y of tle ‘whale, sf, vita PRINCETON, N. J. -W948 1887 a Li redahg te ma vitae “iank at ; a JENIGMA VIT. vw a x ie | me hy wee i > - , ‘ “s ma, ew har ba ae) a ? NES BAA yy a. r aad ee eh , oe eo a 5p r oT. oe) Fp Op 7 Ww = af f a 4h : i‘ om - 7 by py = a al ry oi i Py! f .4 Pe bs 7: et AR > ‘ P - - Pan: a - e : i. Be Nels Ge Vig Nene Vole | 713, OR, Christianity and Wodern Chought. BY JOHN “WILSON, M.A, LATE OF ABERNYTE, SCOTLAND, * Deux pdles de toute Science: la personne Moi d’ot tout part: la personne Dieu ott tout aboutit.”—MaIne DE BIRAN. London : HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. MDCCCLXXXVII. [All rights reserved. } io ' Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Avesaren ‘ i fi rf * ca : . re Ans deh do Say Go ee HE aim of the following pages is to deal with the quest of truth—that truth which man’s spirit craves for its rest and true life—in the light of the modern doctrine of the autonomy of consciousness. To set this doctrine on its true basis, to see it in its true light, is one of the great problems of this age. This is what is necessary in order to show the perfect accord of. living Christi- anity with all the valid results of modern thought, and to find the real point of departure of Christianity from all systems of thought founded on the self-centred consciousness. | Whatever has life possesses a power of adaptation to new external circumstances, not by Protean change from time to time of its essence, but by assimilating all that is akin to it in its environment, thus main- taining organic continuity of life—individual identity or unity amid ceaseless difference ; and Christianity, vi Preface. pa 2 -_ in this age of mighty change, is put to the test in this respect. To the new conditions of humanity, as it marches onwards into new tracts of its unknown future, Christianity has no need to adapt itself by yielding up anything essential, though she may see more clearly what is really essential to her. | Christianity takes man as he is, and makes him alive to God ; it renews him in the inner man,—his true Ego,—but it does not necessarily transform him as to external form of character, or type of thought. It can adapt itself to Western, as well as to Oriental, thought, and to races which are yet in intellectual childhood, as well as to the most civilized. But it does not reduce all men to one outward type; it does not make the Englishman a Hebrew, nor the Hindoo an Englishman. Even so Christianity does” not need to cast a man of this nineteenth century into the mental mould of the age of Augustine, or of Anselm, or even of that of Melanchthon. Every age has its own dialect, according to its stage of mental development and historical conditions ; and as Paul adapted his style of teaching and cast of thought to the character of his audience, becoming to the Jews a Jew, and to the Greeks a Greek,— though, in thus becoming all things to all men, he never in one jot altered the substance of his Divine > Preface Vil message,—so Christianity need not, in giving expres- sion to its life and truth, put on the mental garb of any past century. This is very far indeed from say- ing that Christianity must sever itself from the past, and produce a theology, new in substance as well as in form, for each new age. The true law of progress in all departments of human thought is typified by Dante’s description of his own progress across that “perilous waste :” ‘‘Ripresi via per la piaggia diserta, Si che’l pié fermo sempre era il pit: basso.” ‘I took my way across that desert tract, My hinder foot firm planted, the other reaching forward.” Healthy human thought has ever one foot firmly planted in the soil of the past and in truth already made good, whilst the other is pressing on towards new truth. And here it is surely unnecessary at this time of day to remind any reading Christian, who may still be staggered by the expression, “progress or development of Christian truth,” of the well-known distinction between the unchangeable and the progressive aspects of that truth. In one sense, as it has been given in the life and work of Jesus and in credible records, it is stable; but, as it is apprehended by man, it is progressive. The Vill Preface. expression of Christian truth differs from age to age, as any one acquainted with the history of Christian doctrine knows ; and, yet, there is a central unity in the truth as held by Justin Martyr, by Augustine, by Anselm, by Luther, and by enlightened and living Christians of our own age. The following is not, however, a general discussion of the relations of Christianity to modern thought. It has to do with one particular and dominating aspect of the spirit of our time, which might, in briefest compass, be described by the expression of Amiel, a late philosopher of Geneva: “ The removal of Christianity from the sphere of history to that of psychology is the wish of our epoch.” This tendency has shown itself in our country in various forms, and with diverse results. Some, professing distrust of the historical vehicle whereby the truths and spirit of Christianity are externally conveyed, have cast it off altogether; and yet, clinging to what they consider to be of the essence of Christianity, they base their belief on the testimony of consciousness alone. It is, however, consciousness in a restricted, non-normal sense, as we show; and the result is something far short of the heavenly life brought in by Jesus Christ—something less hopeful, less powerful in meeting the deep-seated evils of our Preface. iX nature, and something far less blissful in its effects. The aim of the following work is not a direct exposition of the truths of Christianity, but, taking modern thought on its own ground of psychology and the testimony of consciousness,—including, how- ever, the phenomena of the Christian consciousness, —to show how the wants of man’s nature point in the direction of living Christianity, and how the latter meets the demand of man’s being when its true character and claims are considered. It should be added, in explanation of the local allusions at the beginning and end of the book, that it has been written on the Continent at a time of enforced exile in quest of health. CLARENS, SWITZERLAND. SELF-KNOWLEDGE THE’ KEY TO IROILZ. CGONTENAS. dee Bad bab CHAPTER I, II. VIIl. GLIMPSES FROM AN ALPINE RETREAT . LIFE IN THE FIELD OF DEATH THE THREE NORNS AT THE CRADLE OF THE EGO BIRTHDAY GIFT OF THE NORNS . WHAT AM I? ANSWER OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE . THE EGO HOW FAR SELF-DETERMINING ? . ATAVISM OF RECENT SCIENCE . : THE AGNOSTIC VETO PAR Pelt PAGE 3 13 PN hl 32 44 54 63 72 FIRST STEPS OF THE EGOS PILGRIMAGE. IX. X. GENESIS OF THE EGO . AWAKENING OF MIND , Xi Contents. CHAPTER PAGE XI. FURTHER STEPS OF THE EGO . F , = 108 XII. THE WIDENING CIRCLES OF LOVE ; ‘ okt | XIII. NATURE’S GREAT LESSON-BOOK . . , - eo PART III. ITE - PATHWAY TO GOD BY.KNOWGEDGE: XIV. HUMAN KNOWLEDGE—WHAT? . ; : ; r41 XV. KNOWLEDGE COMPLETE IN GOD : ; - 149 XVI. KNOWLEDGE BY AFFINITY . : ; : SAI5O XVII. FUNCTION OF WILL IN KNOWLEDGE . ; . 168 XVIII. AUTONOMY OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND AUTHORITY 176 XIX. ON THE PERFECTION OF SCRIPTURE. : . 186 XX. SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE ; ] , : . 196 PART SIVa LHE GOAL OF ‘THE FINITE EGO. XXI. UNION TO GOD. : : ; : : oa ur XXI. THE RACE-NATURE AND THE NEW CHRIST-NATURE 221 XXIII. A GLIMPSE OF THE PERFECT LIFE. . 236 XXIV. CONCLUSION. , : A ; » 245 est open ne 2 - ole | SELF-KNOWLEDGE THE KEY TO TRUTH. { ‘Noli foras abire, in te ipsum redi: in interiore homine habitat veritas.’—THOMAS A KEMPIS. CHAR LER I. GLIMPSES FROM AN ALPINE RETREAT. NE bright January morning, the writer had wandered by a familiar path along a Swiss mountain-side. The spot is one of the loveliest in Europe. Above and beneath, the vine-stocks in their terrace-slopes were hopefully awaiting the spring. High aloft, above the vineyards and the loftiest pines, quaint snowy peaks peered down on the lake of Geneva. Across the lake, the Savoy Alps had their craggy grandeur softened and ethereal- ized by distance, “seeming rather to belong to heaven than earth.” Beyond the head of the lake the Dent du Midi—monarch of the scene—wore its massive silver crown; but so merged in the mellow light, with the sky around, that all its valleys and high glaciers were hidden in the bosom of the sky, and only the prominent snowy ridges stood out, like the first light touches of white upon an azure ground, laid on with a delicate brush. The merry jingle of sleigh bells was in the air ; and the mountaineers, taking advantage of the snow 4 ZEnigma Vite. UG a eee and the force of gravitation, were steering their hay- laden sledges swiftly down the zigzag paths that led from their lofty chalets. This, we suppose, has gone on for many centuries, perhaps even from the time when Divicon and his Helvetian clans en- countered the Romans in yonder narrow pass, near the mouth of the Rhone valley. How the stream of time rolls on, bringing ceaseless changes ; and yet, in many profound respects, how unchanged is our humanity! The great problems of life were present, in some dim form, to the rude Helvetians as to us. As those giant Alps remain the same from age to age, whilst man and his affairs are ever changing round their base, so everywhere, amid ceaseless change of pursuit and topics of interest, the great problems of humanity stand forth the same. Hither, amid other changes, the stream of time has brought an influx of annual visitors from Northern Europe,—invalids and other pilgrims in quest of the Asgard of a sunnier clime; and on this path, where the sun beams so kindly, and winds rarely breathe, one may hear most of the leading languages of Europe spoken. These sojourners, at least those from our own country, though withdrawn from the current of active human life to this far-off side-pool of calm contemplation, retain the keenest interest in their country’s affairs. The daily news- paper is scanned with eager attention ; and, not to Glimpses from an Alpine Retreat. 