopic glass” to restore the lost dimension, and this we must beg him to do in the present instance. I. Our author considers, firstly, the bear- ing of evolution on the study of psychology . This hypothesis maintains that mind and all its faculties have been evolved from the simplest forms of life, therefore the expo- sition of physical life will be the solution of all mental problems ; that mental facul- ties, like physical organs, are to be con- sidered simply as products of the environ- ment, appearing first as peculiarities of accidental variation in individuals, trans- mitted by heredit}'. and made universal by survival of the fittest. Had the environ- ment been otherwise, the laws of thought must have been different. Should the environment essentially change in the future, the laws of thought may be com- pletely reversed. Hence the conclusions, (1) the relativity of all knowledge (ag- nosticism) ; (2) only in the sphere of experience and strict scientific investiga- tion can knowledge possess even relative validity ; (3) pure metaphysics, absolute morality, and revealed religion are noth- ing better than dreams of an idle brain. To this position our author replies in substance as follows : — However dreamy metaphysics, morality and religion may be assumed to be, empirical psychology is as much a ques- tion of fact as physiology. However man originated, one thing is sure, he is, and empirical psychology simply asks and answers the question, what is he? not what ivas man, nor wdiat may he become, 90 Dr. IlicloFs Philosophy as Bearing on Agnosticism. but what is man ? It seeks to attain the faculties with which man is at present endowed and the laws of their operation. In answering this question two methods may be pursued: (1) we may attempt an a priori psychology ; i. e., assuming evolu- tion, we may take our stand in thought at the beginning of the process, and from the nature of the agencies at work affirm what must be their product ; or (2) we may build up an empirical psychology; i. e., beginning at the completion of the process, by a careful study of the existing man, testing and re-testing his mental powers, we may determine what, as a simple mat- ter of fact, are his endowments. Clearly this last is the only scientific method, — - the only safeguard against mistakes. A psy- chology established by this method comes to us not as an hypothesis, craving our favor, but as true science demanding uni- versal assent. Hence our author con- cludes that the view we take of evolution can, according to the scientific method, make as little difference with our empirical psjmhology as wdth our mineralogy, our chemistry, or our geography. If it can be proved by strict scientific experiments, made on the existing man, that he does possess trustworthy mental powers, the discovery that these have been evolved cannot change them any more than the discovery that a diamond has been crys- tallized from carbon can diminish its brill- iancy. A diamond is a diamond for a’ that, and a man is a man for a’ that. Evolution is a subject of greatest inter- est ; if proved, it will elevate our ideas of matter, as being only a lower form of mind ; but it can never degrade our ideas of mind, provided these ideas rest on a scientific basis. In the words of Professor Huxley : “ Legitimate materialism .... is neither more nor less than a sort of shorthand idealism.” Again, so far as the materialist rests his belief in relativity on the theory of evolution, he is false to the sci- entific spirit ; he assumes that only untrust- worthy mental powers can be evolved ; but this is the very question at issue, — a ques- tion that only such an investigation as shall result in a complete empirical psychology can answer. But more than this : in mak- ing such assumption the materialist is especially unfortunate; for what is the hypothesis of evolution itself, but a men- tal product, — a discovery made by the very faculties that it is claimed have been evolved? If these are untrustworthy, it is difficult to see how evolution can have any more real foundation than pure meta- physics, absolute morality, and revealed religion. When the materialist makes evo- lution his aoc crr6> in maintaining relativ- ity of knowledge, he is simply tugging away at his own boot-straps. Such a system of philosophizing may seem pro- found,, for it is indeed bottomless. This suggests the relation of empirical psychology to all science, physical as well as metaphysical. Science 1 is the product of mind and can have no more trustworthi- ness than belongs to the agent that forms it. Hence we can be sure of nothing, not even of our own skepticism, till we know the laws of mind and their trustworthi- ness. As well might the astronomer attempt a science of the stars, knowing nothing of the laws of optics and the ac- curacy of his telescope. Therefore at the basis of all science, as well as of all philosophy, stands empirical psychology. This is the only starting-point in all dis- cussions. II. Outline of Psychology. To expe- rience is to make trial of, to use. A scientific experiment is a re-trial, carefully made and the results accurately noted. Such results are undoubted Jacts — the data of science. Completed science in- volves the classification of such fads. Hence the general method of all science : (1) the attainment of the facts exactly; (2) the assortment of the facts in classes correctly ; (3) the arrangement of the classes in a system, consistently. Apply- Dr. UiclcoJSs Philosophy as Bearing on Agnosticsim. 91 ing this method to psychology, we seek the faculties of the mind and the laws of their operation, as revealed in the facts of a conscious experience. The author begins with evidence for existence of mind. Mind for the present is defined as the agent that makes and takes note of a scientific experiment. Whether it dif- fers in kind or degree from other agencies in nature will be a question for future in- vestigation, but of the existence of this agent there can be no doubt ; “ wherever in any and ever)' age the works of man or of nature have been subjected to rigid scientific investigation, there mind has evinced its presence and power.” Re- specting mind the following general facts are attained: (1) its motive to investi- gations is from within, a desire to satisfy its own curiosity; i. e., the mind is con- sciously self-active , a spontaneous agent ; (2) the mind distinguishes between itself and its objects, i. e., is self-conscious ; (3) it can and does make its own acts the object of its investigations, thereby at- taining a valid empirical psychology, such investigation being more satisfactory, be- cause more immediate, than experiments on external nature ; (4) careful experi- ment demonstrates that no mental action ever takes place, save as some condition has first been given ; and that the inva- riable order of mental activity is sensa- tion, content-in-consciousness, knowing, feeling, willing. These acts constitute the whole psychological process. Sensation is the effect in a living organ of an outer invading agency ; it is wholly without consciousness, but conditional for the mind to awake to activity. The wak- ing state is the dawn of consciousness, but as yet subject and object, knowing and known, are all together, utterly indis- criminate and commingled. The capabil- ity of mind for knowing is the intellect. It includes three faculties, — sense, un- derstanding, reason. These are not three separate organs of mind, but the one mind endowed with three capacities of action. Sense is the faculty of perception. As the unfocused light in a camera is that out of which proper adjustments construct definite images, so content-in-consciousness is that out of which the sense, by a three- fold act of attention — defining, distin- guishing, connecting — constructs all the concrete objects of experience. The action of the understanding is two- fold : (1) as memory it recalls the objects of sense, but in inverse order, those that occurred first in time, standing farthest from us as we recall them in orderly suc- cession, as if memory were a mirror re- flecting the past ; (2) as reflective thought , it subjects the objects of sense, given through memory, to further investigation, making these its data for comparison and classifications. This involves the power of abstraction, of separating in thought what cannot be separated in sense-per- ception. All objects of sense are numeri- cally distinct and local. Their attributes may be common and universal. The taking together ( con-capio ) the essential attributes gives the conception. Concep- tions once formed may be used as data for broader generalizations. This process is known as thinking ; its results, as conclu- sions ( con-cludo ), — the shutting of one conception toitlim another. Syllogism is the universal form of drawing conclu- sions ; i. e., the shutting of one con- ception within another by aid of a third (the middle). Logic has been called the science of thought, but is, more exactly, an exposition of the process of thought. The author here gives an outline of em- pirical logic under two divisions: (1) the logic of mechanical forces ; (2) the logic of living spontaneities. The first includes permanent conceptions (or the ordinary logic of the schools) and changing con- ceptions (or logic of the series of changes through which concrete objects may pass) ; this introduces us to the categories of He- gelian logic, so far as these may be tested 9 2 Dr. Ilickol's Philosophy as Bearing on Agnosticism. by experiment. The second division in- volves a discussion of problems of life and mind, so far as these are open to scien- tific investigation. Under these divisions is included the whole sphere of reflective thought. Its results may have two dis- tinct values. First, when these operations are carelessly performed, only common ex- perience is attained. On these results language and common intercourse depend. Communion involves the having some- thing in common. Shut up to sense and memory, only such concrete facts could be the same to all in all ages, as change of seasons, heaven]}- bodies, etc., and only so far could men understand each other ; but given the faculty of forming concep- tions, of abstracting common attributes, and we possess a mental endowment that is the one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. Second, when these operations are performed carefully, and tested over and over again, the results have a scientific value. All our empirical science is built up in this way and by the use of no other faculties. The under- standing may be properly termed in the first case, the faculty of “ Common Sense ; ” in the second, the “ Scientific Mind.” III. AVe are now in a position to con- sider the objective validity of empirical science. As the understanding is merely a reflective faculty, it follows that, at the best, the trustworthiness of its results can be no greater than that of sense-observa- tion, from which all its data are derived. Now it is a proposition needing no proof that by the senses we are never able to test and re-test objects themselves, even imperfectly. AUe can be conscious of effects produced on us by outer agencies, but never of those agencies in themselves. The mind can immediately know only its own states and acts. We are then forced to admit that objects given by sense are wholly phenomenal, as truly subjective as our dreams ; they are mental images. These, it is true, may be exact copies of objective realities, as the image formed in the telescope is of a heavenly body, but how can this be determined? To compare the reality and the image is impossible. Clearly, but one course is open; viz., to show' that the laws of thought are the laws of things. If a telescope were endowed with consciousness until it knew that the laws of its construction were such as to form only accurate images, it would neces- sarily doubt whether it were truly a tele- scope or a kaleidoscope. It is a common conviction that the mind in waking mo- ments is telescopic, but kaleidoscopic in sleep ; but till this is demonstrated we can only doubt. Thus science, if we have no higher endowment than sense and its reflex in understanding, must be wholly subjec- tive, — simply the attaining, classifying, and systematizing of facts pertaining to our own states of consciousness (phenom- ena), and we are forced into agnosticism. IV. Our author claims that we possess another and higher faculty, viz., reason , and that this faculty is fully competent to establish the postulate, that the laws of thought are the laws of things. (1.) Proof of such an endowment. Sense, as has been shown, can give only a panorama of phenomenal objects. Of the understanding we may truly say, “ Nihil in intellectu quod von fuerit in sensu.” These faculties have done all they can do w r hen they have given a subjective empirical science. Now every man is con- scious that this does not include the whole sphere of mental action. (a) It does not include cause and effect. If from the standpoint of empirical science we forecast the future, our best, our only “prophet of lhat future is the past;” that which hath been ever shall be. Law can be nothing more than uniform fact ; cause, than invariable antecedent. But whence this subjective experience? AVhy are its successions invariable? These are questions beyond the ken of sense and reflective thought, yet they are persist- Dr. HickoTc’s Philosophy as Bearing on Agnosticism. 93 ently asked, and not only asked, but answered, — answered with even greater confidence than is ever given to any scientific deduction. The mind affirms with authority admitting no dispute, that efficient causes, — ■ real forces, — are back of all these phenomena, determining their being and succession, and that these causes are the sufficient and only expla- nation of experience. (b) Empirical science does not give its space and time. The largest construc- tions of sense and understanding are only of place and period. But no adding to- gether of places can give space, nor of periods, time. But more than this, it is a conviction we cannot rid ourselves of for one moment, that place never could have been, had not space first existed as its condition, nor period, had not time already existed as its condition. Places do not make space, for places are in space, nor periods time, for all periods are in time. Call these ideas what we please, facts or fictions, we have them, and with- out them experience itself would have for us no meaning. (c) Empirical, science can never give us pure mathematics. Sense perceives only individual objects of three dimensions. The understanding deals only with ab- stractions from sense ; hence its diagrams are solids, as impenetrable as the objects from which they are taken. Whence, then, our points, our lines, our surfaces? in short, plane geometry, or even wffience solid geometry, since there are no per- fect objects of sense from which to abstract mathematical cones, and cylinders, and spheres? But we do have geometry. Our inner consciousness testifies that the diagrams are not derived by abstraction, but constructed according to rules a.nd therefore are perfect ; that the validity of demonstrations rests not on scientific ex- periment, but on intuitions ; that pure mathematics is the product, not of sense and understanding, but of reason. The reality of such a faculty is beyond' ques- tion. Without it man could not attain necessary and universal truth, .would never ask nor answer the question why. Without it experience itself would be a series of contradictions. Thus, the ex- istence of reason can be as scientifically demonstrated as that of sense-perception. (2.) Whence the postulates of reason ? Two things are clear : (a) the only com- munication the mind can have with the outer world is through the senses ; (b) the postulates of reason can neither mediately nor immediatel} - be derived from this source. It follows that in some way they are given by the mind itself. Yet we are not on this account to conclude with Plato that they are truths learned in a previous life and now recalled by act of memory ; nor with Descartes, that they are innate ideas written on the tablets of conscious- ness and accepted on authority of their divine Author. The postulates of reason are neither more nor less than capabilities of reason, i. e., laws or facts of its exist- ence, as the principles of geometry are capabilities or laws of space. To adopt the terminology of Kant and call them “ forms of thought ” is misleading. The expression suggests a comparison between the insight of reason and sense-perception, as though mental faculties were like phys- ical organs. Color is indeed a subjective element of the eye in seeing. We may term it the “ form of vision ; ” so music, the “form of hearing.” But why these forms instead of those of touch and smell we cannot say. We only know that our organs are so constructed that as a matter of fact, if they act at all, it is always after this fashion, and Ivant leaves us to the same inference respecting mind. But is this a correct analogy? In all mental action, especially that of reason, must there be a subjective element? Cannot the mind be endowed with power of absolute knowledge — if not of the external world, at least of itself, its acts and states? The dream I 94 Dr. IlickoTc's Philosophy as Pearing on Agnosticism. had last night acquaints me with no ex- ternal reality, to be sure, but simply as a dream, it is as truly a fact as the universe itself, and to know lhat I dreamed is to possess. — in this one particular, — absolute, noumenal knowledge. Such must be the mind’s knowledge of all phenomena. To deny it. — to say the mind cannot know its own states absolutely, — is a contradiction, for the denial itself is a statement respect- ing mental action, and meaningless unless it is possible to know that action as it really is. Our author claims that reason does pos- sess this noumenal knowledge not only of its acts and states, but also of itself, its nature and capabilities, so that principles are but self-affirmations of reason, just as in the illustration above, were space en- dowed with consciousness, geometry as known to it might be defined as self-affirma- tions of space. Principles, then, are neces- sary not in the sense that reason can act only in such and such ways, like the phys- ical eye and ear, but in the sense that these affirmations respecting itself, and these alone, express the fact. A word more ex- pressive than principle is idea (literally tidog, idiu, olSu , wit, wise, wisdom, vision) . An idea is the vision , — the insight reason has into its own capabilities ; such vision is wisdom, noumenal knowedge. There are three spheres in which reason is manifested : reason expressed in form is beauty ; in principles, truth; in a personal will, the good. A man of talent is one who possesses a large endowment of under- standing ; a genius, one who is largely en- dowed with reason. The varieties of genius correspond to the threefold way in which reason is revealed. The genius is either artist, or sage, or in the literal sense a hero, as in large degree he sees and ex- presses the true, the beautiful, or the good. (3.) Are these postulates true of the external world? Granting reason abso- lute self-knowledge, its postulates must be accepted as unquestionable realities. A man may doubt his senses, demand re- trial for the conclusions of reflective thought, but distrust his reason he cannot. Yet the question remains, have we here anything more than subjective truth? Un- less minds are the only existences, how show that what is true of my mind is true of objective realities. In fact, if that which is not mind exist, must it not, from the very nature of the case, be wholly unlike and therefore unintelligible to thought? Can joy or sorrow, or love or hate, be pred- icated of that which has no endowment of consciousness? and if not these, how the laws of reason? How, then, if we are not endowed with omniscience in some miracu- lous, inconceivable way, how can we either affirm or deny anything respecting things- in-themselves ? True, we do make such affirmations, perhaps cannot help it ; but possibly this is, as Kant suggests, an un- avoidable illusion, similar to the illusions of sense, that make the sea to appear higher at a distance than nearer the shore, or the moon larger at its rising than some time afterwards, — illusions that no educa- tion or effort will ever remove. In reply to these objections our author frankly admits that in possessing reason we have gained no faculty of omniscience. The mind, whatever its endowment, can be immediately conscious only of itself. But as the mind really does exist and is thus one of the entities in the universe, he claims that science of mind is knowledge of a thing-in-itself, and such knowledge is a valid nov o i oj for conclusions respecting all things. In other words, mind in know- ing itself with the insight of reason, there- by perceives that the existence of anything except minds and their products is an im- possibility, — a contradiction. Therefore the laws of thought are the laws of things- in-themselves. To this type of reasoning, this anthro- pomorphism as it is called, many strongly object. At best, they claim, it is reason- ing from analogy, and in the language of Dr. IfickoJcs Philosophy ns Bearing on Agnosticism. 95 Hume ask if a watch were endowed with consciousness would it not have equally valid ground for concluding that all things, — even its author, — are watches and there- fore are moved by mainspring and escape- ment. We accept the illustration. Sup- pose a watch or anj' material object to be endowed with power of thought in the sense claimed for mind, and suppose in the exercise of such power it attains to au absolute, a noumenal knowledge of self, not a knowledge simply of a few of its attributes, but of its own inner being, its very essence ; such a knowledge of self as the Creator may be supposed to have of it— how much would be involved there- in? A knowledge of matter and force, to be sure ; but to know these in their very being involves a knowledge of the nature and being of extension, — a knowledge that all limitations are necessarily material while extension itself is unlimited. Thus in knowing self as material and finite there would be given a knowledge of the imma- terial and infinite, i. e., space itself. Again, in knowing self as extended, it would clearly perceive that the existence of any material body outside of space would be impossible, a contradiction. Therefore, that the laws of its being, its geometry, were the laws of all material being. In other words, it would possess a mathemat- ical scieuce of things-iu-themselves. But more than this, knowledge of self as ma- terial involves a recognition of its own dependence , its creation and preservation, and thus know ledge of a Creator on whom it depends. Anything short of this would involve a defect in knowledge of itself, its j being and essence. So far then from affirming that all things, including its author, are watches, noumenal conscious- ness of self would reveal the eternal power and Godhead of the Creator. Be- gin where we will and with what we will, the noumenal knowledge of a thing-in- itself is a valid ™oi> otu> for conclusions respecting all things. “Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies ; — Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower, — but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know r what God and man is.” Thus we are forced back to thequestkn with which we started, “ Does the mind know itself? ” This, our author claims, is not a question for argument, but simply a question of fact, to be answered bj' a purely scientific investigation of the fac- ulties of mind and the laws of their opera- tion ; in short, by empirical psychology. That the mind is capable of such investi- gation, i. e., knows absolutely its own acts, must be admitted, or, as shown above, we are landed in the deaf and dumb asylum of universal skepticism. On the impreg- nable basis of empirical psj'chology this system of philosophy rests. The following is our author’s psycholog- ical analysis of mind as endowed with rea- son : (1.) Reason possesses not merely self- knowledge in its fullest sense, but also self- direction, i. e., is both intellect and will, — a person or first cause. This testimony is reiterated in all consciousness of per- sonal responsibility. (2.) In knowing itself human reason affirms that its exist- ence is not independent, but derived, and thus the existence of a reason higher than the human in whom it lives and moves and has its being. Thus in knowing itself as finite it knows the Absolute ; knows that human reason could no more exist without the divine than place could exist without space or period without time ; knows that this divine reason is a Person, its Parent, to whom, in original endowment, it bears a family likeness, is “ made in His image.” (3.) In knowing phenomena of sense it affirms the existence of effi- cient causes that produce them and determine their invariable order of suc- cession. The causes thus thought as standing back of phenomena are called things (that which is think-e d). But Dr. Hickok's Philosophy as Bearing on Agnosticism. 96 things, reason affirms, must depend on divine reason for their being and continued existence as truly as does itself. The very idea of things or causes carries us back to a Personal First Cause. Hence the testi- mony of empirical psychology is that mind endowed with reason-insight does possess noumenal knowledge of itself, and in knowing itself knows that its laws of thought are also laws of divine thought and thus of thiugs-in-themselves, for things are but divine thoughts to which reality has been given by divine will, just as hu- man choice and conduct are human thoughts realized by human will. Here then are solid foundations for pure meta- physics or ontology. V. Reason is also the basis for nou- menal physics. Granting that the laws of thought are the laws of things, we do not thereby endow the mind with omniscience. We simply claim for it a capacity for knowledge of particular objective realities when sufficient data are given. As the only communication possible with the ex- ternal world is through sense-perception, it follows that phenomena must be such data or noumenal physics are impossible. Our author claims that though phenomena are subjective, yet the mind knows them to be effects and that by insight into them, comparing, re-testing, classifying, it is able to affirm with absolute certainty what their causes must have been. The human mind does not get this adequate cause except by its insight into actual sense-experience. It looks over experience and through it and then knows what was before it. This is in-duction , in-ference of what truly was while as yet experience had not been ; not that reason is independently prophetic, but that it is authoritatively and accurately inductive. We have an illustration of this pro- cessin the cipher dispatches of 1876, as interpreted by the New York Tribune ex- pert. The possibilit}' of this achievement depended on two conditions: (1) the despatches were no chance arrangement of words; (2) the keys were constructed according to the laws of thought of the ex- pert. Had Mr. Tilden been a different order of being, as agnostics claim the Creator to be, the cipher would have been unknown and unknowable. But granting these two conditions, the discovery was only a question of sufficient data and skill. Such data were the despatches. By com- paring, combining, and classifying them the expert at length determined what must have been the keys without which the despatches could not have been as they were. These results he then published to the world, defying contradiction. To rea- son, phenomena are but cipher despatches into which divine thoughts have been trans- lated by the aid of efficient causes. Rea- son refuses to be satisfied with the sub- jective empirical science of sense and reflective thought. It will discover the causes back of experience and then ex- claim with Kepler, “ I think thy thoughts after thee, O God.” Such is a brief outline of our author's discussion of intellect. It will be seen that the corner-stone of the whole system is reason as the self-knower, and that in making se//-knowledge the nod ctt w of a science of things-in-themselves he is not reasoning by analogy. This is the point so often misunderstood. When I find a three-leaved clover and then infer that all clovers have three leaves, I am reasoning by analogy ; but when, with mathematical insight, I find a triangle to have the sum of its angles equal to 180 degrees, and conclude that all triangles of whatever name or dimensions must have the sum of their angles also equal to 180 degrees, I am not reasoning by analogy. I have come to a clear knowledge of what is the very being and essence of a triangle. So the mind, in knowing its own being and nature, affirms, on the strength of no anal- ogy, but with clearest insight and knowl- edge, the existence of a Personal Reason higher than human, in whom it lives and moves and has its being. Man an Independent Creative Power. 97 MAN AN INDEPENDENT CEE ATI VE POWER. BY ROWLAND GIBSON HAZARD, LL.D. 1 TN his introductory sentences Dr. Hazard spoke of the general indifference to metaphysical pursuits, which he attributed iu part to the more easily appreciated discoveries in physical science. But, he continued, if the study of the mind may elicit practical modes of increasing the efficiency of the intellect, then this study, which thus increases inventive power, may, even in its relation to the most materialis- tic utility, become the first and most im- portant factor. But beyond and above all such comparatively grovelling applica- tion to our bodily wants, beyond and above even the increase of intellectual power, I hope to show that the special field of metaphysical utility is in our moral nature, that the finite intelligence is not only a creative but a supreme creative power, and therein, bjt the exercise of its faculties upon itself, it may discover new modes of moulding the moral character. Mind, like all other objects of knowl- edge, is itself known only by its proper- ties ; these, as directly revealed in con- sciousness, are knowledge, feeling and will. In knowing and feeling it is not active, but passively perceives and feels. The will is its only real faculty. B}’ this alone it acts. By an effort of memory or imagination, we mean the mind’s effort as to its own movement or action ; and b) r bodily effort we only mean the mind’s 1 Rowland Gibson Hazard, LL.D., was born in South Kingston, R. I., Oct. 9, 1801. He was for many years actively engaged in the woollen manufacture at Peace Dale, R. I., but retired from the manufacturing business in 1866. He has given much attention to metaphysics. His principal work, printed in 1864, on “Freedom of the Mind in Willing,” has for its second book a refutation of Jonathan Edwards’s doctrine of necessity. This work was undertaken in compliance with a request of Dr. Clianning, the celebrated divine* who urged Mr. Hazard to write a logical demonstration of freedom and a refu- effort to move the body. All men know, feel and make effort. It is conceivable that a being mwht have knowledge without feeling ; but it could not have feeling without knowing it. It might with knowledge have feeling, and enjoy or suffer, without will, without any faculty by which it could change its states of enjoyment or suffering. It may seem conceivable that a being might have will without knowledge or feeling, but such a power would be merely potential, for without feeling there could be no motive for its exercise, and without knowledge no means of directing its effort to an object. If it be conceivable that such being could have a potential faculty of action, its tendency to act must be equal in all di- rections, and there would be no tendency to act in an}'. An unintelligent being cannot be self-active. Our sensations and emotions are not de- pendent on our will, for we can neither hear nor avoid hearing the sound of a cannon by an act of will ; nor is our know- ing subject to our will, for we cannot will what we shall perceive. The additions to our knowledge are always simple, im- mediate mental perceptions. Feeling is an incentive to action, but is not itself active ; knowledge enables us to direct our efforts, but is itself passive. Through its only active faculty of will the intelligent tation of Edwards. In 1841-'! he procured the liberation, after much difficulty, of a large number of free negroes of the North who were illegally held in the chain-gang in New Orleans. He has been a member of the Rhode Island legislature several terms. His published works include “Essay on Language” (1834); “Freedom of the Mind in Willing” (1864); "Letters to John Stuart Mill on Causation and Freedom in Willing ” (1869). In 1845 he received the honorary degree of A, M., aud in 1869 that of LL D. front Brown University. Man an Independent Creative Power. 9 s being strives to produce change, of which, when effected, it is the cause. Oil 1 own individual effort is the only cause of which we are directly conscious, but we are directly conscious of changes in our own sensations. From some of these sensa- tions we infer objective material changes, some of which we have and others we have not caused. From some of these we also infer the existence of other intelligent beings like ourselves. But as some of these changes require a power beyond any indicated in ourselves or in our fellow- beings, we infer the existence of a supe- rior intelligent being adequate to their production. We thus come to know our- selves, our fellow-beings, and God as cause. Of the existence of matter or its proper- ties we are not directly conscious, for we know nothing of it except by the sensa- tions which we impute to it. All our sensations which we attribute to matter are as fully accounted for by the hypothe- sis that they are the thought, the imagery of the mind of God directly imparted or made palpable to our finite minds. In any case matter and spirit are still anti- thetically distinguished, the one having the properties of knowledge, feeling and voli- tion, while the other is unintelligent, senseless and inert. This hypothesis that the material phenomena are but the thought and imagery of God immediately impressed on us is the more simple of the two explanations. We can ourselves by effort create such imageiy, and to some extent make it durable and palpable to Olliers. We can, however, no more attri- bute inherent power and causative energy to them than we can to an image in a mirror. On the other hand, if the existence of matter, as a distinct, independent, objective entity, is conceded, it may still be urged that it can, within itself, have no causa- tive power. If wholly quiescent it could exert no power to change itself, for matter cannot move itself. Even if imbued with motive power, it could have no induce- ment or tendency to move in one direction rather than another and a tendency or power of self-movement which is equal in all directions is a nullity. Clay may be moulded, it cannot mould. Matter is onlj' an inert instrument that intelligence uses to produce these effects which we see about us. As germane to these arguments thus drawn from the difficulty of conceiving of the creation of matter as a distinct entity, we would observe that to assume the ex- istence of both is unphilosophical ; and further, that as we are directly conscious of the spiritual phenomena and only infer the material from our sensations, those who set up the material against or to the exclusion of the spiritual are impeaching testimony by testimony less reliable than that which they impeach. And, further, it seems inconceivable that matter, or what does not itself know, should be the cause of intelligence or of a power to know. These considerations seem to furnish sufficient reason for discarding the hy- pothesis of causal power in matter. But whether matter, if it exist, can, even if in motion, be a force, power or cause depends on another question : whether the tendency of a bod3’ in motion is to continue to move, or to stop when the moving power ceases to act upon it. Until this radical question is settled, it is difficult to see how matter, though in motion, can properly be regarded as a force, or even as a conserver of force imparted to it by other power. Nor could intelligent power make matter a self-active cause, capable of beginning to move and of directing its movements, for to be thus governed by law presupposes intelligence on the part of the governed ; such gov- ernment of that which has no intelligence involves a contradiction which power can- not reconcile. All that can be properly implied when we refer an event to the “nature of things” or to the “laws of Man an Independent Creative Power. 