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Part III
Part III
From this stunning hubbub, a true Babel-like confusion of tongues, we
have here selected two Voices; less as objects of praise or condemnation, than
as signs how far the confusion has reached, what prospect there is of its
abating. Friedrich Schlegel`s Lectures delivered at Dresden, and Mr. Hope`s
Essay published in London, are the latest utterances of European Speculation:
far asunder in external place, they stand at a still wider distance in inward
purport; are, indeed, so opposite and yet so cognate that they may, in many
senses, represent the two Extremes of our whole modern system of Thought; and
be said to include between them all the Metaphysical Philosophies, so often
alluded to here, which, of late times, from France, Germany, England, have
agitated and almost overwhelmed us. Both in regard to matter and to form, the
relation of these two Works is significant enough.
Speaking first of their cognate qualities, let us remark, not without
emotion, one quite extraneous point of agreement; the fact that the Writers of
both have departed from this world; they have now finished their search, and
had all doubts resolved: while we listen to the voice, the tongue that uttered
it has gone silent forever. But the fundamental, all-pervading similarity lies
in this circumstance, well worthy of being noted, that both these Philosophies
are of the Dogmatic or Constructive sort: each in its way is a kind of
Genesis; an endeavour to bring the Phenomena of man`s Universe once more under
some theoretic Scheme: in both there is a decided principle of unity; they
strive after a result which shall be positive; their aim is not to question,
but to establish. This, especially if we consider with what comprehensive
concentrated force it is here exhibited, forms a new feature in such works.
Under all other aspects, there is the most irreconcilable opposition; a
staring contrariety, such as might provoke contrasts, were there far fewer
points of comparison. If Schlegel`s Work is the apotheosis of Spiritualism;
Hope`s again is the apotheosis of Materialism: in the one, all Matter is
evaporated into a Phenomenon, and terrestrial Life itself, with its whole
doings and showings, held out as a Disturbance (Zerruttung) produced by the
Zeitgeist (Spirit of Time); in the other, Matter is distilled and sublimated
into some semblance of Divinity: the one regards Space and Time as mere forms
of man`s mind, and without external existence or reality; the other supposes
Space and Time to be `incessantly created,` and rayed-in upon us like a sort
of gravitation.` Such is their difference in respect of purport: no less
striking is it in respect of manner, talent, success and all outward
characteristics. Thus, if in Schlegel we have to admire the power of Words, in
Hope we stand astonished, it might almost be said, at the want of an
articulate Language. To Schlegel his Philosophic Speech is obedient,
dexterous, exact, like a promptly ministering genius; his names are so clear,
so precise and vivid, that they almost (sometimes altogether) become things
for him: with Hope there is no Philosophical Speech; but a painful, confused
stammering, and struggling after such; or the tongue, as in doatish
forgetfulness, maunders, low, long-winded, and speaks not the word intended,
but another; so that here the scarcely intelligible, in these endless
convolutions, becomes the wholly unreadable; and often we could ask, as that
mad pupil did of his tutor in Philosophy, "But whether is Virtue a fluid,
then, or a gas?" If the fact, that Schlegel, in the city of Dresden, could
find audience for such high discourse, may excite our envy; this other fact,
that a person of strong powers, skilled in English Thought and master of its
Dialect, could write the Origin an Prospects of Man, may painfully remind us
of the reproach, that England has now no language for Meditation; that
England, the most calculative, is the least meditative, of all civilised
countries.
It is not our purpose to offer any criticism of Schlegel`s Book; in such
limits as were possible here, we should despair of communicating even the
faintest image of its significance. To the mass of readers, indeed, both among
the Germans themselves, and still more elsewhere, it nowise addresses itself,
and may lie forever sealed. We point it out as a remarkable document of the
Time and of the Man; can recommend it, moreover, to all earnest Thinkers, as a
work deserving their best regard; a work full of deep meditation, wherein the
infinite mystery of Life, if not represented, is decisively recognised. Of
Schlegel himself, and his character, and spiritual history, we can profess no
thorough or final understanding; yet enough to make us view him with
admiration and pity, nowise with harsh contemptuous censure; and must say,
with clearest persuasion, that the outcry of his being `a renegade,` and so
forth, is but like other such outcries, a judgment where there was neither
jury, nor evidence, nor judge. The candid reader, in this Book itself, to say
nothing of all the rest, will find traces of a high, far-seeing, earnest
spirit, to whom `Austrian Pensions,` and the Kaiser`s crown, and Austria
altogether, were but a light matter to the finding and vitally appropriating
of Truth. Let us respect the sacred mystery of a Person; rush not irreverently
into man`s Holy of Holies! Were the lost little one, as we said already, found
`sucking its dead mother, on the field of carnage,` could it be other than a
spectacle for tears? A solemn mournful feeling comes over us when we see this
last Work of Friedrich Schlegel, the unwearied seeker, end abruptly in the
middle; and, as if he had not yet found, as if emblematically of much, end
with an `Aber-,` with a `But-`! This was the last word that came from the Pen
of Friedrich Schlegel: about eleven at night he wrote it down, and there
paused sick; at one in the morning, Time for him had merged itself in
Eternity; he was, as we say, no more.