5 speak of smaller matters of ephemeral gossip, we have seen how higher topics have changed for the last two years with kaleidoscopic transiency. Now all eyes have been turned to a fortress in the sun- beaten deserts of the Soudan, where one hero-soul, in grand isolation, was maintaining a gigantic con- flict; redeeming his day from sordid commonplace, and making it worthy to rank with the old heroic days. Anon, attention has been focussed upon a narrow point on the Afghan frontier, where a small spark seemed to have kindled a mighty conflagration. Again, it is the question of Irish Home-rule—so critical in its bearing on the destiny of Britain, which appears to be drifting into troubled waters, where she may learn to look up, and remember her God-given mission. And then, it is a new stirring among the antagonistic forces which hang about that old perilous slope of the Eastern Question, like the slumbering avalanche which the mere horn of a cowherd might at any moment awaken and pre- cipitate in headlong ruin to the valley. How soon most topics of eager human interest fade away into the dim background to be forgotten : passing waves on the surface speedily sinking and disappearing whilst the main current flows on. The great human problem remains, assuming new and more complex forms as time advances,—What is the real import and final goal of this life ; what is the clue to its solemn mysteries and its terrible 6 Enigma Vile. seeming contradictions ; and wherein lies the sum- mum bonum and true life of humanity ? It is strange how oblivious men are of the perennial, and how keenly alive to the transient and ephemeral. Most live upon the surface and rarely pass within, into that inner region where the world’s shallow voices are hushed, and that of the spirit is heard from out the eternal stillness ; and whence glimpses are obtained of eternity, illimitably ex- panded around and above this dimly-lit platform, enclosed by time’s thin partition-walls. Across this narrow platform, bounded by the cradle and the tomb, generation after generation comes and goes, playing their brief part in the tragi-comedy, and hastening behind the scenes. It is amazing, when we think of it, this power of humanity to forget the tremendous issues of life ; for, upon any theory, it zs a tremendous thing to live. It seems a beneficent provision of nature to— prevent the paralysis of all practical, mundane in- terest, in view of the stupendous facts that underlie human life. Here, as elsewhere, unchecked by the gravity of the problem, unaffected by Malthus and Schopenhauer, the stream of human life flows on. In those picturesque chalets, sprinkled thickly from base to shoulder, up to the edge of the glaciers, all over those Swiss mountain-sides, whatever else may at times be found lacking, there is never any lack of human occupants, “God bless the founder and Glimpses from an Alpine Retreat. 7 all his successors in this house” is the gist of the inscriptions most frequently carved on their front. Successors there shall be, as a matter of course ; for who are so darkly fatalistic and pessimistic in regard to human destiny, or so over-burdened with the solemn mysteries of life; who are so woe-begone and life-weary, as to be deterred from passing on the burden of life's dark riddle to the shoulders of a new generation? It will never be, as modern Pessimism has recommended, by arresting, through common consent, the stream of human life, and abandoning this fair planet to the irrational animals, until Darwin’s survival of the fittest may have produced a happier race, that the problem shall be solved. It must be by taking our hungry and passion-driven humanity as it is, and finding the panacea for all the woes and needs of its nature—conscience and will, heart and intellect alike. When yon famous pile of Chillon, of which we catch a glimpse on looking back, and which bridges over so many centuries for us, was in its prime, the problem of human life was simplified to the many. It narrowed itself down to implicit faith in the Romish Church and her dogmas, and allegiance to their feudal superiors. But consciousness declares that the dread problem of life cannot have its Gordian knot cut in that way. It must be wrought out amid tears and agony in the lonely world of our 8 ; Enigma Vite. own responsible personality. We may be aided in it by others; we may be omnipotently aided in it by Another; but we can devolve the weight of it upon no earthly substitute or helper. The dread responsibility is laid upon each individual of finding the solution, on which his destiny hangs, for himself and herself. | How the deepest quest of the human spirit pre- sented itself to the Mediaeval mind we see shadowed in that famous myth of the Sangrail, or Holy Grail, the symbol of that which brings life and peace to man, the remedy for all woes, and the key to paradise itself. That legend, whatever its particular origin, is truly representative of an age in which man’s spirit sought rest in the external, the con- crete, and the tangible. That sacred treasure, which was worthy the life-long quest of the noblest and bravest, was simply the most precious of holy relics ; it was the true blood—the sang real—of the cross, enclosed in a silver casket ; and, could it actually have been found outside of the region of romance and myth, and brought into the “ light of common day,” it would have been regarded, by the reverent, credulous spirits of that age, as a sort of visible Shekinah. That profound truth, which, when first uttered, was most clearly figurative, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you,” was taken in a crude, literal sense, But the author of the myth, in the form in Glimpses from an Alpine Retreat. 9 which it has come down to us, had at least glimpses of deeper truth. The chamber wherein the holy Grail was kept was full of a light brighter than the sun, but only-the pure-hearted could look upon it ; for, when the guilt-stained Sir Launcelot dared to approach it, he felt a breath “that him-thought was intermeddled with fire,’ and which smote him so sore on the visage that he fell down in a swoon, and lay as one dead. The Sangrail filled the table with all manner of meats; it made the soul which saw it “clean as that of a young maiden ;” it had power to heal a man of his wounds and deadly sickness ; and it had this further strange and figuratively suggestive property, that it was most visible to the soul in dying. The feudal period is gone, with its chivalries and high pageants ; its dreams of philosopher’s stones, elixirs of life, and Eldorados, and its gigantic efforts to keep intact from the infidel the visible shrine and citadel of Christendom, the holy sepulchre ; but still man’s quest of his sammum bonum continues, and still it is sought, in many instances, in what is purely external and concrete. The Sangrail which the mass of men in these days have actually set before them as their ultimate goal is freedom—perfect individual emancipation ; which, for many, means simply freer access to material possessions and pleasures. Much of the hazard, as well as of the hopefulness, of the world’s future oa LEnyma Vite. centres round this point—the working out, in the political, intellectual, and religious sphere, of indivi- dual freedom. Wherein true freedom consists is one of the great problems of the age, involving the whole question of what man’s true nature and life is, what is the relation of the individual to other beings. There is no word so vague as this of freedom ; and, certainly, freedom of any sort is not necessarily a boon ; the freedom, for example, which means the subjection of reason to passion ; emancipation from the authority of truth and the claims of the higher nature ; any freedom, in short, that is not founded on that deeper internal freedom that constitutes man a citizen and freeman of the kingdom of light. All-important it is to have at the outset a true theory of man’s nature ; if, for example, men set out upon the hypothesis, on which so many democrats build, of the atomistic independence of the individual —each man’s rights to be asserted separately ; one man as good as another ; no man superior to another ; and every man his own master, with no higher authority than his own caprice—the future of the world cannot be contemplated with hope. We have come, indeed, into a period of rapid and inevitable political change, which, with its roots far back in the past, has been long preparing and slowly coming to maturity. No good can result from be- wailing the past, far less from dreaming of rolling back the current of the world’s progress and restoring Glimpses from an Alpine Retreat. 