99 nature” as its cause, is that the intelli- gence which causes these events acts uniformly. In investigating the laws of nature, we but seek to learn the uniform modes of God’s action. Another and very popular notion of cause, adopted by many eminent philoso- phers, including John Stuart Mill, is that all events, or successive phenomena, are connected in a chain of which each suc- cessive link is the effect of all that had preceded it. On these and other similar positions of Mill and the materialistic school generally, I will remark that they do not distinguish what produces from what merely precedes change. Life is a pre- requisite to death, but cannot properly be regarded as a cause of it. Again, if the cause is the whole of the antecedents, then, as at each instant the whole of the antecedents is everywhere the same, the effect would every where be the same ; and throughout the universe there could be only one and the same effect at the same time. It is also obvious that on this theory of the “whole antecedents” there can be no possible application of the law of uniformity that “the same causes produce the same effects,” for the mo- ment the cause — the whole of the antece- dents — has once acted, its action and its effect are added to and permanently change it, and the same cause can never act a second time, and we could have no experience of this uniformity of causation. The advocates of this theory that the w’hole antecedents are the cause, and of the asserted law that the same causes must produce the same effects, also very gene rail}’ hold that we get all our knowl- edge from experience. But it is clear that if the theory is true there can be no ex- perience as to the law, and hence no knowledge to justify them in asserting it. In the present state of our knowledge, then, the only causative power that we can be said to know is that of intelligent be- ing in action. Every atom that changes its position in the uniform modes of elec- trical attraction and repulsion, or of chem- ical affinities, is moved not by the en- ergizing, but by the energetic will of an omnipresent intelligence. The question of freedom in willing has for ages been a prominent subject of phil- osophical inquiry. Much diversity of opinion has arisen from defective defini- tions of will, and of freedom as appli- cable to willing. Effort is wholly unique ; through the whole range of our ideas there is nothing resembling it. Will has some- times been regarded as a distinct entity. This finds expression in the phrase, “ free- dom of the will,” and opens the way for the argument that if this distinct entity can be controlled by some power extra- neous to it, even though by the being of which it is an attribute, then the will is not free. Such reasoning is wholly pre- cluded wheu we consider will as simply the faculty or ability of the mind to make effort, and an act of will as simply an effort of the mind to do, and in accordance with this view we speak of the “ freedom of the mind in willing,” instead of the “ free- dom of the will.” The will is that by which the mind does any and every thing that it does at all, or in the accomplishing of which it has any active energy. Lim- iting its function to the phenomena of choice seems to me to be peculiarly unfor- tunate, for our choice is merely the knowl- edge that one of two or more things suits us best. A common mistake in consider- ing this subject is in making freedom to try to do (which is really freedom of the will) dependent on our porver to do. But we may freely make effort or try to do what the event proves we have not power to do. Freedom in willing does not imply that the mind’s effort is not controlled and di- rected, but that it is controlled and di- rected by the being that makes the effort, and is not controlled or coerced by extra- neous power. The consequence of these defective definitions of will and freedom lOO Man an Independent Creative Power. upon the argument are obvious, and result in necessity. As a sequence of the foregoing premises it is evident that no power can change the past, and that the object of every intelli- gent effort must be to make the future different from what, but for such effort, it would be. This is the only conceivable motive to effort. Now intelligent being, constituted as before stated, has through its feelings an inducement to make efforts to so mould the future as to obtain an in- crease of those feelings which are pleasur- able and avoid or lessen those that are painful. Such a being is in itself self- active. Supposing- it to have come into existence with no other coexisting power in action, it would of course be self-con- trolled. But if there were other coexisting causative beings or powers, we know of no mode in which the willing of one being can be directly changed by the willing of another, or by any other extrinsic power whatever. The willing so controlled would be the willing of the other being or power, and not that of the being in which it is manifested. But a constrained or coerced willing, a willing which is not five, is not even con- ceivable ; the idea is so incongruous that any attempt to express it results in the solecism of our willing when we are not willing. Our only mode of influencing the willing of another is to change the knowledge by which he controls and di- rects his own willing, and it is evident that this mode is effective only upon the condition that this other does direct and control his own willing and conforms it to his own knowledge. It would be absurd to suppose that the conforming of the act of will to the knowledge of the being that wills is by an extrinsic power. From these premises it follows that our willing, not only may be, but must be free, and also that every being that wills is a creative first cause, an independent power in the universe, freely exerting its indi- vidual energies to make the future different from what it otherwise would be. Each individual acts in reference to his pro- phetic anticipations of what the future will be without his action, and what the effects of his action upon it will be, in- cluding in these effects the consequent changes in the knowledge and action of others. The interdependence of the action of each upon that of the others, without interference wuth the freedom of any may be illustrated by the game of chess. This equal and perfect freedom of all does not impair the sovereignty of the Supreme Intelligence. Edwards argues that if the Supreme Intelligence did not foreknow human vo- litions, lie would be continually liable to be frustrated in His plans. But Omnis- cience could at once perceive what action was most wise, or, even if prevision was essential, could search out and be pre- pared for every possible contingency. Such foreknowledge may happen in va- rious games, such as chess. Dr. Hazard then considered the phe- nomena of instinct to a considerable length, saying that the only difference between instinctive and rational actions lies, not in the actions themselves, but in the mode of attaining the knowledge by which we direct the action ; in the in- stinctive it is innate and applied with- out deliberation or premeditation, from a plan already formed in the mind ; in the rational action, man devises the plan for himself. When by repetition he has learned to apply the rational plan by rote without reference to the rationale , it then becomes an habitual action which, like the instinctive action, is from a plan thus ready formed in the mind by memory. The popular consciousness of this similar- ity in instinctive and habitual actions 'is manifested in the old adage that u habit is second nature.” The genesis of our actions must be instinctive, founded on innate knowledge, there being no possible The Relation between Experience and Philosophy. i oi way in which we could ever, through ex- perience or reflection, learn by effort to put either our muscular or mental powers in action. But the argument from cause and effect seems to be most relied upon by necessi- tarians. But an intelligent, self-active cause is under no necessity upon a recur- rence of the same circumstances to repeat its action, but having in the first case increased its knowledge it may act differ- ently in the second. Dr. Hazard then noted the arguments which concern the influence of external conditions on the acts of will and the influence of internal phenomena, such as disposition, moral character and knowl- edge, asserting that the position of the necessitarians, that our acts of will must conform to these proves freedom. The interesting question was then discussed whether a man could will the contrary of what he does will. He could if he so decided, said the speaker, but it would be a contradictory and absurd idea of free- dom, which for its realization would require that one might try to do what he bad determined not to try to do. These arguments of the necessitarians, that acts of will must conform to our character, virtual l} r assert that man is not free be- cause he must be free. Dr. Hazard then criticised the argument from the prescience of volitions, saying that a free act of will is more easily fore- known than one that is not free, and hence that the argument from the presci- ence of volitions favors freedom. Dr. Hazard spoke of the power of men to create mental landscapes. They can make them and change them at will with a true creative power. If a man impresses upon a friend the image of this ideal land- scape, so that it becomes fixed and per- manent, it is to him an objective creation as truly as a real landscape. To the thinker himself, sometimes, the mental creation becomes so fixed that he cannot change it at will. This is seen particu- larly in the case of insane persons whose mental pictures are real to them. This line of thought strongly suggests that the difference between the creative powers of man and those of the Supreme Being, are mainly, if not wholly, in degree and not in kind. Eleventh Day, — July 28. THE RELATION BETWEEN EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. BY DR. JONES. f J NIERE is a sensible understanding and a scientific understanding and a logi- cal understanding. Philosophic knowing, as interpreted in the preceding lecture, is not philosophy in its consummation. But above it is the habit of the soul in the search after truth. All truth is beheld by the mind as subsisting in a certain divine effulgence, and this irradiance and splen- dor of the true is beauty, and beauty is a begetting principle. The light and the beauty of truth, irradiant upon the affec- tions of the soul, generate therein the motion and quality of the love of the 102 The Relation between Experience and Philosophy. beautiful, of truth, of good, of purity, of j honor, of righteousness, of justice. And the generating and establishing of this habit of soul is that which is more than all knowledges, that which is more than is contained in the richest mine of dis- covery ; namely, it is the wisdom and faculty of deeds of divine quality and virtue. And this consummation is divine philosophy. Man is sentient, cognitive and motive. What he feels and thinks he moves upon in such manner as to ac- quaint himself with the nature and use of the subject investigated. And all seeing, hearing, sensing and thinking about a knowable matter, without anj r experimental test, is invalid for reality. Abstraction is the reproach of all knowings, sensible, scientifical and logical. There are two principles in the consti- tution of man, whence, as from fountains, How two streams whose confluence is the practical life. One is the intellectual principle, whose motions and progeny are the thoughts and the understanding, in which is the faculty of knowing what is true and good. The other is the sentient principle, whose motions and progeny are the affections and the will, in which is the faculty of loving and doing what is true and good. As are the thoughts, such is the understanding ; and as the affections, such the will. In the understanding of what is true and good is the light which illuminates the way of life, and in the will is the energy which works the deeds of life. Will-energy working is expe- rience ; and will-energy works both in the light and in the darkness. Experience is therefore productive of the fruits of wis- dom, or of folly, according to the relations of experience with the illuminations of the understanding. When the understanding is in the fatu- ous light of sensationalism and physicism the will-energies work in ignorance, and in affliction and anguish, seasoned with alternate sensuous delights. And in the children of this sublunary light, experience leads not to knowledge and wisdom and true good, and therefore it may be said of them that none are so ignorant as those who have most experience. These are they who may be always learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth. Again, when the understanding is in the light of truth, through sensible and scien- tiflcal and logical acquaintance with the knowable subject, but at the same time the affections and the will work in the qualitj' of the false and the. evil persuasion, then are the actual experiences of life fruit- ful of folly and wickedness. Eminent in- stances are the Adam and the Jonah of the oracles, and the Hamlet of the Christian drama. Each of these understood the divine behest, while the affections and will and deed were perverse and went another way. In this case knowledge is abstract, and however great that knowl- edge, however universal that knowledge, if unallied with the moral nature through experience in the voluntary deeds of life, the man is impotent. His intellect may range the heaven and the earth and the in- ferno of existence, and his moral nature may be endowed with the most exquisite sensibility and receptivity to beauty and virtue, but unaflianced and unallied in the actual experiences, the one is but an impo- tence, and the other an insanity. The intel- lect and the moral nature, the understand- ing and the will must be married. Thence are the issues of wisdom and virtue, power and deeds divine. Experience, without understanding truth and good, is not philosophy, and converselj', the understanding of truth and good of whatsoever order, without experience, is not philosophy. Knowledge of truth and good abstract from the affection, the love of the soul, does not enter the will and become deed, for what a man loves, that he wills and does. The dominant love is the soul’s sign-manual of what the man shall will and do. The knowledge The Relation between Experience and Philosophy. of truth and right, not concrete through affection and the will, is the “ sophia the love of this knowledge in the will-en- ergies and deeds is the pMlos- sophia. These are philosophic contraries. The difference between these is the matter ever in issue between the philosophy of Plato, and the wisdom, so called, of the Sophists, the latter holding that intellec- tual knowing alone is the all and suffi- ciency of wisdom ; the former holding that love with knowledge is the constitution of the consummate wisdom. And here is the border line, the differentiating land- mark between the living and the dead systems of philosophy, running through all ages. The highest knowing, the mere knowing of the highest, is not philosophy. That is, the abstract intellectual cognition, and formulation of the idea of deity is not “ philosophic/,,” but “sopliia.” Philosophy' is not merely the logical cognition of some first principle that did work in the universe and in the creation of souls, but it must identify and realize a first and universally creative cause that does work manifestly in nature, and con- scious^ and think ably and knowably and known perpetually through all times in the soul of man. Dr. Jones then reviewed at length the ancient philosophies of Asia and Europe, finding in them theism and atheism and all the issues which men are discussing today. A divine spirit above man has always been asserted. This doctrine of wisdom is distinctively affirmed and identified in the oracles and philosophical speculations of the Christian dispensation. Its author is himself declared to be the Logos by whom the worlds are made and upheld. He declares himself to be “ the way, the truth and the life,” and the light of men, who came into the world to do the will of his Father,” to reveal the laws of the unseen world and the mysteries of the spirit, lie said : “ Whosoever hear- eth these sayings of mine and doeth them, 103 I wall liken him unto a wise man who built his house upon a rock.” The deeds proceeding from the love of the soul and inseparable from it, the practical experi- mental realization, is the wisdom in the case. The abstract knowing of the same things without the deeds is foolishness, the utter privation of wisdom. Not what men know, but what they know and love and do, is the substance of the philosophic consummation — the pliilos-sopliia. Knowledge detached from religion is a fatal fascination, and easily becomes an object of fervent popular desire. Its cor- rupting tendency upon morals is inevitable, and the reason is obvious. It multiplies the devices for gratifying the appetites, passions and desires without any corre- sponding increase of regulating and re- straining principles. Hence the character- istics of declining public morality- and virtue are a progressive increase m the force of passion, a rampant sensationalism, tolerated license and disorder, with a proportionally progressive decrease in the influence of authority and duty. Then follow the contempt for and the decay of the old modesties and social civilities and manners and rectitudes of life, then the endlessly multiplying frivolities, absurdi- ties and tyrannies of fashion, with her amazing extravagance and dissipations and vain repute and heartless pretension. Then speedily follow the dying of public conscience, the secularization and dese- cration of the bonds of marriage, dishorn r in the violations of contracts, the repudia- tion of debts, public and private, the enor- mous avarice and greed which consume the just and natural relations of capital and labor, the diabolical rings which de- stroy the just and healthful working of politics in the relations of the people to their government, which usurp and per- vert the powers of a nation, and are guilty, in fine, both in politics and busi- ness, and even in ecclesiastical affairs, of diabolical rule and ruin ; together with an Practical Utility of Metaphysical Pursuits. 104 alarming' increase of intemperance in nun and opium-eating, of debauchery and the social evil, and suicides and embezzle- ments and recklessness of life, and laxity of laws and of various crimes and disorders and monstrosities of a diseased civilization. Practical ungodliness and unrighteousness in a nation are fearful and hideous mon- strosities, but they are the sure progeny of popular scientific enlightenment de- tached from a public conscience and duty of practical, experimental, revealed relig- ion. PRACTICAL UTILITY OF METAPHYSICAL PURSUITS. BY DR. HAZARD. dT N my former discourse I argued that man is a self-active and self-controlled agent, with creative powers, which he free- ly and successfully exerts to change the existing conditions and mould the fu- ture. Having then treated of the exercise of the creative power in the external, which is the arena of all intelligent activ- ity, I propose now to speak more especially of its manifestations in the internal, in which each individual has his own spe- cial sphere of creative effort. Our efforts for change in the sphere within us, except- ing perhaps those for moral construction, are always to increase our knowledge. The knowledge sought may be of either sphere. Its immediate object, often, per- haps oftenest, is to enable us to decide more wisely as to our action in reference to the actual current events of life, or it may be for the pleasure we derive from the mental activity in the process, and the success which is almost certain to reward our search for truth. A higher object may be to increase permanently the intellectual power, or yet higher, to im- prove our moral nature. For the acquisition of knowledge mind has two distinct modes — observation and reflection. By the former we note the changes which are cognized by the senses, and by the latter we trace out the rela- tions between the ideas, the knowledge we already have in store, and thus obtain new perceptions, new ideas. A large portion of our perceptions, however acquired, are primarily but imagery of the mind, pict- ures, as it were, of what we have per- ceived or imagined. In this form we will for convenience designate them as primi- tive perceptions or ideals. I especially seek to distinguish these from those to which we have given expression or gen- eralized in words. There is a somewhat prevalent notion that we can think only in words ; but it is obvious that we can cognize things for which we have no name, and can also perceive their relations before we have found any words to describe them. These primitive perceptions or ideals are thus independent of the words which we use to represent them, and to which they have a separate and prior existence. Much of our acquired knowledge is of the relations in and between our primitive perceptions. In the pursuit of truth by reflective efforts we have two modes. In the first place we may, through our imme- diate primitive perceptions of things which are present or the mental imager}' of things remembered, directly note existing rela- tions among them or their parts without the use of words. Or we may substitute words as signs or definitions of these primitive perceptions and then investigate the rela- tions among the words so substituted. Practical Utility of Metaphysical Pursuits. In the difference of these modes is the fundamental distinction between poetry and prose ; we see the painting without thinking of the pigments and the shading by which it is impressed upon us. Every reader may experimentally test this dis- tinction in Ms reading of poetry. Poetry, thus depending on this prominence of the primitive perceptions, is the nearest possible approach which language can make to the reality which it represents. These two modes of investigation present the most important and fundamental, if not the only distinction in our methods of philosophic research and discovery. Each has its peculiar advantages, and both are essential to our progress in knowledge. All general propositions must be ex- pressed in the prosaic mode, and the prog- ress of knowledge usually being from particulars to generals, little advancement can be made without it. The particulars become too numerous and cumbersome for the mind to deal with separately. But the poetic mode dealing direct!}' with the things as observed, recollected or imag- ined, we are by it enabled to advance bej'ond the limits of language and of the senses. It is thus the most efficient truth- discovering power, and at the same time furnishes the means of communicating the discoveries it makes in advance of the logical processes. This greater reach and quickness makes the poetic power the essential attribute of genius in all its varieties. In its least ethereal and most common form it is the basis of that common sense which, looking directly at things, events and their rela- tions, enables us spontaneously to form just opinions, or probable conjectures, of immediate consequences, and to determine as to the appropriate action. The facility of application to the current affairs of life which pertains to the ideal processes makes the poetic attribute the main ele- ment of practical business abilit}'. The current events of life are too complicated, io 5 variable and heterogeneous for the appli- cation of verbal logic. To the uninitiated in logic, who are immersed in business, the processes of ideality are much safer. In these, without the intervention of words, the mind at a glance takes in the actual conditions and reaches its conclusions in incomparably less time than would be re- quired to substitute the terms, test their precision, examine their relations, and arrange them in the requisite logical order. The greater quickness with which we examine particular cases by the poetic process, to some extent compensates for the greater number of them which may be embraced in one generalization of the prosaic. Persons who adopt the quicker mode are often notably discreet, wise and able in the actual conduct of affairs, but from the exclusion of words in the process, and its flash-like quickness, they cannot state the grounds of their conclusions, nor assign a reason for their consequent action. The poetic processes are also the char- acteristic features of what has been termed a woman’s reason, which is thus contra- distinguished from verbal logic. And the practical application of these processes is illustrated in the quick and clear per- ception of the circumstances and sound judgment upon them with which woman is properly accredited. And it is to her command of these more direct and more ethereal modes of thought and expression that we must attribute her superior influ- ence in softening the asperities of our na- ure and refining and elevating the senti- ments of our race. But it is by a judicious application of both these modes to the same subject, so that each may supplement and supply the deficiencies or correct the errors of the other, that I look for increased efficiency, reach and accuracy of the mind’s intellect- ual ability. The discovery of improved modes for such cultivation of and selection from these two cardinal methods of seeking truth, and the means of making io6 Practical Utility of Metaphysical Pursuits. these discoveries accessible and available to the popular mind, is in the province of the metaphysician and opens to him an elevated sphere of utility. It is true that both these modes must always have been in practical use, but without conscious attention as to the selection or application of them, singly or combined. The neglect or unconsciousness of any such aids is manifested in the not uncommon belief that we always think in words. I have already touched upon the exer- cise of our creative powers without us, but it is in the isolated sphere within us — in the seclusion of our own spiritual nature, that we should expect to find this power most potent, and our efforts, always men- tal, most successful. Conformably to these anticipations, I hope to show that in the formation of character, this power of creating imaginary constructions and of contemplating and perfecting them, exerts an influence of the highest import- ance, and which, by cultivation, may be enhanced without conceivable limit. From these supposable events, which are con- stantly flowing through the mind, we form rules of conduct, or receive impressions which govern us in the concerns of real life. It is in meditating on these that we nurture the innate feelings, sentiments and passions. He who accustoms himself to this discipline, who, withdrawn from the bustle of the world, tranquilly contemplates imaginary cases and determines how he ought to act under them, frames for him- self a system of government with less lia- bility to error than is possible in the tumultuous scenes of active life. The ideal formations may not be accurately fitted to the occasions which actuall}' arise, but they will at least furnish suggestive analogies, and in the processes lead to habits of disinterested thought, which are so essential to the successful pursuit of truth. We cannot directly will a change in our mental affections an}' more than in what are termed bodily sensations. We cannot directly will the emotions of hope or fear, or to be pure and noble, or even to want to become pure and noble, any more than w r e can directly will to be hungry, or to want to be hungry. The occurrence and recurrence of our spiritual wants are as certain as those of hunger. We are con- tinually reminded of them by our own thoughts and acts, by comparison with those of others. God has placed the moral sense in us to remind us of the wants of our moral nature. It thus appears that want (constitutional, acquired or cultivated) is the source of effort for internal as well as external change. Rian’s knowledge in the sphere of his moral nature is infallible, and were he infinitely wise or certain to act in con- formity to his knowledge of the right, he would be infallible in his morals. It is also evident that the mind must direct its efforts for internal change b}^ means of its knowledge, including its preconceptions, of the character it would there build up. Now such preconceptions are imaginary constructions, incipient creations in the future. In its construction in the external the mind does not, of necessity, even consider or recognize the alreadj’-existing external circumstances. In “castle-building” it often voluntarily discards them and forms a construction entirely from its own inter- nal resources. If all external existences were annihilated, a man, thus isolated, might imagine a material universe in which all is, in his view, beautiful and good. He may not make the additional effort to actualize them. So, too, if moved by the aspirations of his spiritual being, he may conceive a moral nature, pure and noble, resisting all temptations to evil and conforming with energetic and persevering effort to all vir- tuous impulses and suggestions. Though he may make no effort, and not even in- tend to make any, to realize such ideal Practical Utility of Metaphysical Pursuits. 107 conceptions, the}’ are not without influence. The making of such constructions as har- monize with our conceptions of moral ex- cellence is in itself improving ; to conform our conduct to them is a greater step, and the persistent effort to actualize them when the occasion for their practical ap- plication has arisen, is, so far as their moral nature is concerned, really their final consummation ; for whether the prox- imate object of the effort is or is not at- tained, makes no difference to the moral quality. The intent or motive is not affected by the success or failure of the effort. If a man wills to do an act which is good and noble, it does not concern his virtue, whether his effort is successful or otherwise. The effort is itself the tri- umph in him of the good and noble over the bad and base, and the persevering effort to be good and noble is itself being- good and noble. As regards the moral nature there can be no failure except the failure to will, or to make the proper effort. The human mind, then, up to the point of willing, is, in its own sphere, an independent creative first cause. In the external the ideal in- cipient creation may not be consummated by finite effort, but as in our moral nature, the willing, the persevering effort is itself the consummation, there can in it be no such failure, and the mind in it, is there- fore not only a creative, but a supreme creative first cause. We have, then, this marked difference between effort in the sphere of the moral nature and in that sphere which is external to it, that while in the external there must be something beyond the effort, the sub- sequent change, which is the object of the effort, in the sphere of the moral nature, the effort, for the time being, is the con- summation ; and this, if by repetition, ideal or actual, made habitual, becomes a permanent constituent of the character, which, through haoitual action, will be obvious to others — will be a permanent, palpable creation. In his internal sphere, then, man has to the fullest extent the powers in which he is so deficient in the external. In it he can make his incipient creations palpable and permanent constituents of his owm moral character. I11 this permanent in- corporation of them with his moral nature habit has a very important agency. In the sphere of its owm moral nature, then, whatever the finite mind really wills is as immediately and as certainly executed as is the will of Omnipotence in its sphere of action, for the willing in such case is itself the final accomplishment, the terminal effect of the creative effort. Dr. Hazard then distinguished carefully between that mere abstract judgment or knowledge of what is desirable in out- moral nature and the want or effort to attain it. Even Omnipotence can do no more than increase the knowledge and thus excite the wants of man ; for mak- ing a man virtuous without his own volun- tary co-operation involves a contradiction. The increase of virtuous efforts indicates an improvement in the character of the cultivated wants and an increase of the knowledge by w-hich right action is incited and directed. The virtue of the effort of a man to be pure and noble is for the time being just as perfect if no external or no permanent results follow- the effort. If the good efforts are transitory, the moral goodness will be equally so. Nor does the nature of the actual resulting effect make an}’ difference as to the moral quality of the effort. On the other hand, a man may be selfish in doing acts in themselves beneficent ; and doing good for such selfish ends manifests no virtue, whether that end be money- making or reaching heaven. The conse- quences of a volition may prove that it w’as unwise, but cannot affect its moral status. No blame or wrong can be attrib- io8 Practical Utility of Metaphysical Pursuits. uted to one Mho did the best he knew. Until the man has put forth effort against his knowledge of duty, or omitted to put it forth in conformity with this knowledge, there can be no moral wrong. There is no present moral wrong either in the knowledge now in his mind or in the exciting want which he now feels, though there may have been moral wrong in the acquisition of it. There can be no moral wrong in the acquisition of that knowledge which he unintentionally ac- quires. That a man involuntarily knows that the sun shines, or that a drum is beat- ing, cannot be wrong in itself. So also in regard to the natural wants. There is no moral wrong in the mere fact of their recurrence. There may be moral wrong in our willing to gratify a want which should not be gratified, but such recurrence of itself can involve no present moral wrong, and merety furnishes the occasion for virtuous effort to resist wffiat is wrong or to foster and strengthen what is right. The condition of the moral nature may be comparatively low in the scale, yet an effort to advance from it may be as truly and purely virtuous as a like effort at any higher point. In the present moment, then, the knowl- edge and the want which exist prior to effort involve no present moral right or wrong. Moral right and wrong are all concentrated in the effort or act of will which is our own free act. Efforts to be pure and noble and for corresponding ex- ternal action may become habitual and hence comparatively easy through habit. We cannot directly will not to think of any- thing, j’et by willing to think of something else we may displace and banish other thought. We maj r find means of inducing any moral want and thus may give one moral want a preponderance over another which, by repetition, becoming habitual, will go far to eradicate a discarded moral Want and to modffy the influence even of the physical. A man habitually holj', who has eradicated the conflicting wants, has annihilated the conditions requisite to his willing M'hat is unholy ; and as he cannot be unholy except by his own voluntary act, he has then no power to be unholy. This is, perhaps, a condition to w r hich a finite moral being may forever approximate but never actually reach, never attain that condition in which it is absolutely unable to will what is impure and ignoble. Through the knowledge of the means of giving to some of our internal wants a pre- dominance over others, we are enabled by effort to influence our moral characteristics at their very source. As man’s moral nature can be affected onl} T by his own act of will, and no other power can will or produce his own act of will, he is in it also a sole creative first cause, though still a Suite cause. Though finite, his efficiency as cause in this sphere is limited only b3’ that limit of all creative power, — the incompatible or contradic- tory, — and b3 ? his conceptions of change in his moral nature which are dependent upon the extent of his knowledge ; and, in this view, the will itself having no bounds of its own max’ be regarded as infinite, though the range for its action is finite. There is no reason to suppose that there is any absolute limit to our moral sphere of ef- fort, but that it is onl3 r relative^ 7 and tem- porarily circumseiibed by our finite per- ceptions, which, having a finite rate of in- crease, may forever continue to expand in it without pressing on its outermost bound. Every intelligent moral being capable of conceiving of higher ethical conditions than he has 3’et attained, has, in his own moral nature for the exercise of his crea- tive powers, an infinite sphere, within which, with knowledge there infallible, he is the supreme disposer. In contrast with our physical, our spiritual wants are boundless and insatiable, and in our want of progress and activity then, we have exhaustless sources of gratification. The The Ascending Scale of Powers. 