SWEDENBORG AND MODERN IDEALISM Please handle this volume with care. The University of Connecticut Libraries, Storrs SWEDKXBOIKI AND MODEKN II)EALIS:\I SWEDENBORG AND MODEEN IDEALISM ^ Eftrospcct of Pfjil00op]^2 FROM KANT TO THE PRESENT TIjME By frank SEWALL, M.A. AUIHOR OF "the NEW METAPHYSICS; OR, THE LAW OF END, CAUSE, AND EFFECT ; " " THE ETHICS OF SERVICE ; " " DANTE AND SWEDENBORG," ETC. ^^ Nunc licet intrarc intelhctualiter in mysteria ficlei" JAMES SPEIRS 1 BLOOMSBURY STREET, LONDON 1902 NOTICE. /~\r the following Essays, the First, Fifth, and ^-^ Seventh were read before the " Society for Philosophical Incjuiry " in Washington, D.C, U.S.A.; the Fourth, Eighth, Mnth, Twelfth, and Thirteenth have appeared in the New Church Hevietu ; the Tenth and Eleventh, in the Neio World Quarterly Ecvieiu ; the First, Third, and Sixth have been written expressly for this volume. Although appearing at intervals and in different sources, the first nine Essays all treat, progressively and in a contemplated order, of the theme named in the title of the book. FPtANK SEWALL. Washington, D.C, U.S.A. CONTENTS. PAOE I. SWEDENBORG AND MODERN IDEALISM, . . 1 II. SwEDENBORG AND ArISTOTLE, . . .11 III. Descartes and Leibnitz: how sar they are Reflected in Swedenborg's Philosophy, 35 IV. SWEDEXBORG AND KaNT ON CoGNITION, . 59 Y. Jacobi and THE Reason of Belief, . .100 VI. Progressive Phases of Idealism from Kant to Lotze (Illustrative Xotes), . Ill VII. Emerson and Swedenborg, . . .1-17 VIII. Bradley on "Appearance and Reality," 170 IX. Professor William James on the " Worth of Living," 176 MISCELLAXEOUS ESSAYS. X. Philosophy as Affected by Xationality, 1S5 XL John Addington Symonds, . . . 1^02 XII. Utility and Beauty : or, " Art for Art's Sake," in the Light of the Doctrine of Discrete Degrees, and of Ka>vt's Doctrine of "Free and Adherent Beauty," 226 XIII. Progress in the Djctrixe of Final Causes, 235 SWEDEXBORG AND MODERX IDEALISM. I USE the word Idealism in its broadest sense, meaning thereby the opposite of Materialism ; and my purpose in this and the following essays is to point out a trend in philosophic thought, from Descartes and Leibnitz down to our own time, toward the acceptance by the human reason, in its freest exercise, of those principles regarding the reality of spirit and the economy of the spiritual universe which Swedenborg announced in his Arcana of the Holy Scriptures and his tieatises on the Angelic Wisdom, and which on their physical side he also anticipated in his Princijna Renim Naturalium, his works De Regno Animali, including the posthumous publications, De Cerehro and De Anima. While a direct influence of Swedenborg upon the sources of modern philosophy, notably on Kant in Germany, "*' on Carlyle and Coleridge in England, and Emerson and the New England Transcendentalists in America, is not to be denied, nevertheless it is to Swedenborg, not so much as a formative factor in the past, as a critical and corrective standard for the philosophy of the present and of future time, that I desire in these essays to call attention. I can compare this inner, and to a large extent hidden, * See the Essay on Kant which follows. A 2 SWEDENBORG AND relation of Swedenborg's system to the science and philosophy that is l3eing developed under the free intel- lectual atmosphere of the present age, only to a kind of prophecy awaiting its fulfilment, or a seed slumbering in the darkness of the earth awaiting the conditions favour- able to its bursting into light and growth before the eyes of men. History affords abundant analogies of this wait- ing of truth, while the world prepares itself for its better reception. There can be no doubt that a certain intel- lectual preparation for Christianity was going on in the lofty idealism of the Greek philosophy during the four centuries before the Incarnation of the Word. \ There was what Swedenborg would call a birth of the spiritual- rational principle in the human mind, caused by the hidden descent of the Divine into truths freely acquired by sensuous experience, science, and reflection. ) The philosoi^hic speculations of the Greeks about God, the soul, and immortality, were eminently free from dogmatic bias of any kind. It was in their freedom alone that that rationality could be developed which was to be the cradle of the Christian faith. / We may without any irreverence say that the manger in which ths Church was born, was none other than that at which the winged Pegasus had been fed. ) The stress that Swedenborg lays upon the free development of the reason as a condition to the real appropriation of spiritual truth, is so well known to the student of his philosophy as to make un- necessary any argument on this point."^ ISTo better illus- * Students of the Arcana will find the interpretation of the Divine allegories of Abraham and Sarah in the land of Abimelech (Genesis xx.-xxi.) a wonderful illustration of this jirinciple. MODERN IDEALISM, 3 tration of the principle could be found than that which is offered in the experience of Swedenborg himself in passing from the career of scientist and philosopher to that of theologian and seer. Nowhere in history is to be found a more concrete example of the preparation of a mind for the free accept- ance of spiritual truth on the basis of rational thought. Swedenborg illustrates by the parable of the fisherman turned apostle ("Intercourse of Soul and Body," No. 20) his own conversion from a philosopher into a theologian. For those very truths of Xature which he says are " to be first learned in order that a man may teach spiritual truths in a rational manner " were truths gathered by him from the free scientific researches of the scholars of his own and of past times, systematized by the rational powers of his own mind, without a claim on his part to any supernatural authority. The part assigned by Swedenborg to the rational faculty itself, owing both to its freedom from all bias, and to its mediatorial relation to natural truth on the one hand, and to spiritual truth on the other, is what I here claim to find illustrated in the course of modern idealistic thought, and in the striking results attained at the present day, wherein we see science brought of her own accord to the acceptance of truths that no ages of dogmatic teaching could have induced, and the thinking world placed in an attitude toward a real spirituality and a real theology such as, without the free evolution of rational thought, would never have been attained. It is in this attitude of the modern reason toward spiritual truth, and therefore towards Eevelation itself, that I would humbly recognize the operation of a Divine 4 SWEDENBORG AND Providence, and the highest possible witness to the truth, and to the prophetic character, of Swedenborg's teaching. While Kevelation to bo revelation, and as such to accom- plish its saving mission with man's spirit, must be seen to be Divine, and accepted with absolute submission to its authority, yet the office of the reason in the process of this acceptance, and still more in the utilizing of the Divine light itself, cannot be ignored ; and no one in ancient or modern times has so emphasized the supreme value of these gifts of freedom and rationality in men's spiritual development as has Swedenborg. Some of the chief doctrines of Swedenborg, to whose acceptance by modern science I would call attention, are the following : The evolution of the universe from motions in the Infinite, as taught in the Principia. The doctrine of Tremulations. An all-pervading Ether. Light, sound, and colour as etherial and aerial vibrations. The three atmospheres — Aura, Ether, and Air. The three discrete degrees — end, cause, and effect. The exhibition and operation of these degrees not only in the trinal nature of God, as Love, Wisdom, and Work, but equally in the trinal composition of the sun's ray, the tiinal structure, whether of the atmosphere, of the spiritual or terrestrial heavens, of the mind of man, or of the kingdom of Nature. The relation of these discrete degrees of heaven, sj^irit, and nature by correspondence. MODERN IDEALISM. 5 The teleology of Will, the causality of Spirit, and the effectediiess of matter. Nature as the phenomenal reflection of a real spiritual world. The ultimate terms of natural science, such as atom, force, mass, space, and time, as being symbols of realities rather than the reality themselves. The ready acceptance by modern science of ideas such as these, on the authority of reason, and as the result of honest research in the plane of Nature, is, I believe, a far mightier corroboration of Swedenborg's entire system than would have been any immediate acceptance of these prophetic truths while science itself was still slumbering in its cradle, and while the mind of man had not as yet entered into freedom of thinking about spiritual things {L.J. 73), and had not began to conceive of the vastness of meaning in the legend of Swedenborg's vision — Nunc licet intellectualiter intrare in mysteria fidei. To enter into the mysteries of faith under the lead of Swedenborg as guide, thus in an intellectual pupilage, would have been simply to repeat the experience of discipleship in schools upon schools in ages gone by, even that of the disciples of our Lord, who were themselves informed that one day they would know the truth, and the truth should make them free. But to enter intellectualiter — with the understanding and its free rational assent — into these same arcana of celestial truth is the entrance which Swedenborg persists will be that of the Churchman of the future — of the citizen of the holy Jerusalem which descends from God out of heaven. If it is true, as Swedenborg declares, that the science of Correspondence was known to the ancients, and has been withheld from 6 SWEDENBORG AND the world all these ages until the time should come when men were sufficiently advanced out of the simplicity of their pupilage to rationally grasp it, how can we avoid the conclusion that for the same Providential reason the wider publication of Swedenborg's celestial philosophy has been withheld until that stage was reached in man's free intellectual development when the mind could lay hold with living intelligence and interest on these funda- mental questions about the nature of matter and spirit, and their relation, and about the foundation of the ethical principle, the immortality of man, the purpose of life, and the way in Avhich God makes Himself known to man. The whole teaching of Swedenborg in regard to the free- dom of the intellect as a witness to the truth, is exactly in accord with the trend of the world toward a free rational acceptance of a true philosophy, the germs of which are found in the heavenly wisdom revealed to Swedenborg, but were kept sacredly away from man's profaning knowledge until they could be freely, because rationally, accepted. I confess to a feeling of the inadequacy of my definition of Idealism as merely the "opposite of Materialism," when one considers how far from an agreement the world is to-day as to what the term "Materialism" actually means. Since Herbert Spencer has admitted " that force or energy in the sense which a mechanical theory demands cannot be that Ultimate Cause whence all things proceed," and "that there is as much cause for calling it spiritual as for calling it material," and since Lord Kelvin finds the ultimate particle of matter to consist in a " unit of vortical motion in a frictionless medium," to which we can find nothing so analogous as Swedenborg's first ens, MODERN IDEALISM. 7 consisting of a " conatnis of motion in the infinite " (Prin- cipia^ Chap. I.), we hesitate to assume that Materialism is any longer the gross conception which it once was. At the same time I recognize in the Idealism of which we desire to treat, something widely remote from the shadowy fiction of the imagination which it has generally been held to be. • The conception of matter has become so idealized, and that of idea so actualized, in the minds of enlightened thinkers of all schools in these days, that it may seem a hazardous task to determine where Material- ism ends and where Idealism begins.l But my motive in calling Idealism simply the opposite of Materialism was to differentiate between Idealism and the truths of Revelation, or those which we regard as embraced in spiritual Faith. In defining Idealism more precisely, I would say that it means belief in a self-active principle, which as will and idea is the object of a most immediate and absolute knowing in ourselves, and which is the only efficient cause of the activities and the changes we see in the objective world. Such Idealism is related to the truths of faith much as " spiritualism " is related to a spiritual life, and as psychology is related to soul culture. At the same time a true system of Idealism is so important to man's genuine scientific progress, as well as to his moral and spiritual well-being, that we should hesitate to depreciate its true value even as compared with that combination of truths and motives we call religion. A term which has been frequently used as synonymous with Idealism, and which is liable to be misunderstood in the same way, is " Transcendentalism." A very unreason- able prejudice which has been entertained regarding this phase of modern thought is doubtless the result of a mis- 8 SWEDENBORG AND conception of the true meaning of this term itself. As used by Kant, and as imported from him into England and New England, the term is of the highest practical value to all students of spiritual truth, and it is based on the very doctrine which most distinguishes Swedenborg's spiritual philosophy from all others — that of the discrete degree in truths themselves. The "transcendental" as employed by Kant means the primary in experience, or that which is essentially bound up with that mental process of which the knowledge of definite things is the result.* It may be defined as that distinctly rational faculty of the soul which enters into the mere sensuous experience, and makes this the possible subject of intelligent knowing. It means, therefore, something quite different from " transcendant," for which it is not unfrequently mis- taken. " Transcendant " may be applied to ideas which are so far above or remote from actual experience as to be no better than dreams or phantasies. " Transcendental " is rather that element of a prior universality, which, entering our experience of single facts, enables us to con- clude as to those things which lie beyond our experience. God, the soul, and moral freedom are knowledges that no experience of the senses teaches us. At the same time, it is the presence of these, as regulative ideas in all that we learn from the senses, which alone enables us to arrive at the higher i3lanes of human intelligence. They con- stitute what Swedenborg would call the light from the spiritual sun shining in man's mind, in distinction from the brute's, and making man capable of rationality and freedom. Transcendentalism, then, is Idealism made * Wenley's Outline Introzluctury to Kant's Critique of the Pure Reason, p. 27. Heniy Holt & Co., New York, 1897. MODERN IDEALISM. 9 practical, as it appeared in 1842. " Amid the downward tendency of things," wrote Emerson, " when every voice is raised for a new house, a new dress, or larger business, will you not tolerate one or two solitary voices in the land speaking for thoughts and principles Avhich shall be neither marketable nor perishable % " — words suggested, perhaps, by those of Archbishop Leighton, who, when his Westminster catechisers demanded, "Do you preach to the times?" answered, "May not one man preach to eternity?" "These senses," said its votaries, "give us representations of things, but what the things are they cannot tell. Every Materialist may become an Idealist, but an Idealist cannot become a Materialist. Mind is the only real thing. Is it not the power which makes tools of things actual ? " * In much the same way Idealism has been misunder- stood as meaning a system of idle fancies having no foundation in experience beyond that of dreams, whereas it truly stands for all that element, in our experience, which enables us to rise above the delusions of immediate sensation, and to see things in their broader and more universal relations. With that form of pure or technical " Idealism " which devotes itself to asserting the sole actuality of the idea and the non-existence of matter we shall in these essays have nothing to do. ( The existence of matter as a discrete degree of being, which our minds are created capable of feeling and seeing as objective, and distinctly nut ourselves, we are bound to admit, not only on the testimony of our experience, but as fundamental to the whole philosophy of a Divine creation.) But the * From a Lecture by Caroline H. Dall on Transcendentalism in New England. Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1897. lo SWEDENBORG AND IDEALISM. presence of the ideal in the material world, as its causative and formative force, is the principle we shall find illus- trated in the following studies, and whose crowning vindication, we believe, will be found in botli the philo- sophical and theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. In view of the above reflections it will be seen that it is not without reason that the essay on " Swedenborg and Aristotle " is given a place in a volume treating mainly of modern Idealism. For that kind of Idealism with which I would associate Swedenborg, could not be better illus- trated than by the relation of Aristotle to Plato, the father of Idealists, and by the prominence accorded by Swedenborg to Aristotle in calling him " the chief philo- sopher of the Gentiles." * The Idealism of Aristotle is that of Plato made actual. So in Swedenborg we see spiritual principles regarded not as abstractions, nor as constituting a world of abstractions, but as everywhere associated with substance, and so having an actual existence. It is, as Swedenborg says, "in ultimates that all power resides," and "in efi'ects that all ends and causes find their actualization." if The idea as immanent in Nature, and as clothing itself with successive planes of phenomenal existence, in which, and not apart from which, it is to be sought out and studied, is the character-mark of modern Idealism, and that which brings this into relation with Swedenborg. } What this relation is, and in what way the spiritual philosophy of Swedenborg can be brought as a corrective force, and at the same time as an inexhaustible stimulus to the scientific thought of the future, is what I have endea- voured in the following essays to point out. * Econ. Animal Kingdom, Vol. II. p. 240. IT. SWEDEXBOEG AND AEISTOTLE. IJS" a significant passage in his work on " Influx ; or, the Intercourse of the Soul and the Body," Swedenborg relates that he was once asked how it was that from a philosopher he became a theologian, and that he answered : " In the same way that fishermen became disciples and apostles ; " explaining that spiritually a fisherman is one who investigates and teaches natural truths, and afterwards spiritual truths in a rational manner. To investigate and teach spiritual truths in a rational manner, and to show that these rest on a basis of natural truth, would seem, therefore, to have been the distinguishing aim of Swedenborg's work, both as philosopher and theologian. To know on what basis of scientific investigation he built, and what was his organon or method of building, it is only necessary to glance at the wide range of his scientific and philosophical studies before his entrance upon his distinctly theological career. These studies fall into two main divisions which are generally designated as the Study of Nature and the Study of the Human Soul. Consciously or unconsciously Swedenborg was pursuing the path of knowledge which had been pursued by his great prototype among the ancients, Aristotle, a philosopher whom he honours with the title "Our 12 SWEDENBORG AND Philosopher " and "Chief Philosopher of the Gentiles;" a path not the less laid down in his own doctrine of the three planes of knowing — the natural, spiritual, and Divine ; or as he more specifically defines them — the knowledge of effects, the understanding of causes, and the wisdom of the end or of the good. The similarity of their investigations and their relation to the current thought of their times, suggests an inter- esting and fruitful comparison between Swedenborg and Aristotle, and one which should enable the student of Swedenborg to understand better than before in what sense he "lies vast abroad on his times" — to use Emerson's phrase — and on the ages of learning before him. As Aristotle, with his logical and scientific method, succeeded to and endeavoured to put to practical applica- tion the idealism of Plato, so after the speculative and ideal systems of Descartes and Leibnitz and Wolff came Swedenborg, not despising their efforts, but with his severely practical method, his reasoning from experience, attempting boldly to climb up the ladder of knowledges, a poderiori, up to higher and interior principles, from which he might descend into a true philosophy of nature and of man. Dr. James J. Garth Wilkinson calls Swedenborg the " Synthesis of Aristotle and Bacon." " In him are realized the ascending method of Bacon and the descending one of Aristotle, and being connected at either end, they form a legitimate and widening spiral, revolving from the senses to the mind and from the mind to the senses." (Introduction to Economy of the Animal KirKjdom.) Aristotle's divisions of knowledge are primarily into ARISTOTLE. 