11 former conditions. As soon dream of seeing that ancient synonym of the impossible realized, and the rivers flowing back to their sources. The bark of humanity cannot turn back and go up stream to avoid the rapids: those rapids must be faced ; and never was there greater need of wise and skilful steering. Viewed on its purely intellectual side, too, we are in an age of mighty change, which many regard as a new renaissance epoch. Without doubt it has not a little in common with that former age of the re-awakening of mind. There is the same rest- lessness of the human spirit; the same hatred of unreality ; the same questioning of the authority of venerable traditions and institutions ; the same vast strides in scientific discovery ; and the same widening intellectual horizon. With greater bold- ness and far less reverence, universal criticism in our time is testing the foundation of all human beliefs. Mere external authority is being rejected, and the Reformation principle of the right of private judgment is being founded on the deeper basis of the autonomy of consciousness. It must be acknow- ledged, indeed, that the latest results of modern thought on that basis are not reassuring. Fatalistic evolutionism, pessimism, nihilism—that has been too often the mournful progress of thought in these later days. The fatalistic pantheism of Germany has at length ended in despair ; or in the dark resignation ig Enigma Vite. of Buddhism, which is only a slight shade better. So far has hopeless pessimism been pushed that we find some splenetic followers of Schopenhauer pro- nouncing this as the worst of all possible worlds; and their one hope is that reasonable beings (yet how can reasonable beings be produced or exist in such a world!) would curtail the slow agony of existence, and cut the Gordian knot of life’s hopeless enigma by going back as quickly as possible to the region of Nothing, whence they came. In our own country, where physical science has kept thought much more en rapport with nature, the logical results of naturalistic fatalism have not yet been reached. But agnosticism, a result equally unsatisfactory to the human spirit, extensively prevails. Meantime Romanism looks with a sardonic smile on this result of free inquiry ; and devout Protestants, withdrawing their confidence entirely from “modern thought,” take refuge in revealed religion in the most restricted sense of that expression. No satisfactory results can be attained by modern thought, if, whilst basing itself upon the autonomy of consciousness, it arbitrarily represses any of the legitimate claims of consciousness, or takes it in a too restricted relation to the universe. It is not on the basis of the God-dissevered con- sciousness that the goal of human thought, in that central, all-vitalizing Truth, which alone can satisfy the human spirit, can be attained, Cra ral hess 11. LIPRUIN THEO PIEELD OF DEAT, UR path led under the Cubly, a fair young Alp, which, with her mantle of dark pines powdered with fresh snow, glittered in the sunshine, laughing as if in anticipation of wearing ere long her bridal-wreath of apple-blossoms. The sunshine had brought external nature into glad harmony ; and, entering deep into the inmost soul, seemed to give freer access for the all-pervading sunshine of Divine love. Glorious light! with health-giving warmth for the feeble, with inspiring splendour for the doubting and sorrowing ; fitly has it been called by the Psalmist the visible “garment of God.” There is something deeply wrong with the spirit which does not make symphony with nature’s rhythm on such a day, until all pessimistic doubt and gloom is dispelled ; and which does not come into accord with the heart of love which beats behind the pulsing life of nature. Our steps led into a spot where the polyglot sounds were unheard ; and where, because the stillness is 14 Enigma Vite. very deep, there is fitter scope for quiet reflection. This place is a garden of vanished flowers which await a wonderful spring-time. The little furrows all over it—ripple-marks of the tide of Death—shall yet burst with awakening life. All around, the pathetic farewells recorded by sorrowing friends— “Au revoir,’ “Auf Weiedersehen,’ “ Ruhe sanft, “ Stille Ruhe in Gott”—breathe of hope that their sleepers shall yet awake in God’s spring-time. How much happier is this spot than, the cemeteries of ancient Paganism! One sleeper far away from his native mountains in Scotland lies beneath this laconic Christian motto, “ 77/7 He come.” Here, again, is the good-night wish of friends for another departed : “Que TEternel tourne sa face vers tot.” Children are naturally afraid of going to sleep in the dark: to sleep the long sleep with the light of God’s face turned towards one is a happy thought. Why is it that even in the most famous Campo Santos of Italy one has a shivery feeling, as if, amidst the most splendid trophies of art, he cannot dissociate death from the idea of gloom; whilst here, one feels in the midst of a happy sleeping-place ? It is partly because the modern Protestant idea of death is as much brighter than the Medizval, as the latter is superior to that of ancient Paganism ; but, chiefly because in this fair garden the beauty of art is altogether overshadowed by nature ; and because so many saintly dead lie here and speak to us of blessed Life i the Freld of Death. 15 immortality, from the little one whose last words were, “Sing ‘Jesus loves me,” to the Christian philosopher Vinet, who is still a recognised teacher of Christendom. Hither the seeds, which here sleep on the bosom of nature, who keeps kind and careful trust of all her slumbering seeds of life, have been wafted from many shores. Most of the nations of Europe are represented, their national differences all peacefully resolved. Amiel, who himself lies here, thus sketched the spot on a summer visit :—‘“ Above, landscape splendours, foliage-mysteries, blooming roses, butter- flies, noise of wings, murmur of birds, vistas, far- off clouds, mountains in ecstasy, lake of lovely blue. Beneath, Russians, English, Swedes, Germans, come to sleep their last sleep under the shadow of Cubly.” ah Here, too, we encounter the dark riddle of human life as we read many a record of hopes frustrated, and hearts wrung with anguish. How much tender care, fair hopes, deep-rooted love, for example, bound that only child to fond parents, to end here in withered hopes! How many of those who lie here learned truly to live? why did many of these live at all? and what and where are they now? Con- sciousness is satisfied with no arbitrary judgment, or mere external fiat, but seeks internal rest. But, what perplexity she commonly lands herself in when she seeks to solve the mystery, and “ pace th 16 Jtnigma Vite. sad confusion through!” When we begin from the circumference, we are met, in human life, with con- tradiction and insoluble enigmas: only when we can look at all things in some degree from the centre, do we find the implicit solution, to be gradually unfolded for us as we ourselves grow. In other words, the solution of life’s mystery must be sought within ourselves, when we find ourselves in God. Amid such thoughts our eye was caught by a sight of wonder, ever new and fresh as we come upon it. Lo! one sleeper has awaked in this sleeping-place of death. The first spring flower has burst from the cold earth, even through the snow, and unfolding its pure white petals, it seems, in its simple loveliness, like a fair child that has answered its father’s summons forth to the cold open air, and stands biding his will. Eye and heart alike recognized this Divine work of genius and owned its power. It was not merely that it was moulded in forms of wondrous symmetry ; it was not simply by its fresh colouring that its charm could be explained ; for, in its artless meek- ness and childlike watveté, it had touched the mystic spring that opens the fountain of feeling, and tells that Nature and we are profoundly one. It is in no accommodated sense that we speak of it as a work of genius. Genius mediates between nature and man, and between spirit and spirit. It shows us that we are not isolated existences Life in the Freld of Death. 17 in the midst of a wilderness, but that profound affinity and organic unity exist between us and nature, and that the universe is no system of disorder and contradiction, but of harmony. It is not a wilderness, but a Father’s home. We ought to find in it a Father’s home ; but man has isolated himself and become lonely and homeless ; he wanders about seeking rest; with vanity, unrest, unfulfilled longings ever as the end of all his endeavours, until his isolation of spirit from the Father is broken up. But only He who formed the human spirit can reunite it to Himself and restore it to its true harmony. That young flower of spring is a messenger from the inner world of harmony, with a blessed secret to tell to us. What though Materialism finds an explanation of it in the forces and chemical con- stituents of matter? I know that, when we stand before some masterpiece in Dresden or Florence, “ chained to the chariot of triumphal art,’ she could similarly explain that painting as a mechanical product, composed of certain pigments, laid on through a process perfectly explainable by the laws of matter. But our consciousness interprets it more deeply. That work of genius is the meeting-point of spirit with spirit: it is a revelation to our kindred spirit of the soul of the human artist. Nothing interests our Ego so much as other Egos ; nothing can be so profoundly and really known; and the 2 18 LEnigma Vite. creat and beautiful products, not only of human art, but of nature, have their highest value and preciousness for us because they are revelations of spirit. Amid the conflicting utterances of philosophy, in its attempt to interpret the universe for us, let us take this simple flower of spring as our philosopher and guide. This harbinger of the flower world, pro- foundly wise in its unconscious ignorance, is worth to us whole systems of the despairing philosophies of these later days. Great in its unobtrusive littleness, like an angel, strong-mailed with child-like innocence, it is able to scatter legions from the stronghold of doubt and despair. Its practical message to us is the old Stoical one, Vivere convenienter nature, but in a far happier and profounder sense than ancient Stoicism dreamed. Clearly, even to our limited capacity of interpretation, its philosophy of the universe and human life is not pessimism. It seems a messenger from some inner realm of beauty with a glad message to all souls overburdened with the mystery of life. It says: Those problems which seem to you at times so dark and inextricable “ave a solution; and the answer to them. is Yea, and not Nay. Behold it is love and harmony, not confusion and wrong, that reign at the centre of all things: God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. | Whatever contradiction appears at the outer circumference, Life in the Freld of Death, 19 love dwells at the centre, love zs the secret of the untVvEerse. I belong, it says, to a wide and blessed kingdom where there is life, and harmony, and peace, because God reigns and works therein unchecked by selfish- ness. The seal of wisdom is upon it all, for we never commit that supreme folly and absurdity of trying to make the finite creature the centre of the universe. Our true self is the central will ; and the holy moral law which is the afaugasma, or raying forth of that will, and the source of all beauty and order, works through us without obstruction. By myself apart, I am nothing: I am but a void filled by the loving will at the centre of all things—an inlet through which the fountain of love has sprung up to the surface of the earth, I am come on a bright mission, to gladden weary hearts; and though born in a wintry season, I am not an orphan child. I have no care nor need to toil or spin. I came not forth of my own accord; but He who called me hither is responsible for my welfare. I simply let God by His laws work for me and through me. In this spring-flower, what a symbol we have of the dignity and peace of perfect trust, and of the true freedom of perfect submission! In this unconscious part of creation, what harmony and peace there is; in the conscious, what unrest, what discord: as fretful children are all beautiful and peaceful when 20 LEnigma Vite. asleep, but as soon as they are awake they show unrest and moral deformity. 