Still less can we attempt any criticism of Mr. Hope`s new Book of
Genesis. Indeed, under any circumstances, criticism of it were now impossible.
Such an utterance could only be responded to in peals of laughter; and
laughter sounds hollow and hideous through the vaults of the dead. Of this
monstrous Anomaly, where all sciences are heaped and huddled together, and the
principles of all are, with a childlike innocence, plied hither and thither,
or wholly abolished in case of need; where the First Cause is figured as a
huge Circle, with nothing to do but radiate `gravitation` towards its centre;
and so construct a Universe, wherein all, from the lowest cucumber with its
coolness, up to the highest seraph with his love, were but `gravitation,`
direct or reflex, `in more or less central globes,` - what can we say, except,
with sorrow and shame, that it could have originated nowhere save in England?
It is a general agglomerate of all facts, notions, whims and observations, as
they lie in the brain of an English gentleman; as an English gentleman, of
unusual thinking power, is led to fashion them, in his schools and in his
world: all these thrown into the crucible, and if not fused, yet soldered or
conglutinated with boundless patience; and now tumbled out here,
heterogeneous, amorphous, unspeakable, a world`s wonder. Most melancholy must
we name the whole business; full of long-continued thought, earnestness,
loftiness of mind; not without glances into the Deepest, a constant fearless
endeavour after truth; and with all this nothing accomplished, but the perhaps
absurdest Book written in our century by a thinking man. A shameful Abortion;
which, however, need not now be smothered or mangled, for it is already dead;
only, in our love and sorrowing reverence for the writer of Anastasius, and
the heroic seeker of Light, though not bringer thereof, let it be buried and
forgotten.
For ourselves, the loud discord which jars in these two Works, in
innumerable works of the like import, and generally in all the Thought and
Action of this period, does not any longer utterly confuse us. Unhappy who, in
such a time, felt not, at all conjunctures, ineradicably in his heart the
knowledge that a God made this Universe, and a Demon not! And shall Evil
always pros,er then? Out of all Evil comes Good? and no Good that is possible
but shall one day be real. Deep and sad as is our feeling that we stand yet in
the bodeful Night; equally deep, indestructible is our assurance that the
Morning also will not fail. Nay, already, as we look round, streaks of a
dayspring are in the east; it is dawning; when the time shall be fulfilled, it
will be day. The progress of man towards higher and nobler developments of
whatever is highest and noblest in him, lies not only prophesied to Faith, but
now written to the eye of Observation, so that he who runs may read.
One great step of progress, for example, we should say, in actual
circumstances, was this same; the clear ascertainment that we are in progress.
About the grand Course of Providence, and his final Purposes with us, we can
know nothing, or almost nothing: man begins in darkness, ends in darkness:
mystery is everywhere around us and in us, under our feet, among our hands.
Nevertheless so much has become evident to every one, that this wondrous
Mankind is advancing somewhither; that at least all human things are, have
been and forever will be, in Movement and Change; - as, indeed, for beings
that exist in Time, by virtue of Time, and are made of Time, might have been
long since understood. In some provinces, it is true, as in Experimental
Science, this discovery is an old one; but in most others it belongs wholly to
these latter days. How often, in former ages, by eternal Creeds, eternal Forms
of Government and the like, has it been attempted, fiercely enough, and with
destructive violence, to chain the Future under the Past; and say to the
Providence, whose ways with man are mysterious, and through the great deep:
Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther! A wholly insane attempt; and for man
himself, could it prosper, the frightfulest of all enchantments, a very
Life-in-Death. Man`s task here below, the destiny of every individual man, is
to be in turns Apprentice and Workman; or say rather, Scholar, Teacher,
Discoverer: by nature he has a strength for learning, for imitating; but also
a strength for acting, for knowing on his own account. Are we not in a world
seen to be Infinite; the relations lying closest together modified by those
latest discovered and lying farthest asunder? Could you ever spell-bind man
into a Scholar merely, so that he had nothing to discover, to correct; could
you ever establish a Theory of the Universe that were entire, unimprovable,
and which needed only to be got by heart; man then were spiritually defunct,
the Species we now name Man had ceased to exist. But the gods, kinder to us
than we are to ourselves, have forbidden such suicidal acts. As Phlogiston is
displaced by Oxygen, and the Epicycles of Ptolemy by the Ellipses of Kepler;
so does Paganism give place to Catholicism, Tyranny to Monarchy, and Feudalism
to Representative Government, - where also the process does not stop.