13 he Practical, Poetical, and Theoretical (Metaph. vi. 1). The Practical embraces Ethics and Politics, the Poetical, Technics and Esthetics. These may therefore be eliminated from the philosophy proper, or that which is designated as the " Theoretical " knowledges, and these are now divided into ''Physics, Mathematics, and "Theology" (Metaph. xi. 7), or "First Philosophy.'^ This last is also designated the Metaphysics, and its treatises culminate with that on Theology, or the dis- cussion of the nature of God, as the principle of all being, the first cause and the good (Metaph. xii. 6, 10). In another analysis Aristotle's divisions of knowledge still more resemble those of Swede nborg above given, namely, where, in " ISIetaphysics," 1, Aristotle distinguishes between the empirical learning, the theoretical, or that wherein skill or art is applied practically, and finally the highest, or wisdom, which is the "first philosophy," and which deals with the highest or ultimate reasons and causes of things ; for Swedenborg, in " Divine Love and Wisdom," No. 2, declaring that the essence of life is love, says that the first etfect of life is thought, and that thought may be more and more interior, and that that inmost thought which is truly the first effect of life is the perception of ends. The " knowledge of ends " constituting, therefore, that of the first motive of the principle of the world and the first cause, will come last and highest in the series of studies which progresses from the plane of experience, or from the " prior for us," upward to the " prior in nature." The Analytics or Logic of Aristotle is to be regarded as the Organon or method of rational thinking which is preliminary to all philosophic investigation. It was his 14 SWEDENBORG AND own study of the laws of reason preliminary to their application in science. The Logic therefore takes a first place in the chronological series of Aristotle's works. Of Aristotle's method Swedenborg remarks in a passage in the Spiritual Diary, No. 4446 : Aristotle formed his philosophical system in the natural order, that is, from the analysis of his own thought and similar things in himself which he so described. Thus he had first an idea of his own thought and formed a philo- sophical system in his own manner that he might describe, and, as it were, paint it to others. But his followers proceed in the inverse order, namely, from such scliolastic things as they call logic and metajihysics and philosophy in general onward to the acq^uisition of ideas concerning thought. But inasmuch as this is inverted order, they are casting themselves into stupidity or darkness concerning interior things, while Aristotle himself advanced into light. To seek for ideas con- cerning the interior of the mind from terms and such things, is to plunge into utter darkness. Hence it is that most men believe nothing concerning internal things, and the learned less than the unlearned. Tlie case is like that of speaking from thought, as compared with speaking from words. The former is genuine, the latter the inverted order. In this passage which contains an evident allusion to the schoolmen and the nominalist controversy, Sweden- borg clearly discriminates between Aristotle and the Aristotelians. It is in Aristotle himself that we find a striking and interesting analogy to the method and achievements of Swedenborg. As corresponding to the Organon of Aristotle we regard that which Dr. Wilkinson calls Swedenborg's own Organon, although its formal statement does not take chronologic precedence, namely, his " Doctrine of Forms, of Series, Order, Degrees, and Correspondence." This ARISTOTLE. 15 may be defined as " a method of raising experience up into a sphere of intelligence." Beginning with a wide observation of facts, Swedenborg, even during his student life at Upsala and afterward, devoted himself to mathematical, chemical, and other physical studies. These were published ' in a series of works which we may call pre-eminently the scientific division of his labours. They embrace the Chemistry, the Miscellaneous 01)servations, and finally the Principia, in which the whole elemental world of nature is sur- veyed. These works assume a place analogous to Aristotle's physics, especially to his mathematic and mechanical theories, as preliminary to the studies of life or of animated nature. The value and extent of these physical researches of Swedenborg I need not here dwell upon. Prof. Thomas French, the professor of physics in the University of Cincinnati, thus sums up the doctrines of modern science which are anticipated and more or less definitely inculcated in the Prijicipia, and published to the world some one hundred and fifty years ago (1734). These are : Tlie atomic theory ; the solar origin of the earth and her sister planets ; the undulatory theory of light ; the nebular hypothesis. [In this regard an article by Professor Holden, formerly of the United States Naval Observatory, in the North American Review, October, 1880, forcibly testifies to the validity of Swedenborg's claims.] That heat is a mode of moti(>n ; that magnetism and electricity are closely connected ; that electricity is a form of ethereal motion ; and that molecular forces are due to the action of an ethereal medium, (Three Addresses on Swedenborg, etc. New York. 20 Cooper Union. 1880.) To these midit be added Swedenborc{'s definition of i6 SWEDENBORG AND the first simple, or the natural point from which the world originates, and its existence from the infinite. For here we find the emphatic statement of fluxion and motion as constituting the origin of finite things {Prin- cipia, No. 24) ; and the motion defined as not inconsistent with the Infinite, but the Infinite as the causer and pro- ducer of it; and that this "purity and totality" of motion is to be regarded as at first internal state, conatus, or effort toward motion ; that in this pure and most per- fect motion are contained all those things, as well active and passive, which limit things finite, and continue to do so throughout all these series ; and finally a clear defini- tion of the molecular and molar motion of bodies. In this doctrine of motion as the origin of things Sweden- borg anticipates the most recent scientific theories of the constitution of matter, and at the same time carries us back to Aristotle's doctrine that the kinexU is the living principle in nature because the source of change, and that this originates in the pure energy of the First INIovcr {Physics, ii. 1). Also in Swedenborg's statement that "force and conatus, without motion in act or effect, is like something inert, passive, and dead, which by means of local motion or the transition of conatus into act be- comes active, living, and efiicient," we find that which is analogous to Aristotle's distinction between the jDotential and the actual in the First Mover (Metaph. xii. 6). But it is when we enter upon the great series of treatises published under the titles of the Economy of the Animal Kingdom (1740-1741), and the Animal Kingdom (1744-1745), that we come into lines of thought and study Avhich, alike in Aristotle and Sweden- borg, lead us to the deepest of all problems, the nature of ARISTOTLE, 17 the soul and its relation to the body and the natural world. In this great series the world is studied b}"- Swedenborg as a microcosm, and all nature is regarded as epitomized in the human anatomy as the realm in which the soul presides immediately in her own domain. This search for the soul we may regard as the one desire and aim of the entire series of Swedenborg's scientific and philosophical writings. This was, to know the nature of spirit and its relation to matter, or as the author often puts it, "a knowledge of the soul and of its intercourse with the body." If we regard the body in the sense of the larger body, the whole natural world or man's entire physical environment, and if we regard also the soul in the sense of the larger soul, or the whole spiritual world, the knowledge of the soul and its inter- course with the body becomes identical with that of the spiritual world and its relation to the natural world, a subject to which is devoted at last the descriptive portion of the author's theological writings. A comparion is here suggested between the subjects treated of by Aristotle in that series of his studies in which the psychology (;>er^7)^7/c^e.s) occurs and that series in Swedenborg of which the "De Anima," or the Rational Psychology, forms the close. In Aristotle we find four books on the " Parts of Animals ; " five on the "Generation of Animals;" treatises on the "Walking of Animals," on the "Motion of Animals," on the Nous or "Spirit;" three books on the "Soul," with added treatises on "Sense" and "The Sensitive;" on "Memory," on "Sleep," and "Dreams;" on "Length and Shortness of Life : or Youth and Old Age;" on " Life and Death," and on "Respiration." In Swedenborg we B i8 SWEDENBORG AND find in the Part First of tlic " Economy : " Chapters on the Blood, The Arteries and Veins, The Formation of the Chick in the Ei^g, The Arteries, Veins, and Rudi- ments of the Heart, The Circulation of the IMood in the Foetus, The Heart of the Turtle, The Arteries and Veins of the Heart and the Coronary Vessels, The Motion of the Adult Heart. In Part IT. : The ISIotion of the Brain and its Animation Coincid(jnt with the Respiration of the Lungs, The Cortical Substance of the Brain ; also an Introduction to Rational Psychology ; and a Chapter on the Human Soul. In the " Animal Kingdom " are discussed all the remaining parts and organs of the human body and also the Skin and the Sense of Touch, Organic Forms generally and the Sense of Taste. In the "De Anima," or the Rational Psychology, which forms the conclusion of the series, we find discussed in the First Part: The Senses; Intellect and Action; The Several Senses in Particular ; Perception, Imagination, Memory, and their Ideas. In Part II. : The Pure In- tellect ; The Human Intellect ; The Intercourse of the Soul and Body. In Part III. : The Affections ; The Lower Mind or Animus ; the Rational Mind or Mens ; the Spiritual Mind or Soul; and the Inter-relation of these. In Part IV. : Death ; The Immortality of the Soul and the States of Souls after Death; A Chapter Concerning the Divine Providence ; and a concluding chapter on The Universal Mathesis or Science, of Sciences, by which the author means a certain interior and innate intelligence in the soul itself which gives the knowing faculty to the lower planes of the mind and enables the mind to recognize certain things as truths, a priori^ and requiring and admitting of no demonstration. ARISTOTLE. 19 Swedenborg says, in the "Prologue to the Animal Kingdom," in which this entire range of subjects is outlined : From this summary may be seen that the end I proijose to myself is a knowledge of the soul. This my labours intend and to this they aim. For the soul resides and acts on the principles not only of the body but of the universal world, inasmuch as it is the supreme essence, form, substance, and force of the microcosm, and appoints, establishes, and governs the order thereof, of itself and by its own nature ; consequently it is in the sphere of truths. For these reasons the soul has engagi^d the profound attention of human minds since the infancy of philosophy, and still holds them in suspense, divi- sion, and perj)lexity. This has given rise to so many obscure guesses on the subject that all hope of discovery is nearly at an end. In order, therefore, to follow up the investigation and to solve the difficulty I have chosen to approach by the analytic way, and I think I am the first to take this course professedly. To this end I design to consider thoroughly the whole world or microcosm which the soul inhabits, for it is in vain to seek her anywhere but in her own kingdom. The body is her image, resemblance, and type ; she is the model, the idea, the head, that is the soul of the body ! But as it is impossible to leap from the organic physical and material world — the body, I mean — immediately to the soul, of which neither matter nor any of its adjuncts are predicable, for spirit is above the comprehensible modes of nature, hence it is necessary to lay down new ways of approach to her, in other words, to discover new doctrines for my guidance which are as my plans show : the Doctrines of Forms, of Order and Degrees, of Series and Society, of Communication and Influx, of Correspondence and Representation, and of Modification. In the introduction to "Rational Psychology" {Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Vol. II.), the Doctrine of Series and Degrees is defined as that doctrine which teaches the 20 SWEDENBORG AND mode observed by nature in the subordination and co-ordina- tion of tilings, and wliicli, in acting, she has prescribed for herself. Series are what successively and simultaneously com- prise things subordinate and co-ordinate ; degrees are distinct progressions ; so that there is nothing in the visible world which is not a series and in a series, and consequently the science of natural things depends on a distinct notion of series and degrees and of their subordination and co-ordination. It is in this language that Swedenborg anticipates that which afterwards becomes the great distinguishing feature of his philosophy and of his theology as well, when philosophically considered, namely, his doctrine of Dis- crete Degrees and of Correspondence. He was brought to a true appreciation of this doctrine, as we have seen, by his confronting the old problem — that which remains to-day the vexed question with so many — the question of dualism or monism ; the nature of the soul and of its intercourse with the body. Is this mechanical, and so all upon one plane of substance, whether we call that one matter or spirit ? or, if not mechanical, how can two things so unlike in nature operate upon or inflow the one into the other. This discussion forms the subject of Swedenborg's little treatise on "Influx" (1769), which he begins by stating that heretofore there have been three solutions offered to the problem. One which he calls that of the Aristotelians or Schoolmen is the theory of "Physical Influx;" the second that of Descartes, or " Occasional Influx," which he also calls " Spiritual Influx ; " and the third that of the " Pre-established Harmony " of Leibnitz. By the Aristotelian theory of physical influx is understood an inflowing of matter into spirit, or of the grosser into the finer, the lower into the higher, which is contrary to ARISTOTLE, 21 order. By occasional or spiritual influx^ such as Descartes and Malebranche advocated, is meant that soul and body interact not by any effect produced one upon the other, but by a Divine interference or simultaneous action in both, creating a coincidence or agreement of effect. The pre-established harmony of Leibnitz also leaves the two subjects entirely distinct and discrete, but accounts for their coincident action by the theory that like two clocks wound up and set to strike simultaneously without any force whatever being communicated from one to another, the soul and the body were in the Divine creative omniscience so created that they would similarly act in agreement according to a pre-established law. Swedenborg, while agreeing wholly with neither, sought to reconcile the three by including and combining the gist of truth in each, and the resultant doctrine he named the doctrine of " Correspondence," which rests upon the other doctrines of Series, Orders, Degrees, and Modifica- tions. According to this doctrine, soul and body belong to discrete degrees or planes of being or substance which do not operate on each other by any infusion, but by correspondence of modification. This correspondence is, however, not an accidental or special coincidence fore- ordained, or miraculously brought about in each case, but it is a part of a universal law of being itself. In its largest field the law operates in the whole realm of nature in relation to spirit ; in the microcosm it rules in all activities of the soul in the body. Correspondence is the relation of these degrees. As seen in the plane of nature only, correspondence consists in such a mutual adaptation of inner and outer, higher and lower, grosser and more subtile spheres in bodies that 22 SWEDENBORG AND there may be reception, communication, and transference of motion and affection from one to another without any commingling or confusion of substance. It is the relation that exists between the discrete planes of physical substance, as between the aura, the ether, and the atmospheric air, which are mutually incon- vertible and yet act one within another ; in the composi- tion of organic matter, as in the muscle, composed of the fascicles, fibres, or moving fibre, and this of the fibres themselves ; of the nerve as consisting of filaments, and these of the nervous fibres themselves ; of everything in the mineral and vegetable kingdom, that there is a compagination of filaments in three-fold order, or a con- globation of parts in three-fold order, all exhibiting degrees discrete from each other, and yet so that one is formed from another, and by this second, a third or composite. Still on the physical plane of being this correspondence is illustrated by the relation of the waves of ether to the seeing eye ; and also of the seeing eye to the sensory fibre, of the fibre to the cortical gland, of the gland to the common sensory. But it does not stop here; pursuing an unbroken "series," it extends also to the relation of the sensory to the imagination, of the imagi- nation to the intellect, of the intellect to the soul, of the soul to God. This relation is nowhere that of interfusion, but of corresponding modification. Thus from the correspondence of the discrete degrees or planes of being in nature and in the sensations of which we are conscious, Swedenborg is led by his doctrine of unbroken series and subordination, to connect the lowest with the highest, N'ot only do parts of the body, like tlie blood itself, exhibit the wonderful spectacle of series ARISTOTLE. 23 within series, but the bo ly, both as a whole and in each minutest part, corresponds to the principle or plane of life lying within it as cause and form and yet distinct from it. The whole body corresponds to the entire soul of man ; the whole of nature to the entire realm of spirit. As nothing in nature exists but from a spiritual cause, so everything in nature corresponds to something of spirit. To use one of Swedenborg's definitions : When anything from what is spiritual, as its origin and cause, becomes visible and perceptible before the senses, then there is a correspondence between these phases or planes of its being. Such is the correspondence between the spiritual and natural things with man. As the latter have come forth, and perpetually subsist from the former, they are correspondences, and therefore they act as one. {Divine Wisdom, Xo. II.) It is from these particular examples of things in series and their correspondences that Swedenborg finally arrives at his broadest generalization of the doctrine, namely, in the conception of the universal discrete degrees which belong to the unity of all beings as well as of each thing that exists, and which constitutes the true monism. It is namely the trine of end, cause, and effect, which is involved in the very existence of being as a whole, and in each individual thing. No effect without a cause, no cause without an end, or purpose for which. In every effect therefore lies involved or secreted its cause, and in the cause the end, and both end and cause are in the effect. AVhile these three degrees are inseparably related they are absolutely discrete ; the one can never become the other, by fusion, or intermingling, or any community of substance. In each series regarded by itself, end or 24 SWEDENBORG AND puri30se is ever end, cause is cause, and elfect is effect ; the end may be in the cause and the end through the cause in the effect, but there they lie forever discrete and yet forever inseparable and related to another simply by a perfect correspondence. A familiar illustration of this is found in the utterance of a word. It is an epitome of the universe ; all the laws of mind, of body, of the elementary world are involved in it. The intercourse of mind and body is here illus- trated, as is also the true monism, the trine of end, cause, and effect as alone making the true one. In the spoken word we have the word itself as an effect produced in the realm of physics in the setting in motion of certain air, or sound waves ; in the case of writing or visible speech the medium is that of certain ether, or light waves. Within, and essential to the for- mation and utterance of this air wave, is the thought or idea. This belongs to an entirely discrete order of being, equally real, equally essential, and yet having no com- munity of substance whatever with the air waves or their motion. Within the idea or the thought uttered, lies still further hidden the feeling or the motive and desire, which was "father to it," which impelled it. And yet will and its desire have absolutely no community of substance with thought. The desire and thought stand related like substance and form, but substance is not form, nor is form substance. They cannot exist apart, and yet they are forever distinct. Thus the spoken word, a physical effect or an act of the body, has these three universally necessary constituents of its being — the end or will that prompted the thought, and the thought that caused or formed the word, and the word at last ARISTOTLE. 25 as effect. The word perfect!