7 Man is the only part of creation that is really awake. He is the eye of nature. He alone can withdraw within himself to a position whence he can objectivize all things besides. He alone can perceive the law of the universe, and adopt it by voluntary choice, and so attain within himself the harmony that exists in unconscious nature, where law reigns of necessity. What is man awake to see? He is awake to see the glory of God in the temple of the universe. And just as when one has gone out very early on a morning of early summer, ere the first wreath of chimney-smoke has ascended from any homestead, like incense to heaven; when -the rising sun has caught the pine-tops with its crimson shafts, and clorified the highest western peaks, while all besides were sleeping but himself and the awakening birds, he has felt in the elevated rapture of that hour, that where no other conscious witness of the scene is there to praise the Creator, it would be impious for him to be dumb. CHAPTER SIT THE LAREEeVORNVS Al Lils CRADLE OF THE EGO. HE sight of that new-born flower recalled a similar, yet a still deeper, wonder. Away in a fair Scottish valley, which still bore the name. given to it by its early Celtic possessors, whose reverent imagination had ascribed to it some feature of peculiar sacredness, and called it “The Vale of the Blessed,” there sprang up a new human life upon earth. Its awakening was not like that of the flower which needs not to toil, or spin, or think for itself, or ever go forth beyond itself in agonized struggle after true life. This human life awoke with a cry—a great symbolic fact. Man’s awaken- ing and growth in conscious life is but to an ever-deepening knowledge of self-emptiness and im- perfection. If, on the one hand, he gains a position of partial independence above the stream of sur- rounding circumstances, he has, on the other hand, a position of deeper dependence on what is beyond his isolated self. That cry of the new-born infant continues, audibly or inaudibly, yea, grows in intensity, 22 Enigma Vite until true rest is found. That cry, truly interpreted, will be found to be a cry for God. Man, in attaining to consciousness, gives articulate utterance to creation’s groaning, which, in his case, may be thus expressed :— What boots it to me that I have gained a position superior to the unconscious parts of nature? I have but found the consciousness of deeper dependence and insufficiency. Who can point out to me what it is I want in order to fill this dread void within ? I grope hither and thither for it among the objects of the visible world, but cannot reach or grasp it. I am directed upwards, but how shall I attain to it? Can any tell me the meaning of this brief life, as I hurry across Time’s narrow isthmus, with the boom of the ocean of eternity behind and before me ; and how shall I find a life-principle that shall afford me a safe clue, through this perplexed labyrinth of being ? Amid all the mysteries and unsolved riddles that confront the seeker of truth, he is not left without a clue; but it is not found outside of himself. As A Kempis says, he has not to go out of doors to find it,—it is to be sought within himself; and to get conscious hold of that clue, we must form some true opinionof what is man’s relation tothe universearound. What is this Ego, and what is its genesis in time ? Our Northern ancestors, who wrote and sang The Norns at the Cradle of the Ego. 23 their Eddas to the hoarse music of the neighbour- ing tide, amid the wild skerries and headlands of the Hebrides, and of Iceland, had a profound insight into some of the problems which beset the origin of a new personality on earth. On the night when Helgi, the son of Inni, was born, the three Norns, or fatal sisters, leaving their hall beneath the world- tree called Yggdrasil, sought the cradle of the new- born, bearing in their hands the writing-tablets on which, by the unalterable decrees of Orlog, his future was to be recorded with iron pen. The shadowy forms of those ancient Norns are but vaguely dis- cernible to our modern gaze ; and the interpretations of their exact individual significance are somewhat various. Past, Present, and Future, some interpret them: Urd stands gazing back into the past; the eye of Werdandi is concentrated on the present; and Skuld’s penetrating glance looks into the future. These are the fateful sisters who spin the web of life and “lace the threads of gods and men that none may break.” At the cradle of the infant Ego, Past, Present, and Future have met. What is this Ego who is here present? His significance must be referred back to the past from which, with its chain of antecedents and consequents, he has sprung. What is the Ego? It must be referred forward to the future in whose bosom his Jdecoming and his destiny lie hidden. Or, let us take the other and deeper interpretation 24 LEnigma Vite. of the Norns. The name of the first was Skuld, or Should; for she was the embodied form of the eternal law of right of which each person must make voluntary choice, and according to which he must shape himself in the process of becoming. The name of the second is Werdandi, or Becoming ; for each person is not the perfected Ego at any one stage, any more than a stream can be arrested at one point. The third of these wise maidens was Weird, or fixed unalterable destiny, and she holds in her hands the result of the work of the two others upon the human personality. And what if no visible shapes hovered round the cradle of our new-born member of humanity, writing down on visible tablets the destiny that should befall him? yet the things they symbolized were there. The Should was there from the beginning. Each person has the dread prerogative entrusted to him of choosing his own ends, in order to the determina- tion of his own personality; and there is within him a mysterious index or lodestone, indicating the direction of the true end of his being, and warning him of any deviation therefrom. And, mayhap, the form of that Norn called Should, had it become visible, would have been no other than the objective ideal of the new-born life; in other words, the glorious thing which the individual would have become, by perfectly adopting the Divine law as the law of his being. Ina world which is not presided Lhe Norns at the Cradle of the Ego. 25 over by blind chance, but by law and reason, the end is in the beginning; the ideal end is there, while the life is but beginning. As in the artist’s eye, ere a single blow of the mallet is struck upon the shapeless marble, there is already a perfect form, could it but be transferred to the stone, so there belongs to each soul at birth, not merely the ideal of a perfect humanity, but his own individual ideal, what he himself, apart from others, might become. A fair ideal of life attends each soul at the beginning, only, perhaps, to be rejected ; until a sad, ever- widening and finally hopeless interval of estrange- ment has grown between them. Still, like his better angel, unseen only because his eyes have grown blind to it, the Divine ideal of his individual life hovers over him, and beckons him upwards to a higher and more blessed life. This is reality: it lies not in the world of abstract ideas, or of imagined forms. There is a mighty, conscious power, all- organizing, all-vitalizing, the same power which brooded over the waste of Chaos, while it was without form and void, and breathed into it life and order and beauty ; but, in man, it lies with the individual will whether this Divine power shall work in him or not. When one visits in London any of those haunts of poverty where waifs congregate for common shelter,—the flotsam and jetsam drifted from very different levels of society and huddled together in 26 Enigma Vite. unsightly confusion,—we find there some who were born to far different prospects; and in this scene of squalor, degradation, and despair, sad thoughts arise: but the saddest of all is to think of what such a one might have been; how honourable and worthy of respect; how influential for good, and how beloved! There is no sadder thought in regard to an in- dividual than this, that there is a type of character peculiar to himself, and glorious of its kind, im- manent in the Divine Spirit, waiting to be unrolled in actual form for him; but between it and the poor reality the interval is now continually widening. He is a tree of fair and goodly species, that by misusage and adverse weather and soil has been stunted and degraded, the mere caricature of what it might have been. “Qh,” exclaims his better nature, “is there no heavenly remedy to repair this saddest of all ruins? Is