109 ideal conceptions we may always bring to mind, and if we habitually encourage the presence only of those which are pure and elevated, we shall as a consequence be- come more and more refined and ennobled. We are at an early period of life intro- duced into the domain of constructive moral effort, and the quickening influence which the soul receives in this direction attests the beneficent provision for our earlj- moral culture. The child naturally undertakes the forming of these ideal con- ceptions and finds in it a pleasurable occu- pation. The child can be educated in form- ing these constructions and making them beneficial in the forming of moral char- acter. These studies should be encouraged rather than discouraged, as they frequently are, as mere castle-building. Thus it appears that metaphysics in attaining to an adequate understanding and definition of will opens the way to the formation of character. Character is that which is permanent. It is a crea- tion of the divine order, but the beginning of it is in the human will. Herein appears the practical utility of metaphysical pur- suits. Twelfth Day, — Jltly 29. THE ASCENDING SCALE OF POWERS. BY MR. ALCOTT. nV/TR. ALCOTT stated that his chief object in this lecture upon “ The Ascending Scale of Powers ” was to give a Comprehensive view of the faculties of the personal mind. The senses deal with separate, distinct things. Through mem- ory, however, things can be brought up again in consciousness. This is indeed a great step upward, for at first we only per- ceive things through taste, smell and other senses. Memory, too, not only recalls what is seen in this world, but also recalls our experiences before coming here. Classes of animals exist which have only the sense of touch, of odors, colors, etc. A narrow field it is to be confined to sensuous experience, limited by time and space, and thus living only in the present moment. Step out of the world of sense into the world of fact, and there one begins to generalize, for things and facts are not the same. In this sphere the understand- ing drops out single things and thus classifies. Common sense, or the under- standing, is that which is common to all the senses. As yet we have been dealing with native facts ; now we enter the world of fantasy, which takes objects of the senses and gives a meaning which neither sight nor any other of the senses can give them. The word in this world expresses or images the thought,. Ascending still higher, the reason generalizes and deduces truths. Higher than the fantasy is the imagi- nation, which deals with ideas which arc forms of all things, visible and invisible. Through the moral sense, or conscience, men resolve into righteous deed all they have felt or thought. Take one step higher and men mount to the summits of life, the Beautiful, the True and the Good. Then they are in the Presence, iu God himself, and each can say, “ I am I.” I IO Nature. which no animal can do. If we had no souls, we should never ask where, whose, why. Life descends from spirit to mat- ter and reascends to spirit. Beginning at the top we find man, and as we descend, the lower animals ; and the lower man de- scends the more he resembles the brute, — a degrading passion transforms the human into the brute. There is no other key to the instinct of the child than the explanation that the mind of God is a providence nurturing and directing it. We are ever at the fount and drinking, inspired with vital and vascular forces, flooding the soul, animat- ing and incarnating every faculty and vessel of this bod}’ we call ours. Every attribute of its possibility^ partakes of the effluence shed down from on high, each partaking according to its capacit}^ of reception from the overflowing fountain. The golden buckets are dropped down from above for each to dip his draught of in- spiration therefrom, be this less or more. And whosoever drinketh of this water shall never thirst. It shall be a well of water springing up unto everlasting life. Our generation moulds our_state, Its virtues, vices, fix our fate;* Nor otherwise experience proves, • The unseen hands make all the moves, If some are great and some are small, Some climb to good, some from good fortune fall, — Not figures these of speech, — forefathers sway us all. With Fate what boots it to contend P Such I began, such am, and so shall end : The star that did my being frame Was but a lambent flame ; Some light indeed it did dispense, But less of heat and influence. No matter, poet, let proud Fortune see That thou canst her despise no less than she does thee ; Why grieve thyself or blush to be As all the inspired tuneful seers And all thy great forefathers were from Shakes- peare to thy peers ? — Altered from Cowley on Destiny. Thirteenth Day, — July 31. NATURE. BY MRS. CHENEY f I HIE moment we enter into human life 1 we are confronted with the problem of Nature. We may strive to escape from it by calling it illusion, but that does not relieve us from its investigation, for it is an appearance which veils or reveals the reality according as we look at it. Our first step in the knowledge of Nature is the recognition that this word represents more than matter. It is rather the meeting point of spirit and matter. It is the uni- versal tendency of the human mind to personify nature. The philosophic revolt of the eighteenth century against estab- lished religion almost deified Nature ; and even the scientific mind used person- ifying language. Having no absolute standpoint from which to interpret Nature, we make ourselves the test and the standard, and so we fail to read the secret. It was a self-complacent doctrine that Nature existed only for the service of Nature. hi man, but is it possible to make facts har- monize with this doctrine? Is it not an aristocratic doctrine, this belief that any j being does not exist as truly for its own sake as that of any other? Must we not find a true democracy, a true Christianity, which asserts that the least shall not be ruthlessly sacrificed for the advantage of the greatest, and that the welfare of one is only secured by the well-being of all? Nature is chaos redeemed and organized, so that life and action become possible. Chaos differentiated, so that it has centre and circumference, is Nature. It is im- possible for man not to personify Nature, not to recognize will and personality in all the forces which act so strangely upon his life and being. It requires the slow teach- ings of science, even the dreary common- places of materialism, to correct this tendency and make men recognize the relation of every part in Nature to the whole, and see, not the caprice of irre- sponsible will, but the workings of intelli- gent law in all her phenomena. And yet how beautiful is this early Nature-worship ! In every religion the feeling appears. The Scriptures of the Hebrew race, the race which has most fully developed the idea of the central personality of spirit and the human responsibility of duty, are yet full of the love and recognition of Nature. In every revival of the spirit of religion we see a renewal of devotion to Nature. Look over the pages of the “ Dial,” which remains to-day a true dial, marking by its shadow the progress of that sun of illumi- nation which shone upon our land. How full is almost every page of the love of Na- ture ! What an interpreter of the subtlest meaning of the Sphinx was the great soul whose presence will be ever with us in this place. No man can be truly great or religious without a deep and abiding faith in Nature. The true mechanic, prophet, poet, scientist, artist, lawgiver is so be- cause he places himself in true relation to Nature, and all things work with him. The feeling for Nature which in early nations is religion and worship, is poetry and enthusiasm among the moderns. The Eastern nations, especially of China and Japan, almost live in devotion to Nature. Of fourteen hundred streets in Tokio, two-thirds derive their names from natural objects. With the Chinese, work, law, government, religion, all are founded on belief in Nature. The worship of N ature may run into extremes, as it has done wherever it is accepted as a finality. It is possible for Nature-worship to become, not natural religion, but degrading super- stition. In our day there is an aesthetic worship which is as dangerous and en- feebling to the soul as the superstitions of India or the liberal pantheisms of narrow philosophers. In this the claims of duty, the moral needs of humanity are set aside as unlovely and prosaic, and the enjoy- ment of Nature is made the chief end of existence. This irreligious worship is always exclusive ; it believes that it is to the cultivated, the aesthetic alone, that Nature reveals her beauty. But Nature has her guards, and knows well how to preserve herself from impertinent assump- tion. She indulges her holidaj' children in their idle moods, but her deepest mean- ings are for those to whom life is real and earnest. I will not now speak of the j great material uses of Nature, of the food, shelter and raiment which she provides for us. From her we draw the material things of our life. Nature is a stern teacher, and is a con- stant spur to sluggish man. Her forces are all equally read}' to become man’s allies. We are accustomed to speak of man as being forced to a contest with Nature. But is not this a warlike and barbarous view of her? Has civilized man not learned that it is not warfare, but co-operation with Nature that is to turn the world into a paradise ? The arts I I 2 - Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita. of horticulture and agriculture are nothing but an adaptation of Nature’s methods to our special needs. But we must learn the lesson at her knees. Nature is alwaj's ready to work with man when lie has won the key to unlock her grand treasure- house. What seems more barren and desolate than the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada, forever covered with snow? But without these snow-capped mountains Cali- fornia would become a desert. But Nature has her destructive as well as productive forces, and she uses them with stern determination and seemingly relentless cruelty. Yet how impartial and tender she is, and what a fair chance she offers for all in the great struggle for the survival of the fittest. The giant cac- tus, armed with its poisonous prickles, is far more easily rooted out than the grace- ful morning-glory. The contest with the lion is about over. Man, rifle-armed, is master of the field ; but the mosquito still commands the situation, and though the individual perishes, the race survives. The disregard of all expenditure necessary to accomplish the end is a part of her boundlessness which gives us a sense of infinity, and takes us out of material limi- tations. Nature thus symbolizes the flow of spirit, the resistance of matter, their mutual service to each other. But the play and sport of Nature are as remarkable as her earnestness of purpose. Yet she is not heartless in this ; rather she is a great artist, teaching us not alone by symbolism, but by her rare power of suffusing the mind with new life. Herein lies her power to strengthen and comfort us in sorrow. We do not go to her for reasons for faith, but to be made a new 7 creature. I have spoken of the dan- ger of excessive worship of Nature as an already existing one ; as a corrective, we need a finer ideality and more spiritual recognition of her large relations, which will fill us w 7 ith a reverent moderation, so that we shall not overstep the modesty of Nature and flout her with fine phrases and exaggerated rhapsodies. Nature on the surface is fair and attractive, but it is in her hidden depths that her true power and meaning are to be found. Science is the search into her methods. By the aid of science, Nature helps us toward solution of all the grand problems of thought which philosophy deals with directly, the great- est of all, the relation of the individual to the universal, the me to the not-me, the one to the many, the changing to the permanent. PHILOSOPHY OF THE BHAGAVAD GITA. . BY DR. HARRIS. D R. HARRIS began by saying that in the two previous lectures he had sketched the leading thoughts of Gnos- ticism, Neo-Platonism, and Christian mys- ticism, and found everywhere the tendency to exalt the absolute One above all rea- son ; in short, to make it impersonal. He would define this system of theology or philosophy as pantheism, which makes the first principle transcend all thought and conception. Such a principle is entirely above (or below) all revelation, and is the unknowable. It is of interest for us to investigate further this view of the world that makes all finite creatures an emana- tion in descending scale from an indeter- minate first principle, and we accordingly turn to India and take up for our present Philosophy of the Bhagavcid Gita. ”3 lecture that wonderful compend of Hindu thought, the Bhagavad Gita. The position of this work in the vast literature of India is beginning to be well understood. It is supposed to be a work belonging to the third epoch of development, if we reckon the Yedas as belonging to the first. The second epoch would be the one in which reflection had begun to seek the unity of the Yedas and had reached the Sankhya philosophy, which became the thought of a great religious reform, that of Buddhism, in the fourth, or, more probably, the sixth century before Christ. The Bhagavad Gita seems to have been written by a Brahmin who desired to give a new version to the Sankhya philosophy, such as would reconcile its tenets with more practical views of life. A life of penance and self-mortification, with ab- stention from participation in human inter- ests had been the recognized means of reaching a divine life according to the San- khya and the Yoga systems. This new doctrine, in fact, was a new Yoga doctrine. The first Yoga system advocated renunci- ation and quietism and enjoined on its votaries the avoidance of temptation, while the Yoga system of the Bhagavad Gita enjoins the combating of temptation and the active contest wuth evil. This treatise is inserted as an episode in one of the great national epic poems, the “ Mahabarata,” and forms eighteen chapters. The first six chapters present the doctrinal views of the Yoga system in its practice and results. The second six chapters treat of the nature and attri- butes of the Supreme Spirit, and his rela- tion to the world and to man. The last six chapters present the more speculative views, giving a system of psychology and natural philosophy, or at least the Hin- du counterpart of such a thing. There are nearly one hundred thousand lines in the “Mahabarata,” only one-fourth of which are devoted to an account of the great war between the older and younger branches of the Kurus, or the noble Aryans, who descended into India from the north- west, and gradually subdued the native races in the peninsula. Episodes have been inserted from time to time, until this enormous length has been reached. The authors of the episodes hide their names under the general designation of Vyasa, a word meaning “ compiler. ” It is as if the desire of absorption and loss of individual- ity in Brahma manifested itself in literary authorship ; and the Vedas, the epic poem, the episodes in it, the commentaries on the Vedas, the Puranas, etc., are said to be written by “the compiler.” If Homer’s Iliad had been expanded by inserting the plays of JGschylus, Euripides, and Soph- ocles, engrafting them on someone line or another of the epic, there would be one im- mense national poem like this one of India. If the Greek tragedians had called them- selves “ Homer, ” or some word meaning editor or compiler, the parallel would be complete. The Bhagavad Gita opens with a de- scription of the two armies drawn up on the sacred plain of Kuru. When the trumpets sound for battle, Arjuua sees relatives and friends in the ranks of both and wavers in his purpose. What shall he do with a victory that causes so much grief through the death of kindred? Krishna or Bhagavad, who is an incarnation of Vishnu (his eighth incarnation) and dis- guised as the charioteer of Arjuna, here and now unfolds to him the doctrines of the Karma Yoga (Karma refers to practi- cal action, and Yoga refers to the unity with the Supreme) in seventeen lectures. He applies all his theoretical and practical insights to prove that there must be no scruples against practical action, and that Arjuna must fight. He discriminates between inaction that does nothing and inaction which, in doing all necessary' actions, puts aside self-interest. Disin- terestedness is the highest virtue, and it renders all action a union with the divine. The Genesis of the Maya. 1 T 4 The vision of the universal form of Vishnu, which is the content of the eleventh chapter and is the most sublime passage in the poem, shows how all actions, like all being, proceed from the Supreme One. In this and the preceding chapter we meet most of the passages on which Emerson has founded his “Brahma,” and given ns the entire Yoga doctrine in four short verses. In the thirteenth chapter Krishna says : “This supreme eternal soul even when existing in the bodj', O Arjuna, neither acts nor is affected by action, on account of its eternity. He who perceives that the highest lord exists alike imperishable in all perishable things, sees truly. For perceiving the same Lord present in everything, he does not destroy his own soul, but attains the highest path. But he who perceives that all actions are entirely performed by nature only, perceives that he himself is therefore not an agent.” In this we have a sort of fatalism announced, but Krishna defends practical deeds against quietism, even in the presence of such benumbing theories. Almost every chapter announces the doctrine of reward of merit — each one receives what he aspires after. But those who reach perfect indifference reach the supreme, and are not any more subject to birth in new bodies. This looks like ab- sorption into the supreme spirit and the utter loss of all individually, and we hear in the eighth chapter that the seven worlds return and are absorbed at the close of the day of Brahma, which lasts a thousand ages, and learn that “all existence is dissolved at the approach of that night.” For the seven worlds include not only the worlds of man and of giants, and demons, but also of Indra and the inferior deities, and those of the saints and fathers of the race, and even of the superior deities. If the gods lose themselves and their world becomes absorbed, of course the human spirit will lose its individuality. In the hand-book of doctrines of the Vedas used in India, the introductory stanza says : “ To the Self who is existent, intelligence, bliss, impartite, beyond range of speech and thought, the substrate of all, I resort for the attainment of the desired thing.” This is explained in the commentary to mean by “intelli- gence,” not that Brahma is subject that knows, but only the essence of intelli- gence ; he is “impartite,” or “devoid of all internal variety, being only unchange- able unity.” The lecturer quoted from the Vedas, the Sanktrya of Kapila and the Puranas, and discussed the changes of form in the Indian doctrines, and discriminated between the pantheism of later Indian religion and the earlier polytheism. Fourteenth Day, — August 1. THE GENESIS OF THE MAYA. BY DR. .TONES. TN the philosophic theorem of the world the natural sphere is a perpetual cycle and succession of phenomena. It is al- ways becoming to be, always ceasing to be, and never is. This phenomenality of nature presupposes a cause adequate to its production, and in the philosophic theorem of the world the creation is the product or expression of mind. And in the logical order, mind as cause is prior, and matter as effect is posterior. Mind is supereminent ; matter is distinguished as The Genesis of the Maya. the subordination of effects. Wherefore the only primordial, absolute substance is mind ; and mind and matter are dis- tinctly differentiated : mind cannot become matter ; matter cannot become mind. The secret of matter is well-nigh divulged in the light and facts of natural science. It is outmost phenomenon, static force, the lowest phase of substance, the last effigy of form. It is nonentity, and can- not therefore be substantive entity. It is shadow, and cannot therefore be also substance. The physical sciences discover no such entity as a material essence, but all matter, ponderable and imponderable, is resolvable into force. The material is substantial, and the substantial is imma- terial. The only absolute primordial, un- created substance is mind, spirit. Nature is the mere panorama of the supernatural, the scene of the perpetually shifting phe- nomena of the immaterial forces of the system of the world. The orderly se- quence of the processes of these forces through endless combinations and decom- binations we call physics, and the ob- served uniformity of these processes we call laws of nature, and their limit and determination we call matter and material elements. The final resolution of the matter and physics of nature is into forces ; force is not matter, but the producer of matter. The doctrine of the “ correlation and conservation” of forces comprehends all physics and materialities as demonstrably mere protean manifestations of force, first changed into motion and then into the equivalents of motion, the so-called mate- rial elements, and these are resolvable into motion and force again. Force is somewhat that is never augmented or diminished or annihilated, existing eter- nally, the producing cause of all that which we call nature, with her physics and matter. Force is a constant, abiding factor, the essential, predicable only of entity. This doctrine is at once the de- 115 fence and the deliverance of natural science from the taint of technical mate- rialism. So far, natural science identifies nature as some vast, incomprehensible power in manifestation. In the analysis of natural science matter has lost its grossness and become trans- parent, showing the motions of “ Him who works in us and around us.” And in this confine of nature and spirit the science of the metaphysical takes up the refrain, and theology postulates that by the Logos all things come to be. Nature has in time no beginning and no ending ; while in the eternal cause it is perpetually beginning and perpetually end- ing ; and all so-called logical process, assuming and predicating a beginning in this or that point of time, is doomed in its premises to the fate of the vicious circle. There is one only eternal essence and this is predicable of the super-sensible orders only; divinity, angel, daemon, man, cog- nizable by r intelligence only in dialectic vision — and there is one only generated image of it, and this is time with its con- tent of physics and matter, perceptible to mind only through the divine contrivance of sense organization. The creation, the genesis of nature is not an event consummated in time, but it is a sublime anthem forever audible in the seat of wisdom, a grand epopee, a song with no beginning and no ending in time, perpetually discoursing the harmonies of nature. The only absolute primordial substance is spirit. Mind sees : matter is seen by mind. But mind and matter are in the utmost contrariety. They are more unlike as beingentity and nonentity ; and community between unlikes must be effected by means of a middle term, self- related to, and participant of each of them. And so a peculiar apparatus is requisite, and this is the physical sensorium of the material corporeality by which mind is in coni act with materiality. Through the providence of physical generation and The Genesis of the Maya. 1 16 material corporeality the soul descends into the sphere of nature. Without a natural body and its sensorium man has no consciousness of natural things ; and without a psychic body and its sensorium he has no consciousness of supernatural subjects. The genesis of the Hebrew oracles is the genesis of the soul, and not of the external earth. It was in the midst, in the soul, that the firmament was made that divides the waters which are under it from the waters which are above it, — the realm of the truths of nature’s order which is beneath, and the realm of the truths of the supernatural order, which is above. It must be understood that as there is one universe and not two, so also there is one soul-sentience and not two : the duality in both cases takes its rise and distinction in the organic provision for contemplating the prior and posterior energies of essen- tial, volitional natures. Every existing entity performs a universe, and is there- fore microcosmic. The processes of the voluntary energies of existing souls are unto purposed determination and limit, and unto return thence to the source. Process unto the end is prior ; retrogres- sion is posterior. Universally, and spoken of the divine existence, this prior procession of the divine energies is the intelligible sphere. This is the prior manifestation of the primal power. Here are beauty, truth, love and justice beheld in more perfect receptacles than are known to earth and sense. Thus it is that art is the realiza- tion of the ideal ; hence the process and achievement of art is an image and like- ness of the creations of the first cause. The world has two sides, an outside and an inside, and through the providence of an adapted physical organism the soul is capable of an outsight into physics and matter by means of the impressions of the images of objects upon its physical senso- rium. And the annals of man’s sensa- tions and perceptions he names natural science, and his manipulations and eventu- alities out there he denominates society, art, morality, history. A general postulate finally regards time and space as part of the features of this movable world, the moving image of eternity. Eternal, intel- ligible natures existing in their prior en- ergies is eternity ; that existence in poste- rior energies is time, and the intelligible forms of temporal things are thereof respectively. The one is the world of abiding entities ; the other the world of flowing images thereof. Eternity is the divine nature openly exhibiting itself and declaring its own being. Time is the ex- istence in the processes and experience of terrestial generation, a perpetual suc- cession of cycles of equivalent augmenta- tions and decrementations or the mensu- rated flow of ceaseless mutations ; and this again is history. Outside of the motions and progress of beings there is no time, no space. Time is duration and continuity of process in existence, and space is quan- tity of time. And their realization is change. Souls can effect no changeful ex- periences except by means of the condi- tions of time and space. Historical Epochs of Art. 117 HISTORICAL EPOCHS OF ART. BY DR. HARRIS. A RT is the presentation of reason to man through his senses. Such union of reason with sensuous forms constitutes the beautiful, and Plato called the beautiful “the splendor of the true.” Like this, the good is the presence of reason in the will. A philosophy of art has to find the rational element in the beautiful, and see how this rational element manifests itself in other provinces as the good and the true. It must also stud}' the material side of expression, and learn the means used to render prose reality splendid with beauty. Highest philosophy always finds that reason is the supreme principle of the world. It is revealed in the world of na- ture and man, as a personal creator. Phil- osophy undertakes to show reason as the ultimate presupposition in all existence and in all ideas. Art always assumes reason as this highest reality and has noth- ing to do with proving it. It shows it. It takes some material — marble, pigments, tones, words, events — and shapes these so as to exhibit reason acting as the ground and mediation of w r hat is finite. There are reckoned five provinces of art — arch- itecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry. In this ascending scale we find that elements of time and space become less and less important, while the manifes- tation of reason becomes more adequate. In architecture a rhythm is expressed as arising from the two forces, that of grav- ity pressing down, and that of the strength of the material which supports and con- stitutes the structure. A dim feeling in the soul recognizes its own strivings symbolized in the pillar or column or dome or spire, or in the whole temple. The Egyptian felt the same feeling on looking at the pyramid w'hich pierced the sky and rose into regions of light and clearness, as he did w r hen he expressed his creed of transmigration of the soul. Even after the destroyer death had done his worst, the soul should be born again, after three thousand years, in a new body. After gravitation has done its work and the structures of men have crumbled to dust, there still remains the form of the tumulus rising as a hill. The pyramid imitates the form of the tumulus. The poor Hindoo felt himself pressed down to the earth by the weight of cere- monies imposed by the doctrine of caste. He looked at one of his temples cut out of solid rock and saw the symbol of himself standing there as one of the human col- umns supporting the roof and the moun- tain over it. The Greek, on the other hand, saw in his Parthenon, or in his Tem- ple of Theseus, the perfect balance and pro- portion of upward and downward — of spirit and matter. His soul found com- plete bodily expression in the serene and cheerful statues of the gods, and those temples were the fitting abodes of such deities. On the other hand, in after times, when men had come to aspire after a nearer approach to the divine by renunciation of the body and its pleasures, the}' felt the need for another expression, and found it in the cathedrals of Rouen and Tours, of Amiens and Cologne. The nothing- ness of earth, its dependence on what is above, is manifested by the architectural illusion that all lines aspire to what is above ; the pillars seem to be fastened to the roof as the source of support, and to hold up the floor by tension instead of sup- iiS Historical Epochs of Art. porting the roof by the thrust of the floor below. Tlie pointed arch and the lofty pinnacles express this struggle of the finite to reach the spiritual point of repose above. In the domes of our American state houses we can see the tolerant principle of justice extending like the sky over all alike, just as the Roman felt the potent principle of civil law which articulates in words the forms of universal will in which all men can act and not contradict themselves or each other. The pantheon extended over all nations’ gods just as the blue dome, its prototype, extended over all peoples. In sculpture, also, the Indian god, cross-legged on a lotus cup, the sitting statues of Memnon on the banks of the Nile, the Jupiter Olympus of Phidias, the Moses of Michael Angelo, all utter their correspondences to the souls that made them and rejoiced in them. Painting, music and poetry likewise have their epochs of symbolic, classic and romantic, the first belonging to those na- tions and those times when, as in Egypt or in Asia, the mind of man could not perceive so clearly his likeness to the divine nor lift himself so much above nature. Classic art of Greece and Rome reaches the harmony of nature and man, and portrays bodily freedom. Romantic or Christian art has found the spiritual truth which it is unable to express in sen- suous forms, and therefore it offers the spectacle of a struggle against matter and what is earthly, and the possession of an invisible, immaterial support. The paint- ing can represent breadth, depth and height on a surface of insignificant size, by perspective, and thus, with very small material means, create an appearance of vast extent of space, while architecture must have actual size in order to produce its desired effects. Color brings out the expression of feeling and emotion, and thus endows the painter with the means of representing human character in its minu- ter shades of development, and especially in its deepest internality. Music is thoroughly internal, and can go beyond painting in the respect in which painting first finds itself in advance of sculpture. Poetry appeals through trope or metaphor and personification directly to the produc- tive imagination, and can produce the spiritual effects of all arts, as well as other effects exclusively its own. Its material is not marble or color, but the word, a product of human reason, so that in poetry reason is not only form, but also its own material. Poetry, therefore, by means of the word, which it uses musically, appeals to the thinking reason, and produces di- rect effects upon the soul peculiarly its own, while all other arts act mediately through the senses of sight or hearing upon the feelings and imagination, and then reach the intellect by this indirect road. Although each epoch of the world has its art, yet we cannot afford to be very generous in conceding to all the principle of the realization of beauty. Only where freedom is conceived in the mind can be there produced beauty in art. Free- dom in the bod}' gives us the highest reach of plastic art, — that of Greece and Rome ; freedom from the bod}’, the high- est forms of romantic art. Art every- where must presuppose a personal prin- ciple in the world as its lord. In poetry we have this recognized in the very ele- ments of poetic expression, to wit, in trope and personification, which form the very brick and mortar of poetry. The whole world of nature is viewed as instinct with spirit, and man looks upon each plant and animal, and even each thing and place, as having human personality. Thus what religion worships as the su- preme, and thought recognizes as truth, art will insist upon seeing in the world of finite objects. The lecturer discussed at length the limits of the several forms of art and the special advantages of each in expression, and touched upon the distribution of dif- Childhood. 