}^ corresponds to the thought, the thought perfectly corresponds to the will or desire ; yet these three are forever distinct without the possibility of confusion of substance. So are end, cause, and effect the three constituent and essential degrees of all being, for- ever distinct and yet related perfectly by correspondence. This doctrine, applied first by Swedenborg in his studies of the elementary world and his investigations of the human body, was afterwards applied in his theological writings not only to the whole range of things material and spiritual, and so to the relation of the natural and spiritual worlds, but also to these purely theological subjects, namely, Divine revelation to man through the finiting or clothing of Divine truths in correspondential figures of human language, and the Incarnation of Deity in a human nature. The presence of the Divine in the spiritual, and of the spiritual in the natural, is thus posited, not as something transcendent, but as something involved in the very laws of being itself, since the Divine as the end and first cause must be in the spiritual, as the universal law or instru- mental cause, and both must be in the effect which is the natural world itself. As this is true in the largest scope of our thought, so is it in the smallest atom of nature. God as truly resides as End, and as the source of all its motion, in the least grain of the sand of the desert as in the soul of man, or as in the heavens of angels. For He, as End, resides wherever law and order is, since universal law is but the form of His will or love ; and all the universe of worlds, natural and spiritual, are but the effects of Divine Love operating through Divine "Wisdom or Law. The trine of will, of thought, of action, is in 26 SWEDENBORG AND everything. God wills the good. God thinks the cosmos. God acts in creating a world of finite things and beings in whom, through His law, His ends may be realized. This creation is constant and perpetual. The trine of this series of end, cause, and effect is everywhere, and every- where holds good its law of the discrete degrees. This saves the doctrine of the immanence of God in nature from becoming pure pantheism ; for as end while in the effect can never be effect, any more than the will of my speech can actually become an air-wave — so God while present as end in the motion of the atom can yet never be the material atom itself. As the trine is everywhere, so everything is in it. Everything is in its series greater or less, general or particular. " To be disconnected," says Swedenborg, "is not to be." And because this series everywhere prevails, therefore between the lower and higher degrees, or the inner and outer planes of being, there is this perfect correspond- ence ; so that the whole natural world corresponds to the whole spiritual world, just as the whole of man's body corresponds perfectly to the whole of his spirit, and this for the reason that the spirit itself is the law and reason and instrumental cause of every naturod thing or form that clothes it. The outward or phenomenal plane of being belonging to anything becomes thus not the thing itself, but a perfect symbol of the thing — the veil to the senses conforming to the real form and substance within. So revelation and incarnation become rational jDOSsibili- ties, a scripture in human language may be of words that "are spirit and are life," and nature may become to the reverent scientific explorer, truly a "robe woven perpetu- ally by the thought of God." ARISTOTLE. 27 I have dwelt thus at length on this subject of the discrete degrees, because it is, Swedenborg again and again declares, the keynote of the entire system of his philosophy, and also because it is that which briiigs the teaching of Swedenborg most directly into comparison with that of Aristotle, to which we will now return. The human soul is, according to Aristotle also, a microcosm {De Aimna, iii. 8), and its rational substance or nous, corresponding to the mens of Swedenborg, is what distinguishes it from the brute, and gives it its immortality. It is thus in a plane discrete from the matter of the body. The 7ious, says Aristotle, exists before the body, and enters into it from without as some- thing divine and immortal (De Gen. ii. 3). While a part of the soul, the 7iotis, is therefore not the whole soul. There are, therefore, according to Aristotle, discrete degrees, not only between the 7ious and matter, but discrete degrees in the soul itself, since this sums up in itself all the planes of animal life. Here we see that which resembles Swedenborg's doctrine of the six degrees of the human soul, in two trines, the lower of which belongs to the natural world, and is possessed partly in common with brute animals, Mdiile the higher belongs to the spiritual world, and is possessed by man alone. Again Aristotle defines the soul as the forming principle, or " first entelechy " of a physical, potentially living, and organic body (De Ajiima, ii. 1). As the entelechy of the body, the soul is at once its form, its principle of motion, and its end. Each organ exists in view of an end, and this end is an activity; the whole body exists for the soul. Not only thus do we see the doctrine of the discrete degrees of end, cause, and efTect shaping Aristotle's con- 28 SWEDENBORG AND ception of the soul and its relation to the body, but in the " MetajDhysies " we find his own doctrine of these degrees laid down in terms very similar to those of Swedenborg. In "Metaphysics," i. 3, Aristotle enumerates the four formal principles of all being as follows : Cause o]' ground is said to be fourfold. Of these we declare the one to be the essence and the being-somewhat ; another the matter and the substance ; a third from which is the beginning of movement; and the fourth the cause underlying this, that on-account-of-which, and the good ; for this is the End of the becoming and of all movements. Inverting this order we have, therefore, in Aristotle the three degrees: 1. End or first cause, which is the "good," and that for the sake of which a thing exists. 2. The efficient cause, or the motion by which the end proceeds to effect. 3. The matter and substance; and 4. The particular thing realized in this substance. Here the ultimate or the thing realized is the particular thing formed out of matter, or a substance which until so formed is mere potentiality. But as Aristotle elsewhere shows, no substance exists really without a form and no matter exists really as mere potentiality, although it may be conceived of in that aspect, therefore M'e must reduce the third and fourth into one principle or degree, and so we find the soul defined by him as the unity of the three principles (Z)e Anima, ii. 9) : Tlie soul is the principle or ground according to three discrete or bounded (diorismenous) degrees {tro2)ous) ; for the soul is alike the wlience of every motion, the on-account-of- which (or end), and as it were the essence of ensouled bodies. Tlius the end is in the efficient cause, and both are realized in the effect — the thing made actual. ARISTOTLE. 29 The distinction drawn by Aristotle between the poten- tiality of a thing and its actuality, these being opposed to each other like matter and form, is another way of assert- ing the discrete degree between effect and cause. The effect is the thing in substance or matter, but only becomes so through the entelechy or forming principle of the cause. The possible becomes actualized through motion, and there must be before or within motion the l\ou henelia or end for which. Says Ueberweg {HUtory of Philosophij^ i. p. 162) : Especially worthy of notice is the relativity which Aristotle gives to these notions when he employs tliem in concrete cases. The same thing, he says, can be in one respect matter and potentiality, in another form and actuality ; for example, the he\vn stone can be the former in relation to the house, the latter in comparison with the unhewn stone. The sensuous side of the soul or psyche, can be the former, that is, as matter in comparison with the intelligent mind (nous), the latter or as form when compared with the body. Thus the apparent dualism of matter and form tends to disappear in the reduction of the world to a gradation of existence. This "gradation of existence" bears certainly a close resemblance to Swedenborg's monism by discrete degrees. Says Aristotle : As all transition from potential to actual depends on actual cause, therefore there must be a first activity or first mover, proton kinoiin {Mdaph. xii.). This first principle must be (me whose essence is pure energy, and at the same time pure im- material form. It is absolute spirit which thinks itself, and whose thought is therefore the thought of thought {noesis noeseos). This spirit, which is God, is not merely the form immanent in the cosmos recognized as universal law, but is a self-existent su1)stance ; thus it is not merely the order in the ranks of an army, but it is the General commanding in 30 SWEDENBORG AND the army {Metaph. xii.), Tlie mode of its activity is thought, but it acts from or by virtue of essence as being the Good per se, or that which is loved and toward which all things tend. It moves not as being moved by another, but as being loved. It is here we find a point of difference between the theology of Aristotle and that of Swedenborg which is essential. Both recognize God or the Absolute Mind, as the First Mover, and as the Good, and so as the End for which all things exist. But in Aristotle's conception of the Good as the First Cause and First Mover, there does not seem to be the same vital energy or productive power as in Swedenborg's doctrine of God as Love itself. Aris- totle's idea seems to be that of the Good as the centre of a sphere of centripetal forces. Swedenborg's is that of Love, which both repels and attracts ; repelling in the sense of creating from itself by opposites the finite objects of its own Love, since Love without an object to love is impossible, unless we admit the monstrous idea of an infinite self-love ; and those finite objects in order to be objects of love must be objects capable of free reciprocation of the Divine Love, and thus must of them- selves, and because apart, seek their reunion with the One Good, their source. Moreover, in this conception of the End as Love, and therefore as the Love of having its own Good realized in others than itself, we have a source of energy or ki7iesis which discriminates absolutely between tlie First Cause or End, and the series of instrumental or efficient causes. It answers the otherwise always embarrassing question, Why should the series of causes ever stop with a first, if that first is merely causal in the same degree with the rest, and can only be distinguished numerically from the ARISTOTLE. 31 rest ? There is nothing essentially causative in the first of a series of instrumental causes, any more than in another in the series. In the End, on the contrary, re- garded as First Cause, we have a distinct essence — that of the will of Good which uses its wisdom or form as an instrument, just as the affection clothes itself with an idea, and through this acts or creates the effect in which it finds its ultimation. As Swedenhorg regards all creation as exhibiting a grand scale of uses by which nature from the lowest forms struggles up, each least thing animated by its own Divinely imparted conatus towards its superior form of life, and so aspires towards the Good, and in so aspiring finds the Good realized in itself, the End in the effect ; so we find Aristotle teaching that all motion in nature is directed to an end. " God and nature do nothing in vain " {Be Ccelo, i. 4). According to Aristotle, the lower organisms may arise by original generation, or an evolu- tion from the heterogeneous. But in all the higher organisms like is generated by like. In the act of gener- ation the form-giving or animating principle proceeds from the male, and the form-receiving or material prin- ciple from the female. (Compare Swedenborg : True Christian ReJujion, K"os. 92, 103.) In the distinction which Aristotle draws between the soul as the common animating principle of man and brutes and the rational soul of the nous, we may account for that doctrine of physical influx or interaction which is attributed to Aristotle, and which evidently deals with the sensuous plane of the soul only. The higher or intel- lectual soul seems to be set apart in a discrete degree from this by Aristotle as well as by Swedenborg. 32 SWEDENBORG AND In conclusion, the inquiry may arise whetlier, after all, Swedenborg did indeed by his "N'ew Method of Series, Orders, and Degrees," reach at last the object of his quest, — the soul itself. To which it may be answered both " yes " and " no." Yes ; in that he found the formam forman^, the very form of forms ; but No, as far as is meant the human soul as a self-existing substance. The truth of his own method was even proved by his failure to find as a substance and end, that which is in itself a form and recipient of the one substance and an instru- ment and means of the One and only End. It is a series of forms and receptacles that he has been tracing up in all this scientific and philosoj^hic investigation and reason- ing, until he has reached that sublime form whose inner life can be regarded as only universal and Divine. Even in the "Rational Psychology," the soul is finally de- cribed as " pure intelligence and a spiritual essence above all knowledges and all doctrines " (Nos. 526, 527), and " possesse7 the materialistic and spiritualistic implications of the forces we see at work, we find in Herbert Spencer the type of the materialistic monist, we shall find an even more consistent type of the idealistic monist in his pre- decessor, Bishop Berkeley (1684-1753), who held that objects do not exist except to be perceived, and that conversely there is no such thing as an abstract idea, i.e., ideas of qualities which do not inhere in definite substance. To think that objects exist outside of, apart from, our ideas of them is deceptive, because if the object was not a part of the idea, or continuous with it, it could have no relation with it, and could not become cognizable. The fact that we know objects is immediate proof that their essence is ideal. There exist, therefore, says Berkley, only spirits and their functions, ideas and volitions, equivalent perhaps to what Swedenborg calls " truths and goods," and all that seemingly goes on in nature without us is the successive calling forth by God of the ideas of our mind. Opposed to this Monism, whether as identity of mind and matter, or as the exist- ence of the one to the entire exclusion of the other, we have the various forms of — II. Dualism. — First, that of Descartes (1596-1650), who is regarded as the father of modern philosophy, and the originator of the great contest between modern Dualism and Monism. He held indeed to one substance in the sense of that Being to which there could be no prior, but he admitted the existence of a subordinate substance dependent only on this first. This secondary substance exists under two " attributes," as extension and as thought. As extension it forms the objective material world known to our senses from without; as 38 DESCARTES AND LEIBNITZ thought it exists as the ideal world known to our con- sciousness from within. Between the two attributes of the one created or secondary substance tlie dualism exists. Matter possesses nothing but extension and modes of extension. The world arose from vortical motions in an original chaos of matter. The particles of matter have no inherent force, their changes are due to external pres- sure and impulsion, and their action on the brain is wholly mechanical. Thus they are treated altogether as in themselves dead and inert. They constitute a degree altogether discrete from that of mind and the possibility of an intercourse between them and mind, the other utterly unlike attribute of substance, is what Descartes endeavours to explain in his theory of "occasional inter- ference." This theory means a miraculous interference of deity in every instance of mind influencing body or the reverse. Since, according to the recognized maxim Ihat like can only act upon like, any direct operations of one of these planes of being upon another would be im- possible, such apparent action can only be accounted for by a direct operation of God producing this concurrence of actions in the two planes whenever the occasion is produced by sensuous impressions. It is well known that Swedenborg gives the theory of Descartes the name of Spiritual or Occasional Influx,* meaning that when the shock on the sense organ presents the outward vessel or form for the soul's inflowing, an influx occurs from the spirit into the body, and that thus, through the combination of the two factors, we have the production of ideas and a mental lino'idedonal identity arises from consciousne.-s, and consciou-'ness is nothing but a reflected thought or perception. The present phil- osophy, therefore, has a promising aspect. But all my hopes vanish when I come to exidain the 23rinci2'>les that unite our successive percejjtions in our thought or consciousness. I cannot discover any theory that gives me satisfaction on this head. Indeed, there are two principles which I cannot render consistent, nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, namely, that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connection among distiiict existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real connection among them, there would be no difficulty in the case." (Hume: Treatise of Human Nature. Appendix. Works, Vol. II,, p. 554.) ON COGNITION. 63 Theory " of the universe has been generally attributed to Kant as its author. But now it is acknowledged by the best scientific authority that Swedenborg in his Principia, published in 1734, twenty years before Kant's "General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens," was the real author of this theory, which, in our knowledge of a universe, must stand side by side with Newton's discovery of the law of gravitation. ■*" Kant, like Swedenborg, believed it possible that the planets are inhabited, and he speculated as to the physical variation and intellectual superiority of the inhabitants of Jupiter as compared with ourselves.! From these broad surveys of the physical world both went forth into still sublimer researches into the world of mind, and of spirit, and of human conduct. Here, however, we note a contrast. While Kant remained all his life a university professor — his intercourse confined to the lecture-room and to his correspondence with his professional colleagues, and his travels never extending over forty miles beyond Konigsberg — Swedenborg, on the other hand, was a wide traveller. He knew all the capitals of Europe. He explored their libraries, and conversed with their savants. He lived in a large world. He was the favourite naval and mining engineer of his * See article on " Swedenborg and the Nebular Hypothesis : A contribution to the so-called Kant-Laplace Nebular Hypothesis, by Magnus Nyren, Ph.D., Astronomer at the Observatory at Pulkowa, Eussia. Translated from the Vier- teljahrschrift cler Astronomischen GeseUschaJt. Leipzic : 1879, p. 81," published in The New-Church Review for July 1897. t See Kant's Naturgeschichte des Himmels. Kelirbach Edition. Pp. 160, 161. 64 KANT AND SWEDENBORG king, the illustrious Charles XII., a trusted Councillor of State, esteemed and honoured by his fellow-statesmen, while his scientific works — published under noble patron- nge — received honourable recognition among- learned societies abroad. Such was the courtly gentleman and scholar whose personal acquaintance Kant himself sought, but without direct gratification.'*' It was at the time of those striking exhibitions of clairvoyant powers possessed by Sweden- borg, which startled the courts of Europe, that Kant's interest was aroused in this remarkable man, and he endeavoured to acquaint himself particularly with both the man and his teachings. Himself inclined at that time to follow Hume in his scepticism, he was disposed to laugh at all pretentions to supernatural knowledge as on the same plane of absurdity as the metaphysical; and on obtaining Swedenborg's Arana Ccelestia, and studying it to some extent, he wrote a small work "in humourous vein," which is sometimes referred to by writers as Kant's work on " Swedenborg." The title of it was, however, " The Dreams of a Spirit-Seer illustrated by those of Metaphysics." That in the then existing spiritual condition of the world and of Kant's own mind in relation to all kinds of evidence, the profoundly spiritual teachings of Sweden- borg did not appeal to him is not to be wondered at. That Kant did not all at once surmount the barriers of prejudice, of intellectual and spiritual blindness, in which for generations the world of thought about him had been incasing itself, should not for a moment detract from our * See Trnnme eines Geisterseliers. Kehrl)ach Edition. Pp. 70, 71. ON COGNITION. 