there no fairer sphere where I can hope to re- awaken and assume, or even to struggle eternally towards, that Me which should have been and which now appears so irretrievably lost ?” Very profound too was the insight into -human life betokened by the name of the second of those weird maidens, Becoming. We are not here at any point of our life in a state of perfect being, where the ideal of our life is perfectly realized, and the artist can pause and pronounce his work very good. Whatever theory of humanity we may form, of oo The Norns at the Cradle of the Ego. 27 this no one can doubt, that here we are each upon a dread mission as regards ourselves. Our chief work on earth is not wrought on objects outside of ourselves. Whatever else our hand may find to do, and may require to do for himself and others, there is one work which we, and all men, must do, and shall in some way or other actually do. Man’s chief work is HIMSELF. Whether he know it or not, whether he desire it or not, he is continually making himself, shaping himself, and forming, by each act of will, tendencies that gather and crys- tallize into fixed forms and habits, which determine the character and ultimate destiny. Man’s destiny is not to meet him only in the far future; his destiny is in himself: it is himself. Our everyday life may be filled with apparently trivial details ; yet, through these, our character is being mou!ded to a form which cannot be altered at will, but must abide with us, must be ourselves, so long as we have the same conditions of existence. We shall carry nothing with us, of all our most cherished possessions, from this time-island, set in the mist-laden ocean of eternity, but only ourselves decisively made or marred. How closely allied are the three sister Norns? Weird, or fixed destiny, is the complement and com- pletion of Becoming and Should. The results of our lives are faithfully recorded by Weird on the tablets of our inner being. As in the 28 Enigma Vite. present condition of the earth’s surface all its past history is written and could be read by us, had we but intellect enough to interpret the scroll, so in our present character, graven as by pen of adamant, there lies the record of our whole past history. Our character, when formed, is a very stable thing. In the formative stages of its organic growth it is easily deflected this way, or that, at will ; but when fully formed, how difficult to change! It is more stable than the mountains and the enduring rocks. A British army could demolish all the fortresses and temples of Hindustan, but could not change the Hindu national character. Either the race itself must be uprooted, or a voluntary educational change must take place; but, even then, it may be found that the new culture is but over-laid upon the old ; like a palimpsest written with fading ink over the original record, which defies erasure. Dark, indeed, and pessimistic is the view of life we get by the dim light of the lamps carried by the three wise Norns. Judged by the perfect standard, which we dare not lower, and by the adamantine laws, which cannot be broken, we find all lives come hopelessly short, telling of aspirations unattained, lost hopes, broken ideals of sanguine youth, and miserably marred work of manhood. Over how many thoughtful minds in later years does the sentiment of the irreparable cast its gloomy shadow? Is there no Divine remedy that can repair this ruin? The Norns at the Cradle of the Ego. 29 Dark and pessimistic is the view of life regarded from whatever point on the side of the “self” or independent Ego. Conscience, awakened and en- lightened, testifies that this sentence is true of each individual : “ All have missed the mark—yuaprov b —and come short ;” and conscience is pacified with nothing short of a perfectly realized ideal of life. But this dark lesson, taught in the lower school of Pessimism, is but the necessary preparation for passing into the higher school of divine Optimism. The mark is indeed missed, and for ever missed, by self; in other words, by the self-centred, self-sufficient Ego. And the recognition of this failure is for us a necessary step to eternal success ; for it is most true that “Men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things.” In the individual, as well as the race, one great problem at least is being wrought out on this time- stage, where the permission of evil is connected with so much that is mysterious: to show how much the creature, severed in will from the Creator, can by himself accomplish ; that the universe may learn that the finite intelligence, self-severed from God, cannot attain true life. It is the old lesson taught to the race of Israel, as the sum of all their experience: that without God they were incomplete ; that all the struggles of their self-centred will resulted in failure and misery, “that they might set their hope in 20 Enigma Vite. God.” And what does revealed religion offer to man? It cannot be better summed up than in the words of Fichte, which have a pregnant meaning for the Christian: “Religion, or the blessed life, is a life founded on the consciousness of that (as already present and realized) which to morality (or, as we should say, to the isolated Ego) is always looming in the future.” CrP Debbi LV’. BIRTHDAY GifT OF THE NORNS. HE birthday gift which those stern Norns bring to the awakening Ego, is the unsolved problem of life, which each one must solve for himself, in some way or other, and on whose solution his destiny depends. That problem, though essentially the same in all times, varies in particular form according to the age. In shape very different, it is presented to us from what it bore to those who walked the streets of Memphis when the Pyramids were new ; different, too, from that with which the early Romans and Greeks, or with which those who lived in the Middle Ages, had to deal. It is the enigma of life with the mould and fashion of the nineteenth century upon it, for the individual is part of the life of the age. We have come upon the scene in an age of rapid change and of vast mental activity ; which has taken upon it to solve the unsolved problems of the past, but which seems tending rather to doubt and despair than to light and mental rest. The man of nineteenth-century culture, with his 32 Enigma Vite. larger insight into the loom of physical forces, and his feebler spiritual vision, when he comes to take up his lifes problem in earnest is apt to see himself as a weak monad amid the overwhelming powers with- out him, a mere eddy in the tide of blind forces. He is beset with dark mysteries and insoluble riddles, as he overhangs for a little the dread abyss which seems, Saturn-like, to devour all its offspring. He feels depressed by his position, in the grasp of the inevitable, and at the mercy of external circumstances. The light of consciousness seems lit for him only the better to discover the gloom of his situation. And though, as some assert, he may have some small power to determine his own course amid the complex currents ; and though there may be for him a right and a wrong direction to steer, why should he try to buffet with the mighty currents that carry down all alike to speedy silence and forgetfulness? The logical result of the naturalism of the day is pessimism and despair. But when “he comes to himself ;’ d when he gets some insight into his true self and his true life, man can measure himself more correctly against the rest of nature. His conscious Ego is something else than a mere incident in the on-rushing current of physical forces, Small as he feels himself to be, when confronted with the mighty powers of nature, there is that in man to which all nature turns, and on which it allin some sense depends, Nature looks Lirthday Gift of the Norns. ci to man’s consciousness for the true interpretation; to an Ego in whose image man is formed, for its true ‘meaning. The key to all the truth about nature, and about matter, lies in our Ego; the key to our higher nature lies not in matter: and when the new science arises, founded upon the priority of con- sciousness to matter, and on a true analysis of consciousness, we shall see something still more glorious than this all-embracing web of material development, which is the boast of modern Science. There is that in man’s personality which makes all nature unsubstantial. That alone possesses the possibility of permanence. All else on earth is fleeting and phenomenal—forms which pass away for ever, in the flux of matter, and the evolution of new forms ; all else in “the world passeth away,” was written of old, “but he that doeth the will of the Lord endureth for ever.” It is personality— that which is endowed with consciousness and will ; and it is ¢hat personality which wills in con- formity with the Supreme Will, which has true permanent /27e. Man’s great task upon earth is to “come to himself,” to find his true self and his true life. Then alone, amid the mighty, seemingly irresistible forces, and dark mysteries, with which he is sur- rounded, he remains master of the situation ; but not in the spirit of the ancient Stoic, who met, with a) J 34 Enigma Vite. fortitude, irresistible fate to which he must succumb. This man becomes truly master of his fate, because his fate is not controlled by some power external to him ; what he wills and what he loves is his fate. But man never comes to his true self, nor attains his true life, without getting beyond himself; that is, it is not in man’s isolated self that his true life rests, nor his sufficiency lies. By himself he is the poorest of all earthly objects ; his being incomplete, his life truly a death. Man needs to find his fitting complement, his Alter-Ego, for true life. And on the very surface there is something which separates man immeasurably from the rest of nature. Whatever theory of the homogeneity of man with the rest of nature may be held; however it may be held that the lowest forms of matter possess the rudiments of the highest human attributes, so that these differ from those in degree only, not in kind ; still that difference is altogether immeasurable. Other parts of nature go blindly to their ends ; man alone, in any considerable degree, has con- sciousness and reflection. He alone can consciously look before he leaps, and choose where he is to leap; and it is his necessity and duty to reflect before he acts, and to will according to the law of right. Each man must, therefore, have some settled principle or scheme of life. Since he does not vegetate into his true life as the plants do; since he Birthday Gift of the Norns. 