119 ferent ait-instincts among the nations of the world — sculpture to the Greeks, paint- ing to the Italians, music to the Germans. The study of great works of art from the side of their motives and composition, was dwelt upon as the true road to art-culture. The positions were illustrated by au analy- sis of the Holbein Madonna, comparing the Dresden copy with that of Basle, and also by analysis of the Sistine Madonna, comparing the engraving bj- Mueller with the original, and showing the defects of the former. The same course was taken with the engraving of Michael Angelo’s Fates, showing how the engraver had misunderstood the original. A magic lantern was used to produce the pictures for illustration. Fifteenth Day, — August 2. CHILDHOOD. BY MISS ELIZABETH 'A./TISS PEABODY said : The inclusive subject of childhood was suggested to me by the remarkable dream of the gen- erous lady to whom we are indebted for this convenient little building in which we are assembled. It was one of those dreams which our friend Dr. Hedge dis- criminated from the unconscious cerebra- tion which explains ordinary dreaming, being a production of the creative im- agination, when the senses were asleep, and giving sjnnbolic form to the ideas of reason, which are the shining into the soul 1 Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was born in 1804, in Biller- ica, Mass., where her parents passed the first two years of their married life, and where her mother kept a boarding- school, while her father studied medicine with the cele- brated Dr. Pemberton. Elizabeth grew up in Salem, where her father settled to practise his profession in 1808, and her mother taught young ladies in a day school a good deal of the time for the next sixteen years, and Elizabeth never had any other instruction than from her father and mother. The family removed to Lancaster, Mass., in 1820, and she there taught a private school till she was eighteen, when she was introduced by the Rev. Dr. Thayer and the celebrated Mrs. Richard Cleveland to their respective circles of acquaintances in Boston and Cam- bridge, where she already had acquaintance and relatives, for she was the grand-daughter of Colonel Joseph Pierce Palmer, whose father, General Joseph Palmer, had immigrated to this country from Devonshire, England, with his cousin, Judge Cranch, whose sister Mary he had married, and settled in what is now the town of Quincy, in the early part of the eighteenth century. Father and , PALMER PEABODY . 1 of the mind of God, — God’s part in the conversation that makes our human life also divine. In a noon-dav nap, just after she had been listening to one of our pro- foundest lecturers, Mrs. Elizabeth Thomp- son dreamed that in place of this chapel on the Hillside, she saw a great white throne, to which many broad mar- ble steps led up ; and on the throne sat a majestic form with the rainbow tolded round his head, as a crown. He was gazing meditatively on an infant son took an active part in the movements for preserving their English liberty, and Miss Peabody always declared that through her patriotic mother she was educated by the heroic age of the country’s history. Her own life has been uneventful, as she has been engaged in teaching in Boston, Salem, two years on the banks of the Kennebec, two years at Eagleswood, Perth Amboy, and often con- fining herself to directing classes of history. Her reminis- cences of Dr. Channing contain much autobiography, and it is said that she is employing the leisure of her old age, in writing for posthumous publication reminiscences of other distinguished friends, having had intimate relations with a large number of the most distinguished men and women of her day. For the last twenty years she has de- voted herself to spread the educational reform of Friedrich Froebel in the United States, and keeping it pure from un- harmonious admixtures, “a protected self-education of childhood, being,” as she says, “ the second coming of Christ,” according to his own intimation: “He that re- ceiveth a little child in my name, receiveth me.” 120 Childhood. child lying upon his lap, while at his side were two small clouds gyrating, one of which gradually disclosed the form of a bird’s nest full of half fledged little birds with their beaks wide open, as if crying for food ; and the other became the form of the mother-bird flying downward toward the young ones with a morsel in her beak to feed them. This beautiful picture has haunted my imagination ever since I heard Mrs. Thompson tell of it, — it was so picturesque an embodiment, so expres- sive of the idea of the Concord school with the subject of its stud}’, as its two oppo- site poles, spirit and nature, the creative soul and the created body of truth. For I said to myself, — is not childhood the yet unshadowed, immeasurable insensi- bilit}' of the Eternal Soul ere the impact of nature on it, and its consequent reaction had begun to limit it to individual expe- rience? And what is nature but an em- bodied expression of the life of humanity? This life of humanity varies according to the special standpoint of time and space at which each one finds himself at birth , giving each a different angle of perspec- tive for his outlook, whence it results that, — “Eternal form doth still divide The Eternal Soul from all beside.” There is, then, no one object ofcontem- plation so instructive in the science of man, and which so challenges the investi- gations of philosophy, as the child whom Wordsworth calls, “ the father of the man,” the child in that tender season of his being, of which Emerson has sung in the Sphinx-Song when : “ Shines the peace of all being, without cloud, And the sum of the world in soft miniature I lies.” Are we not fain to sing over it the grand rhymes of Wordsworth, beginning: “Thou whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy soul’s immensity.” [Here Miss Peabody quoted the whole of this magnificent ode to the words, “ On thy being’s height,” and continued :] But if on its being’s height, asks the sceptic Philistine, is not this human life on which it is entering a misfortune, a fall, a curse? Is it worth living? .... But, behold ! here sits Philosophy, crowned with the rainbow of promise and pointing to the most central and heart- touching phenomenon in nature, the mother in her characteristic act, who makes reply with the analytic and gen- eralizing processes of the understanding and bids us observe, that before the process of individualizing the mind has begun, in that season of physical helplessness inci- dent to the planting of the immortal spirit in the material world, there is revealed a counterpart to the Divine creativeness, viz., the human providence , of which the instinctive method of motherhood is the beginning in time. The immeasurable sensibility of childhood is not thrown with a cruel recklessness on the rocks of ne- cessity, which are to individualize it, but is gently laid in the arms of motherly love, to be very tenderly and gradually brought into contact with material nature, the correlated opposite which is to become eventually the child’s instrumentality for, at least, “ the forever of this world.” By becoming his instrumentality for the employment of his boundless energies and the gratification of his innocent desires, nature becomes a revelation to his mind. The eternal word, of which the forms of things are S3’llable, shines into nature’s darkness to enlighten the blind heart and direct the blind will of every man that cometh into the world ; and this resound- ing light is the life of humanity , for what, precisely, manes the word life , but con- scious relationship , including relations of individuals to each other, and of mankind to God. This relationship eternally ex- ists, whether recognized or not by us, and Childhood. 121 breaks forth in the immeasurable joy of the young child in his surroundings, when they are normal, — joy in nature, joy in human intercourse. The first joyous con- sciousness of the child is of its filial de- pendence on the loving mother, who embodies to him the infinite love ; and if the parents be true to the child, as a con- ception of the Holy Ghost, rather than as a fruit of the body, and ponder all the child’s words in their hearts, as Mary did those of the child Jesus, he shall sponta- neously “ grow in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man,” while subject to them. I want to emphasize the truth, that' the child of Man and of Nature appears to be so lovingly sent upon earth, by the Father of Spirits, for the immediate pur- pose of enjoying itself in relation to nature and mankind, and for the ultimate purpose of enacting love freely on the plane of human life. .... The joy of childhood, which sends the little body bounding upward in direct opposition to the whole gravitation of the earth, needing the mother’s whole strength to keep it from springing out of her arms, surely means more than the mere sense of animal well-being. Ruskin has noticed and beautifully illustrated the infinite disproportion of this joy to the occasions which call forth the expression of it The child is presumably in- corporated with nature for some purpose of love Is it not to individualize into self-conscious sons the eternally be- gotten of God, who was with God before the foundation of the world, and is con- sciously to ascend up where he was before? Our common sense, common conscience, common ideals of justice, love and beauty, testify^ to, for the}' constitute, the pre- existent man of Plato, and by reason of them all children are alike in more than they are different, and are, I affirm, in- trinsically more generous than selfish un- til made selfish in sheer self-defence, by our neglect or cruel misunderstanding and undervaluing of them, and consequent arbitrary handling. But the individuality, the different peculium of each individual in each instance, also expresses somewhat of God, their pre-existence with the Father, and this is the individual’s own secret and reason for being. This secret is only to be communicated to other individuals at “ his own sweet will,” as it always will be, sooner or later, because of the all-prevail- ing instinct of unity, that prompts inter- communion of thought, feeling and spirit. It is this intercommunion, “ speaking the truth in love,” preferring one another in love, which is human goodness, the per- fecting of the just , which is St. Paul’s idea of heaven ; in fine, that loving of “the brother whom we have seen,” that enables us “ to love God, whom we have not seen.” This generous life of the in- dividual, (observe the etymology of the word generous) should go on in the child, whose birth need not be an absolute for- getting of “ the glories he has known and that imperial palace whence he came,” though a partial forgetting is necessary to bring him within the attractions of nature and human life. The great Italian philosopher, Gioberte, proclaimed this scientific statement of childhood, when lie’ said, that the soul has seen God before embodiment, and was put to sleep in nature to be waked up, point by point, by the particulars of na- ture, whose generalization shall experi- mentally restore the original vision, gradu- ally giving a certain cubical solidity to self-consciousness, which grows more and more broadly personal by enlarging its boundaries through communion in all di- rections with other persons, learning the individual secrets of them cdl personally, until a mutual understanding be developed, symmetrical and satisfactory to reason. Personality means absolute free agency, and reason etymologically signifies the relations, i. e., the ratios of the parts to 12 2 Childhood. the wholeness (holiness), which is in the soul, beauty; in the mind, truth; and in the activity, power of good, or efficient will. Miss Peabody said that the common notion of childhood’s being a negative of life and being, a blank paper to be scrawled over with other men’s thought, or a crude matter to be drilled and shaped by an educator’s finite will ac- cording to his finite ideal, prevents it from being a subject of science at all, and makes the educator a creating ma- chine instead of a creative philosopher. She defined spirituality to be the equi- poise of the feeling heart, the active will and the thoughtful understanding, which makes a living unit, the statement of whose three aspects or modes of being — feeling, activity and thought — in one triplicity without dividing the substance or confounding the terms, it is almost im- possible to make ; and which can only be pointed at by human language, not fully expressed or understood, except by the co-operation of the hearer of the word. Childhood, she said, was the unfallen man as he first appears on the shores of matter, rushing into the darkness of an earth without form and void, and being individualized thereby, which individuali- zation is the cause both of evil and good that are facts of human life. She seemed to think that we were apt to dwell on the limitation of the eternal element by the conditions of time and space rather than on the complement of individuality by other individualities of the human race, and so to take a too narrow view of child- hood, not grasping the essential being, whom Christ set before his disciples as their teacher, from whom the}” could learn only by appreciating what he intrinsically is. Only putting themselves in his place would begin a human living that should be a divine life on earth. She said this could be done if the grown-up received the child in the name of Chiist, that is, as the anointed Spirit creating in com- munion with God a spiritual universe. This was man’s overcoming the world and sitting down on the Father’s throne — king of nature — the Son of Man in con- scious communion with God forever more. Miss Peabody explained the parable of the prodigal son as follows : I note a difference between the words force and power. Force is predicated of the necessary correlations of nature, — is fatal ; power means freedom to will, full- ness of life, creativeness, and is spiritual; a word which is more specific than the German word geistliche that confounds the intellectual and spiritual. The intel- lect generalizes the perceptions we have of natural facts, and the laws of things, to which the laws of thought correspond ; but the spirit involves feeling and free will ; and the word spiritual in the Chris- tian oracles always implies communion with the race, as such, and with God. who wooes his child into it by that act of parental love which puts all souls into equal fraternal and filial relation respec- tive^' with one another and with the common Father, who indulges the way- ward (so precious in his sight is the free will) with giving to him his portion of goods on demand, even to carry it away to a far country, to make his own experiment, and although the failure of the experiment is all but infinite, it is, how- ever, no greater evil than may come to be that of the son, who in the exercise of his own freedom has inertly staid at home. This corruption of heart from self-conceit, envy, and want of generous sympathy, is a deeper and subtler evil than is produced by riotous living which, wasting his pat- rimony and reducing him to the husks which the swine do eat, has sooner brought him to himself (observe that expression), that is, to self-knowledge and a contrite estimation of what he has done. So that conscience has a cliai.ce to speak, and remember, that “ in the Fathei’s house is Childhood. 123 enough and to spare,” and he resolves to arise and go to his Father and say, “ Father I have sinned and suffered ; make me as one of thy hired servants, for I have for- feited my right as a son.” How docs the Father treat the case ? Does he con- sider the prodigal’s presumptuous sin total depravity ? Flas he ever so considered it? Surely not, for he seems to have been watching for this moment of repentance, “ waiting to be gracious.” When the prodigal is yet afar off, he rushes to meet him, upbraiding not, embraces him and calls for the best robe and fatted calf to celebrate the reunion. Here we see the great evil that can transpire from individualization ; but does not the con- scious, free-willed return, add something absolutely to spiritual substance? Is not the conscious, intelligent reunion more than was the original unconscious union? Is not growth in virtue more than the origi- nal innocence of the child? Even that in- nocence, we must remember, is not a nega- tive quantity, but a positive good, — the sum of all being passive, only less than virtue which is active holiness ( whole- ness) ; the sum of all being creative, the son on his Father’s throne. And with respect to the other son of the parable, who has been idly enjoying his patrimony without separating apparently from his Father, whose passive innocence has subsided into dead inertia, engender- ing fouler miasma than can riotous living, which at least is an exercise of the free- will, though a perverse one, not an abro- gation of it. But does the Father seem to regard even that as total depravity? On the contrary he earnestly remonstrates, reminding him of his inalienable claims by birth-right, — “all that I have is thine,” he says, and assuming that the divine germ of brotherhood is still there and perchance asleep, he says to him : “ It is meet that we should rejoice, for thy' brother was lost and is found.” All human evil is covered by the action and inaction of -the tw r o sons that divide the human race. We see the direction of love, which is the mind and head in equi- poise, perverted on the one hand, and on the other hand the stagnation of love in a stupid inertia. But I do not see in this most interesting of Christ’s parables, that there is any*- suggestion of total depravity or everlasting damnation ; and here we should expect to find these doctiines, if they were expressions of the truth. The gospel of good-news has apparently no place for them. Miss Peabody ended with reading some sentences of Froebel, whom she named the discoverer of childhood, and some passages of one of her lectures to kinder- gartners, describing that part of the earliest life of childhood in which it is taking possession of the body and learning to walk, which comprised, she thought, the unconscious part of her teaching of the adult, and intimated that there science should gather, but had not yet gathered, untold treasures of wisdom from conver- sation with young children — genially educated by a respectful dealing with them and assistance proffered in respectful deference to their irrefragable free will. She recounted the great apologues of the Sacred Scriptures of Humanly and in- terpreted them to elucidate her theme — namely, the historic story of Abraham and Isaac ; of the childhood of Moses ; of that of Samuel ; of David ; Isaiah’s vision of the child born of virgin nature, justified in full by the life of Jesus of Nazareth ; the apologues of Christ’s birth ; and the myths of the birth of Buddha, of the heroes of Greece, Asia Minor and Rome, of Horns (the Egyptian civilization), son of Isis (nature) and Osiris (spirit). 124 Heading from Thoreau’’ s Manuscripts. READING FROM THOREAU’S MANUSCRIPTS. BY MR. SANBORN. R. SANBORN read from the first manuscript which Thoreau offered for publication, except his essay on the Roman poet Persius. It is probably that rejected and criticised by Margaret Fuller. It is signed “ Henry D. Thoreau,” and dated July, 1840. “The Service; Quali- ties of the Recruit,” is the title. Ex- tracts follow : — “ The brave man is the elder son of crea- tion who has stepped buoyantly into his inheritance, while the coward, who is the younger, waiteth patiently for his decease. He rides as wide of this earth’s gravity as a star, and by yielding incessantly to all impulses of the soul is drawn upward and becomes a fixed star. His bravery con- sists not so much in resolute action as healthy and assured rest. Its palmy state is a staying at home, compelling alliance in all directions. So stands his life to heaven as some fair sunlit tree against the western horizon, and by sunrise is planted on some eastern hill to glisten in the first rays of the dawn. The brave man braves nothing, nor knows he of his bravery. . . . . . He does not present the gleaming edge to ward off harm, for that will often- est attract the lightning, but rather is the all-pervading ether, which the lightning does not strike, but purifies. It is the profanity of his companion, as a flash across the face of his sky, which lights up and reveals its serene depth. “ A pyramid some artisan may measure with his line, but if he give you the di- mensions of the Parthenon in feet and inches, the figures will not embrace it like a cord, but dangle from its entablature like an elastic drapery. “ The golden mean in ethics, as in phys- ics, is the centre of the system and that about which all revolve, and though to a distant and plodding planet it be an utter- nmst extreme, yet one day, when that planet’s year is completed, it will be found to be central. “ The coward wants resolution, which the brave man can do without. He recog- nizes no faith above a creed, thinking this straw by which he is moored does him good service, because his sheet anchor does not drag. “ The div inity in man is the true vestal fire of the temple which is never permitted to go out, but burns as steadily and with as pure a flame on the obscure provincial altar as in Numa’s temple at Rome. In the meanest are all the materials of man- hood, only they are not rightly disposed. “ We say justly that the weak person is flat, for like all flat substances, he does not stand in the direction of his strength, that is, on his edge^ but affords a conve- nient surface to put upon. He slides all the way through life. Most things are strong in one direction, a straw longitudi- nally, a board in the direction of its edge, but the brave man is a perfect sphere, which cannot fall on its flat side and is equally strong every way. The coward is wretchedly spheroidal at best, too much educated or drawn out on one side and depressed on the other, or maj- be likened to a hollow sphere, whose disposition of matter is least where the greatest bulk is intended. We shall not attain to be spherical by lying on one or the other side for an eternity, but only by resigning ourselves implicitly to the law of gravity 125 Reading from Thor earns Manuscripts. in us shall we find our axis co-incident with the celestial axis, and by revolving incessantly through all circles acquire a perfect sphericity. “ It is not enough that our life is an easv one. We must live on the stretch, retir- ing to our rest like soldiers on the eve-*of a battle, looking forward with ardor to the strenuous sortie of the morrow.” In a letter of October 27, 1837, when twenty years old, Thoreau wrote to his sister, Helen Thoreau : — “ For a man to »act himself, he must be perfectly free ; otherwise he is in danger of losing all sense of responsi- bility or self-respect. Now when such a state of things exists that the sacred opinions one advances in argument are apologized for by his friends before his face, lest his hearers receive a wrong impression of the man, when such gross injustice is of frequent occurrence, where shall we look and not look in vain for men, deeds, thoughts? As well apologize for the grape that it is sour, or the thunder that it is noisy, or the lightning that it tarries not. Further, letter- writing too often degenerates into a communing of facts, and not of truths ; of other men’s deeds, and not of our thoughts. What are the convulsions of a planet compared with the emotions of the soul, or the rising of a thousand suns, if that is not enlight- ened by a ray?” Following this was read a Latin letter which Thoreau wrote to his sister, together with Mr. Sanborn’s translation. Parts of it were as follows : — “ Bulwer is to me a name unknown, one of the ignoble crowd, neither to be contra- dicted nor cited. Yet in truth I have some favor for one who is suffering from the disease of authorship .... If you love history and the bold exploits of he- roes, don’t lay Rollin aside nor offend Clio now so that you may ask her forgiveness by and by. What Latin books do you read, — I say read , not study? Happy is he who can turn over the leaves of his books and peruse them often without fear of an urgent taskmaster. He is far from hurtful' idleness and can invite and say farewell to his friends when he will. A good book is the noblest work of man. Hence a reason not only for reading, but for writing too It will do pos- terity no good that you have drawn breath and passed through life, now easily, now with hardship, — but to have had thoughts and especially to have written them down, that is something.” Several letters were written home to Concord in 1843 from Staten Island. In one to his mother, dated August 29, he wrote : — “ I have tried sundry methods of earning money in the city of late, but without success. Have rambled into every bookseller’s or publisher’s house and dis- cussed their affairs with them. Some proposed to me to do what an honest man cannot. Among others I conversed with the Harpers to see if they cannot find me useful. to them, but they say that they are making fitly thousand dollars annually, and their motto is to let well alone. I find that I talk with these poor men as if I was over head and ears in business and a few thousands were no consideration with me.” On October 1 of the same year he wrote : — “I hold together remarkably well as yet, speaking of my outward linen and woollen man, no holes more than I brought away, and no stitches needed 3 *et. It is marvellous. I think the fates must be on my side, for there is less than a plank between me and Time, — to say the least. As for Eldorado, that is far off yet. My bait will not tempt the rats ; they are too well fed. The ‘ Democratic Review ’ is poor, can only afford half or quarter pay, which it will do. They saj r there is a ‘ Lady’s Companion ’ that pays, but I could | not write anything companionable. How- The Oracles of New England. 1 26 ever, speculate as we will, it is only gratu- itous ; life never the less and never the more goes steadily on ; Ave shall be fed and clothed somehow, ‘ honor bright,’ withal. It is very gratifying to live in the prospect of great success always, and for that pur- pose we must leave sufficient foreground to see that through. All painters prefer distant prospects, for the greater breath of view and delicacy of tint.” Several poems by Thoreau were also read, including one which he entitled “Inspiration,” in which he gave his ideas on the way in which man gained his knowl- edge, and on the means by which the soul apprehends the outer world. This is a poem of Thoreau’s but little known, begin- ning — What’er Ave leave to God, God does * And blesses ns ; The work we choose shall be our own, God lets alone. In the conversation following the read- ing, reminiscences of Thoreau were given by his former personal acquaintances, Mr. Alcott and Mr. Sanborn. Sixteenth Day, — August 3. THE ORACLES OF NEW ENGLAND. BY MR. SANBORN. rpHE oracles of New England, said Mr. Sanborn, came in the past from the churches and parsonage-houses of New England, — where the godly ministers amid pOA’erty and toil cherished the undy- ing flame of piety and aspiration. It was not a material fire that they kept up, as did the servants of Apollo at Delphi — though there \vas too much need of that also in our cruel winters, — which made Oliver Cromwell, as Roger Williams tells us, “ look on New England only with an eye of pity, as poor, cold and useless.” But the flame of zeal, lighted and fed by the Puritans on this barren coast, has been more effective in retaining the poor people who were stranded here, than was Calyp- so’s fragrant fire of cedar and frankincense in her enchanted grotto, surrounded by murmuring trees and flowery meadows — where she vainly sought to hold Ulysses her colonist. The heavenly messenger bade him depart, but forbade our forefa- thers to abandon their wilderness of rocks and snows. Roger Williams in 1 636, being, as he says, “ driven from my house and land, and wife and children, at Salem, in the midst of a New England Avinter, — at a hint and voice from God Avaiving all other thoughts and motions, I steered my course (though in winter snow which I feel yet, some 35 years after,) to these parts (Providence) Avherein. I may say, I have seen the face of God ; ” and where, indeed, he was an oracle both to the sav- ages who depended on his word, and to his own Christian brethren, whom he often saved from savage atrocities. It was an oracle indeed, but an unaA r ailing one, which in 1651 Williams addressed to John Endi- cott, the persecuting governor of Massa- chusetts, warning him against whipping Baptists at Boston : — “Are all the thousands of millions of millions of consciences, at home and abroad, fuel only for a prison, for a whip, The Oracles of New England. 127 for a stake, for a gallows? Are no con- sciences to breathe the air but such as suit and sample yours? Be pleased, then, hon- ored sir, to remember that the thing which we call conscience is of such a nature (es- pecially in Englishmen) that though it be groundless, false and deluded ; yet it is not by any arguments or torments easily removed. I speak not of the stream of the multitude of all nations, •which have their ebbings and flowings in religion, as the longest sword and strongest arm of flesh carries it ; but I speak of conscience , a persuasion fixed in the mind and heart of a man, which enforceth him to judge and to do. This conscience is found in all mankind, more or less. ’Tis impossible for any man or men to maintain their Christ b} - the sword, and to worship a true Christ ; to fight against all consciences opposite to theirs, and not to fight against God in some of them. It is a dreadful voice from the King of Kings and Lord of Lords : ‘ Endi- cott ! Endicott ! why huntestthou me? why imprisonest thou me? why finest? why so bloodily whippest? why wonkiest thou (did not I hold thy bloody hands) hang and burn me ? ’ ” This noble utterance is not oracular poe- try, — for poetry was denied to these early New England oracles, — but it rises from Greek oracle into Hebrew prophecy, and so raises our thoughts, as heroic poetry itself would. In 1637 Williams, “ being solic- ited by my loving friend, Mr. Buckley,” had sent to our Musketaquid oracle herein Concord, the Rev. Peter Bulkelej', one of his intractable pamphlets. This good man, though much at variance with some of the opinions of Williams, had, like the Rhode Island planter, a vein of oracular piety, inspired by which he said to his little flock of English exiles, in Concord, soon after 1637 : “ There is no people but will strive to excel in something, — what can we excel in but in holiness? If we look to number, we are the fewest ; if to strength, we are the weakest ; if to wealth and riches, we are the poorest of all the people of God through the whole world. We cannot excel, nor so much as equal, other people in these things ; and if we come short in grace and holiness too, we are the most despicable people under heaven.” Mr. Sanborn then read some Latin verses of Bulkeley, with a translation ; quoted from Jonathan Edwards, John Woolman and Miss Mary Emerson, and then passed over the Atlantic to consider the oracular poems of Goethe, several of which he read, — among them Carlyle’s version of the Earth-Song in Faust, as it stands in “Sartor Resartus — and Ellery Channing’s “ Hymn of the Earth.” From these he came to Wordsworth, who was for more than half his lifetime the contempo- rary of Goethe and yet knew little more of him than we know of Zoroaster. “ I would have you listen once more to these oracular verses of Wordsworth,” said Mr Sanborn, “ for a double reason, — because, like Milton, this solemn English poet has been one of the oracles of New England — and because from Wordsworth and from Goethe, we come naturally to Emerson, a higher poet than either. Better than Wordsworth he has kept the faith of Wordsworth, who said in the ‘ Pre- lude ’ : — ‘ Be mine to follow with no timid step Where knowledge leads me ; it shall be my pride That I have dared to tread this holy ground, Speaking no dream , but things oracular ; Matter not lightly to be read by those Who to the letter of the outward promise Do read the invisible soul.’ Yet the best utterances of Wordsworth are in a high strain, and of more variety, perhaps, than Emerson’s, though far less than the world-embracing inclusiveness of Goethe. Between Wordsworth and Ger- many a great gulf was fixed, and he had little patience with either the German or the Scottish philosophers.” After quoting from the Ode on Immor- tality, he said that in this whole poem The Oracles of JSFew England. 1 28 Wordsworth, — like his friend Coleridge in writing that singular, melodious frag- ment called “ Ivubla Khan,” — seems to have composed his lines amid the insights of a dream or trance, from which when he awoke he could neither continue the compo- sition, nor quite understand what he had written down. In this he did but furnish a commentary on that saying of Socrates in the Phaedrus, which concerns the insights of poets and philosophers, — what he calls the third and fourth kinds of madness or inspiration ; for Plato there says that poets write better under inspiration than when they are “lamentably sane,” as Emerson once said, Plato discourses on Beauty Eternal, and on Love, earthly and celes- tial, but even he does not surpass the oracular wisdom of Emerson in his won- derful Ode to Beauty, which was read, and also the poem of “ Uriel,” beginning, — “ It fell in the ancient periods That the brooding soul surveys, Or ever the wild Time coined itself Into calendar months and days.” It is possible that “ Uriel” here signifies that bright god Asha vista, one of the seven counsellors of the Good Spirit in the Persian mythology, but the name is taken from Hebrew mythology, where it applies to the Angel of the Sun, as Milton makes him, — “ Uriel, the regent of the Sun, and held The sharpest-sighted spirit of all in heaven.” This is the Uriel that Allston painted, sitting in the sun with an expression of “ cherub scorn ” on his beautiful face. But Emerson’s Uriel is an angel by himself — a heavenly counsellor who withdraws from the conclave because his companions have not yet fathomed his counsel, and therefore have received it in its superficial and less moral aspect. In his grand poem of “ The Sphinx” — which is the epic of world-history — short as it is, — and also the best epitome of philosophy, — Emerson carries the doctrine of Uriel further, and shows how it harmo- nizes with the laws that govern the uni- verse. The Sphinx, chief person in this ballad-epic, is no longer the Boeotian mon- ster who threatened to destroy Thebes, nor yet the Egyptian goddess whose huge image, — “ Pedestaled haply in a palace court, When sages looked to Egypt for their lore,” still confronts the pilgrim amid those sands. Emerson’s Sphinx is the mundane soul, a sort of Demiurgus, but a feminine and com- passionate one — ready to confess, too, that “ the riddle of the painful earth ” has been duly guessed, when the wise poet comes along and opens it. Speaking of “The Sphinx” in compar- ison with “ Brahma,” Mr. Sanborn said : “ Out of that poem you can only unfold by evolution a certain number of meanings — a certain form of the Totality ; but ‘ The Sphinx’ has implied in it the Totality it- self, so far as this world of man is con- cerned. I expect to live long enough to see professorships established, even at Har- vard and Yale, to explain this poem, as professors have for so many centuries been explaining Plato’s Timams and Aristotle’s work on the Soul.” Passing then to a criticism on Emerson as a poet, the lecturer said in substance that Herman Grimm, the German critic, assigns very high rank to Emerson when he allows him to be compared with Shakespeare, with Schiller and with Goethe. Emerson’s rank must be ven - high. He was Persian rather than Greek, English or American. He was allied to the great Zoroaster and the far- shooting, truth-speaking Parthians. He was Persian in his build of body and mind, — slender, agile and active, not broad and massive. He was Oriental both in activity and repose ; fitted alike for society and solitude. No man lived more publicly nor yet more retired. He withdrew into him- self without asceticism or hauteur. But he had a Yankee side to his nature, and has Individualism. 