Perfection of Practice, like completeness of Opinion, is always approaching,
never arrived; Truth, in the words of Schiller, immer wird, nie ist; never is,
always is a - being.
Sad, truly, were our condition did we know but this, that Change is
universal and inevitable. Launched into a dark shoreless sea of Pyrrhonism,
what would remain for us but to sail aimless, hopeless; or make madly merry,
while the devouring Death had not yet ingulfed us? As indeed, we have seen
many, and still see many do. Nevertheless so stands it not. The venerator of
the Past (and to what pure heart is the Past, in that `moonlight of memory,`
other than sad and holy?) sorrows not over its departure, as one utterly
bereaved. The true Past departs not, nothing that was worthy in the Past
departs; no Truth of Goodness realised by man ever dies, or can die; but is
all still here, and, recognised or not, lives and works through endless
changes. If all things, to speak in the German dialect, are discerned by us,
and exist for us, in an element of Time, and therefore of Mortality and
Mutability; yet Time itself reposes on Eternity: the truly Great and
Transcendental has its basis and substance in Eternity; stands revealed to us
as Eternity in a vesture of Time. Thus in all Poetry, Worship, Art, Society,
as one form passes into another, nothing is lost; it is but the superficial,
as it were the body only, that grows obsolete and dies; under the mortal body
lies a soul which is immortal; which anew incarnates itself in fairer
revelation; and the Present is the living sum-total of the whole Past.
In Change, therefore, there is nothing terrible, nothing supernatural: on
the contrary, it lies in the very essence of our lot and life in this world.
Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our Works and Thoughts,
if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change,
indeed, is painful; yet ever needful; and if Memory have its force and worth,
so also has Hope. Nay, if we look well to it, what is all Derangement, and
necessity of great Change, in itself such an evil, but the product simply of
increased resources which the old methods can no longer administer; of new
wealth which the old coffers will no longer contain? What is it, for example,
that in our own day bursts asunder the bonds of ancient Political Systems, and
perplexes all Europe with the fear of Change, but even this: the increase of
social resources, which the old social methods will no longer sufficiently
administer? The new omnipotence of the Steam-engine is hewing asunder quite
other mountains than the physical. Have not our economical distresses, those
barnyard Conflagrations themselves, the frightfulest madness of our mad epoch,
their rise also in what is a real increase: increase of Men; of human Force;
properly, in such a Planet as ours, the most precious of all increases? It is
true again, the ancient methods of administration will no longer suffice. Must
the indomitable millions, full of old Saxon energy and fire, lie cooped-up in
this Western Nook, choking one another, as in a Blackhole of Calcutta, while a
whole fertile untenanted Earth, desolate for want of the ploughshare, cries:
Come and till me, come and reap me? If the ancient Captains can no longer
yield guidance, new must be sought after: for the difficulty lies not in
nature, but in artifice; the European Calcutta-Blackhole has no walls but air
ones and paper ones. - So too, Scepticism itself, with its innumerable
mischiefs, what is it but the sour fruit of a most blessed increase, that of
Knowledge; a fruit too that will not always continue sour?
In fact, much as we have said and mourned about the unproductive
prevalence of Metaphysics, it was not without some insight into the use that
lies in them. Metaphysical Speculation, if a necessary evil, is the forerunner
of much good. The fever of Scepticism must needs burn itself out, and burn out
thereby the Impurities that caused it; then again will there be clearness,
health. The principle of life, which now struggles painfully, in the outer,
thin and barren domain of the Conscious of Mechanical, may then withdraw into
its inner sanctuaries, its abysses of mystery and miracle; withdraw deeper
than ever into that domain of the Unconscious, by nature infinite and
inexhaustible; and creatively work there. From that mystic region, and from
that alone, all wonders, all Poesies, and Religions, and Social Systems have
proceeded: the like wonders, and greater and higher, lie slumbering there;
and, brooded on by the spirit of the waters, will evolve themselves, and rise
like exhalations from the Deep.
Of our Modern Metaphysics, accordingly, may not this already be said,
that if they have produced no Affirmation, they have destroyed much Negation?