35 SE UES AIE aS SN gE aa le a is endowed with reflection, whereby he can consider his own ends; and _ will, whereby he can select among them, he must have some scheme of living, and some view of what human life ought to be. Each man must see clearly wherein his true life consists, and must will to make it his own. And whatever darkness and mystery, as to many things, invest our life on earth, this at least is clear, that there is a true way of life for man, and there is a way that comes miserably short of it; and still it is true, as in the days of Hesiod, that the baser life is the easy one; it is only the heroic, who despise ease and self-indulgence, that find and tread the true path of life. Where lies the path of true life for man? In order to find an adequate reply to that question, we must in some degree settle these others, which are of infinite practical moment to every man: What am I? Why am I here? and, Whither am I going? These questions are very commonly thrust aside as unanswerable, by the leaders of modern thought. Carlyle, speaking in this instance as the mouthpiece of Agnosticism, exclaims to the earnest seeker of truth: “Know thyself! thou shalt never know thyself, I believe ; know what thou canst work at, and work at it like a Hercules.” Our personality, he says, like the clay on the potter’s wheel, shall be moulded into harmony by active, earnest work. 36 ‘Enigma Vite. Again, he says, “ That alone is certain which lies close to thee ;” make the best of it, and whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. What then does lie closer to me, asks the earnest truth-seeker, than szyself? What if there are pro- found mysteries in my nature that I cannot fathom ? There is yet much that I may know, and require to know, about myself, and my true life. I must not, in everyday life, despise the knowledge I have of the properties of things useful, because much in regard to their origin remains a mystery to me. I know much about wheat, its properties and uses ; and yet, in spite of all the definitions of modern science, the nature of its /#fe is a mystery to me. And what if some young Hercules, who was told that the whole duty of man is summed up in one word, Work, and that he had only to find out what he could work at, ascertained that the work which lay most readily to his hand, and for which his physical strength and natural taste most admirably fitted him, was highway-robbery or sea- piracy! What say you to the moulding power of such work as that? To the question, What caz I work at? this prior one comes in, What ought I to work at ? and this leads on to those others, What am I as man? and, What is man’s true life ? Modern Agnosticism tells the youthful truth- seeker that he cannot solve those questions; and Dilettanteism stands by to add, And it matters not Birthday Gift of the Norns. an Oe Re a Sn A Las Ea dd SS to me though they cannot be determined. Here, for example, is an eclectic, who tolerates all systems, and tries to find a modus vivendi among the oddest in- tellectual bed-fellows ; though, in his case, it is not poverty, but the very riches of his intellectual domain, that has brought him into such close acquaintance with them. He says, “I do not trouble myself with metaphysics. I believe that the instincts of my nature are a sufficient guide. With old Zeno, I hold the desirableness of living agreeably to nature ; but I believe also with Epicurus, that this maxim must not be overstrained, nor the idea of nature narrowed overmuch. I believe in allowing all the claims of nature ; and, if art is adequately to be her mirror, it must be very broad. I do not find nature ascetic or straitlaced ; and if I follow her guidance I cannot go wrong.” But what, demands the seeker of true life, zs my nature? I find there are diverse and warring elements within ; and something besides which declares that there is one element which rightfully governs, and others which are rightfully the governed ; and that to allow the claims of ¢/ese to govern is not the way of life, but of death. If you mean by allowing the claims of nature, yielding the government to reason and passion alternately, or to subject the will to the control of any desire that may be uppermost, this is not the pathway to life and inner peace. How- ever practical truth and error may be confounded 38 LEnigma Vite. and obscured in the mind of man, they are never one jot confounded in the laws of the universe. It is, therefore, a necessity to know what those laws are, and what our due relation to them is; and this brings us once more to the questions with which we set out. Or, if personal culture be admitted as one of the highest aims of life, then we must know somewhat of the nature of what we cultivate, that we may employ the proper methods. We must, for example, have some solution, at the outset, of the momentous question, Is the individual Ego the true centre and culminating point of the universe ; and is it right to live with no higher end than to minister to self ? Is it possible to produce the highest,—in other words, the true—type of character on a selfish basis, how- ever otherwise refined the ideal of life may be? This once more leads us to the question, What is our true life ; what is the normal position of the individual Ego in the universe; and is this life we are personally living the right and rational one for us? Nor could that modern question, Js life worth living ? be adequately stated or solved without a true knowledge of ourselves. As it is often under- stood, that question simply amounts to this: Is there sufficient; selfish enjoyment derivable from life to make it worth the while of the Hedonist, refined or unrefined, to live? In a world like this, where misery and sorrow are so rife, and where, for those Birthday Gift of the Norns. 39 oO whose inner eye has lost its lustre, deep darkness envelops the question of man’s life and destiny, it is indeed more than doubtful if it is worth while for the mere pleasure-seeker to live. Life on that basis is a hollow thing; the Ego is subjected to external circumstances, and nothing but emptiness, misery, and death can on that basis result. Where all external circumstances are adverse, where health, wealth, and friends have deserted him, how poor and despicable to the epicure has life become! But, on the principle that the true life is altruistic ; that its highest use is to be given lovingly away for others’ benefit, and its highest enjoyment the heroic blessedness of self-sacrifice ; even then, in the hardest external lot, the highest life—nay, even the highest happiness—would still be possible, and the best ends of human life might be attained. The question, Is life worth living ? means, for man, in its highest sense, Is this life I am now living worthy to be lived? ‘This leads us on to find the true platform on which the worth of life can be estimated. It is necessary for each man to have some “/- creed or scheme of living, based upon some know- ledge of what his nature is and of what his life should be. Every life is actually based upon some practical scheme or creed: each man has some religion. There is no human being, however poor and ragged 40 Enigma Vite. externally, but sums up in his person whole volumes of interest, pathetic and humorous. But to find the deepest clue to his personality and life, we have to find out what is his true creed and religion. This may be very far apart from the creed, or no-creed, to which he nominally subscribes. The lip-creed and the life-creed may be very different things. Into the former we may have simply drifted by force of external circumstances. It may have been merely inherited among other heirlooms from our ancestry ; and, although it may not be founded on personal inner conviction, it may none the less on that account be tenaciously held, amid bitter un- reasoning hostility to those of opposite opinions. As when a clan has dwelt in a certain valley for many generations, bleak and barren though its soil may be, the associations and traditions of centuries that have gathered round it; the dust of their fathers mingled with its soil, and the blood of brave men shed to defend it,—all conspire to endear that heritage to the living generation, who never willingly leave it to seek a better locality ; no, not till some great external pressure of famine or forcible eviction have driven them from it: thus sacredly and tena- ciously are their inherited convictions held by the majority of men., It is, indeed, no duty for a man to despise or reject his beliefs, simply because they are inherited ; but it is his duty to see that they are held as matters of deliberate, unbiassed, personal Lirthday Gift of the Norns. 