65 appreciation of the splendid service he actually did render in the purely intellectual field in the defence of the possibility of knowledge and the integrity and reliability of the reasoning faculty. We can see too how desperate was the issue that really confronted him, when, beside the negative and destructive criticism of the Scotchman who was undermining* not only the revealed knowledge of the spiritual, but the scientific knowledge of the natural world itself, and into whose fallacies the thinkers of all Europe were stupidly plunging, there arose this other witness to a knowledge of, not things natural and physical only, but a knowledge of things spiritual and heavenly, and this, too, based not upon metaphysics, but upon the actual vision, the actual experience of another world than this of matter. Of course, if this mental seeing was to be admitted, if the bodily senses were not the only avenues of knowledge, if there was thus possible an easy way to a knowledge of the soul, of immortality, of God, then all the occupations of the philosopher and the critic ^vere gone. There would he no further use for the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics in the Royal University of Konigsberg, if knowledge on the profoundest and most hidden themes was thus to be uiven by intuition or immediate vision ! Therefore it is natural that his first impulse should be that of mere contemptuous rejection, and that he should feel himself called upon to prove the utter inability of the mind, whether by metaphysical or other transcendental dream- * Hume describes the aim of his " Incpury " as being : " To undermine the foundations of an abstruse philosophy, which seems hitherto to have served only as a shelter to superstition, and a cover to absurdity and error." (Conclusion of Section I.) E 66 KANT AND SWEDENBORG ings, to obtain a knowledge beyond what is yielded by the senses. And yet when we find Kant, despite the skeptical fascination of the time, contending for the possi- bility of an Argument for the Demonstration of the Existence of God ("Essays an Treatises," London, 1798. Vol. II., 7), and later find him asserting and defending the purely intellectual element — or that which we may call the spirit in knowing — to be that essential part without which there could be no knowing of sense, then we will also not wonder that we find Kant in the midst of his " Dreams of a Spirit-Seer " admitting that there are nevertheless some remarkable resemblances to be found between Swedenborg's doctrines and his own, " which are to be accounted for only on the ground, either of accidental coincidence, or that there is more truth in Swedenborg than would appear at first sight."* More remarkable, however, than these early immature admissions of Kant, are those utterances which the scholars of Germany are only now beginning to estimate in their due weight and significance, and in which Kant mani- festly calls to his aid — in the death struggle he had at last to maintain with the logical results of the Scottish Skepticism — many vital psychological and spiritual prfn- ciples which he manifestly, and even avowedly, owes to Swedenborg, whom in the days of his early over-con- fidence and prowess, he has aifected to be amused at. Placing his work on the " Dreams of a Si^irit-Seer," in the year 1766, we have only to read the " Inaugural Dissertation" of the year 1770, his work on the two dis- tinct worlds, " The World of Sense and the World of Intellect," to see how real a hold the chapters of Sweden- * Kant's Works. Leipzic, 1838. III., 95. ON COGNITION. 67 borg's Arcana^ with the wonderful intervening scenes of "heaven and the world of spirits and hell," had taken on his mind. That these ideas clung to him, and formed a kind of interior plane of reaction by which to measure the force of the purely negative philosophy of his time, is evident in all the series of his writings up to and even following his " Critique of the Pure Reason," in which work, espe- cially in his ultra-skeptical use of the antimonies, he was, whether consciously or not, merely demonstrating how absurd was the attempt to construct a philosophy of the mind and its powers of cognition without a recognition of the discrete degree between mind and matter. Kant's own nature, too, long schooled by the great seer across the seas, never really ceased to revolt against the doctrine of the real continuity of mind and matter. As positively as Swedenborg himself, he clamours for the existence of the two worlds, the munclus sensibilis and the mundus intelligihilis. * * That Kant consciously or unconsciously recoj^nized that fundamental principle of Swedonborg's philosophy, the exist- ence of a "discrete degree" between cause and effect and between the spiritual and the natural world, appears from these passages in this "Inaugural Dissertation of 1770," on the two worlds, the mundus sensibilis and the mundus intelli- gihilis. It is in these passages also that we find Kant's solution of that problem which Hume failed to solve, namely, that of the existence and nature of relation. Several substances being given, the principle of their possible intercommunication is not apparent from their existence only, but something else is required from which their mutual relations may be understood. For on account of mere existence they are not necessarily related to anything unless it be to their cause ; but the elation of an effect to the cause is not intercommunication, but 68 KANT AND SWEDENBORG It seems quite clear that Kant in all this part of the *' Critique " is only pursuing with desperation an ineffec- tual critical warfare with that which he had tried in vain to laugh down in his earlier work (1766), the "Traiime," etc. — namely, the idea of a spiritual or super-physical substance — a corpus imjsticum or a world of mind lying within tlie world of matter as its veritable cause and origin. As is admitted by not only Schopenhauer, but dependence. Therefore if any commerce intervenes between them, there is need of an exactly determining specific reason. The sham cause in physical influx consists in rashly assuming that the commerce of substance and transitive forces is sufficiently knowable from their mere existence. . . . Freeing the concept from the defect, we shall have a species of commerce alone deserv- ing to be called real, and from which the whole constituting the world merits being called real, and not ideal or imaginary. — Inaugural Dissertation, Par. 17. This seems to have a direct reference to Hume's doctrine of tlie fictitious character of our knowledge of that relation of things which constitutes their unity under a law. A whole from necessary substance is imjjossihle. For since the resistance of each stands for itself without dependence ... it is plain that the inter-communication of substances does not follow from their existence, but cannot belong to them at all as necessary substances (Par 18). The whole, therefore, of substances is a whole of contingent things, and the world consists cssenticdly of only contingent things. Besides, no necessary substance is in connection with the world coicept as a cause with the effect, and, therefore, not as a jmrt loith its complements making up a whole [compare Swedenborg's "con- tinuous degree " ], since the bond cementing parts is mutual depend- ence, which in a necessary being cannot occur. The causr, there- forcy of the world is an extra mundane being, and so is not the soul of the world, nor is its presence in the world local, but virtual (Par. 19). The mundane substances are beings from another being ; not from several, hut all from ooie. . . . The unity in the conjunction ON COGNITION, 69 by Du Prel, Heinze, and Yailiinger, and other German critics of to-day, the influence of Swedenborg on Kant was a profound one, and such that it will take more than the persiflage of his work on " The Dreams of a Spirit-Seer illustrated by Dreams of Metaphysics," to conceal from the eye of those able to read between the lines.* of the substances of the universe is the consequence of the depend- ence of all on one. Therefore the form of the universe witnesses the cause of matter, and only the sole cause of all thiiujs is the cause of the universe, nor is there an architect of the world not at the same time its creator (Par. 20). For Swedenborg's Doctrine of Discrete Degrees, see his work on " Influx, or the Intercourse of the Soul and the Body," and also the work on "Divine Love and Wisdom," Nos. 186-198. * " Through Kant's ' Lectures on Psychology,' his ' Dreams of a Spirit-Seer ' are placed in an altogether new light. One might suppose that this work was so clearly written that an erroneous interpretation of it would be an impossibility, but the aversion of our century to mystic thinking has brought about a misconcepticm of the ' Dreams.' It has been inter- preted as a daring venture of Kant's genius in making sport of superstition ; the accent has been laid on Kant's negations, and his affirmative utterances have been overlooked. The * Lectures on Psychology ' now show, however, that these utter- ances were very seriously intended ; for the affirmative portions of the 'Dreams' agree very thoroughly with the lengthier exposition of the ' Psychology,' and the \vavering attitude of Kant is here no longer perceptible." (Du Prel : Introduction to Kant's " Lectures on Psychology," pp. vii. viii.) The faculty ascribed to Swedenborg answers completely to Kant's conception of a being inhabiting two worlds at the same time. (Du Prel: Ihid., p. xxiv.) That Kant at the time of the letter to Friiulein von 70 KANT AND SWEDENBORG In his almost fanatic revulsion from the dogmatic philo- sophy of the a 'priori Physicists, and under the fascina- tion of Hume's free lance, Kant had been led to take the ground of utter opposition to metaphysics as an element of knowledge, and he had thought it convenient to use Swedenborg's alleged second sight, the wonderful exam- ples of which were at that early time making an impression in the courts and learned circles of Europe, as a kind of Knobloch felt the deepest interest in Swedenborg is freely admitted by Robert Hoar in his Inaugural Discussion, entitled Ber Angehliche Mysticismus Kants. Brugg : 1895. So soon as Swedenborg's Arcana Ccslestia was printer!, for whose publication he had been eagerly waiting, he bought the volumes at seven pounds sterling, and this at a time when Kant, the privat-docent, was anything but well off, and when that amount of money meant more than it does now. That he also studied other works of Swedenborg besides the Arcana appears from a letter of Hamann to SchefiFner, Nov. 10, 1784, where he mentions Swedenborg and Kant : " As our Kant at that time pre- scribed to himself all the works of the Dreamer, so I had the patience tojwade through the whole set of thick quartos." Further we may assume that Kant interested himself personally in Sweden- borg, for in a letter to Moses Mendelssohn, April 8, 1766, he writes : " Inasmuch as I had occasioned much talk by my curious inquiry into the visions of Swedenborg, not only through persons who had opportunity to know him personally, but through cor- respondence, and at length by obtaining his works, I saw that there was no rest from these endless inquiries until I should free myself from a suspected knowledge of all these anecdotes." {Der Angehliche Mysticismus Kants, p. 8. ) In the famous letter to Fraiilein von Knobloch, a young lady who had asked Kant his opinion about Swedenborg, Kant admits that he has felt obliged before complying with her request to " acquaint himself thoroughly with the sub- ject," eine vollstiindige Erhundigiing in dieser Sadie einzuziehen. He does not regard the subject as beneath his earnest con- ON COGNITION. 71 lay figure under which he could abuse at his pleasure all the vain and ghostly assumptions of the metaphysicians. But that in the pursuit of this purpose he relented mid- way, and could only carry on a half-hearted fight, is plain from his own elaborate treatise on the " Two Worlds," and the remarkable admissions in his lectures on " Meta- physics," during the years 1770-1780, as well as from sideration. He has not been of those who have a weakness for the wonderful, and his inclination has on the whole been against the admission of the possibility of any intercourse with the spirit-world. " This," he writes, " has been the attitude of my mind for a long time, until the story of Mr. Swedenborg was made known to me." " In order now not to blindly strengthen former prejudices by still another pre- judice, I thought it reasonable to inform myself particularly about this occurrence." He goes on to say how the friend who had informed him of Swedenborg's intercourse with spirits, had advised him to write to Swedenborg himself. Kant followed this advice ; he writes to Swedenborg, who promises to write in reply. Here it may be remarked that it is supposed by some of Swedenborg's biographers that his work on the " Intercourse of the Soul and the Body : " Be Commercio Animce et Corporis, quod creditur fieri vel per Influxum Physicum, vel per Influxum Spiritiialem, vel per Harmoniam Prcestabilitam, was written in reply to this request of Kant. It Avas published in London, in the year 1769, thus three years after the publication of Kant's "Dreams of a Spirit-Seer." Its opening thesis : — There are two worlds, a spiritual world inhabited by spirits and a natural world inhabited by men — indicates an interesting relation between this work and Kant's " Inaugural Dissertation," on the two worlds, referred to above. To proceed with the letter to Fraiilein von Knobloch, Kant reports : Swedenborg is a rational, agreeable, and open-hearted man : 72 KANT AND SWEDENBORG the coincidence with Swedenborg's philosophy of the most valuable elements of even his own later " Critique." Such are the : — I. Doctrine of time and space as mental forms ; II. Of the reason as regulative and not creative ; III. Of its function as a mediator between the natural and spiritual planes of the mind's activity ; IV. Of reality, or the noumenon, as belonging to a degree of being discrete from that of the phenomena of matter, the Ding an Sich of Kant being the spiritual he is a savant, and my friend has promised to send me soon some of his writings. In order, dear Mademoiselle, to give you some proofs where the whole living public are a witness, and the man who informs me has been able to investigate the matter on the spot, I will ask you to consider the following occurrences. He then relates the instance of the widow of the Dutch Ambassador finding the lost receipt through information con- veyed by the spirit of the deceased husband. The following incident, however, seems to me to be the most convincing of all, axiA forbids actually the possibility of any doubt. Here he describes the incident of the fire in Stockholm, in the year 1759, witnessed by Swedenborg in Gothenburg, three hundred miles away. At the close of the letter Kant writes : " How much I wish that I could have myself questioned this remarkable man ; for my friend has not the method enabling him to find out that which would throNv the most light. ... I wait with longing for the book that Swedenborg is to publish in London. I have made all arrangements for receiving it as soon as it leaves the press." (See Traiime eines Geidersehers, Ed. Kehr- bach, pp. 69-74.) Was this eagerly-awaited volume the De Commercio, pub- lished in London in 1769 ? ON COGNITION. 73 substance of Swedeiiborg.* (See especially the lectures on Metaphysics for frequent assertions of this.) These and others belong to those ideas whose extra- ordinary likeness to Swedenborg Kant frankly admits in * The Doctrine of the Reason as taught by Swedenborg and its bearing on our knowledge of reality may in general be seen from the following extracts from the Arcana^ and other works : — Three things constitute the external man : the rational, the scientific, and the external sensuous. The rational is interior, and is that through which the interior man is conjoined with the external : in itself it is nothing unless affection flows into it, and makes it active ; and it thence becomes such as is the afifection. When the afi'ection of good flows in, this becomes in the rational the afi'ection of truth ; the contrary, when the afi'ection of evil flows in. (Swedenborg : Arcana Ccelcdia, No. 1589.) What goes on in the internal man cannot be apprehended by the man himself, because it is above the rational from which he thinks. To the inmost or internal man is subject the rational faculty or principle, which appears as if belonging to man. Into this, through the internal man, the celestial things of love and of faith flow in, and through this rational down into the scientific things which belong to the external man ; but the things which flow in are received according to the state of each. {Ibid., No. 1941.) In man's rational is truth, which is the chief thing : in it also is the afi'ection of good, but this in the aff'eetion of truth as its soul. The reason truth is the chief thing in the rational of man is that the rational is formed by means of the knowledge of truth. {Hid., No. 2072.) With man the first rationality is conceived and born through the infiux of the internal man into the life of the afi"ections of knowledges in the external man. {Ihid., No. 2093.) Man is born into nothing rational, but only into the faculty of receiving it ; and as he learns and imbues all things, so he becomes rational. This is done by the way of the body. But there is some- thing constantly flowing iu from the interior which receives the things thus entering [through the bodily senses], and disposes them into order. Hence is their order and tJw relationships among theniy 74 KANT AND SWEDENBORG the passages cited above. Without questioning Kant's entire sincerity, we may at least form our own conclusions as to the cause of this resemblance when we compare certain statements of Kant with those of Swedenborg in a work which Kant confesses to have bought and read, from which it is evident that the rational faculty of man is' from Divine celestial good as its father. {IhicL^ No. 2557.) The things of reason illustrated by the Divine are appearances of truth. All appearances [phenomena] of truth in which is the Divine are of the rational faculty, insomuch that rational truths and appearances of truth are'the sanie, whereas scientific things belong to the natural plane. Rational truths can never exist and come forth except from an inflowing of the Divine into the rational faculty of man, and through the things of reason into the scientific things which belong to the natural plane of the mind. The things that then take place in the rational appear in the natural plane as an image of many things together in a mirror. {Ibid., No. 3368.) Rational things, or, what is the same, appearances of truth — that is, spiritual truths — are not knowledges [acquired by the senses, F. S.], but are in knowledges ; for they are of the rational or internal man. For knowledges being of the natural man, are vessels which receive rational things. [Ibid., No. 3391.) When man is in the world his rational is distinct from his natural [plane of thought], insomuch that he can be withdrawn from external sensuous things, and in some degree from interior sensuous things, and be in his rational, thus in spiritual thought. {Ibid., No. 3498.) It is not he who can ratiocinate from scientific facts who enjoys the rational faculty. A fatuous lumen produces this skill. But he enjoys the rational who can see clearly that good is good, and truth truth ; consequently, that evil is evil, and falsity falsity. Thus the scientific [sensuous] knowledges are means for perfecting the rational faculty, and also for destroying it ; and those who by means of scientific knowledges have destroyed their rational faculty are more stupid than those versed in no knowledges. {Ibid., No. 4156,) The faculty of thinking rationally, regarded in itself, is not of man, but of God with him. Upon this depends human reason in general. {Divine Love and Wisdom, No. 23.) ON COGNITION. 75 even though he pretends it was time and money thrown away. How could Kant indeed be willing to attach serious importance to statements in the Arcana which it was his very purpose in his battle with metaphysics to destroy ? But the fact remains that Swedenborg, in 1753, wrote, in the book which Kant confesses to have studied, as follows : — The ideas of interior thought pertaining to man, although they are above material things, yet terminate in natural things, and where they terminate they appear to be. Thence the man perceives what he thinks. . . . Man cannot in anywise think without the idea of time and space. The idea adheres to everything which man thinks. If the idea from time and space were taken away he would not know what he thinks — scarcely whether he thinks. The ideas of space arise from measuring by times ; wherefore where the one is, there is the other. {Arcana Coelestia, No. 7381.) Compare this with Kant's derivation of the concept of succession, that is of time, from the subjective sense of motion when abstracted from the synthesis of the mani- fold in space. (In the " Critique," Section XXIY., p. 154 : German Edition.) After summarizing the philosophy of Swedenborg, in 1766, Kant's next metaphysical work was on " Objects in Space" (Konigsberg, 1768), and only two years later, in his '* Dissertation on the Sensible and the Intelligible World," he announced his final philosophy of space and time. It was about the year 1769 that Swedenborg wrote in Canones Novce Ecdesice the doctrine that space and time are not forms of things in themselves, but by correspond- ence there is such relationship (between phenomena and noumena). Thus : " God's infinity as corresponding to 76 KANT AND SWEDENBORG spaces is called ' immensity ; ' and as corresponding to times, ' eternity ; ' yet there is nothing of space in His immensity, and nothing of time in His eternity." And the following year Kant defines space to be the "Divine Omnipresence as a phenomenon ; and time the pheno- menal entity of universal cause." Of coui-se the human mind is not affected by external things, and the world does not lie open to its insight infinitely, except so far as itself together with all other things is sustained by the same infinite power of one. Hence it does not perceive external things but by the presence of the same common sustaining cause ; and hence space which is the necessary and universal condition of the joint presence of everything known sensually may be called the phenomenal omnipresence, for the cause of the universe is not present to all things and every- thing as being in their places, but their places, that is, the relation of the substances, are possible because it (cause of the universe) is intimately present to all. . . . The concept of time as one infinite and immutable in which all things are and last, is the phenomenal eternity of the general cause. (Kant : Scholium to Section XXII. On the Form and Principles of the Intelligible and of the Sensible World.) Compare Swedenborg : — The Divine apart from space fills all the spaces of the universe. . . . The Divine is in all time, apart from time. {Divine Love arid Wisdom, Nos. 69, 73.) It would appear, then, that Swedenborg and Kant agree in this noteworthy statement that time and space are the correspondential or symbolic form on the plane of sense, which the substances of the noumenal or mind-world take on in becoming objects of our human experience and knowledge. On the subjectivity of knowledge even as derived ON COGNITION. 