It is a disease expelling a disease: the fire of Doubt, as above hinted,
consuming away the Doubtful; that so the Certain come to light, and again lie
visible on the surface. English or French Metaphysics, in reference to this
last stage of the speculative process, are not what we allude to here; but
only the Metaphysics of the Germans. In France or England, since the days of
Diderot and Hume, though all thought has been of a scepticometaphysical
texture, so far as there was any Thought, we have seen no Metaphysics; but
only more or less ineffectual questionings whether such could be. In the
Pyrrhonism of Hume and the Materialism of Diderot, Logic had, as it were,
overshot itself, overset itself. Now, though the athlete, to use our old
figure, cannot, by much lifting, lift up his own body, he may shift it out of
a laming posture, and get to stand in a free one. Such a service have German
Metaphysics done for man`s mind. The second sickness of Speculation has
abolished both itself and the first. Friedrich Schlegel complains much of the
fruitlessness, the tumult and transiency of German as of all Metaphysics; and
with reason. Yet in that widespreading, deep-whirling vortex of Kantism, so
soon metamorphosed into Fichteism, Schellingism, and then as Hegelism, and
Cousinism, perhaps finally evaporated, is not this issue visible enough, That
Pyrrhonism and Materialism, themselves necessary phenomena in European
culture, have disappeared; and a Faith in Religion has again become possible
and inevitable for the scientific mind; and the word Free-thinker no longer
means the Denier of Caviller, but the Believer, or the Ready to believe? Nay,
in the higher Literature of Germany, there already lies, for him that can read
it, the beginning of a new revelation of the Godlike; as yet unrecognised by
the mass of the world; but waiting there for recognition, and sure to find it
when the fit hour comes. This age also is not wholly without its Prophets.
Again, under another aspect, if Utilitarianism, or Radicalism, or the
Mechanical Philosophy, or by whatever name it is called, has still its long
task to do; nevertheless we can now see through it and beyond it: in the
better heads, even among us English, it has become obsolete; as in other
countries, it has been, in such heads, for some forty or even fifty years.
What sound mind among the French, for example, now fancies that men can be
governed by `Constitutions`; by the never so cunning mechanising of
Self-interests, and all conceivable adjustments of checking and balancing; in
a word, by the best possible solution of this quite insoluble and impossible
problem, Given a world of Knaves, to produce an Honesty from their united
action? Were not experiments enough of this kind tried before all Europe, and
found wanting, when, in that doomsday of France, the infinite gulf of human
Passion shivered asunder the thin rinds of Habit; and burst forth
all-devouring, as in seas of Nether Fire? Which cunningly-devised
`Constitution,` constitutional, republican, democratic, sansculottic, could
bind that raging chasm together? Were they not all burnt up, like paper as
they were, in its molten eddies; and still the fire-sea raged fiercer than
before? It is not by Mechanism, but by Religion; not by Self-interest, but by
Loyalty, that men are governed or governable.
Remarkable it is, truly, how everywhere the eternal fact begins again to
be recognised, that there is a Godlike in human affairs; that God not only
made us and beholds us, but is in us and around us; that the Age of Miracles,
as it ever was, now is. Such recognition we discern on all hands and in all
countries: in each country after its own fashion. In France, among the younger
nobler minds, strangely enough; where, in their loud contention with the
Actual and Conscious, the Ideal or Unconscious is, for the time, without
exponent; where Religion means not the parent of Polity, as of all that is
highest, but Polity itself; and this and the other earnest man has not been
wanting, who could audibly whisper to himself: `Go to, I will make a
religion.` In England still more strangely; as in all things, worthy England
will have its way: by the shrieking of hysterical women, casting out of
devils, and other `gifts of the Holy Ghost.` Well might Jean Paul say, in this
his twelfth hour of the Night, `the living dream`; well might he say, `the
dead walk.` Meanwhile let us rejoice rather that so much has been seen into,
were it through never so diffracting media, and never so madly distorted; that
in all dialects, though but half-articulately, this high Gospel begins to be
preached: Man is still Man. The genius of Mechanism, as was once before
predicted, will not always sit like a choking incubus on our soul; but at
length, when by a new magic Word the old spell is broken, become our slave,
and as familiar-spirit do all our bidding. `We are near awakening when we
dream that we dream.`
He that has an eye and a heart can even now say: Why should I falter?
Light has come into the world; to such as love Light, so as Light must be
loved, with a boundless all-doing, all-enduring love. For the rest, let that
vain struggle to read the mystery of the Infinite cease to harass us. It is a
mystery which, through all ages, we shall only read here a line of, there
another line of. Do we not already know that the name of the Infinite is Good,
is God? Here on Earth we are Soldiers, fighting in a foreign land; that
understand not the plan of the campaign, and have no need to understand it;
seeing well what is at our hand to be done. Let us do it like Soldiers; with
submission, with courage, with a heroic joy. `Whatsoever thy hand findeth to
do, do it with all thy might.` Behind us, behind each one of us, lie Six
Thousand Years of human effort, human conquest: before us is the boundless
Time, with its as yet uncreated and unconquered Continents and Eldorados,
which we, even we, have to conquer, to create; and from the bosom of Eternity
there shine for us celestial guiding stars.
`My inheritance how wide and fair!
Time is my fair seed-field, of Time I`m heir.`
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