41 conviction. It is no hopeful sign of the individual or the nation that lightly throws off inherited con- victions ; yet there is something more sacred and momentous still to each man than ancestral claims upon his heart and memory, even the claims of God and truth upon his conscience. A. man’s life-creed is to be tested by that for which he has the profoundest spiritual affinity ; it is those principles on which his actual life is based and sustained. In this sense it is the most important of all things that a man’s creed be true. Whatever be his relation to the creed to which he nominally adheres, the system of truth to which his inmost soul by living affinity adheres is of essential moment. Orthodoxy, at least of the sadjective kind, is essential to every man. His faculty of investigating the truth may be limited ; he may be far from attaining, by personal inquiry and conviction, a complete and compact creed or solution of the problem of the universe ; but that he himself be subjectively rue, that is, in living affinity with Him in whom dwells the central unity which binds up and harmonizes all truth, is a necessity for every man. It is at the centre, not the circumference, that the truth-seeker must begin. The world of his own consciousness is a microcosm, which is the mirror and interpreta- tion of all truth. But this mirror must be hung aright to catch the rays of that Sun whose image it is. _Man’s consciousness must be in living affinity 42. LEnrgma Vite. Sk te a ge ee Re ee aD with God. Then only it dwells at the centre of all truth ; and must begin at the centre as its starting- point. The best qualification and stock-in-trade for the truth-seeker to begin with is a spirit of guileless receptivity, humility, and child-like trust. The deepest truths of the spirit, which are hidden from the wise and prudent in their own esteem, are revealed to those who become as little children ; as the stars at noonday, which are invisible to those who walk above-ground, are easily seen by those who are in deep mines, Our starting-point, then, in the quest of that truth which is the life of the human spirit, is the know- ledge of ourselves. We must find truth, not outside of, but within, ourselves, It is through ourselves, by living affinity, that we must attain the highest truth. This Ego, in its normal state and its relations to the universe around, and with its universality of affinity, possesses in itself the key to all truth. We have to interpret consciousness aright, and see to what the facts of consciousness testify and point. But this is something wholly different from the so- called evolution of truth from man’s inner conscious- ness, which is the jest of precise science. The inner consciousness, in the sense of a transcendental world absolutely apart from the world of fact and objective reality, is an impossibility. Consciousness does not exist without the union of the Ego with the external Birthday Gift of the Norns. 43 world. We cannot know ourselves except in rela- tion to what is not ourselves. The seeker of highest truth must combine the methods of Transcendental- ism and Empiricism. With the one, he will hold that there are no valuable or clear results attainable without experience, and patient search ; with the other, he will see that the central truth does not lie far remote from the human spirit, in its normal state. The mere Empiricist, beginning at the out- side, plods slowly on step by step, with eyes bent downward, never catching a glimpse of the radiant heights where lies the central goal of the spirit’s quest. Transcendentalism, of the right kind, holds that the centre and goal of all truth is not far off from the normal human consciousness, It catches glimpses of the glorious heights which lie altogether beyond the ken of mere Empiricism ; and yet, Trans- cendentalism must go hand in hand with experi- mental science, in tracing out the complex process and mutual relations whereby the diverse parts of the web of being are interwoven in one great unity, radiating from its living centre to its outmost circumference. CHAPTER V. WHAT AM I? ANSWER OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. HAT is this mysterious entity which can distinguish itself in thought from all else, and speak of itself as “7” ? What, in the first place, has Etymology to tell us of its nature? It is in- teresting to note how the insight of the early races into the nature of things has been embalmed by etymology ; how profound and clear that insight has often been; and how happy the art of hitting off, in the compass of a single word, some striking peculiarity of the thing named. We do not, in this case, learn much from etymology ; and yet we see how it has caught one of the essential features of the Ego—this namely, that it stands apart in thought from all else, on this Aither side, at a point whence it can objectivize all other things. Philology tells us that the Ego, /ch, or J meant originally the “this here ’—this which sees itself on the hither side of all else. But as to the nature of man’s personality, etymology helps us little. Turning to Positive or Physical Science to ask ‘What am I? Answer of Phystcal Sctence. 45 what is this “I,’ we receive from one of its most eminent representatives the following definition :-— “ There is every reason to believe that consciousness (in which he includes the conscious I) is a function of nervous matter, when that nervous matter has attained a certain degree of organization.” That is the definition of the Ego in its material aspect ; though the question remains, if there be not other and higher planes on which we can view and estimate the Ego. When we have one true ex- planation of an object, it does not follow that all possible knowledge of it is exhausted; or that another explanation of it, from a different point of view, with a different set of faculties, or on another plane, is excluded ; for this is a universe of which simplicity, or onxe-foldness, is not the keynote. We find no simple unity in nature, even among material objects, but unities composed of heterogeneous factors, which are more and more subtly blent the higher we advance from the plane of matter into that of pure thought and spirit. And further, if we cannot know an object except in its relations; and if we cannot know it until we see it in its higher unity ; and if there is a central unity, the highest of all, then we cannot know an object in its pro- foundest aspect, until we see it in its relation to the central unity, which stamps all objects with their true significance. And yet, even when viewed on the material plane, 46 Enigma Vite. what a marvel and mystery is the Ego! Very wonderful, even were it wholly explainable on physical grounds, and from material processes and laws, is this conscious eddy in the mighty multiplex current of correlated forces, this flower on the Ygegdrasil of universal existence. Very wonderful, even were it wholly explainable by physical law, is this coalition of molecules round a self-cognizant centre, the particular atoms being incessantly decimated in the war against external forces, and their places supplied by others drawn from without by the self- maintaining reorganising power of the internal forces : the matter—the particular molecules—change ; but the form—the self-cognizant centre—remains, calling itself I—the selfsame I in its latest as in its earliest years. There is no co-operative or joint-stock company on earth whereof the members work so marvellously in harmony, sinking the individual ends in those of the corporation, as in man’s conscious material organism. Sic xos non nobis is the motto of each part. See, for example, how the successive brain-particles are storing up impressions, to remain in some mysterious manner for the benefit of the corporation after they themselves have gone. The individual elements pass away, but memory with its store of recollections’ remains. And no less wonderful is the maintenance and persistence of the species, and the subtle intercon- nection of its members, Each human organism is What am I? Answer of Physical Science. 47 the variation of a class-type that persistently endures ; though it fluctuates in its individual manifestations. Even on the purely Physical hypothesis of nature, what mysteries far-reaching meet in each person! He is a wave upon a current that flows on continually through the ages, bringing down from higher reaches of the river strange relics and records of the past, could we read them aright. The civilization of London or New York, including the art, language, and commerce of those Cities, carries us back to Rome, Greece, Assyria, Egypt ; and each individual person is no less the outcome and the heir of countless generations. In his character is written many a secret of the past. Those lofty aspirations and those grovelling tendencies, those elements of inner harmony or of discord, that jarring note that is jrequently given out by natures of the finest mould, —these may be all, or many of them, echoes from _ the past of the lives of remote ancestry. These may be the manifestation of the inner lives and secret thoughts of our progenitors; for this is a universe whose keynote is the manifestation of spirit. Always and everywhere it is true that “there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known.” Natural Science regards the universe from her own standpoint: that, namely, of the priority of matter and its laws. Science stands at the side of the mighty stream of natural process, and sees, passing 48 Enigma Vite. before her, the endless chain of antecedents and consequents, the action and reaction upon each other of forces acting according to law, and nothing but the laws remaining stable. It is coming now to be admitted by the most enlightened men of science, who do not fail to see the incompleteness of the scientific view of the universe, that there is another legitimate standpoint from which nature can be viewed, as we may say, from the source of the stream, namely, the standpoint of the priority of conscious- ness to matter. In this age of the autonomy of consciousness, the human mind cannot be satisfied with a partial view of nature. Its demand must ever be for that to which consciousness, as a consistent whole, testifies. Now it is clear that natural science does not found upon consciousness as a whole, but only on its objective side. It looks at the phenomena of nature as objective realities, independent of mind. When we come to the standpoint of the Ego as subject, we pass, not indeed beyond the bounds of science, in the sense of precise knowledge, but beyond the hitherto recognized bounds of natural science, The great question here is if the Ego have in any sense an @ priort or only an a posteriori relation to nature ; that is, if the Ego be wholly determined by matter and its laws, or if matter and its laws are not determined by an Ego ; and if the finite Ego and its What am I? Answer of Physical Science. 