77 from experience, S\vedenT)org teaches in another passage of the work which Kant confesses to have read {Arcana Oelestia, Xo. 5119):— It appears as if things of the outer world flow through sensuous experience into the interiors [of the mind], but this is a fallacy of the senses. There is an inflowing of interiors into exteriors, and from this inflowing the apperception arises. It is the interior man that sees and perceives what goes on without him, and from this interior source the sense-experi- ence has its life, for from no other [than tliis subjective source] is there any faculty of feeling, or any sensation. But this fallacy [that is, that the sense conies from without] is of such a nature and so common that the natural mind cannot rid itself of it, nor even the rational mind, until it can think abstractly from sense. In the same way Kant, in the Analytic and /Esthetic, plainly adheres to the doctrine that even the experience for which he clamours so persistently as the only source of knowledge, is yet possible only under the operations of mind upon the changes wrought upon the organ of sense, and only in accordance with the laws of the mind's own acting, namely, the two scliernata, space and time, and the twelve categories of the understanding. It is an interesting illustration of the principle that truth is a sword that cuts both ways that we find in Schopenhauer's essay, Versuch uber Geistei'>^'ilien und was damit zusammen hawjt Parerya und Paralipomena, Vol. I., pp. 241-328. In proving a world of being where time and space under material conditions are annihi- lated, and only the corresponding mental states remain, Schopenhauer calls Kant himself to witness, and bases this real experience on the action of will as the ultimate realitv or the Dinq an Sich. 78 KANT AND SWEDENBORG Thus he calls attention to an existing order of things : — Entirely distinct from that of nature where the purely formed laws of nature do not apply, hence where time and space do not separate individuals any more, and where separation and isolation resulting from time and space do not offer obstacles to influence of will or to communication of thought. . . . Here, be it said, that the true idea of actio in distans is that the space between the worker and the worked upon, whether full or empty, has no influence at all on the woi'king ; it is the same whether the distance be an inch or a billion of Uranus orbits (p. 282). We commonly imagine that the reality of a spiritual world is overthrown when we have shown that such a world is only subjectively conditioned. But what weight can that argu- ment have with one who knows from Kant's doctrine how strong a share of subjective conditions is involved in the appearance [to our senses] of the corporeal world ; how, for instance, this world with the space in which it stands, the time in which it moves, and the causality in which the being of matter consists, according to its whole form therefore, is only a form of brain-functioning, according as the impres- sions are awakened by shock on the nerves of the sense organ (p. 318). And this shock it is the main purpose of Schopen- hauer in this essay to prove may as really occur from internal as from external causes. And therefore, as he says, " there remains the only question as to the Ding an Sich left." That Kant in his struggle against dogmatic meta- physics and the rational psychology as distinguished from the psychology of observation, could not easily break loose entirely from the great doctrine of discrete degrees of being or of the two worlds, one of effect or material impact — the world of mechanism — the other of cause, or of self-activity and of spirit, further appears ON COGNITION. 79 from his admissions in his Politz lectures in a passage emphasized by Du Prel in his essay on " Kant's Mystical View of the World " (Im. Kant's " Lectures on Psychology," edited by Carl Du Prel. Leipzic, Says Kant, as quoted by Du Prel : — The thoughts of Swedenborg are in this connection [that is, with regard to the two worlds] very sublime. He says the spiritual world constitutes an esjDecially real universe ; this is the intelligible world, mundus intelligibilis, which must be distinguished from the sensible world, mundus seusibilis. Professor Yaihinger of Halle in the Archivfilr Geschichfe der Philosophie, 1895, Berlin, calls attention to the work of P. von Lind : Kants Mystiche Weltanschauung^ ein Wahn der Modernen Mystik: Munich, 1892, in which the author criticises Du Prel's favourable view of Kant's so-called mystic tendency, and remarks that — Lind has correctly pointed out that Du Prel has interpreted the Traiime too favourably for Swedenborg, but still he fails to recognize that Kant must have had a strong sympathy for the metaphysical hypotheses which he brings forward to explain Swedenborg's phantasies. The well-known place in which Kant calls certain views of Swedenborg (regarding the two worlds to which we belong), " sublime,'"' Lind endeavours in vain to interpret ironically. I called Du Prel's attention to this passage which occasioned his new edition of the Kantian "Lecture on Psychology." The passage also, Heinze admits, points out an inner jprinci'piale relation between the doctrines of both, which Kant discovered ; indeed he took 'perhaps this doctrine of two worlds from Swedenborg direct. But only the doctrine ! Not Swedenborg's pretended empirical proofs which Kant has always discarded as phantasies. (Compare my Index of Du Prel's edition in Archiv, IV. 722, and also my Extracts in 8o KANT AND SWEDENBORG Coinnienlary, K. 512ff.) But Du Prel is in error, in that from that agreement in single points of tlieory he concluded that Kant would give up his opposition to the Praxis in view of the facts of modern spiritism. Lind has done valuable service in showing that Kant knew very familiarly this pre- tended material of facts, and always rejected it with the same determination. Lind has shown this by many extracts from Kant's works, especially from the Antliroi)ology. On the other hand, Lind goes far beyond the mark when he seeks to dispute away the " transcendental subject " of Kant, whose relationship to the spiritual Ego of Swedenborg is unmis- takable. . . . This is not affected either by Yon Lind's further explanation in Hallier's Recension of his article in the Altpr. Manuscript XXIX. 449f, on these questions. Compare also the favourable comment on Von Lind's article by Giittler, in the Zeitschr. f. Philos. Bd. 104, S. 146-152, and also the there cited article in the Zeitschrift, "Sphinx," 1892 and 1893. The well-known testimony of Kant in Jachmann, that he "has nothing to do with mysticism," refers only to the practiciis (of spiritism), and to the Mysticism of the Feelings ; it does not apply to the rational belief of Kant in the " corjms mysticum of the intelligible world." In regard to the whole matter I refer again to Heinze's treatise on Kant's " Lectures on Metaphysik," p. 556ff. Here Heinze proves an inclina- tion of Kant to Swedenborg, which from the Dissertation of 1770, reaches through the year and through the " Critique of the Pure Reason," and even into the " Critique of Religion within the Bounds, etc." It is not until in the lectures of tlie year '90, that Kant became more cautious (see Heinze, 577, 595, 650, 677, 691-2). The following extracts from Heinze's " Observations on Kant's Lectures in Metaphysics," will fully bear out all that Professor Yaihinger has asserted as to the deep hold Swedenborg's doctrine of the two worlds had taken on Kant's mind. I have translated them from the ON COGNITION. 8i Abliandlunrjen dev SacJisischen Gesellscha/t der Wisse?:- scha/ten, Leipzic, 1894 : — Immortality. The proof derived from the idea and nature of the thing is always the only i)ossible proof, and this is trcmscendental. Other proofs are not really proofs, hut only reveal the hope of another life. It is of the nature of a subject in which is spontaneity and self-determination to be the source of life, and to give life to the body. The ground of life is not from matter or from body ; this rather hinders life. The source of life is in another substance, namely, in the soul, etc. Therefore can its existence not depend on the body, and when this ceases to be, the principle of life which has put forth the acts of life independent of body still remains, and must continue to exercise the acts of life unhindered, (p. 234.) This is the ontological proof of the Immortality of the soul. It reminds one of Plato in the Phsedo, especially in the view of the body as a " hindrance to the soul," which then first begins j)roperly to live when it is set free. This is the only proof a priori which can be given from a knowledge and from the nature of the soul, of its immortality. But besides the transcendental j)roofs of the soul's immor- tality, Kant introduces the theological-moral proofs, derived from man's knowledge of God's will. The argument is that all our actions are under a unity or moral law, according to which right living ensures happiness. But this life does not exhibit this result in every case ; therefore another life must follow wherein this can be fulfilled. If we accept another world, then we must govern our actions accordingly. Kant did not regard this argument as logically correct or complete ; since, because we do not always see here the 82 KANT AND SWEDENBORG reward of virtue, it does not necessarily follow that it is not really accomplished. Nor can an endless future life be logically required to reward any finite desert here. That Kant laid great stress on the belief that the soul by its very nature must live again, he so declares : " For otherwise if I must ever die, even if it be after thousands of years, I would rather die now than linger on to spend my time in anxieties and watching the farce meanwhile." Together with these arguments in the " Rational Psychologie" (or of a transcendental nature), Kant intro- duces also, for completeness' sake, what he calls the empirical proofs, that is, proofs from experience. Although the soul declines with the body, this is only true of the animal life, which indeed ends with the body, but not the whole life. One can, it is true, have no knowledge of the soul's experience without the body, but at the same time one cannot tell what the soul may be without a body.* This argument has a negative use, in showing that we cannot from experience draw any conclusion adverse to the life of souls. No objector is qualified to find in experience any proof of the mortality of souls. (Politz, p. 244.) Of more value is the Fourth Proof, which may be called the " empirical-psychological based on cosmological reasons," but named by Kant the analogical. In nature all powers and instruments and faculties are directed to a certain end. In the soul are many such faculties and powers which in the world find no such end ; therefore there must be an after- world where these ends can be attained. Compare this with the argument in the " Critique of the Practical Reason '' — in that the highest good is only practical under the supposition of the immortality of the soul. If it be objected that no creature can claim immortality for that which is the result of the arbitrary generation of human * It is interesting to compare this entire treatment of the soul's immortality with Swedeuborg's argument on the same subject, and from much the same standpoint, in his work on " The Soul ; or Rational Psychology," pp. 311-343. ON COGNITION. 83 parents, Kant replies that while the animal life may so begin and, in its turn, die, the soul-life is not thus accidental ; it existed before, and can continue to be exercised without the body."^ Of all these proofs the transcendental is the only fully valid one ; against this there can be raised neither criticism nor doubt. As to the state of the soul after death, Kant will say nothing with assurance, since the limits of our "reason" stop here, evertheless he speaks loith more certainty than one would expect from this precaution ! After death the soul possesses sslf-consciousness, otherwise it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the consciousness of personal identity. This and the self-consciousness rest upon the inner sense which remains without body, and thus the personality remains. But if the body is a hindrance to life, and yet the future life be the j)erfect life, then it must be purely spiritual ; the soul cannot therefore resume its body. If we ask as to the future place of the soul, we are not to think of the separation of the soul from the body as a change of place, since the soul has no determined place in a corporeal world,, and, in general, occupies no place, but is in the spiritual world and in communion with spirits. If the soul is in the society of good and holy beings, then it finds itself in heaven ; if with the evil, then in hell. Thus the soul does not enter into hell if it has lived wickedly, hut it will only now find itself in the society of evil spirits, and this is called being in hell ; and so conversely with heaven.f Similarly in the " Keligion within the Bounds of the Pure * Compare this distinction of the animal from the soul-life, with Swedenborg's distinction between the animus, the m€7is, and the anima, in the " Rational Psychology." t Swedenborg in " Heaven and Hell," says *' That the Lord casts no one into hell, but evil spirits cast t'lemselves in ;" etc. (545.) 84 KANT AND SWEDENBORG Reason," Kant shows heaven to be the Seat of Righteousness, that is, the association with all the good. The Resiu rection and Ascension of Christ signify, " when regarded as ideas of reason," the beginning of the new life, and tlie entrance into the above-named association. (Religion within the Bounds of the Pure Reason, p. 138.) It is remarkable how Kant proceeds further to describe without any hesitation the condition of the soul after death, in that it exchanges its sensuous vision which it enjoyed during life, with the spiritual vision, and that this is the other world I (Politz, p. 255.) As regards the objects of that world, they remain the same ; tliey are not different in substance, but only changed in being seen spirit iialhj ! Erdmann in his Reflexionen, No. 1277, remarks on this j)assage : — " The other world will not present other objects, but only the same objects seen (intellectually, that is) in their relations to ourselves : and the knowledge of things through the Divine vision, and at the same time the feeling of blessedness through this, is no longer the world, Init is heaven." ^ When one comes into the otlier world he does not come into connection with other things, as if with another planet, but one remains in this world only having a different vision. The other world is heaven for me if I have lived a righteous life, and enter into the society of such righteous spirits, and therewith enjoy spiritual vision. It is true this view of the other world cannot be demonstrated, but it is a necessary hypothesis of reason (which can be maintained against its opponents.) + Kant here becomes so enthusiastic as to call " very sublime " * This reflection of Erdmann is evidently an attempt on the part of the modern decadent philosophy to adapt Kant's truly splendid conception to the materialism of modern thought in explaining away a real life after death, and reducing heaven to a certain state of mind in this world.— F. S. t Wanting in PoHtz. ON COGNITION. 85 the thouglit of Swedenborg about the spiritual world, which according to him [Swedenborg] is a very real universe — even though in the work " The Dream of a Visionary," etc., he had called Swedenborg the arch-fanatic and enthusiast — and had remarked of his great work that it consists of "eight volumes full of nonsense." That Kant here uses the word sublime in an ironic sense, as Lind tries to show in his work on " Kant's Mystic View of the World," no one can admit, since Kant's view, as here presented, bears at least a resemblance to the idea of Sweden- borg. Nor is there anything contradictory in the fact that Kant finds something inconsistent in Swedenborg's doctrine of one's being able to see in a certain manner the society of departed spirits with which one's own soul, which is not yet departed, stands associated as a spirit. Naturally ; since the soul in this world has only sensuous vision, and cannot at the same time have spiritual vision : one cannot be wholly in this and in the other world at the same time. (Heinze, p. 557.) This inclination of Kant to Swedenborg at the time of these lectures (1775-1780) is not so surprising, since in his " In- augural Dissertation," Kant himself clearly distinguished between the two worlds, the mundus sensihilis and the mundiis intelligibilis, and in this it is probable that he was influenced by Swedenborg. Kaut differs distinctly from Swedenborg in that he does not believe in the possibility of the association of any soul which is still bound to the body with absent souls ; as he also rejects the idea that souls which spiritually are already in the other world appear in visible acts in this visible world. If we accept this, then there is no more use of reason in this world at all, for then the spirits can be made to account for many transactions. It is of this kind of vision or representation that Kant speaks in his earlier * and his later works. His utterances in the " Criti(pie" leave the impression that he has not entirely rid himself of these ideas of the Lectures. * "Dreams," etc., S. 27. 86 KANT AND SWEDENBORG 111 the " Paralogisms of the Pure Eeason " (p. 330, German edition) he says : " The idea that the thinking subject could have thought before connection with the body, would be thus expressed : ' Before the beginning of the kind of sensation wherein something appears to us in space, the same trans- cendent olijects which in our present state appear as bodies may have been seen in an entirely different way ! ' " The idea that the soul also after the body's death could still think, would take this form : ' If the kind of sensation whereby transcendental objects and those at present entirely unknown appear as a material world should cease, still all vision would not thereby cease, and it would be quite possible that even the same unknown objects should continue, although not indeed under the aspect of bodies, but still continue to be knowable to the thinking subject.' " It is true he speaks altogetlier in a critical manner regard- ing these views, insisting that dogmatically notliing can be adduced either for or against them. [Compare " Lecture on the Philosophy of Religious Doctrine," p. 106 : " Of this immediate vision of the under- standing have we as yet no notion : but whether the departed soul, as intelligence, instead of the sensuous vision, may not obtain some such vision, wherein, in the Ideas of God, he may behold the things in themselves, cannot be denied, neither can it be proved."] Something similar and reminding one of the Lectures, but still of Swedenborg, we find in the section (of the " Para- logisms of the Pure Reason ") on the descrij)tion of the Pure Reason in regard to Hypothesis. There we read (p. 592) that " one may use as a weapon against materialism the argument that the separation from the body is in the end of our sense-knowledge, and the beginning of our intellectual knowledge. The body helps the sensual and animal part, but hinders the spiritual part of our nature. And against other criticisms of the doctrine of Immortality one may adduce the transcendental hypothesis : — "All life is essentially only intellectual, and not subject to ON COGNITION. 