129 done his part in establishing our national- ity. By him our country first declared her independence of England in philosophy and letters, as she had already declared her independence in politics by Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Franklin. Individ- ual freedom breathes in his writings, and to him American literature owes much of its small and precious wealth. Where then shall Emerson be placed? Even when most philosophic he is purely poetic, and while he lacks creative power in verse, he carries with him the atmosphere and light of poetry. Since Milton and Spenser no man has equalled Emerson in this respect. There is that in him which puts us on the highest levels of the soul. The region which this pure and manly intelligence in- habits is ideal, but not unreal. Emerson raises earth to the level of divine philoso- phy. He followed closely his own law for the perfect bard laid down in “ Merlin ” : He shall not seek to weave, In weak, unhappy times, Efficacious rhymes ; — Wait his returning strength, — Bird that from the nadir’s floor To the zenith’s top can soar, The soaring orbit of the Muse exceeds that journey’s length.” INDIVIDUALISM. BY MR. ALCOTT. INDIVIDUALITY is a separation from a oneness with God — a becoming di- vided from Him — and wilfully pursuing the path that leads away from Him. Our personality, on the other hand, is that by which we are united with God. The fol- lowing passage from a Persian poet illus- trates the difference between individuality and personality : — “ One knocked at the Beloved’s door, and a voice asked from within, ‘ Who is there?’ and he answered, 1 It is I.’ Then the voice said, ‘This house wall not hold me and thee.’ And the door was not opened. Then went the Lov- er into the desert and fasted and prayed in solitude, aud after a year he returned and knocked again at the door, and again the voice asked, ‘ Who is there?’ And he said, ‘It is thy- self,’ and the door was opened.” The first comer is the individual ; the sec- ond, the personal ; and all mankind in their general characteristics can be classed under these two terms. So far as the divine love is present we are personal ; so far as it is not present, we do not harmonize with others or build any lasting institutions. Individuality separates and distracts and leads to extremes. Osiris and Typhos were brothers born of the same parents, but their heavenly he- redity was as diverse as the poles. There is human heredity and divine heredity. Those whom we call brothers aud sisters may have no fraternity of soul. Osiris was desirous of learning, obedient to his father, anxious for all wisdom. He rever- enced his elders and loved the welfare of man. He was born of a noble spirit- ual ancestry. Typhos was perverse in everything. He hated and ridiculed knowledge and looked upon his brother as a coward because he did not strike those who struck him. He was drunken and licentious. He was a manifold evil, — emi- nently an individual. He was violent in his passions, and especially hated every- body who loved his brother. The two grew farther and farther apart. The one represents personality, or the aiming to be one with God and to do His will ; the other individuality, or the path of sep- r 3° Individualism. avation from God and Ilis will. The love of beauty, of truth and of good constitutes the Godhead, and when we enter the human form this love comes with us. But our wills are free, and we can either follow this trinity of beauty, good and truth, or we can depart from it. It is our spiritual heredity. But our hu- man heredity cramps and restricts us, and from this we must free ourselves. Through our reason we seek the truth, through our conscience the good, and through our imagination the beautiful. And so far as we partake of these we are personal. When we die, our individuality is cast off and our personal^ remains. When we see the right and refuse to do it, we are sinners. We become two instead of one. Hence the senses become ob- scured, the reason dimmed, and the con- science seared. The consequences of per- sisting in our individuality are isola- tion and complete separation from all our race and from society. At the same door enters passion or genius. Whoever tempts the Sphinx shall be straightway devoured. The Sphinx is life, and whosoever tempts life must be overthrown in the contest. Individuality is egotism. The individ- ual sees only himself, like Narcissus look- ing in the pool. AVe cannot cut ourselves off from all human interests and live alone. No society established on that basis has ever succeeded. This is the fallen man. The unfallen soul has only one will ; it is single. But how shall we be helped out of this pit when we once have fallen ? AVe must be born again. We must seize hold of this threefold strand of truth, beauty and goodness, and draw ourselves upward again. Our individuality must not be confound- ed with our differentiation — that which distinguishes us from other persons. It is our separateness from good and truth and beauty. It is the attribute of Satan, who isolates himself from God and surrounds himself with a hell of denial and evil, of oppositeness to the highest. As we obej' the law of our spirits, or as we are per- sonal, we gain and create all good ; as we disobey this law, we obtain and create all evil. Individualism brings men into oppo- sition with the divine will, and only as it is broken down is there harmony. Mr. Al- cott dwelt upon the collisions in the family, in institutions of learning, in the state and in the church which are caused by the efforts of individualism to assert itself. He also spoke of the different temperaments as en- tering into the question of individualism, and of their influence upon the life. In- fluences are often inherited which form a factor of individualism. Apropos of the different temperaments, he read the follow- ing from an old English poet : — “ Some whom we call virtuous, are not so In their whole substance, but their virtues grow But in their humors, and at seasons show'. For when through tasteless, flat humility, In dough-baked men some harmlessness we see, ’Tis but his phlegm that ’s virtuous, and not he. So is the blood sometimes : whoever ran To danger unimportuned, he was then No better than a sanguine, virtuous man. So cloistered men, who, on pretence of fear All contributions to this world forbear, Have virtue in melancholy, and only there. Spiritual, choleric critics, who in all Religions find fault, and forgive no fall, Have through their zeal virtue but in their gall. We’re thus but parcel gilt; to gold we’re grown When virtue is our soul’s complexion — Who knows his virtue’s name or place has none.” Mr. Alcott then showed how individual- ism may result in “ come-outerism,” and in other extremes of no value to the race and of pain to the individuals. The Philosophy of Peligion and the Law of the Supernatural. 131 Seventeenth Dat, — August T. THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION AND THE LAW OF THE SUPERNATURAL. BY DR. JONES. O AYS Aristotle : “ Beings are unwilling ^ to be governed ill,” and “ the domina- tion of many is not good ; there is there- fore one Supreme. The First Princi- ple, the First Being is immutable, both essentially and according to accident. But he moves the first, the eternal, the universal motion. But such things as are connected with matter are many in number, but that which ranks as first among formal causes is not connected with matter ; for it subsists in energy. Hence that which first moves, itself im- movable, is one, both in reason and num- ber, and consequently that -which is always and continually moved is also one. There is therefore, also, only one universe.” One Mover, one motion, whose primal irradiations, sometimes called the Platonic ideas, are the sources of all motion, and all energy, and all truth, and all beaut}', and all love, and all good, and all order, and all justice, and all law. And here in this celestial summit alone shall we behold the law of all laws, the First Mover of all motion. Hence and wherefore these prin- ciples or ideas are universals. Hence do thej' pervade the universe, and hence do ideas rule. And in mind, in spirit, are the potentialities of the world and not in matter. All the ages of thought illustrate the collision of two opposing opinions, which predicate first cause or beginning on the one hand of the natural orders and on the other hand, of the supernatural. This op- position of opinion has its root and differ- ence in the two consciousnesses respect- ively in the constitution of the soul, viz., the consciousness of the sensible sphere with its content and mental outlook on the one hand, and the consciousness of the sup- ersensible sphere with its content and out- look, on the other hand. These two types of thought must have existed always in the world of mind and they are related as the centripetal and centrifugal forces in the world of matter, necessary to preserve the equilibrium of the forces in the world in its circulations. These two types of mind, or of mental phenomena, are respect- ively sufficiently characterized and dis- tinguished as the physicist and the idealist. The former invalidates the ideal and ex- alts the physical to primordiality and monism. The latter co-ordinates the ac- tual and exalts the ideal into primordiality. The one constitutes the physical school, and the other the metaphysical school of the world’s philosophies, ancient and modern, from the Ionics to Herbert Spencer on the one hand and from the Eleatics to Emerson on the other. Anciently and now 7 , and henceforth as well, in accordance with the affirmations of all the great ages of faith and philosophy, the human mind postulates of the world two ranges of ex- istence, namely, the natural and the super- natural, the physical and the metaphysical, the sensible and the intelligible, the sen- sibly visible and the sensibly invisible, the one cognized and identified as entity by mind in spiritual vision, by mind standing in the illuminated summits, the i,} i The Philosophy of Religion and the Law of the Supernatural. other perceived and believed to be reality by mind in sensuous vision, mind standing- in hollows and flats of the world. Man individually must realize existence most truly and beneficently through the use of both these orders of faculties, spiritual and sensuous or natural, exer- cised in due proportion. And so also must human society realize its noblest fruitions by means and use of both these orders of faculties. All human histoiy, with the sciences and arts and religions and philosophies of human society, com- prehends in its genesis the service of both these functionaries, the abstract realistic or “natural” mind and the idealistic mind, the energies of the natural man and the energies of the spiritual man. The world’s thought, and the world’s work, and the world’s social fabrication could not be done with either of these forces alone without the other. If we would know either and justify either, we must know and justify them both at once, as they are co-ordinated and correlated in then' practical unity in the social constitu- tion. Human life depends from the spiritual world and is conditioned in the natural world. Humanity must have, therefore, its two priesthoods, — its priesthood in the temple of nature and its priesthood in the temple of the spirit. The public be- lief and trust in the one and in the other constitute the dual and valid foundations and effect the superstructure of civil so- ciety in every generation. Mankind are distributed and devoted socially in their several different functions by innate genius, and that means by Providence Divine. This is still the fundamental principle in the constitution and maintenance of civil society, viz., civil society exists not with- out productive toil and commerce and military defence and education and gov- ernment. These are still born into the world from the foot of Brahma, and from the thigh of Brahma, and from the arm of Brahma, and from the mouth of Brahma. They are all born of Brahma unto their respective functions. It yet remains to be seen whether modern democratic schemes shall improve or mar the divine order in the constitution of the social fabric and its actual working. Society and history require at the hands of these priesthoods their respective functions and that each should know and mind its own business, and that each should confess, and respect and honor the business of the other. Either is heretical and false in postulating enmity between religion and science. Eternity and time are correlates. Time is but the movable image of eternity. Eternity has no motion, no process, no existence, but as the expanses and motions and changes called time. Eternity with all its content of spiritual essence and form, and time with its content of nature and physics and matter are mere aspects of one system. When we are in the act of existence, we are related to both at the same time. We do not now exist abstractly in time, nor shall we ever exist abstractly in eternity. Existence must comprehend them both as aspects of one whole. The Creator himself cannot be cognized and contemplated in the thought of man as an abstraction, as separate and apart from his creatures ; nor can the forms of the creations be cognized and understood wheu contemplated apart as abstract and separated from the Creator. Especially must this be seen by those who see that the Creator creates all things simulta- neously forever and not in measures of temporal succession. The unity of the mind and will of the Creator with the forms and laws of the created must be a unity of the two, and not an annihilation of either one in the other. Therefore the distinguishment of each from the other is a prerequisite to the true thought of their unity All thinking, conditioned in the relinquishment of either term or side of The Philosophy of Religion and the Law o f the Supernatural. 133 this duality, is sophistical in its character, one-sided in its view, incomprehensive and so without content of truth. So also of the mind of God and of the laws of na- ture. Thejr must be comprehended in their unity, in their concreteness. Either alone, either as an abstraction from the other, is untruthful and contentless. Religion and science, divinity and na- ture, primary and secondary causes must be distinguished and comprehended in their unity, in their concreteness. The ground and reason of all existence, the ends and purposes and determinations of existence are purely in the realm of thought and mind and cannot be found in the objective world. There are no natu- ral forces. All natural substances and materialities of whatsoever sort are with- out form or motion, or thought or feeling, or disposition toward any form of order or arrangement. Hence, also, Nature legis- lates not and there are no natural laws. Only being moves from within itself. Only entity moves and thinks and feels, and so what and whence are forces, powers, but as cognized to be predicates of will, mind, thought. The sphere or as- pect of the universe denominated spiritual, mental, is the vital sphere, and its proc- esses and determinations are the vital forces, and these vital forces are the laws and forces of nature. The substance of this sphere is spirit, as the substance of the other is matter. Dr. Jones continued in this train of thought, advancing the idea that all politi- cal and social institutions have force only as long as the public mind and will are expressed and abide in them. Institutions not vitalized by the mind which produced them are as dead as dust. The essential forms in the universe, the motion, order and harmony are but the energies and impress of the Divine will unto the form of the Divine idea and thought. The handiwork of the Creator is the adumbra- tion and effigy of his thought and pur- pose. The concluding portion of the lecture was as follows : In the light and view of that school of thought, life, mind, soul, intelligence, will, have another paternity than nature’s physics. In this thought of the universe, nature is that which is pro- duced, that which is begotten and not that which begets. The eventualities of history all have their parentage in the un- seen powers. Each and every generation of mind constituting the great measures of history, has its fountain and form in its idea of Deity. And this idea is contained in some special form of incarnation and its accompanying dispensation by oracles. And from this idea and fountain all their social institutions of church and state, their sciences and arts, and law's and man- ners and customs, receive their type and determination. i34 Schell in g's Relations to Kant and Fichte. SCHELLING’S RELATIONS TO KANT AND FICHTE. BY PROFESSOR JOHN WATSON, LL. D. , F.R.S.C . 1 TT has been said with some truth that Schelling issued new treatises on phi- losophy as he received new light ; hence his life may be separated into three phases. First came the “ storm and stress” period, in which he refused to admit the reality of a Supreme Being other thau the moral or- der of the world. Then came the second phase, in which man and nature were re- garded as two co-ordinate manifestations of a single activity that was revealed in each with equal clearness and perfection. Thirdly came the crowning stage, in which the attempt was made to prove the per- sonality of God while preserving the moral responsibility of man as maintained before. There is no break in the continuity of Schelling’s philosophy. In his first period he has grasped with great clearness the principle of human freedom, however blind he may be to its ultimate implications. In the second stage, without letting go the freedom and responsibility of man, he has discovered that nature is the expression of rational processes, and that man and nature are alike the expression of “ something not themselves.” Schelling’s philosophy, to be perfectly frank, is in large measure a failure, but it 1 John Watson, M. A., LL.D., F. R. S. C , was born February 25, 1847, in Glasgow, Scotland. He entered Glasgow University in 1866, and graduated as M. A. with tirst-class honors in mental and moral philosophy in 1872, — the year in which he was appointed to the chair of moral philosophy in Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. from his Alma Mater in 1880, and was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1881. He is the author of pamphlets on “The Relations of Philosophy and Science” (1872), and “Education arid Life” (1873) ; also of the following articles in the “Canadian Monthly”: “Science and Religion” (May, 1876) ; “ Darwinism and Morality ” (October, 1876); Professor Tyndall’s Materialism” (March, 1878); “A Phase of Modern Thought” (November, 1879); also of the following articles in the “Journal of Speculative Philoso- phy”: “Empiricism and Common Logic” (N, 17); is oue of those failures which are more sig- nificant than the petty successes of others. He shows the transition from Kant to He- gel through Fichte. Professor Watson then passed in detailed review the philo- sophies of Kant and Fichte, reaching the conclusion that subsequent speculation concerning the unity of subject and object must attempt to get a clearer and deeper view of the realities of mind, the world and the absolute. In Schelling’s first work, published in 1794, “ The Possibility of a Form of Philos- ophy in General,” he followed pretty closely Fichte’s “ Idea of Philosophy.” His only claim to originality in it is that he attempts to deduce from the three fundamental prin- ciples of Fichte’s philosophy not only Kant’s categories of quality, but those of quantit}’ and modality also. In 1794, also, appeared his treatise, “ The I as the Prin- ciple of Philosophy.” His aim here was to show that the I, or intelligence, is the su- preme or unconditioned ultimate in human knowledge. He traces back the results of the critical philosophy to the ultimate prin- ciples of all knowledge, refusing to be bound by the mere letter of Kant’s sys- tem. The supreme principle is not sub- “ Kant’s Reply to Hume ” (X, 113) ; “ Hedonism and Util: tarianism ” (X, 271) ; “ Relativity of Knowledge ” (XI, 19 “The World as Force” (XII, 113, XIII, 151); “Kant’s Principles of Judgment ” (XII, 376) ; “ The Critical Philo- sophy in its Relations to Realism and Sensationalism ” (XV, 337) ; also of the following books: “Kant and his English Critics, a Comparison of Critical and Empirical Philosophy ” (New York : Macmillan & Co.) and “ &chel- ling’s Transcendental Idealism ” (in Griggs’s Philosophical Classics). Professor Watson is at present engaged in the composition of a work on psychology. The synopses of Professor Watson’s lectures contained in this volume give some idea of the topics discussed more fully and completely in the work just published by S. C. Griggs & Co., in their series of German Philosophical Classics. Schelling'’ s Relations to Kant and Fichte. x 35 ject nor object, but that which is the condi- tion of both, the pure or absolute Ego, which can never be an object of knowl- edge, but which establishes its reality in and through itself. This absolute Ego cannot be thought, but only perceived or contemplated by the organ which Fichte well names “intellectual perception.” We have not immediate knowledge or con- sciousness of the absolute Ego. In it there is complete identity of possibility and actuality. The absolute Ego is to the iinite Ego an ideal to be realized. Approx- imation to this idea is possible to man, because he is identical in nature with the absolute Ego, and herein consists his prac- tical freedom. Schelling brings into clear relief Fichte’s opposition of the absolute and finite Ego, making it appear that all finite individuals are in some sense but modes of an intelli- gence w'hich manifests itself in them, but is somehow distinct from them. Schelling denies the “ thing in itself,” and, opposing the object to the subject more strongly than Fichte, seeks in the absolute Ego for the unity which is to reconcile them. The reason why the supreme principle cannot be found in the finite self is mainly that that self exists only as conscious of an object and such consciousness, as implying distinction, necessarily involves limitation. If we follow out this idea we shall come to the conclusion that the true absolute is to be sought in an abstract identity which excludes all distinctions. Schelling was veiy far from intending such a result, and his theory contains a principle utterly dis- crepant from it, but we have here the germ of the theory that the true absolute is to be found in a complete indifference of subject and object. In the same year, Schelling’s “ Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism ” were pub- lished. Dogmatism and criticism were considered in their bearing on the inde- pendent existence of the “objective” Cod. It was meant as a counterblast against the followers of Kant who were seeking to convert the critical philosophy into a dogmatism of a w'orse kind than that from which Kant had set out to free the minds of men. The attempt to base morality on a pure hypothesis Schelling denounced as neither Kantian nor rational. The ultimate ground of subject and object must be either the absolute subject or absolute object. As the theoretical reason moves only within the realm where subject and object are opposed, it can give no an- swer to the problem. Dogmatism cannot be refuted by criticism so long as both remain within the sphere of knowledge. So the battle must be carried into the sphere of action and determined there. The absolute identity of subject and object is the goal of human progress. To negate the object and to negate the subject are at bottom the same thing, for in either case the personal disappears. The main ad- vance beyond Fichte in this work consists in the conception of dogmatism as incap- able of refutation by criticism, except within the sphere of practical reason. In 1796 and 1797 appeared in Fichte’s and Niethammer’s Journal four articles, which complete Schelling’s work while apprentice to Fichte. In the first he show s that the ordinary interpretation of Kant completely misrepresents his real meaning. In the second article he shows further how this is done. In virtue of freedom a self-conscious being is free to abstract itself from what it has perceived, and so arises consciousness of an object. It fol- lows that reality cannot be explained from the point of view of consciousness. Fur- ther, since consciousness of an object is possible only in contrast to free activity and the consciousness of free activity only in contrast to an object, to those at the point of view of consciousness man seems partly necessitated and partly free. The essence of spirit is to perceive itself and this tendency is infinite. Matter is simply spirit contemplated in the equilib- La ndsca pe Painting. 3 6 riura of its activities. But spirit finds out- ward limitations, and hence arises the dis- tinction of the outer and inner sense, the former being simply the latter as limit- ed. Spirit lias the infinite tendency to become object to itself. The goal of all its acts is self-consciousness, and the his- tory pf those acts is just the history of self-consciousness. Hence the task of philosophy can be completed only when we have reached the goal of complete self-consciousness. Such self-conscious- ness is will, in which theoretical and prac- tical reason meet together. But everything arises from our representations, and holding them away from us we are able to explain them and connect the theoretical and the practical self. Thus we arrive at the Ego as the principle of freedom, beginning with which we can now see spirit and nature arise together. Eighteenth Day, — August 5 . LANDSCAPE BY 1)R. I N early art, among the Egyptians and Asiatic people, nature is a fate that annuls the freedom of man and rests like a great weight upon him. It seems to crush him to earth, and the feeling of this oppression is represented in their art. Pillars of their temples are made as if supporting enormous burdens, and it is not till the Greek begins to find the superiority of mind over nature that the pillars become light in design, and even bear acanthus leaves at their tops, as if they slighted the weight to be supported. In Greece was developed the idea of the supremacy of the mind ; the body was looked upon as the temple of God. Hence it was cultured in the games to a degree of wonderful grace and beauty and became a model for the statues which the world admires. There were the Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemean and the Isthmian. Culture of the body resulted in the devel- opment of sculpture. The statues of the victors were set up in the grove. Then, too, the perfected physical forms fur- nished models for the statues of the gods. PAINTING. HARRIS. After the Greeks, the Romans had a still deeper insight and saw the highest divine expression in the will. Law is the expression of will and the Romans became the law-makers of the world. The Ro- mans invented the arch and rounded it into a dome. Singularly enough, the arch and dome express the Roman principle. In them each stone supports all the others and they support it. The arch represents the union of all wills in the universal will. If any stone is removed from the arch it will fall and perish. If any will is not in har- mony with society, and society cannot destroy the opposing will, society must perish. The Romans were unconscious of the significance of this contribution to art, just as an} r nation is unconscious of the meaning of the highest form of its art. It only feels that the art is in harmony with its desires and aspirations. Architecture has not reached a high development in this country, but for their court-houses and public buildings the Americans have in many cases instinctively taken the dome. Among Americans and English the art Landscape Painting. 137 feeling is generally very dim, and is ex- pressed chiefly in poetry. The}’ have no marked taste for plastic art, painting, sculpture, and music. But in selecting the dome, the architects have followed a true instinct. Christian art was a reaction against all that was material and external, and in painting it found means for the expres- sion of internal feelings. Color made it possible to express emotion much more accurately than it could be expressed in marble. Christian painting takes for its theme the superiority of the spirit over the body. Martyrs suffering bodily tor- ture could die with placid faces. Their wonderful internal peace and strength found even better expression in music. Christianity makes prominent the idea of the infinite importance of the individual, aud modern art is developed in the direc- tion of detail. Mere individuality as such becomes a favorite theme, — with a Rem- brandt for example. Earlier it was indi- viduality only as type of the universal — a body of dazzling beauty, or a martyr, attesting the divine by his death. Music better than any other form of art, expresses the desire of the human person to attain something higher, to reach the infinite. Formerly it was believed that the infinite must be reached by sac- rifice of the finite. So the things of this world must be given up. A beggar em- bodied the idea of the highest type of human life. But later has been developed the idea of bodily sacrifice in work, whether in the kitchen or shop or farm, for the good of the race, and there has grown up the idea that a secular government may be divine and that the prose reality of usefulness to one’s fellow men is also the embodiment of a divine ideal. In the early Christian centuries it was important that the church should lay its hand on the secular government and com- pel it to follow the principles of the church. Afterward, when the church saw that the state was permeated with religion so that the sense of justice had ripened, she could say, “ Go, my son. You have organized yourself on the divine idea of justice. The more you secure that, the more you follow me.” So the church in its independence | lets go the state and other secular insti- tutions when they are organized on the divine idea. The modern spirit leads more and more to the founding of institu- tions which unfold into independence of the church, not because they lack religion, but because they contain it. The tendency is to make institutions independent, and hence particular things take on more importance, and for the ex- pression of this yearning of the particular to attain the divine, or the universal, mu- sic is the greatest art. It could not have been great among the ancients. They could not allow the human individual to be recognized in his finiteness as worthy of attention by the side of the Divine. The Greek tragedies show how dire were the consequences if the individual broke the divine ordinances. Socrates seems to have been the first to seize the idea of the im- portance of the individual, and develop- ment of this idea has cost all the travail of history. Poetry is the highest of all arts, because it works directly on the productive imagi- nation, while the other arts reach the pro- ductive imagination indirectly through the perception of some material fashioned into an art-form. There must be a reve- lation of reason, as well as sense-percep- tion, in order for one to perceive art. A dog can see no art in a picture. Poetry leaves out all the subordinate stages of art, and works directly on the imagina- tion, and has the entire sweep of painting, plastic art, architecture, and music. Dr. Harris then took up a peculiar development of modern times in art, — landscape painting. In ancient poetry there is little mention of landscapes, and the ancient appreciation of landscapes Landscape Painting. T 3 8 seems to have been materially different from the modern. A landscape as such is not the most direct revelation of reason, for that is much better revealed in the human form divine. For the Greek there must be a soul shining in the face and a single thought animating the figure. Thus we get harmony, and the symmetry which the ancient idol-worshippers attempted to reach by r putting faces upon the back of the heads of their gods, and by adding other pairs of arms, is superfluous, for there is a unity of action in the statue and mere symmetry, or mere regularity, is not a high form of unity. The unity of activity is the harmonizing principle in art, and this was seen by the Greeks. It is illustrated in the Apollo Belvedere, whose whole figure is animated by a single thought, as the posture of eveiy limb is influenced by the purpose to discharge the arrow, or perhaps by the intention to put to death the spoilers of his temple, if he holds the aegis of Jove in his hand. But how can a landscape express reason? It has the elements of light, air, water, high land and low land. Air symbolizes the intellectual in human nature. All great attributes of mind are represented by light, and air in its trans- parency is the chief bearer of light, its collector and distributor. Air also is the symbol of freedom. Water represents the reflective principle of mind, and is the connecting element between air and earth. Nature is everywhere a reflection or a symbol of mind, and so we find the land- scape to have its spiritual suggestion. As we look up toward the mountains (the third element of a painting), we feel the tonic influence corresponding to the way in which we are affected by our reason rising to perception of higher truth. Any good landscape must represent this rising into the realm of clearness. The low land represents fertility and warmth, luxuriant vegetation, and finitude and weariness over details. The mountain top is clear, but cold, like the pure mind. It is like ice. But the stream in the picture flows from glaciers, carrying fertility^ to the plain be- low, as the cold abstractions of mind, carried down to common life, become fruit- ful. In the valley is the multi tute of de- tails, the particular; on the mountain top is the universal. Dr. Harris then explained an engrav- ing of Church’s “Heart of the Andes,” which hung on the wall. He pointed out the cold mountain tops, the stream, the pool reflecting the sky, the luxuriant vege- tation, and the abodes of man. In the lower level nature seems too powerful for man to subdue, but on the mountain tops there is no vegetation, nothing for him to conquer; all is abstraction. Indeed it is too abstract. Nature’s vegetation is con- quered so much that man cannot live there. The “Heart of the Andes” is perhaps the best of all landscapes for showing the significance of the five ele- ments of landscape paintings. Bierstadt’s “Storm in the Rocky Mountains” is a good picture, but does not have the at- mospheric effects of Church. Dr. Harris spoke briefly of Claude Lorraine’s land- scapes as illustrating the rest of man in the finite, — the living careless groups suggesting the finite, and the architectural lines of ruins near them suggesting the eternal element of the mind. Then he spoke in much detail of Turner and his wonderful atmospheric effects, say- ing that it was remarkable that the painter of the most wonderful atmospheres should be a native of a country where the sky is rarely clear. But his imagination taught him how to make use of the atmospheres of the countries whose scenes he painted. The country of fogs and mists was found to possess capacities for the highest order of landscape pictures. If Turner goes to Italy he must find its phases of cloud and mist, and present them in their glory to the neglect of the mere sunshine and clear air and distinct outlines. Transcendental Idealism of Schelling. 