49 laws have not a certain independence of, and priority to, matter and zt¢s laws. Any interpretation of consciousness on the basis of matter and its laws must be incomplete ; the interpretation of nature on the ground of conscious- ness as a whole must be the aim of the science of the future. One fact in man’s nature to which consciousness plainly testifies is responsibility. This is the true index of a higher nature in man than the purely material. Were it granted, indeed, that a material organism can attain, not only to consciousness and reflection, but to such a power of self-determination as to be responsible, then practically it would be of small moment though this higher nature were held to have its basis and explanation in matter. But in point of fact responsibility does not fall in harmoniously with the scientific view of nature. In this latter view human action is the final expression of certain complex physiological conditions, over which the law of material necessity reigns as strictly as any- where else in nature. From the wider standpoint of consciousness, a human action is (or rather ought to be—because all men have not attained to the realiza- tion of spirit, and many content themselves with a higher form of mere animal existence) the expression of man’s spiritual nature in its conflict with the Opposing principles of a lower form of life. From this point of view, man has, or ought to have, freedom, 4 50 Enigma Vite. in the sense of the self-regulation and self-determin- ation of his own actions and character to this extent: that he is, in large measure, responsible for what he is and what he does. These two views of man’s nature are not to be regarded, however, as wholly apart ; for, whatever he — is in the highest aspect, man is not apart from, or independent of, nature. All that science can tell him of nature, her history, forces, and laws, must be welcome to him, as being, in a profound sense, the history of his own nature. And yet, there is that in man which we find nowhere else-in nature, which is superior to nature, and to which all nature must look as its key and its completion. Man alone is an Ego: and in this there is an essential distinction from the rest of nature. The Ego is the fundamental element of all that is knowable. Thought seeks the permanent and self-existent, amid the ever-changing phenomena of the universe ; and it is, in this quest, led onwards to the Ego. Everything else, so far as it can be distinguished from the Ego, is its manifestation, and exists for it. Everything else is determined by an Ego ; that is, determined not by itself. Man alone, of all things in nature, is in any true sense self- determined. Man alone can attain to what may truly be termed freedom. Whatever freedom man has, it is not without its analogies and indications in lower nature. If freedom be provisionally defined as a power of self-realization, What am I? Answer of Physical Science. 51 SoBe aciicen rae np on aS undetermined from without, then we find it 2x a certain sense in the lower creation. The plant has a mys- terious power of self-adaptation to surrounding cir- cumstances ; whereby, giving itself up to them, by lending, as it were, its own nature to them, and getting from them in turn what it can adopt as part of its own structure, it maintains its form and nature in the midst of change. We see in the case of the plant how harmonious is its relation to the laws of the universe ; and we admire the result in its beauty and symmetry and perfect adaptation to its position. But when we bestow our tribute of admiration upon it, is it the plant itself that we praise when we consider that its beauty is the result of its conformity to law ? No; for we knowéthat, whatever the nature of the power within the plant, which we term life, it is not really self-originating or self-determining : it has no self, no Ego. Only in so far as any being has the _ power of intelligent self-determination is he respon- sible, and subject to praise or blame. The essential point in regard to the nature of the Ego is that his acts be, in a real sense, his own ; so that they are referable to him as their originating source, and that he is really responsible for them. The essential point in regard to freedom of will is, that one is not bound to any act, or course of action, except by his own true nature intelligently deter- mining it. There is an endless possibility of scholastic subtle LP teu Enigma Vite. ties when we approach the question of freewill and contingency ; and this is complicated by the strange complexity, and even contradiction, which we shall see is bound up in man’s nature. Contingency, or uncertainty, has appeared to many to belong to the very essence of all free actions. If will is perfectly free in regard to any course of action, then, it has been argued, its act of volition, in choosing one in opposition to another course, must be perfectly un- certain beforehand, even to an omniscient mind. For, if it can be foreseen what course of action he would choose, then that action was determined beforehand, and he was not free. This reasoning would make the holiest beings the least free, and it would identify freedom of will with weakness, or caprice of will. It is in a weak nature that there is the greatest uncertainty in regard to the line of action it will in any case follow. But, though some act of will on the part of a rational being may, in some particular case, be certainly determined by his nature, it may be no less free on that account; the essential point being if it was the intelligent act of his own nature, and undetermined from without. But empirical science declares that this only the more surely stamps all human action as necessitated. Man’s nature, it'is held, is determined by the necessary laws of matter; and his nature mechani- cally, however subtly, determines the action, and therefore responsibility and self-determination are What am I? Answer of Physical Science. 53 precluded. Here we are dealing with the Ego, as placed in ordinarily favourable circumstances: in which case, though, in one aspect, the acts are determined by the nature—an exceedingly complex fact, we shall see—yet, in a prior aspect, the higher nature is determined by will. In its most essential elements, the nature is determined by the Ego itself, We come upon this earthly stage unformed, with our true self to choose and determine, and with only the raw material of many possible natures given tous. We will our actual selves into being ; and, whatever our ultimate character and destiny, we are ourselves responsible for them. How do we prove this? On the warrant of consciousness which claims the power of choice, and testifies to responsibility. This is far, however, from saying that each man, at any stage of his life, is free; for freedom of will is only his who asserts his true or higher nature, and determines his actions by its laws. That man is a slave who wills against the law of his real, or higher, nature; and so far as men do this, they come into bondage. CHARTER VE, LHE EGO HOW FAR SELF-DETERMINING ? Case great object set before every wayfarer through this world, and the most important work he actually does, is to make and shape himself : to determine by acts of will what his character and destiny shall be. He is put on a platform where it is possible to accomplish this task ; and, therefore, there is in his nature from the first two aspects, or spheres,—the one necessitated, or determined Jor him ; the other free, or determined by himself. It was necessary that many of the elements of man’s being should be determined for him ; though Aizmself was to be determined only by his own will. There is a large part of our nature independent of our own will, such as the physical frame, Stature, growth ; along with many of the animal functions,—the beating of the heart, the formation of the brain, as well as the bent and range of the intellectual powers. The influence of our acts of will upon these is less direct ; but over the sphere of man’s spirit,—that is, his true nature,—will presides and acts directly. In this sphere Lhe Ego how far Self Determining ? isis his nature is in process of becoming; and as all physical life stands at the point of encounter between opposing forces,—alien and destructive forces from without warring with the constructive forces within, —so is it with man’s true nature. It lies at the meeting-point of contending forces; so that, when it is affirmed that all human action is essentially related to the nature, we have still to ask, Where is man’s nature, and how does it originate ? All human action is a revelation of the man ; and, if his nature were a purely simple and uniform thing, this definition of freedom would be perfectly satisfactory—the power to develop himself according to the law of his being. But man’s nature is a complex unity. Bound up in a single personality there may be several natures; or the potentiality of acting according to the principles of very opposite characters. The assertion that will always follows the nature, or that every human action is the neces- sitated result of the strongest motive, is too simple a solution of the matter. For, there may be two natures, with either of which the Ego may identify itself, in some particular instance, when it is necessary to act; and, among a certain set of motives, one is the strongest to the higher nature, and another to the lower nature. Here, it is objected, that it is still a matter of mechanical necessity ; since the action will follow according to whether the higher or lower nature is the stronger. Our court of 56