87 time clianges, neither beginning witli birth nor ending with death. This world's life is only an appearance, a sensuous image of the pure spiritual life, and the whole world of sense only a picture swimming before our present knowing faculty like a dream, and having no reality in itself. For if we should see things and ourselves as they are, we ivould see ourselves in a world of spiritual natures, with which our entire real relation neither began at birth nor ended with the body's death." One sees here Kant's strong inclination to these views, and how easy it is to establish them by his distinguishing of the appearance from the thing in itself, and on his acceptance of a world of rational beings {mundus intelligibilis) as a kingdom of ends to be thought of as under its own ruler and as neces- sary to the moral conception of the world, even if at the time of the " Critique " he is afraid to insist on these views dogmatically. If we add to tliis the idea of the corpus mysticuni of rational beings in the sense-world — that it " consists in the free will of these rational beings under moral lau's, this being in perfect systematic unity with the freedom of themselves and of each other," * we cannot wonder that both in modern and earlier times the "mystics" have claimed Kant as being of their number, even if we can in no case admit that modern spiritism has any claim on him. Jachmann has reported Kant as denying totally that his words have any mystic sense, or that he is in any way a friend to mysticism. It all depends on what is meant by the mystic. Truly the whole idea of freedom is with Kant a mystic one. Where he differs from mysticism is seen from the Lectures (Politz, 101), where he says : "If one supposes there are thinking beings of whom one can have intellectual vision, that is mysticism, so long as the vision remains only sensual." From Heinze's " Observations on the Lectures of 1790-91, on national Psychology," we quote : — * Compare passages from the "Ecstatic Journey of a Dreamer through the Spiritual World " in the " Dreams," etc. KANT AND SWEDENBORG VVlien Kant says of the virtuous man, " he is in heaven," but cannot see himself there, and only infers this from reason, the statement resembles the thought of Swedenborg which Kant communicated in his earlier lectures, but without clearly designating it as liis (Swedenborg's). Now our souls are all as spirits, associated in this union and society, even in this world ; only here we do not see our- selves as being in this society, because here we have only our sensuous vision ; but although we do not see ourselves in this society (of spirits), we are nevertheless in it. If a man has lived righteously in the world, and his will has been well-dis- posed, and he has endeavoured to obey the moral law, he is in this world already in the society of all well-disposed and righteous souls, whether they be in India or in Arabia, only he does not see himself to be in this society until he is freed from the sensuous vision. In the same way the wicked is in the society of the wicked, (p. 577.) The following is an extract from the Lectures them- selves : — Life reveals nothing but appearances; "another world" means nothing more than " anotlier way of seeing things." The TJinge an Sich selbst are unknown to us here ; whether in another world we shall come to know them, we do not know. (Beilage III., Heiuze, p. 677.) AYliat is very remarkable is the tlioory last advanced by Du Prel, which is noticed by Professor Yaihinger in the Kaiit l^tudien, Vol. I., 1896-97, p. 477, under the heading, " Kant and Swedenborg : Dr. Carl du Piel." Du Prel is here said to attribute tlic spirit-vision described in the letter of Kant to Friiulein von Knob- loch, to Swedenborg's " Clairvoyance brought about by Mono-ideism " : — This appears to Du Prel as the most i)robable explanation, and not the intromi.'^sion of SwedenlK)rg into tlie spiritual ON COGNITION. 89 world, which to Kant seemed even more plausible, because it corroborated his own philosophic views regarding the double nature of man. It is strange to find the discussion of the German meta- physicians resulting in the bringing forward of Kant as a witness to the rationality of Swedenborg's claims to spirit vision ! It might seem almost to be the long- delayed retribution for Kant's scornful treatment of them in the " Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, illustrated by those of Metaphysics." The thorough and sympathetic student of Swedenborg, not to say the New Churchman, for I am here discussing the subject from a purely philosophical standpoint, will, I am sure, find himself in very hearty agreement with the conservative position taken by Professor Yaihinger, in his estimate of Kant's relation to Swedenborg. Espec- ially will he appreciate that discrimination made between the rational acceptance of philosophic principles regarding the existence of two worlds, and the sensuous evidence which is supposed to be afibrded in the practices of the magic of spiritism, practices which Swedenborg not only condemns as mischievous, and of no essential value, but which from his own system as from no other can be stripped of their pretended importance, and shoAvn in their true psychologic and moral value. It is never as a " wonder worker," never as a " spiritual medium," that Swedenborg calls attention to his doctrine of the two worlds. We can conceive of him indeed as having the same kind of inward aversion that Kant him- self felt to all that sort of sensuous evidence of the supernatural. The " materialization of spirit " was to him a revolting notion, because it was in direct conflict 90 KANT AND SWEDENBORG with his supreme metaphysical doctrine of the "di.^ci-ete degree " between the material and the spiritual world. His own intromission into the spiritual world was strictly in keeping with this doctrine, consisting only in the helwlding his environment with a different vision ; but even this vision he nowhere appeals to as final evidence of anything over against the conclusions of reason and the clear testimony of the Holy Scriptures. Robert Hoar in his " E^say on an Unexplained Influence in Kant's Philosophy " {Philosophische- Monatschrift, XXIX., 1893), remarks that— The prevailing opinion regarding the genesis of the critical philosophy, must, after glancing through these Pulitz Lectures of Kant's on Psychology, become entirely changed. As matter of fact the prevailing opinion about Kant, as it is represented by Kuno Fischer and his school, is in nowise correct in this matter. In Kant the critic, people have overlooked Kant's positive tendency, which now may be more readily detected even in his critical writings, since the edition of the Lectures by Heinze have sharpened the vision for detecting it. Professor Vaihinger, in reviewing Du Prel's work, further says, in Archiv filr Geschide dev Philosophie, 1891, pp. 721, 723:— What cannot be denied, and what constantly strikes the more careful reader of Kant in the ante-critical period, is that he gladly entertained Swedenborg's ideas. As Reihl has truly replied to Kuno Fischer, the Traiime of 1766, "are not mere persiflage and pure ridicule, but eiii humoristisches mit Ernst versetztes Lachen : a humorous laugh carrying a serious meaning." Even in the "Dissertation of 1770," Sect. 22, Kant dis- courses on tlie thought that the spatial connection of appearances are the phenomena of the Omnipresence of God [a passage identified above wuth a statement in Swedenborg's ON COGNITION. 91 " Arcana "]. Even in the time of the wider development of his "Critique," Kant was disporting with the idea of a " mystical world," as is shown in the Politz Lectures, whicli date from about the year 1774. Professor Yaihinger further remarks : — These strictly dogmatic ideas [of the two worlds] Kant has relegated to the " Ideas of the Practical Reason," The most important reference to them is in a little regarded passage in the "Critique of the Pure Reason" (A. 808; B. 836), where he represents the corpus mysticum of rational substance [Verminftige JFesen] as a " pure but still practical idea of high moral value." In this connection compare Kant's significant observation with regard to the great function committed to the Practical Reason, in his Transcendental Doctrine of Method. Here, after speaking of tlie limitations of the Pure Reason in discovering knowledge, he says : — At the same time, there must be some source of positive cognitions which belong to the domain of pure reason, and which become cause of error only from our mistaking their true character, while they form the goal towards which the reason continually strives. How else can we account for the inextinguishable desire in the human mind to hnd a firm footing in some region beyond the limits of the world of experience ? It hopes to attain to the possession of a knowledge in which it has the deepest interest. It enters upon the path of pure speculation ; but in vain. We have some reason, however, to expect that, in the only other way that lies open to it — the path of practical reason — it may meet with better success. (Chap. II., p. 483 ; Engl. Ed. " Cdtique.") The wdiole of Kant's treatment of the . " Canon of Pure Reason," which forms Chapter II. of the " Trans- cendental Doctrine of Methods," is of the deepest interest in connection with this doctrine of the two worlds, and the relation of the reason with reference to them. Kant's 92 KANT AND SWEDENBORG real estimate of the teleogical argument of the existence of God cannot be fully understood until this section of his work is read ; and it is here, as the critics admit, that the strong and attractive influence of Swedenborg is manifest. (See "Critique," Bohn's Edition, p. 500.) Together with the German critics above cited, Presi- dent Schurman, of Cornell University, in the Pliilo- sophical Review for March 1898, also makes note of the inevitable return of Kant's mind to those ideas of the corpus imjsticum, and of a mundus intelligihilis, which he tries in vain in his work on Swedenborg to laugh avvay. Professor Schurman says : — The disparity between the reach and the grasp of his thought engendered in him a bitterness of spirit, the pathos of which is unknown to the mere skeptic. Hence the still sad music which he that hath an car may hear beneath the banter and the persiflage of Swedenborg and jMetapliysics. In the " Dreams of a Spirit-Seer " we have the critical part of the " Riglit Method in Metaphysics." Here Swedenborg serves as a whipping-post for the metaphysicians whom Kant .scourges most unmercifully. Knowledge of the supra-sensible is put on the same level with arts of necromancy. In tlie one case it is a dream of sense ; in the other a dream of reason — in both an illusion, (p. 146.) But though Kant, in virtue of the divorce between the theoretical and practical element of his thought, jiV)ed at the metaphysical proof of those clear interests, which his heart was still open to shelter, it required some effort to overcome the rationalizing aspirations of early years, and the struggle occasionally found vent in a bitterness of feeling like the hatred of a deserted friend or the despair of a rejected lover. It is this spirit of desperation with which we behold Kant in the Dialectic, and especially in the discussion of the Antinomies and of the proofs of the existence of God, ON COGNITION, 93 carrying out, as lie admits, " tlie problem of science to its widest extent." Hume bad said in bis parting in- junction : " Commit to tbe flames any volume of divinity or scbool of metapbysics ; for it can contain notbing but sopbistry and illusion." And yet so late as tbe year 1763, about tbe year of Kant's letter to tbe Fniulein von Knoblocb in wbicb be extols tbe learning and marvellous gifts of Swedenborg, Kant says : — All kinds of notions must rest upon the inner activity of the mind for their foundatiou. External things may of course contain the conditions under which then appear in this or thai form, but not the power actually to bring them forth. Tbe soul's power of thought is the real ground of them all. (Works II., 101.) Compare this with Swedenborg in tbe passage cited above from tbe Ai'cana, No. 2557, in the footnote on pages 73, 74. But, in conclusion, to return to tbe relation wbicb Kant bears to Swedenborg in tbe positive direction of the reconstruction of knowledge. In brief we may say that in his "Inaugural Dissertation" (1770), as well as in " Tbe Critique of tbe Pure Reason " (1781), Kant has vindicated the power of tbe mind to know relations, and this by an inherent faculty, belonging to tbe nature of tbe mind itself derived from the one infinite creator and cause of all, and antecedent to all sensuous proofs. This inherent faculty of tbe mind may be called tbe mind's form of thinking and perceiving things, and is described by Kant as consisting of tbe twelve categories of tbe under- standing and of tbe two modes of sensuous experience — time and space. By means of tbe categories, tbe things perceived by the senses are classified into relations, and become objects of thought. 94 KANT AND SWEDENBORG We do not derive time and space from the outer world through our senses, but we experience the outer world in those fields of space and time which the mind projects from itself. We could not experience things moving in space unless we first had the a priori idea of space as a field in which to locate the " here " and " there," or the points between which the motion takes place. On these motions of time and space as forms of seeing things are built pure mathematics and geometry, that is, the science of numbers and extended bodies. The reason why these are the exact sciences is because these relations of time and space are things belonging to the mind itself, and are not dependent on the changeable impressions of the senses. If we depended on sensuous evidence only, and were certain only of the immediate impression being experienced in any given moment, we could never know that in all triangular planes the sum of all the angles is equal to two right angles, without actually measuring every triangular plane that ever has been or ever will be ; whereas our certainty that this is the case grows out of the forms of thinking which exist in our own minds, and which, instead of coming from experience alone, made experience possible. This inherent reality of the knowing power, its separation from the things known, its independence of these as to its form and ability, is the great discovery that philosophy owes to Kant. It is true the under- standing remains mere form in itself, an instrument that may be used for positive or negative results according to the objects submitted to it. The lenses through which the mind looks out upon a world outside of itself are ON COGNITION, 95 those two senses of the finite, the notions of time and space, but these lenses belong to the mind, and not to the things seen. Time and space are not things, but they are the forms by which the finite spirit experiences things.* AVhat that " outer " world may be, which, through these lenses come under the mind's cognition, who shall determine? Kant devotes himself to the contemplation of the material world as if this only were capable of introduction through the sensuous intuition into the mind and into the forms of its judging and knowing. Of the real substance of what we call matter he admitted * 111 the spiritual world the progressions of life appear to be in time ; but since state there determines time, time is only an appearance. Time in the spiritual world is nothing but the quality of state. Times are not there constant as in the natural world, but change according to the state of life, having relation especially to changes of wisdom. Time there is one with thought from affection. (See Swedenborg : " Divine Love and Wisdom," Nos. 70-74.) But time and space as fixed or measured by material standards are proper to nature, and as such belong only to a limit'^d world, and cannot be applied to infinite being. Time and space belong to nature, just as finiteness or limitation belong to a created world. For nothing which is proper to nature can be predicated of the Divine, and space and time are proper to nature. Space in nature is measurable, and so is time. Nature derives this measurement from the apparent revolution and annual motion of the sun of this world. But in the spiritual world it is different. (No. 73.) Tim.es which are proper to nature in its world arc in the spiritual world pure states which appeal' progressive, because angels and spirits are finite ; from which it may be seen that in God they are not progressive, because He is Infinite, and infinite things in Him are One ; and hence it follows that the Divine in all time is apart from time. (No. 75.) 96 KANT AND SWEDENBORG the senses give us no knowledge. But there is nothing in his system that would go to prove that these laws of our knowing would not be true of our experience of any outer or objective world, whether it were of what we call matter or of a purely spiritual substance. A large part of Kant's lectures on psychology and metaphysics is taken up with the rational consideration of the nature of a world which he calls supra-mundane and intelligible in distinction from sensible. His whole treatment of such a world reveals a conception in his mind, of man as a spiritual being clothed in a real spiritual body, which, nevertheless, is not material, and living in a world of objective reality, which, nevertheless, is not fixed by the limitations of what we call the " inertia " of matter. In a word, Kant conceived rationally of a world knowable to man through his spiritual senses. The very substance, the Ding an Sich which lies within or behind the phenomena experienced by the senses in this world, Kant distinctly denies our ability to know here ; we know, he says, only phenomena — or things — as they appear to our senses. But if the great reality, then, only comes to our knowledge by our experience, and this ex- perience is based on our spirits projecting a world of time and space around itself wherever it is, which is certainly Kant's position, then we are in no sense bound to think of a world of matter as the only possible world. The world of spirit appealing to the immortal mind through the intuition of the spiritual organism, may have all the objectivity and reality to the spirit, which a material world can have ; for neither the reality nor the object- ivity lies in the matter as matter, but in the mind's ON COGNITION. 97 native ability to see things apart from itself and from each other, and to know their relations. The significant contribution which Kant has made to the rational basis of faith lies therefore in this : that, while he vindicated the reality of knowledge or the power of the mind to know, he did not make knowledge dependent on the sensation produced by material objects alone. The power of knowing like the power of judging lies within ; the jDOwer of reason is within ; what comes " from without " must come under the judgment of reason : but this " from without " may be from any sphere of phenomena, physical or spiritual. The rationality of a belief in a spiritual world is therefore vindicated. Thus while Kant was furnishing, by his doctrine of the subjectivity of time and space, the ability to know, or the instrument for knowing a spiritual world, Swedenborg was actually bringing such a world into the field of our knowing, by his truthful relation of things heard and seen by him in such a world, through the opening of his spiritual senses. Kant gave to our rational reflection the instrument, as it were, a beautiful telescope, but lying in a closed case with the vision of the stars shut out. Swedenborg lifts it to our eyes, and the vast infinitude of the heavens bursts upon our vision. It is true that the trend of philosophy since Kant has been largely in the employment of his Critique in its negative applications, that is, in showing that, as the mind is purely a form of thinking, and has not in itself the substance of knowledge or the power of creating truths, therefore it can only reason about the things which come through the senses ; it cannot knov>^ anything of their immortality or of God, since these are not things 98 KANT AND SWEDENBORG cxperi(^iiced by the senses of the bodies we possess in this world. But it must never be forgotten that while Kant thus admits the impossibility of the mind's proving immortality and God from natural experience, he asserts at the same time the impossibility of man's disproving these ideas. He merely says these are conceptions which do not come within the range of bodily sense ; we have no authority within the bounds of pure reason either to assert or to deny their reality. On the other hand our practical reason or moral sense demands them. Whether God be or not, we must live and act as if He were, or else mortality ceases to be. Whether God created the world or not, we must practically presuppose Him in order to understand creation. Whether the soul be free and immortal or not, we must practically admit these theories, or the soul loses its normal incentive or spring of right living. Thus if Kant refused to make faith a matter of dogma, he equally refused to make the denial of God a rational necessity. God, the spiritual world, the soul's immor- tality, may be, he says ; only show them to me ! Let them not be mere fictions of metaphysics, mere theoretical creations a priori of the mind. Swedenborg came to answer this final challenge of the reason in its search for God. The vision directed upward to the eternal and the supernatural he filled with the splendid realities of a spiritual world. That which the reason despaired of giving reality to, in all its ages of philosophizing, Swedenborg now came to declare *' from things heard and seen." Both the demands of Kant's Critique are herewith satisfied. The " practical " and the " pure " reason are brought into perfect unity. ON COGNITION. 