139 Dr. Karris explained in detail a large in the brief conversation afterward, a high number of paintings by Turner by means appreciation was shown of the merits of of heliotypes. In his explanations, and this great English painter. JNeSTETEENTH D.\Y, AUGUST 7. TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM OE SCHELLING. BY PROFESSOR WATSON. TN this lecture the purpose is to' give -E some idea of the “Transcendental Idealism,” in which the ethical idealism of Fichte is sought to be combined with the objective idealism to which Schelling ad- vanced when he definitively parted from Fichte, or, as he himself expressed it, “made a breach to nature.” As neither intelligence nor nature exists in indepen- dence, philosophjr may start from either indifferently. When we start with the former, the solution of the problem de- mands the derivation of the knowable world of objects from the nature of intelligence. This is the problem which transcendental idealism has to resolve. Schelling begins by showing that the simplest form of consciousness must be the perception of a limit, and having done so, he draws attention to the fact that this immediate consciousness of a limit is iden- tical with that stage of knowledge known as sensation. The second phase is that of perception. In the former there is an implicit opposition of subject and ob- ject ; in the latter the opposition becomes explicit. In perception I have a conscious- ness, not simply of a limit, but of some- thing which is a limit to me. I not only feel, but know that I feel. Perception is the act by which the subject apprehends an object, conceived as standing in oppo- sition to it, and limited by it. This object is viewed as completely independent of any perceptive activitj’, and as existing apart by itself. At the same time the object is not something which is regarded as the mere effect of an object, but as an actual object of perception ; while standing in opposi- tion to the subject, it is yet in relation to it. Schelling then proceeds to show that the world of nature, as an object stand- ing in contrast to the knowing subject, is really only a product of intelligence itself, and that perception must therefore be regarded as a process of intelligence, not as a dead product existing apart from intelligence. Accordingly he endeavors to connect together, in the closest way, space and time, and the categories which Kant has separated. It further seems to him that the categories are all reducible to those classed by Kant under the head of relation. It is at the stage of reflec- tion (which is Schelling’s next step) that the distinction of the unconscious and con- scious productions of intelligence is clearly seen. After a minute examination of the de- tails and steps by which Schelling arrives at this point, the lecturer then said that in the theoretical part of his sj’stem he has shown that an ultimate explanation of in- telligence, and therefore even of knowl- edge, must be sought in the nature of will, for the perception of self-activity is inex- plicable so long as we remain at the point 140 Transcendental Idealism of Schelling. of view of knowledge. There could be no knowledge at all, did not intelligence de- termine itself to activity, and hence will is the condition of knowledge. In willing I contrast myself as purely self-determined with myself as active only in knowing ob- jects ; and thus, contemplating myself as raised above all particular perceptions, I set before myself an object as an ideal which I am freely to realize. The lecturer then proceeded to complete the practical part of the transcendental philosophy, by showing the bearing of the conception of freedom upon the concep- tion of rights, the state, and history. The law which is for human action what the law of causality is for external events, is the law of justice, and is as inexorable as the laws of nature. The law of justice is a sort of second nature set above the first, under which free beings must be placed in the interest of the freedom of each. To secure the highest form of constitu- tion in all individual states, there ought to be a subordination of all states to a common law of justice administered by an areopagus of nations. The gradual reali- zation of law is the substance of history. Each epoch is the condition of a higher epoch, which includes and transcends the one that has gone before. History is thus a continual advance toward a predeter- mined goal, an advance which is realized ia and through the will of individuals, and notwithstanding the free play of individual caprice. Necessity and freedom are related as conscious and unconscious action. This necessity is more potent than human free- dom, and prevails in spite of it. Not only tragic art, but all high deeds rest upon the belief in something higher than ourselves. Such an order of things is not the moral order of the world, which is dependent on freedom and can be made a conscious end, but something absolutely objective, which nerves the will in its depths and gives us security that the highest ends will be realized. In our immediate consciousness it is we who act, but objectively it is rather some- thing else 'through us. This “something else ” is the unconscious, while we are con- scious, and hence it has to be shown that the one is identical with the other. Is there any object of perception which com- bines those two characteristics? Schelling finds there is in the case of organisms. Our next step is to find in intelligence itself the explicit consciousness of that unit}'. This Schelling finds in art. The rest of the lecture was devoted to the de- velopment of this idea, showing the high rank which Schelling gives to art. The fundamental character of every genuine work of art is its unconscious infinity. Every work of art exists purely for its own sake, not for any finite end whatever, such as pleasure, utility, morality or sci- ence. In art, intelligence for the first time becomes self-conscious in the widest sense of the term. Thus our system is complete. Alexandrian Platonism. M r ALEXANDRIAN PLATONISM. BY DR. WILDER. r | M1E origin of the Alexandrian school of philosophy is usually traced to Ara- monius Sakkas. He had been brought up as a Christian, but entertained the pro- found conviction that among the multi- plicity of religions and doctrines, there existed the remains of the true religion, which might be eliminated and constitute a faith and philosophy in which all might unite. This true faith he considered to be the wisdom, or, more accurately, wis- dom-religion of the ancients. Follow- ing the example of Pythagoras, Eumolpos and the priesthoods, he instituted a secret rite and required his disciples to obligate themselves not to divulge the esoteric doctrines except to persons who had been duly initiated. This secret associa- tion does not appear to have existed long, as Herenuius after his death hesitated not to teach openly, and both Porphyry and Iamblichus referred their disciples to the current Hellenic, Mithraic and Egyp iau mysteries. The sages and mystagogues of Western Asia and the adjoining regions, appear to have lighted their torches at the fire-altar of Zoroaster. We have the assurance of Porphyry that the secret rites constituted the oldest worship. The Mysteries, whether of the Kabeirian gods, or of Isis, Adonis, Bacchus, or Demeter and her daughter, were evidently imported from Assyria. Speculative philosophy, itself the outcome of religious doctrine, must have had the same source. After the conquest of Pon- tus, where Mithraism was the occult wor- ship, the secret rites were adopted over the Roman world. We find their influ- ence in the existence of Gnosticism in the Christian church, which retained a foot- hold till the extirpation of the Albigenses. As the widowed Isis searched everywhere for the mutilated fragments of her hus- band’s body, so did Ammonias Sakkas, in his quest for truth, explore the various faiths which found expression at Alexan- dria. His noblest disciple was Plotinus, who united the intuition of a seer with the enthusiasm of a worshipper. After a time we find him at Rome, endeavoring, among other things to establish a Platonic com- monwealth. We learn the most that is known about him from Augustine and Porphyry, his favorite disciple. He was a vegetarian like Pythagoras and lived unmarried like Plato. Augustine declared him to be the Great Teacher resuscitated, and the true expositor of the interior meaning of the Dialectic. He wrote by inspiration, Porphyry declares ; and was in close intimacy and assimilation to God. His diffidence, probity, accurate habits and ability were such that Roman patricians bequeathed their orphans and estates to his care to protect and administer. Longinus was another disciple of Am- monias. He was a man of great learning and retentive memory. He opened a school of philosophy and rhetoric at Athens, at which Porphyry became a pupil. Afterward he was the preceptor and counsellor of the celebrated Queen Zenobia. His treatise on the Sublime is his sole remaining work. Porphyry seems to have given tangible form to the new philosophy. Plotinus declared him a poet, scholar and hiero- phant, all in one. He wrote many books, but most of them have been destroyed. H e was considered as in many respects the representative man of the Neo-Platonic school. Iamblichus, his cotemporaiy and sue- I 4 2 A! excindrian Platonism . cessor, has been supposed to have taken a new departure in philosophic teaching. This conjecture is founded upon the en- deavor in his famous work on “ Initia- tions,” to identify philosophy with the theurgy of the Egyptian worship and the angelology of Assyria. He indeed affects to be a priest and hierophant rather than a sage, or student of the higher wisdom. The last bright luminary of the Alexan- drian constellation was the celebrated Hypatia. She was a proficient in mathe- matical learning and introduced a more rigorous method into the teaching of philosophy. She had been her own pre- ceptor, but completed her studies at Athens, and became a lecturer at the Mu- saeum at the request of the magistrates of Alexandria. Many of the best and ablest men of the age repaired thither to listen to her. Her career was cut short b}' her atrocious assassination, which has left its brand on all who promoted and partici- pated in the crime. Proklos and a few others continued the school at Athens. The times, however, were adverse, and finally Justinian prohib- ited them from giving instruction. This arbitrary action did not destnyy philoso- phy. Both the Platonic and Aristotelian doctrines, under various names and forms, were entertained and taught in the vari- ous Christian and Moslem countries, all through the middle ages. The world owes more to the Alexan- drian philosophers than it is usual to ac- knowledge. Their doctrines have some- times been called eclectic , as having been taken from the principal systems extant in the world. In lamblichus are recognized the triads of existence. These are the ousia , or essence ; the energeia, or interior activity, and the dunam is , potency or re- ceptive principle. The essence is the per- manent reality, the efficient cause of phe- nomenal existence, and it is intermediate between the sole Deity and the objective universe. The potency is the power and capacity of producing, while the energ}’ is the active principle that unites with it to that end. The following formula is how- ever more commonly used : the essence, the genesis, or creative principle by which souls come within the region of the cosmic universe, and the phusis , or nature by which and through which all things are evolved. The categories of spiritual be- ings are set forth by him with a careful ex- plicitness. Very precise instructions are given in regard to their appearance and specific character, at the sacred rites ; indicating that apparitions (or more prob- ably representations of them) were seen on those occasions. The philosophical systems of the an- cients were all of them closely affiliated to the secret rites. “What Orpheus shadowed forth by the mystic worship, Pythagoras expressed by his symbology and Plato by philosophy.” Worship stood at the foundation, and philosophy was the super- structure. The early Christians had also their Mysteries and we find frequent allu- sions to them in the New Testament. When the disciples interrogated Jesus in regard to his use of blind parables when addressing the multitude, he replied : “ To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God ; but to them it is not given. I speak to them in parables in order that seeing they may see and not per- ceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand.” In conformity with this practice, not only the mystic representa- tions and the dramas, but the prophetic literature, were regarded as arcane and alle- gorical. Paul recites the story of Abra- ham and his two sons, adding: “Which things are an allegory.” He also refers to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and accompanying events, and declates these to be “ ensamples,” or types writ- ten out for admonition. Josephus also de- clares that Moses wrote like the philoso- phers, “ under the veil of a decent alle- gory.” Philo, Oiigen and Augustine, as Alexandrian Platonism . H3 well as Emanuel Swedenborg, gave an esoteric sense to the Mosaic scriptures. Man}’ of the Platonists expound the Dia- logues as mystic utterances. Kingsley represents Hypatia as interpreting the works of Homer as metaphors relating to the soul. Such was the universal prac- tice. Paul emphatically declares that he had a secret doctrine, “ a mystery” which none of the arehons of the Grecian rites knew about. “ We speak wisdom to them that are perfect,” said he; “even that which is arcane, — the wisdom of God in a mystery.” It may fairly be supposed, therefore, that both apostle and philoso- pher taught alike that all real knowledge related to the soul and its discipline, and that the universe itself is the shadow of the Deity, a symbol of his power, a veil to shade his presence, a school to lead to him, and that in its inmost entity it is divine. While the Alexandrian philosophers, like others, taught of “gods many and lords many,” the}’ all acknowledge the One, the God prior to the first God and King (Mithras), the Alone, abiding in Eternity. This Divine All was the “ Con- cealed God ” of the Egyptians, and the One whom the Babylonians held as the One to be contemplated and adored in silence. He was in eternal repose, yet that repose was an ever-inspiring, incessant Energy. We have the word of Porphyry that the cult of Mithras was an earlier worship of the archaic world. It is ap- parently an Ethiopian or Ivushite religion. In the Assyrian symbology Mithras is denoted by the elevated fire, the luminous globe, the divinity in the Disk, the one standing in the Sun. He was “ the God of Truth ” and the hater of a lie. The “ Ora- cles of Zoroaster ” are supposed to relate to his worship. The Mithraic doctrines teach the lapse or descent of the human soul from its primeval state on high, the purifications essential in order to cleanse it from earthly taint, and its ascent through twelve gates or grades, from order to order and from virtue to virtue, till it attained a throne with the gods. We find this same idea conspicuous in Neo-Platonism. Plato taught the same. He distinguishes the soul into two regions,' the divine immortal part and the diverse, which is passional and receptive. When it adheres firmly to what is illuminated by Truth and Real Being, it then understands and knows, and appears to possess the higher spiritual faculty. But w’hen it joins itself to what is blended with darkness, it deals with opinion only, and so wanders from one opinion to another like one destitute of the higher reason. That which imparts truth and the faculty of knowing, is the idea of the good and the principle of knowledge of truth. It is not correct, however, to suppose that knowledge and truth, either of them, is “ the Good,” for that is still superior. The Apostle Paul, in the first Corinthian Epistle, discourses thus : “ Eye hath not seen nor ear heard the things which God hath prepared for those that love him ; but he hath revealed them to us through the spirit, for the spirit exploretlr all things, even the bathe or deeps of the Divine.” Of course the agnostic and rationalist would scout such wisdom as not being philosophical. “ The psychical man re- ceiveth not the things of the spirit, for they are foolishness to him ; neither can he know them, because they are spirituallv discerned. But he that is spiritual dis- cerneth all things, but he himself is dis- cerned by no one. For who hath known the mind of God, and who has spoken his counsel ? ” The Apostle relates an example of vis- ion, which illustra'es this superior condition. “I know a man,” says he, “whether in the body I cannot tell, or whether out of . the body I cannot tell ; God knows. He was caught up to the third heaven — into paradise, and heard things unspeakable, 144 The Community of the Faiths and the Worships of Mankind. which it is not lawful (possible) for a man to utter.” Analogous instances can be cited in other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures. This peculiar condition is recognized b} r the Brahmans. “ To the Omniscient, the three modes of being, — sleep, waking and trance, — are not,” says Manu. Porphyry has related of Plotinus, that he, by the method set forth b\' Plato in The Banquet, was elevated into an ineffable union with Divinity. “ By the assistance of the Divine light,” says he, “ Plotinus frequently raised himself by his concep- tions to the First God, who is beyond, who hath neither form nor idea. He did this by an ineffable energ}", and not by poten- tiality. I also once approached, and w r as united to the Supreme Divinity, when I was sixty-eight years of age.” This superior exaltation is evidently identical with the yoga and nirvana of the Buddhists and Brahmans. Aristotle appears to have known some- thing about the ecstatic condition. That it must be recognized as a psychical fact, and in some sense a function of human existence, cannot be candidly denied. Every religious faith has had at its incep- tion numerous phenomena of the kind. Mohammed says: “There are moments in which I am with God in such a manner that neither angel nor prophet nor apostle can attain to it.” Plotinus seems, how- ever, to have explained it. “ You can ap- prehend the Infinite only through the fac- ulty superior to the understanding by enter- ing into a condition in which you are your finite self no longer, in which the Divine Essence is communicated to you.” In conclusion, it would seem that the Alexandrian philosophers professed to bring down the Divinity to men ; but, in candor, it must be understood that they meant the elevating of men to Divinity. Twentieth Day, — August 8. THE COMMUNITY OF THE FAITHS AND THE WORSHIPS OF MANKIND. BY DR. JONES. rnilE due emphasis of differences of opin- ion, pursued in the spirit of discussion rather than of controversy, tends to liber- ate from the limitations of thought and ex- perience of the individual and the current age. But one of the chief sources of this deliverance is history. To know truly what our gfcat ancestors thought, believed, loved and worshipped, may therefore be , held to be a philosophic aim, practically related to the welfare and wisdom of the present time. The things that are seen are temporal ; but the things that are not seen are eternal. The eternal forms are the stable factor of the universe, and the temporal things are the transient ; the eter- nal forms are the substantial, and the tem- poral are their effigies. The sphere of essential forms is called the spiritual world ; the sphere of the phenomenal or apparent forms the natural world. Nature is but a visible image of invisible forms, moving and acting. Nature is the forming mould ; the supernatural is the pattern. The mould is the realm of crea- tive formation ; the pattern is essential The Community of the Faiths and the Worships of Mankind. 145 and eternal form. It is abiding, immuta- ble being, which threads and holds in per- petual identity and succession that which has in and of itself no stability. And nature is therefore but a visible image of invisible realities. But the mould and pattern are not alike ; they are contrarieties. Where the pattern is convex, the mould is concave ; or, as in the camera, the images are inverted and reversed from the real forms. Nature is therefore not a direct but an indirect dis- course of the supernatural. She is an in- direction and a reversal of the forms and order of which she is the apparition. The material apparitions are, to the corporeal sense, contrary to the truths of natural science ; and the physical apparitions are, to mind exclusively in the lumen of natu- ral science, contrary to the truths of the spirit, the forms and facts of the super- natural. In this cause mythic discourse has its reason, its peculiarity, its history, and its justification. Because of this con- trariety of the letter and the spirit in the spheres of mind and matter, he that would read nature’s handwriting of the supernat- ural must be illuminated to see the super- natural, to see the forms of essential being. In every age of the world which history records, there have been persons who have been led of the spirit of truth, which lead- eth ever the reverent and obedient soul into all truth, — men and women sent from God, the angels, delegated with commis- sions of Divine love, truth, and guidance to mortals. Human history is not a record of the aboriginal creation, or entrance of souls into being and their exit therefrom. On the contrary, it is the movement of the eternal soul through the sphere of time. The thought, the experience, the eventuali- ties of this motion, are the annals. And of this perpetual movement of an eternal nature there is in philosoph}’ no new thing under the sun. This unity of tin? race, through endless successions of generations of immortal souls in mortal generation, must be seized upon as the onty and first principle of his- tory ere we can read history. All the facts of history pre-exist in the mind of everj- andof each generation, and so round about the mind of today are stuck the mj’stic forms of the great ages of thought, philos- ophy and religion. The content of these forms is in us as well, and we shall see with what eyes we bring. And as we realize our liberation from egotistic and illiberal conceit, we shall understand the actions of the Jew, the Greek, the Egyptian, the Asiatic and the European, as they discourse of the mighty works and the eternal forms. In this spirit of just sympathy and fra- ternity only shall we subordinate the alien element, and bring to the foreground of our estimates the thought, aims, devotions and deeds that are generic in humanity, and 011I3' so shall we read history truly. Man is somehow the “ offspring of God ; ” the human race is a descent from the eter- nal mind, and the impress of Deity is actual in the conscious soul and actuates it. So that the unifying principle of history is the conviction and experience of the presence and dominance of the Supreme Deity per- vading and upholding all things, to be reasonably worshipped by his creatures through those things by which he is mani- fest. And this conviction and acknowledgment of the one living God and Father of all have underlaid the institutions, the worship, gov- ernments, civil authorities and laws of all human society of every age. In no instance within the pale of history have a race of men who look upon the heavens and earth with the eyes of oxen and horses ever laid the foundations and reared the superstruc- ture of a civil empire. Only they who have seen with religious e3'es have founded and built the sacred and political institutions of society. The annals of all ages attest that the human mind has never rested within the limit of natural phenomenon, but 146 The Community of the Faiths and the Worships of Mankind. that a deep and abiding consciousness of divinity has impelled man to seek and iden- tify. beyond this boundary of sense, the en- tities and causes of all sensible apparition. And history and philosophy further attest that the inventory of this search after Divine entity and causation is nob-inane babbling. But in every age men have invoked Deity as the one uncreated cause and Father of all. the one supreme, omnipotent, omnis- cient, omnipresent and unmade Deity, of whom the universe aud its content are the offspring, in whom the soul hath its parental fountain and providential care. Indeed, the whole world of mankind, through all ages, has worshipped one only Supreme Name in a multiform manner, under different names and rites, while the so-called polytheism, if it existed at all. is truly alleged only as the idolatry of the sot- tish vulgar, who are common to every gen- eration and every worship, Pagan and Christian alike, a sensuous generation, that lead not in nor characterize any his- toric movement. It may be affirmed of the most plausible exceptions, as the Per- sian Ahriman and Egyptian Typhon, that they are the personification of the evil principle, as the satanic polity of souls who are there found to be, in the fatal determinations, the instrument of Divine Providence in this sublunary world. In which view evil is not an entity’ at all, in and of itself, but a relativity to good. It appears upon the testimony and rea- sons of Aristotle and Plato, that the the- ology of the Pagan Greeks consistently and reasonably embraced the idea first of one supreme, omnipotent, and only un- made Deity, the Creator and Father and benefactor of gods and men ; and second, the idea of subordinate divine entities, gods supermundane and mundane, daemons and heroes, all of whom are ministers and servants of the Most High. What is the idea of the institutions and ceremonies of the Pagan-Greek worship? Is it true that this highest intelligence, thought and genius of a great age, a wor- ship comprehending in its instruments and aims the elements of a social power and history which gave a moral, intellectual and religious supremacy over the nations of the world, unequalled for its extent and permanency, was a vulgar idolatry? What mean the names of these divinities, these statues and lofty temples? Athene is a myth ; Demeter is a myth ; Dionysus is a myth. In mythic terms Minerva was born directly from the brain of great Jove, Zeus- Pater, the father-god. What else is this than the irradiation of divine thought in all things created? Again, in mythic term Demeter is the Earth-Mother. Mother Earth with her gifts to man is a divinity. Without her providential presence the earth is neg- lected, man is desocialized, and the land is barren and fruitless ; on the other hand, the most desolate country of the world is made fruitful by her hand. The fruits of the earth are of Providence Divine, and not of fortuitous spontaneity. And again, as a middle term in this triad of a national faith, Dionysus, the Bacchus, the wine- god, the true god, the giver of terrestial joys and gladness of heart, the delight of life, the realization of heart-gladness, life-joy and thanksgiving, is also the be- stowment of the Most High, a Divine Providence, a manifestation of divinity. The sacred highway is a mythic form. It spans the expanses of the sublunary world of the soul. It represents the ex- perimental progressions and retrogressions of the soul between the celestial and ter- restrial abodes. All of earth from the celestial heights of the spirit, — Athene in the Acropolis, to the terrestrial fruitions of the plain, Demeter in Eleusis, recon- ciled and realized as the festive proces- sion in life’s sacred way, — Dionysus, — is comprehended in the thought of divinity manifest as Divine Providence. And in this contemplation of the, supernatural and natural in a science of divinity and of na- The Community of the Faiths and the Worships of Mankind. 147 tu re it may be emphasized that there is no worthy fmit of existence unless it be con- summated in joy and rejoicing of the spirit ; without this the fruit of all beauty, truth and knowledge, and of all creeds and con- fessions, and of all sacrifice is but ashes and dust. According!}’, in the Greek polytheism, the supreme and unmade divinity as he was manifest in the illumination of the conscious soul, was Minerva ; as he was manifest in the providence of the fruits of the earth, he was Ceres ; as he was manifest in the bestowment of divine de- light. he was Bacchus ; in the ether he was Jupiter; in the air he was Juno; in the sea he was Neptune ; in the earth he was Pinto ; in divination and the fine arts he was Apollo ; in time he was Saturn ; in war he was Mars ; in fire he was Vulcan ; in the art of healing he rvas Esculapius ; in the light and beauty of the psychic sphere he was Diana ; as inspiring love he was celestial Venus. And so all these rmthical deities were one God. They are but the several names of the Supreme, the Jupiter Omnipotens, in his many mani- festations of government, and the provi- dences and bestowmeuts of the world. This view of the principles of the an- cient worship is further supported and defended by corroboratory evidence of all other of the pagan, systems of antiquity, the Persians, Egyptians and early Hin- doos ; their polytheism -was substantially the same, and there was always one su- preme, omnipotent and only unmade Deity. The Persians invoked their deity as the “ Creator of the Corporeal World,” “ The Giver of all Good,” “The Master of Eaithly Creatures,” “The Holiest of the Heavenly, that giveth us Wisdom and Understanding.” The Zoroastrian doctrine of God is that he is older than the darkness and light, and the creator of them, so that he is with- out companion or counsel, and that good and evil, virtue and vice, did arise from a certain commixture of light and darkness, without which this lower world could not be produced. In the Egyptian religion Ammon is the one supreme name, the author and finisher of all ; Osiris is the manifestation of his providence as father of all, and Isis is the manifestation of his providence as the preserving and redeem- ing love. In all which and much more available testimony it may be made to appear that there is no real era, no great faith and worship, no great nationality in human history, ancient or modern, in which the generations of earth had not their genesis in the idea of the one supreme name, the immovable mover, the first cause, the Creator, Father and ruler of the heavens and the earth, and of gods and men, with visible manifestations and intermediator}’ ministries. And from all which is reason- ably deducible, also, the philosophical theo- rem, that the idea of deity engenders and determines as the first principle or cause, the historic movement of the world ; and consequently in all successful research this idea must be discovered to be the fountain, and first principle of every great historic form of faith and nationality ; and the dominance and lead of an idolatrous poly- theism in any age, is but the expres- sion and witness of the decadence of its faith. 148 Immortality. IMMORTALITY. BY MII. ALCOTT. R. ALCOTT began his concluding lecture with a review of the three preceding ones, which have led to the sub- ject of immortality. Our Personality, he said, is our likeness to the Godhead in his threefold attributes of the beautiful, the true and the right ; these being made man- ifest in our affections, our reason and our will respectively. But above all and in- cluding all, there is love, without which neither one can manifest itself. Spirit alone gives life, and life is the essence of love. Our higher instincts are the manifesta- tions of the spirit through all our faculties. And these mysteries manifest themselves in the life of the babe. The child comes from God pure and holy, and, if its human parents are united by a divine love, the child will be in all respects divine ; its temperament will present the fewest appe- tites and passions hostile to its real self. But if its human parents are not truly related, there will enter into the temper- ament of the child whatever is evil in the parents. Pure love is the only creator, and so far as we love purely we are par- takers in the Creator. The new being, born into the world with its divine and its human heredity, will now try to find its way in this new exist- ence. Through its human organs of taste, touch, sight, hearing and smell, God works, and stirs these human tenden- cies to open out to the external world. These bound its little horizon. After a while it desires to recover the sensations produced by the exercise of these organs, anti so memory is born. Life is now con- scious life; it has entered into the world of events. Thence it goes into the realm of understanding, and then ascends the stairway into phantasy, or the power of expressing its experiences, and thence it begins to generalize truths, and reaches the realms of reason. But it wishes to clothe truth with beauty, and so enters the realm of imagination, and at last the realm of right, and then it reascends into the spirit and becomes one with God, — a true person. But the nursery and other institutions of the world must help the soul. Although it may have a heavenly heritage, its pro- tectors must be true lovers, else its life will not be expanded nor taught what to do. Then its divine attributes will be preserved. But if its protectors are not truly related by love, or if its ancestry is not pure, it will at some time break out into the faults of its ancestors. The sep- aration from its personality or its likeness to God is sin. The soul cannot sin unless it knows the right. If it is ignorant of the right, it only errs or mistakes ; if it knows the right and wilfully does the wrong, it sins, and thus becomes individ- ualized or separated from God, though it cannot be entirely separated. Love unites ; everything else separates. Unless love is the sentiment that unites all in one, the institutions of life will crumble and fall to pieces. So the soul passes through this world wdth all its virtues and vices, and at last the time conies for it to pass into a new existence. If it has maintained its youth- ful innocence and followed its divine in- stincts, then it will pass away as if it had not journeyed through this world. Such souls have already passed. They have never been away from God ; and in their new existence they are just what they were here, clothed anew in garments fitted The Symbolism of Color. 