99 Knowing and believing are not antagonistic, but the same faculties of that mind given to man by His Maker that he may know not only things perceived in the earth beneath him, but also the things revealed from the heavens above him. Revelation is possible ! As Kant proved that even what we call sensuous knowing rests on the mind's belief in the true testimony of the senses, that is, on the mind's prior intuitions of space and time, and cause and effect, and so that belief is the soul and the validity of our knowing, in the same way Swedenborg leads us up to the higher recognition that sees God — the Being of infinite love, wisdom, and life — as the soul of our soul, the knowing of our knowing; because He Himself as the conscious Life and Creator is the basis of all necessary relation, of all the unity and of all the laws of universal being ; and tlierefore is the eternal Reality which is the ground of all believing. V. JACOBI AND THE KEASON OF BELIEF * WHETHER Jacobi may rightfully claim a place in the history of philosophy has been questioned to the extent of his being passed over without mention by some of the historians of the post-Kantian development, and by others referred to rather as a mystic and a theologian than as a philosopher in a true sense of the term. The reason for this exclusion will be found, as wo shall see, to be in entire accordance with Jacobi's own definition of philosophy as viewed from his standpoint, and the status assigned him, viz., that of being extra or super-philosophical, is one in which he would, doubtless, cheerfully acquiesce. JSTevertheless, what he would con- tend is, that tlie grounds of difference between him (Jacobi) and the philosophy of his time, as well as the criticism by which he arrives at this ground, are matters which legitimately belong to the realm of philosophic thought. They constitute, indeed, a critical examination of philosophy itself, of its aims and its limitations. In arriving at the ground of immediate consciousness or faith (glauhe)^ as a positive source of man's knowledge of that which lies beyond the senses, and in his conse- quent rejection of philosophy as a source of such ultimate ■^ Read before the Society fur Philosophical Inquiry in Washington, D.C. February 1899. JACOB I AND REASON OF BELIEF. loi knowledge, it cannot be denied that Jacobi employed the reasoning of the philosophers, and even, as in the case of Kant, carried their reasoning to only its logical conclusion. He is not therefore to be regarded as belonging to the mystics or the oriental intuitionists in the sense of having a system of knowledge revealed to him in a state of ecstasy or while his reason was in a state of suspense. It is by the most careful and critical employment of the reason in the analysis of the philosophy, especially of Spinoza and of Kant, that Jacobi arrived at the principle of the necessary agnosticism of all philosophy. While Jacobi thus speaks the last word for philosophy, as it were, in declaring its failure to attain its end, and so seems rather to stand for a break in the chain of the continuity of post-Kantian thought, yet, on the other hand, it is not difficult to discern a logical connection between his standpoint of the immediate knowing of the (jJauhe and the Fichtean doctrine of the Ego, and to trace its production, through its own assertions of its opposites, of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and so of a logical evolution of being ; equally manifest is its logical connection with Schelling's doctrine of the identity of the Ego and the non-Ego, or of the object and subject, in the absolute, and so, finally, with the fundamental or germ principles of Hegel's logic and phenomenalogy. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was born at Dlisseldorf, January 25, 1743, and died, at Munich, in 1819. The son of a wealthy merchant, and intended for a mercantile career, he was educated at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and, later, at Geneva, where he came into touch with the political ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau, and with a brilliant circle of literary and scientific men. Returning 102 JACOBI AND REASON OF BELIER to Diisseldorf, he entered mercantile life only to abandon it shortly afterwards for positions of Government service in finance and economics, without at the same time lay- ing aside his literary and philosophic studies. After a residence in Holstein for a number of years during the wars with the French Kepublic, Jacobi finally accepted the office of President of a newly organized Academy of Sciences in Munich. He retired from this office in 1812, and then began to edit a complete collection of his works, which was published in 1825, in six volumes, six years after his death. After his early works, the Correspondence of All-Will, and the novel Woldemar, in which romance and philo- sophic speculation are mingled in the manner character- istic of that time in Germany, the first work that attracted attention in the philosophic world was his Letters on Spinoza's Theory (1785), addressed to Moses Mendelssohn. In his work on David Hume on Belief, or Idealism and Realism (1787), Jacobi enters into a critical examination of Kant's Critique, and pronounces his judgment there- upon. In 1802 he published an essay on the Attempt of the Critical Pliilosophy to explain Reason, and in 1811 a treatise on Divine Things, in which he charges Schelling with a pantheistic use of the terms of the Christian religion, and with a concealed but real tendency to the practical atheism of Spinoza. No one pretends, and least of all Jacobi himself, that he was the founder of a system of philosophy. What he contributed was rather a principle than a system. He Avould leave it to others, whether, in the view of this principle, tlie so-called systems of philosoj^hy were of vital consequence or not. This principle was, that Faith, JACOB I AND REASON OF BELIEF. 103 or the immediate consciousness of man's spirit, is the real ground of our knowledge of the supersensual realities, especially of God, of immortality, and man's moral free- dom. Xot only does the understanding, he would say, contribute nothing to our knowledge of these truths, it leads rather to the denial of them. All i:)hiloso[>hy is essentially from its very being agnostic. It neither knows the reality of things perceived by the senses, nor the reality of things conceived by reason. Whatever knowledge we have of either of these two objects of per- ception, we have intuitively, immediately. And the knowledges which we obtain through the intuitions of faith, are as reliable as those we obtain through the immediate testimony of the senses. The knowledge is in both cases a priori, or at least assumed a priori ; the understanding is as helpless so far as the originating of knowledge is concerned, in the one class of cognition as in the other. This negative outcome of philosophy Jacobi undertakes to prove from what he calls, taking his word from Less- ing, the only perfectly consistent system of philosophy, namely, that of Spinoza. The result of this mode of thinking is to prove that God or the Absolute cannot be proved by demonstration. All demonstration, because all the business of the understanding, has to do with the conditioned. We can think of things, and reason from one to another in an understanding, only as conditioned. The understanding can conceive of the world as a whole, only as the entirety of the conditioned. To prove God, therefore, is to negate Him. If the understanding there- fore is the only source of our knowledge of the absolute we are without such knowledge. God at most is merely I04 JACOB I AND REASON OF BELIEF. an empty term standing for an aljstraction, having no place in our intelligent thought. But in our thought, every- thing being conditioned by an invariable law of cause and effect, the world reduces itself to pure mechanism, and as thought and extension are only two attributes of the one thing, or the one substance seen on its two sides, the moral world reduces itself equally to pure fatalism. If there were liberty, then the law of conditioned phenomena, or the law by which they become intelligible, is destroyed, and the world itself becomes unintelligible. There is therefore no world intelligible to our under- standing, but a world whose grounds are mechanism and fatalism. Therefore Jacobi confesses himself to be a " Pagan with the understanding, but a Christian with the heart." Examining now the Critique of Kant, he finds the out- come of the understanding equally negative. The cate- gories of the understanding, according to the Critique, apply only to things knowable through experience. But experience gives us only phenomena, not, says Kant, the Ding an Sich, the reality itself. There is no intelligible connection, therefore, between our knowledge obtained by sensuous experience and reality itself. To experience a thing through the modes of the understanding, is in fact to deprive it of reality. It reduces it from the real to the phenomenal. If there is an experience or a know- ledge of the ultimate realities, it must therefore be through some other source than that of the under- standing. This source Jacobi now finds in the immediate reason of belief. It is man's consciousness, through the spirit, of a spiritual reality, immanent in himself and in all JACOB I AND REASON OF BELIEF, 105 things, and perceptible to man's inner nature in the same way, or with equal certainty, as is the outer world through the senses. Indeed, it is alone this principle of faith, or immediate knowledge of reality, which on the one hand assures us of the validity of our sensuous experience, and on the other of the existence of God, of the good, the just, the free, the beautiful. Behind all so-called know- ledge, and before all philosophy, lies the a priori truth of the undemonstrable. This is not the empty abstraction of Spinoza, nor the unknowable Ding an Sicli of Kant's *' Pure Reason," nor even ihe dens ex machina of the *' Practical Reason," but it is the immediate testimony of the infinitely real spirit in man, whose organ of this highest knowing is faith, or the reason of belief. This may be called the faith of the heart, in distinction from the faith of the understanding, because it rests upon feel- ing rather than upon the logical process of thought, which, as Jacobi claims to have proved, can only result in the negation of a knowable reality. God, the giver of the spirit, is present to man through the heart, as nature is present through the senses. The intuitions of the heart when brought down to the analysis of the understanding, lose their reality in the process, just as God ceases to be God, in man's effort to demonstrate His being. It does not follow that the understanding, or that all philosophy based ui^on its conclusions, must be set aside as useless, but that its limitations should be recognized, in that it deals solely with the conditioned, with the intelligible, it may even be said, rather than with the knowable world ; while the only source of the highest knowledge, that of the infinite realities themselves, will be through the reason of belief, the revelations of the spirit to faith. io6 JACOB 1 AND REASON OF BELIEF. Jacobi does not hesitate to say that a ground for tlie certainty of this belief is the satisfaction it gives to man's moral nature, and he freely admits that the kind of know- ing which is thus obtained through the feelings, is com- paratively "indefinite." He seems, therefore, to recognize the will as a very potent factor in the matter of man's belief, or his choice of a philosophy. He finds an element of freedom in the reason of the will emancipated from the bondage of a conditioned, and so a fatalistic world. Instead of concealing this schism between philo- sophy and faith, he emphasizes it in the way which in his opinion perfect sincerity and consistency demand. In the reason of faith is this whole man active and free. In this freedom lies the precious jewel of the human, as distinguished from the animal physical nature, for in this is the freedom of the spirit, and the possibility of man's infinite progress and aspiration. "Which illumination is the true one," he says, "that of the understanding which discloses indeed well-defined and fixed shapes, but behind them an abyss, or that of the heart which, unable indeed to supply the want of definite knowledge, still sends the rays of promise up- ward ? " The issue as thus stated by Jacobi has not, as sub- sequent history shows, been accepted as final. The ability of philosophy to arrive at a knowledge of the absolute, or of the ultimate reality, has still been con- tended for by a long line of idealists, while the futility of all such efforts has been as confidently proclaimed by those among the scientists who compose the determinist and consistently agnostic school. Perhaps the most interesting illustration of the survival of the Jacobean JACOBI AND REASON OF BELIEF. 107 principle as a factor even in very recent philosophy may be found in the elaborate application of his argument on the negative side by Bradley in his work on " Reality ; '^ and on the positive side by Professor James in the "Will to Believe." The very fact that Jacobi formulated no system on which to found a school of philosophy, or rather that his attitude was that of a final adieu to philosophy, is sufficient to account for the absence of allusion to him in the later philosophical developments. But it would be erroneous to think that the principles for which Jacobi contended, namely, that of the vital agency of faith in all knowledge whatsoever, has ceased to be recog- nized under whatever vast variety of guises that element may be treated. Thus our most eminent physicists have not hesitated to avow the indebtedness of science of the faculty of imagination, and to recognize the ultimate reality whether of matter or of force to be in something we know by faith rather than by sight. And as to the negative and destructive effect of the critical understanding upon the immediate knowledge of the heart or of the feelings, and the consequent maiming of the freedom of the human spirit, this is a matter of every man's experience. Jacobi's assertion that to reduce a thing to philosophic knowledge is to make it either un- knowable or else to put the mind itself into a kind of straight jacket of conditions in which it struggles pain- fully for breath, seems to find corroboration whichever way we turn. "NAHien for instance we appeal to our immediate con- sciousness for the realities and substances of the total that makes up our life, we are aware of such things as the io8 JACOB I AND REASON OF BELIEF. mind, activity, impulse of will, desire, love, \visf creative energy. The universe ]>rogresses by minimal or infinitesimal increments and modifications. The divine agency pervading the visible world, in taking on intelligible and complete manifestations along definite paths, prefers t(j creep rather than leap. This is not the old creationism over again. AVe cannot think of the Divine Being as ever having been without a world. On the other hand, the world that is now is not his old work. He creates from all eternity, and the product each instant is a brand new A\ ork entire, which, though God's creature, is yet not external to Him, l)ut rather the sign of his own living, throbbing presence.— President E. BenJx^mim Andrews, of Brown University, R.I. Swedenborg's Doctrine of Love. I j^ropose to be entirely free in taking points of \'iew and in choice of methods, and in this way I ho])e to I'eproduce ])oth the substance and form of Swedenborg's own doctrine. It should be premised at the outset that Swedenborg's interest is prevailingly religious, and he uses both science and philosophy as means to his constant end of religious instruction. This character too I shall try to preserve. To begin, Swedenborg's whole doctrine is the direct out- PROGRESSIVE PHASES OF IDEALISM. 141 come and the consistent development of one deep and com- preliensive insiglit, wliicli is, that love is the essence and the all of personality. Love is this organized whole of conscious experience which we know ourselves to be, and which we call man. Tliis is Swedenhorg's distinct, clear, and unique contriljution to philosophy. Tlie first and direct consecpience of this insight and con- ception is that the characters of love are the fundamental characters of all reality. The universe, therefore, citn only be truly understood and descriljed as the processes and developments of love. AVhat then are these characters ? First, love is the love of an object other than itself. {True Christian Religion, No. 43.) This is the thing about love that puzzled Plato. He saw that love is the love of something other than itself, and so he argued that love could be neitlier good nor beautiful, for the good and the beautiful are the prime objects of love. So neither could love be a god, for it is a longing and striving for that which it is not in possession of. But no one wouhl be so impious as to assert that the gods are in want of any- thing, for that would imply that they are imperfect, dis- satisfied, and unhappy, but these characters are contradictory of the very nature of the gods. To be a god is to be perfect in goodness, wisdom, power, beauty, and happiness. I will not stop to criticise this argument of Plato, I only wish to make it serve to bring the jiroblem before us. Love, as Plato rightly says, is an emotion, an impulse, a longing, a striving, and all these imply an object not pos- sessed, but desired and wished for. But love is more than these, it is also a seeking, a choosing, a willing. It is, more- over, enjoyment, and enjoyment implies possession and conjunction. It implies a oneness of love and its object. Now the question arises, how can love have an object which is other than itself ? or to put the question otherwise, in what sense is the object of love other ? Beginning with Swedenhorg's fundamental insight, that love in its real essence and ultimate being is the conscious 142 PROGRESSIVE PHASES OF IDEALISM. •su1)ject, and bearing in mind tliat it is described by such terms as imi3ulse, longing, striving, seeking, choosing, willing, ;and so on, we select as the one character which exhibits the whole and constant nature of love, tlie obvious fact, that it is •ever moving towards the fulfilment of a purpose. This purpose looks to the attainment of some end, and it is the nature of this end that furnishes the key to Svvedenborg's ])hilosophy of Love. The d()Ctrine is that the end is all in the cause and the 43ause is all in the effect (X^iviwe Love andJFisdom, Nos. 167, 168). In other words, the end is a given present state, or affection, of love, which looks to a real and complete embodiment in some definite, particular, iinique experience, an experience which we call individual. In such experience the affection feels itself expressed, fulfilled, satisfied, and so in a truly Cibjective sense real. Now there are two stages of otherness exhibited in tliis process whereby a given state, or affection, of love is thus individualized. In the first place, the affection gets repre- sented in thought as an idea, and in this form of idea it is •cut loose from the general body of feeling in which love is immediately self-conscious, and at once, in the form of an idea it becomes an end, and as an end it is conceived to be realized in the unique experience we call individual. Now as immediate feeling this affection is an affection of love. It is love in a certain state. But \k^hen this affection is cut loose from the general mass of feeling which constitutes the total immediate personal consciousness, and takes in thought the form of an. idea, it is no less an affection of love, it is no less love than before ; but observe, it now has a certain kind of otherness, the otherness of being viewed separately and distinctly, and of being referred to a possible other mode of existence as the fulfilment of its purpose and meaning. As such separate and distinct idea it is other than the immediate feeling. But the individual experience in which the idea is fulfilled is other that the idea itself. Thus we have two stages of otherness, and yet we do not PROGRESSIVE PHASES OF IDEALISM. 143 pass out of the region of love. We are only following love through three stages of existence. Swedenborg uses a variety of terms, drawn from the language of philosophy and of common sense, to designate and distinguish these stages. For example, he calls the first stage love, the second wisdom, and the third use ; or he calls them respectively, celestial, spiritual, and natural ; again he calls them affection, thought, and deed. When he Avishes to mark the moral quality of the second and third, he calls them truth and good. We have already seen the application of the terms end, cause, and effect to these three stages of love, but further consideration will show that these terras point to another fundamental character of love which we must now examine. We observe at once that idea and its fulfilment in the process above described are not merely stages of love, but they are developments of it, and grow directly out of its original character of l)eing the love of another. We see now that this other is produced from itself. In Swedenborg's words : *' Love cannot otherwise be and exist than in others created by itself." {Divine Love and IVisdom, Nos. 47, 48.) We have come, then, to the creative function of love, and we see that love is of its own nature creative and creator. It has its very being in the act and process of creation. We have next to discuss the character of love which deter- mines the nature of the object which is to satisfy it. Keturning to the fundamental doctrine that love is the organized conscious sj'stem we call a person, and that all its special states or affections seek fulfilment in some unicpie individual experience, and that this individual must be in some real sense other than the love or the affection that seeks such fulfilment, we are to see what kind of object these characters determine. Love as we now see is a self-representative system of the type familiar to us in our own personal consciousness. Its first movement is to get itself represented in a system of ideas, and then it proceeds to the fulfilment of these ideas in a 144 PROGRESSIVE PHASES OF IDEALISM. system of uiiic^ue individual experiences. The system of ideas, if complete, would be a perfect image of all tlie possible states or affections of love, that is, in this complete system of ideas love would be perfectly self-represented. Each idea is the self-representation of an affection of love, and the sum total of ideas is the self-representation of love as a whole. But as each separate affection is an affection of the whole love, so each idea is in a certain sense an image of the whole lov^. This being the case, the fulfibuent of a given idea is in the same sense the individualization of the whole love. In other words the whole nature and constitntion of love is expressed and fulfilled in this particular individual {Divine Love and Wisdom, Nos. 77, 78.) But observe, that if love in its wholeness be thus completely expressed, represented, and realized in the individual, it is because love is itself an individual. We have now reached the point where we can define the object which the nature of love determines. This object nmst, as we have seen, be other than the love, and it must be a perfect image {Divine Love and Wisdom, No. 64). It is clear in the light of the foregoing that the only object which could be for love really and completely other is another will, that is, a finite system of love so constituted as to be self-conscious and self-deternuning — to use Swedenborg's terms, a finite will and understanding, rational and free. Such a system would still be, in Swedenborg's terms again and in the language of Holy Writ, an image and likeness of the parent love, and it would be the only possible such complete image. It would possess the two chief characteristics of love, namely, self- consciousness and self-determination. In such an object love would be, in the first place, completely rejDresented and realized, and in the second place it would have its other. It is only in such an object that love could fully express and realize itself. In so far as this object should represent to itself the whole true nature of love, and will the fulfilment of this nature, just so far would it be conjoined with the whole love, and so love and its object be one. But in so far as the PROGRESSIVE PHASES OF IDEALISM. 