149 for communication with the beings of that other world. But if they have not been true to what is highest in them, they are still separate from God in that other world. The type of divine life is in the mind of God, and so far as we share that type we are divine. As to our memory of what has hap- pened here, we shall remember what and whom we have loved, and forget all else. We shall not wish to remember that which we do not love, but the memory of all that we have loved here we shall carry with us, as we brought with us from that other world the memory of that which we loved there. They who have loved one another here will know one another hereafter. Whether we obe}' or disobey the divine laws lies within our own choice. We are free, and can choose to do well or ill. And if we sin and desire to return to that state whence we have fallen, we have only to seek it. We need only to turn to God with all our heart in order to find him again. The soul is eternal ; it had no beginning, and so it can have no end ; for only that which has had a beginning in time can have an end, and the soul always has been. Our life began in the spring ; let us see that it ends in the spring, — the spring of love and innocence and purity. The lecture called forth a long and ani- mated discussion upon immortality, in which the Rev. Dr. R. A. Holland questioned re- garding the relations of immortality to pre- existence. Mr. Alcott replied that souls never came into time. The soul is a uni- versal, and cannot enter the particular. But the soul manifests itself in objects which are in time. He said that human heredity gives ex-istence ; but the subsist- ence of the soul was with God from all eternity. A'.'r-istence is the coming out from God, the incarnation in the flesh. In God’s mind souls subsist as ideas, but their ez-istence is in time ; it begins here. Twenty-First Day-, — August 9. THE SYMBOLISM OF COLOR. BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP . 1 f I X) see is only a language, said Mr. Lathrop, quoting Coleridge ; but to know that the sky is blue and roses are crimson is to know only a few letters of 1 George Parsons Lathrop was born Aug. 25, 1851, of American parents, in Honolulu, Island of Oahu, in the Sandwich Islands. His father was wholly of New Eng- land stock, and his mother nearly so. He is a kinsman, on his father’s side, of John Lothrop Motley and Oliver Wen- dell Holmes, both of whom trace back to John Lathrop [Scituate and Barnstable, 1634], as an ancestor. On his mother’s side is some Beotch-Irish blood and a descent from the half-sister of William Penn. Also, through a collateral branch on his father’s side, he is of the posterity of Increase and Cotton Mather. He came to the United States with his parents in 1858, and went to school in Os- wego, N. Y., and New York City. In 1867 he went to Dresden, Germany, and took a three years course in a gymnasium. Then he went to New York, where he studied the alphabet. Even to note the physical genesis of such phenomena is but one step toward a true insight. Mr. Lathrop then gave the scientific view of color as a sen- law one year at the Columbia College Law School. After a brief sojourn in the office of Evarts, Southmayd and Choate, he decided to devote himself wholly to literature and journalism. He went to London in 1871, and there married Miss Rose Hawthorne, Sept. 11, 1871. He returned to America in January, 1872, and to Massachusetts, Anally settling at Concord in January, 1879. He published in 1875, “Rose and Roof-tree,” a volume of poems now out of print; in 1876, “A Study of Hawthorne”; in 1S77, “Afterglow”; in 1878, “ Somebody Else ” (novelette), and edited “A Masque of Poets”; in 1882, “In the Distance,” “An Echo of Passion,” and “Spanish Vistas.” From the spring of 1875 to the summer of 1877 he was assistant editor of the “ Atlantic Monthly.” From the autumn of 1877 to 18S0 he was editor of the “Boston Courier.” 1 5 ° The Symbolism of Color. sation in the eye, a creation of our own from waves of light. Professors of science are usually content with describing color as a sensation. But behind the nerve- fibrils and “seeing purple” of the retina we must look for a deeper principle. This is found in an opposition of light and dark and a striving after unity, producing a vast variety of colors according as light and dark are combined. As Goethe said, “ Color is law-abiding nature in relation to the sense of the eye ; ” and throughout nature we find a movement of separation and union, repulsion and attraction, action and reaction, constantly demanding some form of life. The same law of opposition and unity pervades all our perceptions and is finally discovered in thought, the con- trast of real and ideal, object and subject, and their union in self-conscious spirit or the Ego. This leads directly to the con- ception of an infinite spirit as the first principle, to which we are ushered through the portal of color. Color, then, is the impress of our own minds on the external world ; and in that impress we discover beauty 7 , relation, balance, order. As a reality-giving illusion, color may be called the visible speech of imagina- tion ; but it also aids insight, as shown in the use astronomers make of it in dis- tinguishing planets from stars, and in the discovery that the sun is really blue or green. Suggestions of infinity were pointed out in it, and then Goethe’s observation of color as a token of ascending physical forms was retraced. Form represents fixity, isolation ; color indicates change, flowing, relation, and hence helps the mind to pass from perception to reflection. Mention of color in literature was next taken up, and the growth of a color vocab- ulary. First, bright colors predominated in poetry ; but a totality was reached only when the beauty of dark ones was ob- served too. This came with the growing importance of landscape in literature, and accompanied a general movement of mind toward emancipation. But there is a much subtler kind of coloring. What does Em- erson’s “color of romance” mean? It was born of Wordsworth’s “light that never was on sea or land,” and streams from - the imagination. Words possess color, as well as sound and form, and exercise a mutually modifying influence. If they did not in this way give us a total- ity of impressions, they would have no meaning ; for music has both sound and form, and if that were all that is needed, w r e could dispense with language and com- municate by melodies. The peculiar cor- respondence between sounds and colors was alluded to. As color in nature indi- cates relation, so words give a surface- scale of relation, connected w 7 ith the deeper insight of imagination which goes into in- terior relations. Ideas imparted in emo- tion, passion, sentiment, through carefully combined words, in a style depending on the author’s temperament, produce literary coloring, which appeals to and is appre- hended by 7 feeling. Sombre or enlivening effects cannot be produced without a sense of darkening or brightening. Contrast the impression made by Hawthorne and Dickens. The lecturer here read from Carly le and Gibbon, in illustration. Progress is always accompanied by 7 color. This was shown by 7 the lecturer in the history of painting, where, as in lit- erature, it accompanied emancipation of the human spirit. American literature suffers from a repression of color. Bryant carefully 7 estimates the sentiment of nature in place of feeling it swiftly 7 and deeply. AVith Longfellow the play of emotion is mild and timid, and the whole coloring of his verse conventionally faint. Yet in- stances of more rounded development are not wanting. We cultivate music ; a school of painting is in growth ; and even the greater taste for poetic interior decoration is a good sign, since the color of house- adornment has always corresponded to the temper of the times and is bright and The Symbolism of Color. temperate in proportion to refinement. Color in art, while engaging us by its sensuous charm, is intensely spiritual, bringing spirit and sense close together through the most ideal of the senses, siorht, in which it is the liveliest factor. If great epochs of color in art have ended in debasement, it was corruption from within which destroyed the faculty of color, which also comes from within ; and not because splendid color from without corrupted the mind. When society shall have been purified and human brotherhood makes universal love the motive of art, color will become dominant and be health- ily sustained. Color has led us on through nature, literature and art to a completer knowl- edge of spiiit. Comparing it in each de- partment, we get a perfect chord. Soul began and soul ends the octave. Art should not be placed below philosophy, because it creates, instead of abstracting ; unites sense and spirit, consciousness and unconsciousness, thought and emotion, as they actually present themselves. If I strike a note on the piano, and hold it, my ear will presently supply the appro- priate third and fifth, and I shall have a perfect chord. So, too, when we now behold a beautiful tint, we shall — if we have held the first note firm — supply in- tervals in literature, art and the nature of mind, and at once establish a far-reaching harmony. The deep principle in that liar mony is the Absolute, the divine love ; contemplating which, we shall merge in it the will of self-consciousness, like Dante when he lost the triple hue of the Trinit}' in the dazzling radiance of Christ : — “ The glorious Vision here my powers o’er- came ; — But now my will and wish were swayed by Love Love, at whose word the sun and planets move.” But even to this exalted stage color fol- lows us, in the realm of art. Form and outline there, as in nature, represent fixity w and limit ; opposed to which, color types succession and the unlimited, thus be- coming a means for the suggestion and symbolizing of infinity. But since color is also the artistic medium for emotion and sentiment, it carries with it into infinity the thought and feeling of love. Thus, with the aid of color, art at its best sums up all that we can present to our- selves in the way of knowledge. In it, sense, spiiit, infinite love, are concrete and living ; conjoined in beauty and joy, even as we find them in the universe. It therefore supplies what philosophical ab- straction, however grandly poetizing, can- not b}' itself impart. True, art is unconscious ; and the un- conscious is not higher than the conscious. But though the artist is said to work un- consciously, he does not work wholly so. He has an insight which he cannot define except by embodying it in created forms ; and even then he knows that much of the meaning which he has put there must be left for others to discover. He seizes his theme on the concrete side and by such a divination with all his faculties at once, that it is impossible for him to be cogni- zant of all the steps in the process. Com- plete self-consciousness at such a time would simply destroy the creation, or ren- der the act impossible. Therefore his mind draws around itself a veil ; a fine protective sheath is spontaneously formed for it. It is the apocah'pse of the uncon- scious ; for in his high and rapt state he takes up into himself the ordinarily lower condition of unconsciousness and gives it a loftier manifestation, revealing its true place as a factor in the economy of ex- istence. Color is present in art as a sym- bol of its superior healthiness. But in the future we may expect a philosophy that shall also be poetry and art united in a pervasive religious sentiment — a triune knowledge that shall combine under the highest types of creation all the activities of spirit, developed in perfect and joyous health. i5 2 Ficldes Destination of Man. FICHTE’S DESTINATION OF MAN. BY DR. HARRIS. TjMTCHE published his first sketch of A- the science of knowledge, his great philosophic work, in 1794. The publica- tion of his works on the science of rights and the science of morals led to a charge of atheism against him, inasmuch as he sets up the doctrine of a moral world-order in place of a personal God. The result of this attack was Fichte’s withdrawal from the University of Jena, and his removal to Berlin in 1799, where he began a new exposition of his science of knowl- edge, which he published in 1801. In 1809 Fichte became a professor in the University of Berlin, and continued in that office to his death, in 1814. After reaching Berlin, in 1799, he first wrote a sketch of his whole system, intending it as a popular exposition. It is fiery and dramatic in style and sublime in its concep- tions. It resembles somewhat the tenth and eleventh chapters of the Bhagavad Gita. This exposition he gave the prac- tical title of the “Vocation of Man” (“Bestimmung des Mensclien”) — man’s destined function in the world. This popular presentation of his doctrine pre- ceded the second systematic presentation of the science of knowledge b}' one year. It has furnished the chief source of knowl- edge of Fichte’s system to English-speaking people, and indeed, because of its pro- digious force of statement and sharp, clear contrasts of views, it has until recently exercised a wider influence than any other work of German philosophy. Dr. Harris said that in his next lecture he should discuss the science of knowledge itself. For the present he would sketch the merest outline of its doctrine in order to exhibit the frame-work to which the details of “The Vocation of Man” are attached. Fichte attempts to give a more systematic exposition to the system of Kant, and accordingly unites into one the two critiques — the one on the “Pure Reason” and the one on the “Practical Reason.” lie deduces their point of view from an investigation of self-consciousness. He asserts the fundamental fact of our knowledge to be that we find the self or Ego limited by a not-self or non-Ego. The me and its identity, the not-me and its difference from the me, — these are the pri- mary principles united in the first affirma- tion of self-consciousness. The me affirms itself to be limited through the not-me. This contains two views ; the first being the basis of the “ Critique of Pure Reason,” and the second the basis of the “ Practical Reason.” “The me affirms itself,” etc. ; in this the me appears as active. But it affirms itself to be determined or limited through the not-me ; here the me appears as passive. In the former case the Ego appears as cause acting upon the world, and hence as will, and this gives the prac- tical part of the science of knowledge. In the latter part the me appears as limited through the not-me or the world, and thus gives the basis of the theoretical or first part of the science of knowledge. Each of these two parts again should have a two- fold exposition containing a theoretical view of both factors in the first instance and a practical view in the latter. Fichte is essentially the greatest genius in pyschology that the world has seen. He is able to discriminate in the sharpest manner between activities in the sonl that are seldom brought into consciousness. His mind’s eye, like that of the miner’s, long used to see in the dark, can define with precision what has escaped other Fichte's Destination of Man. T 53 philosophers. But he pays the penalty for his superhuman vision into the activities of the mind, bj’ a blindness toward the world of nature and human history, and especially toward the realm of the beauti- ful in art. He is only a stern moralist on his side of practical life — “ a Cato major among degenerate men,” as Carlyle calls him. On the side of the passivity of the Ego he finds the standpoint of materialistic realism which affirms all active causes to belong to nature and makes consciousness to be a product of external forces. But through the fact that the me affirms or posits itself in all its perceptions and will not have any object before itself unless it consents to give its attention to it, there is a basis for idealism such as that of Berke- ley or of Leibnitz, who explain the phe- nomena of consciousness through its own activity and self-determination. Idealism affirms causality to reside wholl}' in the non-Ego. But the fundamental fact found on analysis of knowledge is that one al- ready named, viz.: “The Ego affirms itself to be limited by a non-Ego.” In this there is activity or causality on both sides, and hence reciprocal action is the true result and the one that Kant and Fichte himself insist upon, and which the latter calls ideal realism. With this view of the Ego as both active and passive in relation to a non-Ego, Fichte comes to the distinction of a finite Ego from a universal Ego ; for this dis- tinction of the me and not-me takes place within the consciousness. Here arises the problem of the finite Ego. It ought to be brought into identity with the absolute Ego. As theoretical Ego it can- not be identical with the absolute, because it is theoretic, always a me opposed to a not-me and never absolute. But as will power it makes its thought objective, and imposes its own ideas upon nature, and thus give its own forms to external things. In this activity of will, therefore, the finite Ego reaches a synthesis with the non-Ego, and thus comes into the form of identity with the absolute Ego, by degrees. This process of practical activity of man is thus a progressive ascent into the abso- lute me out of the finite me — it is the realization of an absolute ideal and will take an infinite time. Hence man is assured of immortal life. This view of the solution of the problem of the finite indi- vidual is also the explanation of the con- tradiction developed in the theoretic part of the science of knowledge, namely, be- tween the Ego and non-Ego — idealism and realism. For now it is seen that the activity of the will presupposes an exter- nal world upon which it may act. Hence the world exists for the practical Ego in order that it may unite with the absolute Ego, and thus the theoretical Ego finds itself opposed to a non-Ego, or the world. In the “Vocation of Man” Fichte be- gins with his discussion of materialistic realism -which places all causality in the object, and all passivity in the Ego. Then he discusses idealism in a second book, and in a third book the doctrine of the practical reason, or the explanation of nature and human life, or the principle of discipline, or the education of the finite individual through reasonable deeds into union with the absolute Ego. Book first he calls doubt ; book second, knowledge ; and book third, faith. Looking upon the external world as the exclusive cause, we find it everywhere determined through- out — each thing that exists is what it is and nothing else. But we see also that there is a round of ceaseless change. Each thing becomes, and it becomes just what its antecedents cause it to become. The totality of conditions necessitates each thing to be this or that. Change is not the mere beginning and ceasing of things, but it is a transmutation occasioned bv forces or active powers ; all is connected together as one whole, and nothing could be changed without piesupposing a change of the whole. The grain of sand on the *54 Fichte’s Destination of Man. seashore, if it lay some paces farther inland than it does, would have required that the stormwind that drove it should have been stronger than it was, that the preceding state of weather should have been different ; and so on till you have a different temperature of the air and a dif- ferent constitution of the bodies that influ- enced the temperature, and thus, too, a different influence on the fruitfulness or unfruitfulness of countries, and through this a change in the duration of human life. In fact, if you change the causes that carried this grain of saud to its place you may re- quire a change that would have caused an ancestor to die of hunger, cold or heat, and thus you might have never been at all, and all that you have done, or hoped to do, must have been prevented in order that a grain of sand lie in a different place. This doctrine of fatalism, which re- sults from the realistic hypothesis, is de- veloped with increasing power to the end. All possible objections are canvassed and answered, and the dismal consequences to the human soul are painted in vivid colors. Even the delusive appearance of freedom that man has, and his seeming independ- ence ancl individuality distinct from all others, is explained ; more than this, his phenomona of moral sense and crime and sin and repentance are all accounted for on materialistic principles that are deduced from natural necessity. Then the horror of the soul, as it finds itself enmeshed in fatalism, and its hopes and aspirations all quenched, is described pathetically. Book second, or knowledge, assumes the opposite theoretical principle which places causality all in the Ego. It is written as a dialogue between the Ego and a spirit. That fatalistic world which re- duced the soul to a mechanism is swiftly demolished by dialectic, and the Ego is convinced of its internal powers of forma- tion and production. The spirit lifts the veil that hides unconscious activilies of thought, and reveals most astonishing processes that enter into the psychologic activities of sense-perception and reflec- tion. In all perception the Ego perceives only its own condition. It is conscious of a modification of itself in sensation. It infers objects, but its sensations are not objects, but onty a feeling of its own states. Again, these sensations are suc- cessive ; in order to cognize extended surfaces a very complicated system of in- ference is implied. The dialogue passes over into a discussion of the principle of causality, which has been used as a ladder to enable the Ego to add to the knowl- edge which it had of its own feelings another knowledge, namely, of external things. The spontaneity and freedom of the Ego is thus shown to underlie all possible knowledge of the external world, and hence whatever necessity had been de- duced out of that world in the stage of doubt certainly must have been loaned to that external world unconsciously through that principle of causality which affirmed the existence of that world. Then the steps which enable the mind to conceive the ideas of space and time are adduced and minutely described. In this part Fichte proves his high claim to be the psychologist pa?- excellence. [Further dis- cussion of this point in the next lec- ture.] Then the negative results of this doctrine of idealism are shown. The Ego finds itself in possession of pictures only*. Not only nature and human history are mere subjective fancies, but the Ego itself is only such a picture, “ merely a confused picture of pictures.” Thought, the source of all being and all the reality which I imagine of my being, of 1113’ powers, and my T own purposes, is the dream of a dream. After the inadequacy of idealism to satisfy the aspirations of the soul is exhibited, the third book, or faith, takes up the problem and shows its solution in rational or moral aclivit}’ by r which the Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre — Theoretical. 155 individual man unites himself to the ab- solute will by ever pursuing an infinite ideal. The greater part of the lecture was taken up in quoting passages from the second book, and in criticising Fichte’s oversight in regard to the true inference from it. Twenty-Second Day, — August 10. FICHTE’S WISSENSCHAFTSLEHRE — THEORETICAL. BY DR. HPHE lecturer began by characterizing the different tendencies of the Greeks and Germans, both being nations gifted in theoretic capacity. The Greek was ontologic and saw that the world is a revelation of reason. The German is psychologic and sees into the essential activities of reason as revealed in human thinking. Greek art looks upon all na- ture as immediately instinct with life. The murmur of the leaves of the oak tree is the voice of a dryad that haunts the tree ; another nymph dwells hard by in that fountain, and her voice is heard in the babbling of its rill. Each distinc- tion in nature seems to the “Manteia” of the Greek mind to have its origin in a distinct personality in the invisible world ; all is spiritual or rational. Akin to the art spirit of the Greeks is the scientific spirit of the same people, in that it ex- plains the natural by rational causes, al- though science differs from art in referring particular phenomena to general causes or principles rather than to special individual causes, — such personifications as nymphs and gods. To refer the particular to the universal is the essential characteristic of the scientific spirit, and the culmination of it is found in philosophy, which sets up one sole principle as the universal ex- planation of all particulars. In Aristotle the active reason is the absolute that explains all. HARRIS. The German, too, has an art that cor- responds to his theoretic principle. Music expresses the slightest shades of feeling, the subtlest movements in the soul. Its material is sound, the fleeting vibrations in air ; but with this he can portraj pro- cesses from their beginning to their cessa- tion and describe the history of ethical collisions from their inception to their resolution by the might of eternal prin- ciples. Music and a psychologic tendency are as much consonant activities of the German soul as the plastic art and onto- logic tendency of the Greek soul. The German movement in philosophy is com- pleted when German philosophy rises to a point of view in psychology' where it con- firms the supreme result of Greek ontology as found in Aristotle and Plato. When German philosophy- finds the presuppo- sition of psychology to be the creative reason as first principle of the world and of the human soul, then it has reached the thought of Plato’s divine reason as the good and Aristotle’s thought of reason as its own object and as purely self-active. The manifestation of the national genius for insight into those mental processes hidden from the view of all common re- flection was noted in our study' of Meister Eckhart, and in Angelas Silesius, Leib- nitz, Lessing, Goethe and others, but it seems to begin a national philosophy in Kant. The “ Critique of Pure Reason” Fichte’s Wissenscliaftslehre — Theoretical. 156 makes us acquainted with wonderful at- tributes of the mind. Time, space, quality, quantity, relation and mode are shown to be a 'priori possessions of mind, which it gets by looking into itself, and not by deriving them from experience. These are forms of mind, therefore ; but they 7 are also logical conditions of all existence in the world, because they are the a priori conditions of the existence of all phenom- ena. This result is in harmony with Aris- totle’s theory. But Kant did not draw exactly this conclusion. He said that there is a world of things-in-themselves beyond phenomena, to which these cate- gories and intuitions do not apply. Our ideas of God, freedom, immortality and creation are ideas, too, that can find no corresponding object in the world. But they are presupposed in every deed that we perform. Our wills imply them when- ever we act. The practical reason establishes a faith in these ideas that transcends all experi- ence, although theoretical reason cannot prove them. Fichte, whose genius for seeing mental processes seems to be much greater than Kant’s, although we may err in not allowing enough for the suggestions he receives from Kant, has not essentially modified the Kantian view as given in the two critiques, but he has added very remarkable deductions of the ideas of time, space, quality, quantity, causality, substance, matter, and similar general thoughts. His reduction of the two ciitiques to one science of knowledge was discussed in the previous lecture. His “ Science of Knowledge ” has a gen- eral introduction in which he finds the fundamental basis of all consciousness to be the three laws of identity, distinction and limitation — (a), the me is identical with the me ; (b) the not-me is not iden- tical with the me; (c), the me limits and is limited by the not-me. The first and second principles express only par- tially the fact of consciousness, but the third nearly expresses the whole. Every consciousness gives us the tact of mutual limitation of the me and not-me. It is only necessary to add, “ Consciousness is a whole activity that distinguishes with- in itself a me that limits and is limited by a not-me,” to make the statement com- plete. With these three principles Fichte closes his general introduction and deduces two parts of the science, a theoretical and practical, from the third principle. In so far as consciousness affirms an in-me as limiting the me, we have the subject of the theoretical science of knowledge on which we must explain how it happens that na- ture seems to be the active cause with the human mind its result, as well as how it happens that consciousness, by its own activity, produces and supports this ap- pearance of a nature that limits the soul. The second part of the science of knowl- edge is called practical. It considers the part of the third principle which affirms that the me limits the not-me. In every act of our wills we may cause some modi- fication in the objective world by which we may reduce the quantity of it that is alien to the me fry imposing on some portion of it the form of the me. If we could realize our wills perfectly we should leave no alien determination in the not-me, but transmute it all into forms corresponding to our own ideal. In the theoretical part of the science of knowledge as indicated, we have two phases of opposite theses. The me as lim- ited by the not-me affords the basis of all materialistic realism. It holds that mind is the product of nature, and deduces fatal- istic conclusions, just such as the first part of the “Vocation of Man” expounded. Fichte varies in his expositions of his science of knowledge, sometimes leaving this view stated as a necessary form of thinking, and at others going more into the details of its deduction from conscious- ness. The fact that consciousness posits Fichte’s Wissetmh aftsleli re — Theoretical. T 57 or affirms this limitation of the me by the not-me and in this positing is self-active, makes it possible to refer all this limita- tion to the me acting through nature as an agent, and thus the other part of the theo- retical science of knowledge is the basis of idealism, just as the second part of the “ Vocation of Man ” expounded it. But Fichte considers idealism to be as one-sided as materialism, and adopts the critical attitude of Kant, which justifies both and repudiates both. The true point of view should include both, and limit each through the other, just as the third gen- eral principle unites the principles of iden- tity and distinction. But in the idealistic phase of consideration we see arise the distinction between the Ego as a whole or the entire extent of consciousness, and the Ego as particular element of it which is limited bj T the non-Ego. Here the uni- versal Ego appears as that which limits the particular Ego through the world as the non-Ego. The non-Ego is then not the opposite of the universal Ego, but only of the particular Ego. Here is the proper transition to the practical part of the science of knowledge. For here appears the particular or finite Ego, in contrast to the universal or abso- lute Ego, and hence the problem of union with it comes distinctly before us. How can the particular Ego become the univer- sal Ego and transcend this limitation through the non-Ego? Fichte answers that he can begin this work by moral ac- tivity. He has an infinite ideal ; let him strive to realize this and become a moral being, and he will at the same time dimin- ish the not-me. In the third part of the “ Vocation of Man ” we saw how this practical science of knowledge is developed. First, moral ac- tion is treated ; next, the co-operation with one’s fellow-men in founding a State that secures justice and freedom to all ; next, the necessity of immortal life as the true condition of moral action : we live here a segment of a life that goes infinitely toward the absolute Ego. The union with the absolute is an infinite progress and demands immortality. Then come his considerations on the nature of the ab- solute ’will, which he finds presupposed by the vocation of man. He thinks that personalit}’ limits and degrades the absolute, and therefore cannot be predica- ted of the absolute, although he calls him an absolute will and also an “ abso- lute Ego,” an expression that would seem to imply personality. By far the most important contribution of Fichte to philosoplry, as intimated, is his deduction of categories. He deduces causalitj' from the principle 'which affirms that the non-Ego determines the Ego, and in like manner derives the category of sub- stantiality from the other principle of con- sciousness, that the Ego affirms itself as determined by the non-Ego, and thus makes the causality of the not-me an energy derived from the total self-activity of the me. In his secondary develop- ments from the same principles he deduces time and space. Feeling is the root of all, and contains states which are not co- existent, but successive. Consciousness is always a power of reflection, for it perceives its own activity. First, it per- ceives mere feeling ; secondly, it perceives its feeling or sensation in a series that occupies time. Here time becomes ob- ject to it when it reflects again, for it then perceives the content (sensation) and the form (time) of its activity. Then a third reflection perceives the form of the consciousness of time and its content ; this is the idea of space. A fourth reflection of the consciousness that perceives space, time, and their contents furnishes the idea of causalitjq and a fifth reflection dis- covers substantiality. Each subsequent stage of reflection sees the previous stage as a whole. Take the idea of cause and effect, and see it as a totality, and you have causa sui , or self-determination, in which ScJ/elling's Later Philosophy. ! 5 8 the effect and cause do not fall asunder in place or in time, but are seen as perma- nent cause and permanent effect, and thus as substance and attribute. So the idea of space is that of the reality of all points, and hence of infinite lines in every direc- tion, while time makes only one point real (the now), and all the rest as unreal (past or future). The idea of substantiality of self-deter- mination is not co-ordinate and antithetic to the idea of causality, as Fichte sup- posed, but transcendent and inclusive of it. Had Fichte seen this, he would have made his theoretical science of knowledge reach the thought of the Nous of Aristotle and establish the principle of absolute reason as God. Aristotle would have criticised also his list of fundamental prin- ciples, and required him to add a fourth one in which he stated both sides as a self-determining Ego, instead of a “ divis- ible Ego limited by a divisible non-Ego.” The identity of the fundamental principle of nature with the ideal of the conscious Ego would thus have been asserted as both theoretical and practical. SCHELLING’S LATER PHILOSOPHY. BY PROFESSOR WATSON. f PHE Transcendental Idealism, which -L was sketched in the last lecture, is, with all its merits, full of inconsistencies. In particular, it leaves the relation of sub- ject and object badly defined. Nature, apart from intelligence, at once lapses back into a mere “ thing in itself.” Schel- ling’s final attempt to combine what he had put asunder b} T means of the poetic faculty as at once creative and uncon- scious is a virtual confession of failure, and prepares the way for the leap into the dark which he soon felt himself com- pelled to make. The great imperfection of Schelling is not in contrasting man and nature, but in maintaining the complete parallelism of the two distinguishable realms. Instead of this, we must hold that the latter is simply a lower phase of the former. The onlj’ wonder, in fact, is how Schelling did not see at the time he wrote the Transcen- dental Idealism that the parallelism of nature and intelligence necessarily carried with it the implication of a unity tran- scending both — a unity which for him could only be that in which they agreed, or their “ absolute indifference.” The source and rationale of his, as of all other pantheism, is in putting the objective world of nature on the same plane with intelligence. The next step in Schelling’s philosophi- cal development was his Philosoplry of Identit} 7 . Philosophy of nature and tran- scendental philosophy are the opposite poles of his philosophizing ; the philos- ophy of identity starts from the point of indifference and goes on to show how the opposite poles may be developed from it. The whole system must, therefore, rest not on the reflective opposition of intelligence and nature, subject and object, but on the production of all reality bj' and in the absolute. Schelling begins with reason as above the dualism of subject and object, and proceeds to establish the identity of the two. Philosophy thus shows that the onty intelligible meaning of “ things-in- themselves” is the knowledge of things, or rather of the finite, as they are in the absolute reason. In the works representative of Schel- T 59 Schelling's Later Philosophy . ling’s last phase of speculation, he vir- tually admits the imperfection of the Sj^stem of Identity, and attempts to show that for the indeterminate absolute must be substituted a personal God and for the co-ordination of man and nature the subordination of nature to a system of free beings. Sehelling at a later period expressly avers that the pantheistic ab- sorption of all things in the absolute is a necessary stage toward a genuine mon- otheism. In his treatise on “ human freedom” he begins with some general remarks on pan- theism in which he says that it is usuall}- held that pantheism is destructive at once of all individuality and of all freedom. But neither of these charges can be substan- tiated. The dead and motionless pan- theism of Spinoza, spiritualized by ideal- ism, is the true philosophy of nature ; which, however, must be carried up into a philosophy of spirit resting upon the supremacy of free-will. Sehelling, starting from the absolute in the shape of pure indifference or primal baselessness as it had been reached in the system of identity, goes on to maintain that God first appears as the diremption of existence and ground in order that he maj 7 finally transform His original indif- ference into identity, and thus become a self-conscious person or will. The lecturer then proceeded to show how in Sehelling the possibilit}' of evil is reconciled with the, personality of God, and further to explain the actual existence of evil. The next thing to be explained is how the individual man comes to decide for good or evil. Sehelling accepts Kant’s distinction, and says that in his “intelli- gible character ” man is taken out of the chain of mechanical causation. The em- pirical man is not free, yet his empirical nature is the product of his own free act as out of time. His acts in time are pre- destinated, but predestinated by himself, for he acts from no necessity but that of his own nature. Evil is a necessity in the process toward the complete realiza- tion of the good. The main value of Schelling’s later philosophy lies in its vivid presentation of problems for solution and in its prophecy of the reconciliation of contradictions which it does not itself reconcile. In his last stage he was led to see the necessity of maintaining the personality of God and of seeking for a reconciliation of that per- sonalit}' with the freedom of man. His later philosophy was mosth r mysticism and flashes of poetic insight, and was not arrived at by a rational and well-ordered method. Further, it must be said that he has not solved the problems he has set himself to solve. His explanation of free- dom to will evil or good as due to a time- less act really explains nothing, and is further away from a true explanation than the view of Kant which it affects to im- prove, but really distorts. He is not more successful in reconciling the fact of evil with the goodness of God. The lecturer then discussed Schelling’s philosophy as a whole, pointing out that the starting point and goal of his specula- tions seem to be diametrically opposed. But the advance from a literal interpreta- tion of Kant’s position to that of its spirit well accounts for Schelling’s development from the denial of a transcendent God to the affirmation of His reality. The eth- ical idealism of Schelling’s first phase of thought — au idealism without God — could not be permanently satisfactory to one who had drunk deep of the spring of critical idealism. i6o The Symposium. Twenty-Third Day, — August 11 . THE SYMPOSIUM. BY DR. JONES. R. JONES, in this lecture, finished his second course of four lectures upon “ Christian Philosophy.” Contrary to his practice, he talked without notes for the first time in his Concord lectures, and his inspiration was more complete than when he was limited to manuscript. His subject was the Symposium, and he took “ The Banquet” of Plato for his text. Plato’s symposium, he said, was not a night’s debauch of revellers. Plato is alwa3*s metaphysical ; he is not a scientist, for physical science is not philosophy. By way of parenthesis, Dr. Jones said that there was no locking of horns at Concord with science. Science was not the field of thought at Concord. If there were an}' antagonism, it was between philosophy 7 and unscientific philosophizing. In the “ Banquet” the characters are Soc- rates (salvation-power), Glauco (cerulean light), Apollodorus (priestly office), Pau- sanias (temperance), Aristophanes (best appearance, or good manners), Phsedrus (beauty), Eryximachus (the healing art or health), Aristodemus (the best social state or best of social relations), Agatho (goodness), Diotima (the idea of divine love), and Alcibiades (pride, exalted self- assumption, or the worldly man). The principle of pride in the conduct of life comes in last, and comes in drunk. It works in all men. In this drama each character rehearses liis opinion of life, and compared with the thoughts expressed by them, we know not what vantage-ground we stand upon in having the oracles of God, es- pecially here in America, where we think we can get along without the “ old church,” and that the so-called oracles or scriptures can be abolished. Yet, compare Christian civilization with all other civilizations of the world and see how Christ being lifted up hath lifted up all the world with him. Pausanias, in the drama, tells why it is not good for a man to get drunk. The doctrine of life is temperance in all things. He who does not practise it has surren- dered everything which makes against vice, has surrendered his purity. What has he who refuses to give up tobacco done under the first injunction of the Christian dispensation, “ Deny thyself, take up thy cross and follow” the living? He is not able to give up tobacco, a thing which makes the mouth foul and nasty.; a thing which in all its essential relations to the animal organism is utterly obnox- ious ; a thing from which the uncontami- nated natural sense recoils with loathing. Yet how vigorously we conquer that sense ! We cherish an intemperate spirit, seeking excitation from even the worst causes. When we hgve learned to love the foul poison, we shall learn to love other excitations which are morally impure. What is the tendency of this habit, looked at from a social point of view? At all decent places man must leave it out of doors, — in your parlors, at your churches, and wherever are presented social decency and decorum. But go down to your hell- holes and there it is free. There are tubs where you can spit your tobacco-juice ; there are areas provided for scattering it around. “That,” said Dr. Jones, “ is the The Symposium. 161 social demonstration of the character of the habit, not my counterblast. Present compan}" is always excepted. I do not mean to speak offensively.” Next comes Aristophanes. He was a little drunk and had the hiccoughs, but he got over that and made his speech. He is good manners, — appearing at one’s best. In civil society, in cultivated, in- telligent, moral, virtuous, religious, hon- orable and just society, we discover our relationship to one another. In manners one must appear at his best, and what- ever he has that is unseemly, uncomely, ungentlemanly, unmanly, he must keep hidden till he has overcome it. He is bound to present himself to his fellows at his best. That makes good society. Good manners tend to good morals, as bad man- ners tend to bad morals. “ I regret some things in our social system,” said the speaker ; “ I regret that our young people are not disciplined so much in outward manners as they used to be. When I went to school manners were as much a subject of discipline as the letters of the alphabet. We were taught modesty, respect, defer- ence, and especially reverence to our su- periors in age and condition. I do not discover any discipline nowadays looking to that end.” Eryximachus makes the next speech. He is the physician. Many of us forget that infirmity is not commendable. “I know,” said Dr. Jones, “ a young ladies’ boarding school where a certain lacka- daisicalness is a sort of recommendation. Beauty and health go together ; all un- healthiness is unbeautiful. The art of discovering the beautiful soul is the art of all arts, and good health is one of its indispensable conditions.” Phsedrus then talks of the sense of beauty in the soul. If it were cultivated from childhood, what a wonderful, new insight into the world it would give ! Al- cibiades then makes his speech. Pride is always drunk, and gets mam* a fall accord- ing^. He failed to appropriate the wis- dom of Socrates. Men should get the true wisdom, not live to regard the opin- ion of others. Wisdom does not lend itself to the use of pride in the soul. Dio- tima, divine love, subsists in and of itself. If we cannot behold the glory which is in this planet, we cannot see it in any other place. Some ask, “Why not eat and sleep and die?” Because, in the first place, we cannot die. We cannot get out of life, even if we are cowardly enough to wish it. Dr. Jones then summarized the remainder of the dialogue, and showed how Socrates, as a philosopher, was superior to other men in every respect ; that he was greater in exertion, endurance, suffering and joy. He then spoke of God being as truly man- ifest in this life as he is an}’ where, and of the probability that the human soul can find existence as happy here as anywhere. This, indeed, was the leading lesson in the entire lecture. For all that men can know, the soul has on this earth as high a pos- sibility of happiness and as ample an opportunity for attaining it as can be found anywhere. Hence the foil}’ of look- ing upon this life as a wretched, brief affair, when perhaps it is the very best life possible for the soul. Certainly oppor- tunity exists to make this life much better than most men do make it. Dr. Jones also touched upon the doc- trine of pre-existence. The soul is of an eternal nature and exists in cycles, going out and returning to itself, being made in the image of God. Hence he did not be- lieve the soul was limited to one sphere in the universal sphere of time and space. Human history is merely the record of souls as they pass through nature. The soul has always existed ; it has other cy- cles than this. Christ said, “I know whence I come, and whither I go,” im- plying that his listeners did not know whence they came, but that they had ex- isted before this life. When we see more than the little side-show of this life, we Atomism, 162 shall see the soul in its true universality and personality. In the discussion following the lecture, Dr. Alexander Wilder said that the doc- trine of pre-existence was held in the early days of the Christian church, and was hinted at in the New Testament, in the question, “ Who hath sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” im- plying a previous existence on the man’s part; also in the current conjecture that Jesus was really Elias, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. Miss Peabody supported Dr. Jones’s views, and the Rev. Dr. R. A. Holland and Dr. Harris took the opposite side of the question. ATOMISM. BY THE REV. DR. HOLLAND. A TOMISM is that tendency in thought which seeks to explain big mysteries by an equal quantity of little mysteries, as if a universe of pulverized dust were not as obscure as a universe of solid unknowa- bleness. It has many forms. In physical science it is the atomic theory ; in the science of knowledge it is empiricism ; in politics it is individualism ; in art, natural- ism ; and in ethics it identifies good with pleasure, and pleasure with pleasant feelings or sensations. In all these forms it has the same faults. Nature is not explained by being ground to powder in one’s imagina- tion. Imperceptible dust does not make clear the object of perception. The im- perceptible is only another name for the same mystery it is supposed to have re- moved from the mind’s sight. The infini- tesimal is as strange as the infinite. This fine dust of worlds, — what is it? What moulds it into earth, and sea, and air? Does it originate its own motion? How? Ify simple attraction ? Attraction alone would draw the universe into a solid mass, without possibility of motion. By simple repulsion? Repulsion alone would scatter the universe out of all possibility of form. Form implies bounds, and bounds imply a binding force. The diffused gas must have some principle of continuity to distinguish it as a gas. But simple repulsion would destroy all continuity, not having so much as space for the atoms to exist in ; for space, too, must have limit or bound, even if the bound be its own, which, however, absolute repulsion would explode at once, hurling its contents to uttermost nowhere. If both attraction and repulsion were at work, and either of them stronger than the other, the condition of things would soon become the same as if there were but one force. One would finally overcome and nullify the other. And as they have already had infinite time for the trial of strength, it must have been decided before now whether the universe were to be mass without motion, or motion without either mass to move or space to move in. More- over, if the two opposing forces be equal and constant, the universe would have the same densit}’’ throughout and forever. Hence every atom must have power to at- tract, power to repel, and a choice which of these powers to use, and in what degree to use it so as to make now the granite crag, now the mosses that grow in its clefts, and now the cascade that breaks against its midway ledges into a down- ward breeze of mist. Again, if the atoms were in contact they would be no longer atoms, but a solid mass, as we have seen, incapable of motion. But if they are apart they have spaces between Atomism. t6 3 them, and these spaces are voids, and voids are nothings. Now nothings cannot transmit, cannot undulate, have neither points of the compass nor degrees of dis- tance. It was to fill up just such an abyss of nothing, between the earth and the sun, that science poured into it a sea of billow- ing ether for heat and light to drift across. But the ether turns out to be no true sea, if composed of atoms separated by voids. For these voids need each to be filled with ether as much as did the great void between the earth and the sun ; and should other seas of ether be poured into them, this ether would likewise prove to be atoms separated b} T voids or nothings. Since, then, the least void or nothing is as large as the largest, — nothing divided by ninety-five million miles being no less than nothing multiplied b} r the same amount, — the nearest atoms are as far apart as the worlds themselves, and leave the universe just where it was in point of mystery. But more : how will science form the different chemical elements except by giving the atoms different weights accord- ing to their equivalents of combination? But differences of weight are differences of density, and differences of density are dif- ferences of distance between the atoms combined in a given space. And so the atom itself which was to be the utmost compression of matter, — matter in its sim- plest form, irreducible and absolutely solid, — turns out to have a whole astronomy of minor atoms separated by immeasurable abysses of nothing within its own private little cosmos. The lecturer went on to apply the same method of treatment to empirical cognition and the theory of private interest in the State. Concerning art he said : Here it insists that art is imitation ; that things are to be painted as they are to the last atom of realism. Ideals are false. Nature alone is beautiful ; and b} r nature is meant not her perfect intention, as if she had a mind behind her appearances which was striving to reveal itself through them, but simply the things of sense, — a bit of blue slvy, a puddle of green slime, a lady’s boudoir, a fish-boy in a heap of flounders, eels and crabs, a street-walker with bedraggled gar- ments and frowsy hair, and eyes red from loss of sleep, or M. Zola’s dirty wash-tubs, anything and everything, since they are all alike realities and equally dear to nature, so far as nature only signifies whatever is. To prefer one scene to another would be to assume for art a superiority over nature, while nature never discriminates, and would as lief make a sunset the background of a buzzard’s perch on a dead horse as a ver- milion glory in itself. Art, therefore, must not choose its subjects, but copy what- ever it sees, and see like a cow with bio- O nature-loving eyes. For if beauty dwell not in the mind, but in the thing, the grass of the landscape is as beautiful to the cow as to the man, and she shows a genuine artistic instinct by gazing at it for hours together, with much good taste and rumi- nation. Moreover, to copj r things does not re- quire any unity of intention, for they have no intention of unity. Things are indiffer- ent to each other. The brook never dreams of the hills, nor the trees of the clouds, and the road has no expectation, as it winds, of ford or of forest. Every pebble, weed, brier, scraggy oak, drop of floating vapor and speck of mud, seems an object by itself, and may be painted alone. They do not conspire to form a landscape, and seen near give no hint of one. . It is the eye of the mind which, from afar, lends them the harmony of its own perspective, and frames them into a single view. But such a view, according to the tlieoiy of natu- ralism, is inartistic, inasmuch as it falsi- fies the disjoined realities of nature. Art, like science, must stick to atoms ; that is, to the pebbles and briers and scraggy oaks and mud. But if this be just, it finds its perfection in photograph}’. Quit painting, therefore, and photograph nature. Photo- 164 Fichte’s Doctrine of Religion. graphs do not idealize, but imitate tilings exactly. The man with the camera and sensitized plate surpasses Buonarotti or Raphael, Claude or Turner. Henceforth lie is the artist supreme. Mr. Holland closed by a discussion of atomic morals, showing how the identifi- cation of good with pleasure, and pleasure with pleasant sensations, was as narrow and misguided a doctrine as the assertion that realism in painting is true art. Twenty-Fourth Day, — August 12. FICHTE’S DOCTRINE OF RELIGION. BY DR. TX the previous lectures we have seen how Fichte started from the Kantian basis and united into one “ Science of Knowledge,” the doctrines of the Critiques of Pure Reason and Practical Reason. Kant made the theoretical part of his sys- tem develop the results of the pure reason, while the practical part unfolds a doc- trine superior in authority to the theoreti- cal. The will furnishes the ground of all action and also gives the only explanation for the theoretical antithesis of Ego and non-Ego. Will presupposes an objective world in order to develop its freedom by acting on it and trans- forming it. By such free action it be- comes like the absolute Ego and removes its fatal defect. The limit which is given in the objective world for the exercise of its will is also a not-me which the theoret- ical mind cannot explain satisfactorily. It presents the irreconcilable theories of idealism and materialism as equally tena- ble and justifiable grounds. We noted, too, that any system that makes the will the supreme principle and the foundation of the intellect, must presuppose an un- conscious absolute, — a transcendent One above thought. Schopenhauer is the one who draws the legitimate conclusion from such a doctrine. Consciousness as result- HARRIS. ing from the struggles of the will, and as incident on the existence of an insur- mountable not-me can give in the aggre- gate only the perception of pain and must lead to pessimism as a view of the world. We saw on the other hand, that the antithesis of idealism and materialism, set up in the theoretical part of the science of knowledge, was not warranted by the premises. The third general principle of the common basis of the whole science made the Ego, or consciousness, the ori- gin of the limitation of the me by the not-me and hence the totality 7 in which the antithesis appears. Hence the result should have been that an absolute Ego or Reason is presupposed as the ground of nature and man — a conclusion which would have agreed with the highest result of Greek thought as adopted by Chris- tianity. Aristotle would, moreover, have required a recognition of this principle in the statement of the common basis with which Fichte begins his expositions of the science of knowledge, by 7 the addition of a fourth principle which stated the positing of the Ego not as concluding with the category of quality or of ground, but as a totality which determined within itself the distinction of subject and object. Such a distinction would leave the principle self- Fichte’s Doctrine of Religion. identical in both its sides and at the same time make explicit the transcendent char- acter of consciousness or mind. This same criticism was applied also to the category of substantiality which should not have been co-ordinate with that oi causality, as Fichte made it, but transcen- dent, as including and subordinating causality. For Fichte made substantiality the principle of causality taken as a whole, and therefore as causa sui. Kant had been careful to keep the idea of God along with those of freedom and immortality as a regulative idea, al- though incomprehensible by thought. Fichte substituted for it a moral order of the universe — a sort of law without will or consciousness. This occasioned the charge of atheism and his dismissal from Jena. In his sensitive soul the memory of that collision would draw his attention especially to the bearing of his science on the idea of God. Accordingly we find him in the “ Voca- tion of Man,” written directly after his arrival in Berlin, defining the absolute as will, although still denying personality to it. Six years later he writes his “ Doc- trine of Religion,” or tk The Way Toward the Blessed Life,” — a series of eleven lec- tures that show an astonishing progress in his thinking on divine things. Indeed, within the work itself there is a very marked development. The third and fourth lectures show his arrival at the fundamental point of view of Gnosticism. The eighth lecture gives a more profound exposition of his doctrine of being, and in the ninth he rises above Gnosticism and reaches the Aristotelian principle of rea- son as the self which is adequately mani- fested in its objective existence. This gives up the idea of a hidden absolute that is not revealed, and adopts the idea of an absolute that is perfectly revealed in man and nature. In the sixth lecture we have the clew to his theological progress in a profound i6 5 study of the gospel according to John. If that gospel was written to oppose Gnosti- cism, which made reason, soul and the world to be aeons which descend from an absolute one which they do not reveal, but only pervert and misrepresent, it is not singular that it should have turned Fichte out of his phase of Gnosticism. Of historical Gnosticism he seems to have known nothing. Indeed, Kant and Fichte say very little of the history of philosophy. According to John the Logos was in the beginning with God and identical with him, and was also the creator of the world. Fichte identifies this doctrine with his own, which says first that there is absolute being in itself which has not arisen, nor contains anything within it that has arisen, but is wholly one and simple in its essence. Besides this there can be nothing unless we conceive also the same being as out of itself — that is to say, as existing. Such existing or being out of itself there must be, because the world is. The form in which being can be outside itself is con- sciousness. Consciousness is a reflection of being, and has something of the nature of a picture or image, according to Fichte. This leads him to lay stress at first on the difference between being and its exist- ence in consciousness and to make it transcend the latter altogether, as the Gnostic unity transcends its aeons. “ I distinguish being, essential, self-contained being, from existence, and represent these two ideas as entirely opposed to each other, as not even indirectly connected with each other.” Then he comes to define the two as iden- tical : “ The actual life of knowledge (or existence) is at bottom the essential being of the absolute itself, and nothing else ; and between the absolute, or God, and knowledge in its deepest roots there is no separation or distinction, but both merge completely into one.” And again : “ Be- sides God there is truly, and in the proper sense of the word, no other existence 1 66 Fichte’s Doctrine of Religion. whatever but knowledge ; and thus knowl- edge (or consciousness) is the divine ex- istence itself, absolutely and immediately ; and in so far afe we arc this knowledge, we arc ourselves, in the deepest root of our being, the divine existence.” This “ deep- est root of knowledge” refers to the funda- mental principle which gives unity to the whole. Knowledge in its principles is unchangeable, and thus a true image or revelation of the divine unity. In its one highest principle it reveals the absolute being as one and simple in its essence. Since thought discovers principles as the unities of the facts of experience, and goes on and discovers higher principles to unite lower principles into deeper unities, thought is the basis of the blessed life. In the fact that thought discovers the supreme principle, it finally brings ns back to the absolute being and to absolute blessedness. Thought appears also as divine love and as freedom or absolute will. A very important point is reached in this recognition of thought, or theoretic mind, as being the chief organ of elevation of the finite existence to absolute being. But a more important insight is given in the demonstration of the independence and persistence of individuals. The de- velopment of the individual is a return from the immediate and particular toward the absolute being. Hence the individual has the possibility of realizing in himself, through thought and will and love, the total existence and the absolute being. But in this realization he acts constantly under the individual form from which his reflection began and consequently pre- serves a personal identity forever. Fichte’s explanation of the creation of a world of particular objects is identical with that of Neo-Flatonism. The exist- ence or consciousness reflects on itself, and by the act of attention sees all the universals — species and genera — that constitute it an existence of the one abso- lute being, as particulars. Instead of trees, it sees these trees; instead of man, these men ; instead of beauty, these beau- tiful sights. Thus, Plotinus said that the soul, turning around to view her Creator, formed an image which was only matter or body — that is to say, pure particu- larity. Thus the whole world exists onl} r in consciousness, and not as the divine exist- ence, except in so far as thought goes back by reflection from particular beings of sense to the universal ideas which are the principles of mind. For it is in the principles of mind alone that absolute being finds its existence. Hence Fichte is able to map out the way to the blessed life as five stadia extending from the standpoint of sense* perception, which is the lowest, up to the contemplation of the absolute being itself. First, sense-perception has before it a world of infinitely manifold particulars, and hence cannot see the absolute being except in the feeblest manner. Next comes the standpoint of legality, wherein species and genera are perceived as ab- stract laws only, including laws of nature ■and the moral laws. The third standpoint is that of the higher morality, which sees not a dead law, but a creative law — an ideal that urges the soul on to action. This is the highest point reached by Fichte in his first writings. Now, however, he goes on to the defi- nition of two higher forms of realizing the blessed life. The fourth is religion, which places reality not in a moral law, or even in a moral idea, but in God alone and in his existence or revelation through the soul of man. The highest of these stadia is that of science (or philosophy) which comprehends the transition of the one into the manifold, of the absolute into a rela- tive, and the return from the multiplicity into the primitive unity. It comprehends the origin of the particular finite existence from the universal. It changes mere faith into insight. The Closing Words. 167 I 11 his treatment of Christianity Fichte reaches many positions similar to those of Emerson in his Address before the Divinity School. A sonnet of Fichte, written from his later standpoint, is trans- lated by President Seelye of Amherst as follows : — “ The Eternal One Lives in my life and sees in my beholding. Nought is but God, and God is nought but life. Clearly the vail of things rises before thee ; It is thyself ; what though the mortal die And hence there lives but God in thine endeavors, If thou wilt look through that which lives beyond this death, The vail of things shall seem to thee as vail, And unveiled thou shalt look upon the life divine.” THE CLOSING WORDS. ANNOUNCEMENTS AND VALEDICTORY. BY ME. 1 1 ''HE conversation which bore directly upon the lecture was brief. Mr. Alcott regarded it as peculiarly fitting that so eloquent an exposition of Fichte should crown the work of the 3 ’ear. Mr. Emery thought “The Way Toward the Blessed Life” was a wonderful revelation of Fichte’s thought, and that one cannot make anything out of his philosoply without reading the book. Mr. Emery then announced a pamphlet of authorized abstracts of the 3 'ear’s lectures to be pub- lished by Mr. Moses King of Cambridge, and announced also the programme for 1883 so far as it had been arranged. The term will begin on Wednesday, July 18, and close on Friday, August 10. No lectures will be given on Saturda 3 T s, and there will be thirt 3 ’-five in the entire course. The beginning on Wednescla 3 T is for the accommodation of those who live at a distance and find it inconvenient to arrive on Monday. In addition to the regular lectures, morning and evening, there will be a series of five elementaiy lessons to introduce pupils into the method of philosophic study. These will be given at the Hillside Chapel in the afternoon, ALCOTT. and will be free to those who have tickets to regular lectures ; only those will be admitted who have previously registered an intention of attending. This course has been undertaken at the suggestion of persons interested in the school. Next 3 r ear’s lectures, so far as known, will be delivered by Dr. William T. Harris of Concord, Dr. H. K. Jones of Jackson- ville, 111., Mr. A. Bronson Alcott and Mr. F. B. Sanborn of Concord, the Rev. Dr. R. A. Holland of Chicago, and Professor George H. Howison of Boston. Each of these six persons will deliver four lectures, and no announcement can be made as to the eleven remaining lectures, except that they will probably be delivered by persons who have already lectured. In the four years about a thousand persons have left their names with the Secretary, and the toial attendance has been about fifteen hundred persons. Mr. Alcott said that the school had reason for great encouragement. A yeai lv improvement had been manifest in the lectures. The School had been a novel experiment. People asked whether philos- ophy had any practical value, and were :68 The Closing Words. inclined to ridicule the school ; but more people had come than were expected. The School had aimed to show that philos- ophy was really the doctrine of life, of living nobly and well, and that it was a practical thing. This year the attendance had not been large ; but that was not a discouragement. Curious people had come ; but this year it had been demon- strated that there was a sufficient num- ber of persons interested in the study of philosophy to sustain the School. Some persons want teachers in philosophy, and next year the experiment of providing teachers will be made. It had been sug- gested that the school should go West next year, so as to be nearer the large number of Western pupils. But the faculty had decided not to go peddling to a support which would not come volun- tarily. He really believed that a little seed was being sown on that hillside which would spring up into everlasting life. The faculty had undertaken a little book, with the utmost delicacy, and ques- tioning whether it was not going beyond their self-respect. But, on the whole, as the public had read the newspapers and had learned to select the truth, which was sometimes strangely shaded in them from error, they had concluded to risk, after revision, a little book. They did not ask anj r one to do it, but the publication was voluntarily offered by a reputable pub- lisher. So the public will have a chance to learn the doings of the present year. The prospects of the school, he thought, were hopeful. It had been shown that it was safe for young people to come there and not to have their faith shaken. Phi- losophy has been taken from Germany ; but it has been interpreted by an American expounder, and people no longer fear to open a German book lest they thereby become sinners the next morning. Ger- manj- had done the thinking of the world for the past forty years, and that thinking commands attention. There is probably growing somewhere, perhaps in Concord, an American philosophy, coming fresh from the soil. Among them at Concord had been one of saintly life who was known over all Christendom and beyond ; who was claimed today by all as belonging to their school and their church ; who saw underneath all little classifications and creeds, and saw the life which they repre- sent, the universal truth interpreted by Aristotle and Plato. 11 Let me say,” said Mr. Alcott, “that he spoke in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, if I know what Jesus taught. That is an example of what we mean by the philosophy of life.” Mr. Alcott then spoke the valedictory words, and thanked his listeners for the honor of their attendance. He believed that the school was going to send into the nursery better mothers, that it would send better teachers to the schools and colleges, that it would result in better professional men, that it would cause better interpreta- tions of the Sacred Book in the pulpit, and that it would help in all directions. Mr. Emery then declared the session of 1882 to be at an end.