145 object should only icpre.'^ent to itself its own monieiitary and limited system of states, and will tlie fulfilment of these alone, with the deliberate rejection of the whole as other, just so far would it express its self-determined opposition and unlikeness to the excluded whole and thus destroy the oneness and con- junction. In this act it would bring into existence hate and evil. It is, as it seems to me, in the direction of the statement now before us, that we are to look for the philosophical significance and interpretation of Swedenborg's doctrine of Love. I am aware that this statement is very brief and highly abstract, but I hope I have kept near enough to Swedenborg's language and to common experience to make it intelligible. From this point the doctrine develops in various directions, theological, cosmological, psychological, and ethical, but space forbids us to pursue it further. I close \vitli the remark that Swedenborg's doctrine of Love is most important in the field of religion, and its importance here lies in his distinction between selfish and unselfish love. Plato said that self-love is the root of all offences, and Augustine goes so far as to say that self-love is the city of the devil. Spinoza and Wolf have penetrating analyses of love, and in some points come very near to the thought and even the exact language of Swedenborg ; but they stop distinctly short of his insight into the ditterence between the two loves, and their statements stand incomplete. With Swedenborg the distinction is not only clearly made, but upon it depends the whole meaning of the religious life. In fact it serves to define what we mean in concrete terms by the word si:)iritual when used in the religious sense. The religious importance of the Arcana Ccelestia grows mainly out of the fact that it is a marvellous exposition of the varieties and possibilities of these two opposing loves. Indeed we may say that the Arcana Ccelestia is a unicjue body of spiritual psychology, and as such it is the most important body of psychology in existence. After all, philosophy which does not keep in close contact with p'jychology, is apt to be empty and idle speculation, and 146 PROGRESSIVE PHASES OF IDEALISM. we liave Swedenborg's example for carrying liis doctrine of Love into the field of spiritual psychology and there finding its most important application. For the sake of its applica- tion, we should try to understand the general significance of this doctrine of Love, but our motto should be : All doctrine, as all religion, has relation to life, and true life is the life of unselfish love. Lewis F. Hite. VII. EMEESOX AXl) SWEDENBOEG. " X HAA^E sometimes thought," said Emerson, in his J- essay on "Swedenborg; or, the Mystic,"* "that he could render the greatest service to modern criticism who sliall draw the line of relation that subsists between Shakespeare and Swedenborg." It is with the hope of l)eing of at least some humbler service to modern criticism that I attempt in this paper to draw the line of relation that subsists between Emerson and Swedenborg. When Emerson, in this essay, calls Swedenborg "the Mystic," he uses the term in the sense of one Avho gazes upon the realities, whose privilege it is to have access to the secrets and structure of nature by some higher method than by experience through the bodily senses alone (p. 81). He derives the word " mystic " from muesis (Greek), " the closing of the eyes," but it is truly the turning away of the gaze from the merely phenomenal aspect of things as they come to the senses, to behohl their veritable reality as things of the world of mind. In modern limes, no sucli remarkahle example of this * " Representative Men." Boston : Houghton, Mifflin, & :) The moral insight of Swedeiiborg, the correction of popuhir errors, the announcement of ethical laws, take him out of comparison with any other modern writer, and entitle him tf)- a place among the law-givers of mankind. Of course, what is real and universal cannot be confined to the circle of those who strictly sympathize with his genius, but will pass forth into the common stock of wise and just thinking. The world has a sure chemistry by which it extracts what is excellent in its children, and lets fall the intirmities and limitations of the grandest mind (p. 102). V. DEGREES AND THEIR CORRESPONDENCE. Leaving now these tributes of Emerson which borrow a certain grandeur and beauty inseparable from the sub- ject with which they deal, let us glance very briefly, in Swedenborg's own language, at those which Emerson found to be his most interesting philosophical doctrines, namely, the Doctrine of Influx, of Discrete Degrees, and of Correspondence — doctrines which, says Emerson, " should be studied in his books ; " and which " not every man can read, but which will reward him who can." SWEDENBORG ON THE THREE DISCRETE DEGREES, OR END, CAUSE, AND EFFECT ; AND INFLUX, OR THE DIVINE PRESENCE IN NATURE BY MEANS OF THESE. The end of creation is, that all things may return to the Creator, and that there may be conjunction. This end exists in its ultimates. There are three things which follow in order : these are called the first end, the middle end, and the ultimate end ; and they are also called end, cause, and effect. These three must needs be in everything, in order that it may be anything ; for a first end without a middle end and an ultimate end is impossible ; or, what is the same, an end with- out a cause and an effect cannot exist ; so neither can a cause 1 56 EMERSON AND S WEDENBORG. exist without tlie end IVoiii wliicli it proceeds, and the etlect in which it is manifested ; nor can an effect exist alone, with- out a cause and an end. This may be comprehended if it ])e considered that an end without, or separate from, an effect lias no existence, and is a mere term : for an end, to be actual, must be terminated, and it is terminated in its effect, in which it is first called an end, because it is an end. The agent (jr efficient appears indeed to exist by itself ; but this is au appearance arising from the fact of its being in its effect : if it be separated from the effect, it disappears in a moment. Hence it is evident that these three — end, cause, and effect — must exist in everything, to make it anything (D.L.W. No. 167). By this conjunction the Lord is present in every work created from Himself; for every created thing is finally for the sake of man ; wherefore the uses of all things, which are created, ascend by degrees from ultimates to man, and through man to God the Creator, from whom they originate {D.LJF. No. 170). Creation is in a continual progression to this ultimate end by these three principles — end, cause, and effect — because these three exist in the Lord the Creator. Hence it is evident that the created universe, in its common progression to its ultimate end, is respectively the middle end, or tlie means. For forms of uses are continually raised up from tlic earth by the Lord the Creator, in their order, to man, who as to his body is like- wise from the earth. Man is next elevated by the reception of love and wisdom from the Lord ; and all means are j^ro- vided that he may receive these ; and he is made such that he can receive these if he will. From what has been now said it may be seen, though as yet only in a general way, that the end of creation, which is, that all things may return to the Creator, and that conjunction may thus be effected, exists in its ultimates [that is, in the effects or things created] {D.LJW No. 171). That end, cause, and effect aie in all and everything of creation, is evident when it is considered that all effects, or ultimate ends, become anew first ends, in a continual series EMERSON AND S JVEDENBORG. 1 5 7 from tlie Lord the Creator, who is tlie first, to the conjunction of man with Him, which is the last. That all ultimate ends- hecome anew first ends, is evident from the ffict that there is nothing so inert and dead but has some efficiency in it : even the grain of sand exhales somewhat which contributes assist- ance in producing and therefore in effecting something (D.LJV. No. 172). OF DISCRETE DEC4REES. Degrees are of two kinds, discrete degrees and continut)us degrees, or degrees of altitude and degrees of latitude. The knowledge of discrete degrees is as it were the key to open the causes of things, and enter into them. "Without it scarcely anything of cause can be known ; for without it the objects and subjects of both worlds appear to be of one kind {univoca), so as to seem to have nothing in them but what is seen with the eye ; when nevertheless this, respectively to the things which lie interiorly concealed, is as one to thousands — yea, tc> myriads. The interior things which lie hid can by no means l)e discovered unless degrees be understood ; for exterior things advance to interior things, and these to inmost, by degrees — not by continuous degrees, but by discrete degrees. Incre- nients and increasings from finer to grosser, or from rarer to denser, like that of light to shade, or of heat to cold, are called continuous degrees. But discrete degrees are entirel}- ditferent : they are in the relation of prior, posterior, and postreme ; or of end, cause, and effect. They are called discrete degrees,, because the j^rior is by itself, the posterior by itself, and the postreme by itself ; but still, taken together, thev make a one (Z).L jr. No. 184). MAX THE UNIVERSAL TYPE. All created things in a certain image represent man. The- uses of all created things ascend by degrees from ultimates ta man, and through man to God the Creator, from wdioni they had their origin. As there is an endeavour of the minerals of the earth to vegetate, so there is an endeavour of vegetables to vivify themselves ; hence exist various kinds of insects cor- rcsj^onding to their odoriferous exhalations. This is not an 158 EMERSON AND S IVEDENB ORG. •effect of tlie heat of the sun of this woild ah)iie, but of life, by that heat, according to the recipients. That there is a relation to man in all things of the created universe, may indeed be known from what has been adduced, but can only be seen obscurely ; whereas in the spiritual world it is seen ■clearly. In that world, also, there are all things of the three kingdoms, in the midst of which is the angel, who sees them about him, and knows that they are representations of him- self; yea, when the inmost of his understanding is opened, he knows himself, and sees his image in them as in a glass {D.L.JV. Nos. 61-63, 65). OF SPACE AND TIME AS BELONGING TO THE NATURAL PLANE OF THOUGHT. The Divine fills all spaces of the universe without space. There are two things proper to Nature — space and time : from these in the natural world man forms the ideas of his thought, and thence his understanding. If he remains in these ideas, and does not elevate his mind above them, he never can per- "Ceive anything spiritual and Divine ; for he involves it in ideas which are derived from space and time ; and in propor- tion as he does this, the light of his understanding is merely natural. All who die, and become angels, put off those two things proper to Nature, which, as has been said, are space and time ; for they enter into sjjiritual light, in which the objects of thought are truths, and the objects of sight are similar to those in the natural world, but corresponding to their thoughts. The objects of their thoughts, which, as has been said, are truths, derive nothing at all from space and time. The objects ■of their sight indeed appear as in space and in time, but still they do not think from them. The Divine is in all time without time {D.L.JV. Nos. 69, 70, 73). Of Corri^spondeuce^S wedenborg says : — / Correspondence is the appearing of what is internal in Avliat is external, and its representation there (A.C. No. r)423). EMERSON AND S WEDENBORG. 159 And reversely : — There is a correspondence of sensuous things with natural ones ; there is a correspondence of natural with spiritual ones ; of spiritual with celestial ones ; and finally there is a cor- respondence of celestial things with the Lord's Divine : thus there is a succession of correspondences from the Divine down to the ultimate natural. Correspondences may be thus explained : The effect must correspond to the cause ; the cause must correspond to the end ; and as they correspond, the end can be in the cause, and actuate it ; and the cause can be in the effect, and actuate it ; consequently the end through the cause can actuate the effect. Everything in man and in Nature is successive, like end, cause, and effect ; and when they thus correspond to each other they act as one {A.C. Xo!^ 5131). All things in the natural Avorld correspond to those which are in tlie spiritual world {A.E. No. 273). OF THE GENERATION OF PHENOMENA FROM THE NOUMENA. When anything from what is spiritual as its origin or cause becomes visible or perceptible before the senses, there is then a correspondence between them. Such is the correspondence between the spiritual and natural things with man : as the latter have come forth and perpetually subsist from the former, they are correspondences ; therefore they act as one : as end, cause, and effect. Tliere is nothing in the mind to which something in the body does not correspond, and that wliicli corresponds may be called its embodiment {T.C.R. No. 375). Not only the things of the mirrd correspond to spiritual and celestial things, but also the whole man in general, so that there is not the smallest part of him that does not correspond. Hence, man comes into existence and subsists. The universal heaven is so formed as to correspond to the Loi'd, to His Divine Human ; and man is so formed as to coi - respond to heaven, and through heaven to the Lord. Througli this correspondence the angels know the most secret things in man, in the world, and in Nature {A.C. Nos. 3624-3626). i6o EMERSON A XD SWEDENBORG. Regarding tliese correspondences in the language of the Scriptures, Swedenborg says : — The Lord S])()ke by corres])ondences (tliat '\^^ by parahU^s) ; because He s])oke from His Divine ; for what is Divine fall;^, in Nature, into such tilings as corrt'S])()ii(l to the DiviuL' ones (RS. No. 20). The* Word A\as written by correspondences, and thus by representatives. Interiorly it is spiritual and celestial ; and, written by pure correspondences, it becomes in the ultimate sense such as we find it in the Proi)hets and Evangelists. In the most ancient times the science of correspondences was the science of sciences, and was so universal that all their manu- scripts and books were written by correspondences. The Book of Job is full of them ; the hieroglyphics and mythologies were nothing else. All the rites and statutes of the Ancient and Israelitish Churches consisted of ])ure covresjumdences (S-.S. No. 20). There is a mighty force in corres})ondences, because heaven and the world, or the spiritual and the natural, are together in them. Therefore the Word has been written by pure cor- respondences, and therefore the Sacraments have been insti- tuted by correspondences, on which account there is a Divine jiower in them {Ini\ No. 59). The Ancient Word was written l)y pure correspondences ; but wdien correspondences were turned into idolatry and magic, the knowledge of them was obliterated (S./S. Nos.102,22). Each and all things in the created universe have such a correspondence with each and all things of man that it may be said that man too is a kind of universe (D.L.TF. No. 52). Having thus glanced at these teachings of Swedenborg which chiefly impressed Emerson's mind, and noted in wdiat appreciation he held them, we can better understand what Emerson meant when he said of Swedenborg that : He no douht led the most real life of any man then in llie world. EMERSON AND SWEDENBORG. i6i It Avas because he saw the realities behind the corres- ponding veils or symbols of the phenomena ; because he jijinvij3ehind_an^^ eifeiits spiritual causevand behind ^>r Arithin all spiritual causes Divine ends, the essential j^alities themselves. It is because not content with being a mere philosopher in the sense of one who " understands and keeps in awe the cities that others build," he rather "leads us into another region — the world of morals and of will." Then, also, the philosopher has his value, who flatters the intellect of this labourer by engaging him with subtleties which instruct him in new faculties. Others may build cities : he is to understand them, and keep them in awe. But there is a class who leads us into another region — the world of morals or of will {The Mystic, p. 79). The ends of all are moral, and therefore the beginnings are such (Poetry and Imagination, p. 10). In penetrating into the world of Divine ends he reaches that Will, the prime motive of all existence — the very self-activity. VI. THE FUNCTION OF THE IMAGINATION. It is of this real world, the world of causes and of ends, lying within the phenomena of facts ; and it is of man's approach to this world through the imaginative faculty, in distinction from the sensuous knowing, that Emerson treats in the essay on " Poetry and Imagination," of which I shall now present a few striking extracts ; and knowing what we now do of Emerson's studies of Swedenborg, we can hardly keep out of mind the vision of the great law- giver's presence, of his constant influence, even of the order of his development from the dealer in facts to the explorer of their causes and their ends. 1 62 EMERSON AND SWEDENBORG. Says Emerson : * The perception of matter is made tlie common sense, and for cause. This was the cradle — this the go-cart of the human child. We must learn the homely laws of fire and water ; we must feed, wash, plant, build. These are ends of necessity, and first in the order of Nature. The common sense which does not meddle with the absolute, but takes things at their word — things as they appear — believes in the existence of matter, not because we can touch it, or con- ceive of it, but because it agrees with ourselves, and the universe does not jest with us, but is in earnest — is the house of health and life. But whilst we deal with this as finality, early hints are given that we are not to stay here. . . . Thin or solid, every- thing is in flight. And nothing is fast but those invisible ends which we call laws, on which all is strung. And whilst the man is startled by this closer inspection of the laws of matter, his attention is called to the independent action of the mind — its strange suggestions and laws — a certain tyranny which springs up in his own thoughts, which have an order, method, and beliefs of their own, very different from the order which this common-sense uses. All multiplicity rushes to be resolved into unity. Anatomy, osteology, exhibit arrested or progressive ascent in each kind ; the lower pointing to the higher forms, the higher to the high- est, from the fluid in an elastic sack, from radiate mollusc, articulate, vertebrate — up to man ; as if the whole animal world were only a Hunterian museum to exhibit the genesis of mankind. Natural objects, if individually described, and out of con- nection, are not yet known, since they are really parts of a symmetrical universe, like words of a sentence ; and if their true order is found, the poet can read their Divine significance * See the Essay on "Poetry and Imagination in Letters and Social Aims." " Little Classic" Edition. Boston : 1891. EMERSON AXD SWEDENBORG. 163 / . / orderly as in a Bible. Eacli animal or vegetable form reniem- \ bers the next inferior and predicts the next higher. ^ Every man is an image. The world is an immense picture-book of every passage in human life. Every correspondence we observe in mind and matter sug- y gests a substance older and deeper than either of these old nobilities. Their value to the intellect appears only when I hear their meaning made plain in the spiritual U'uth they cover. If you agree with me, or if Locke or Montesquieu agree, 1 may yet be wrong ; but if the elm tree thinks the same thing, if running water, if burning coal, if crystals, if alkalis, in their several fashions, say what I say, it must be true ! * And indeed. Nature itself is a vast trope, and all particular natures are trojjes. The atomic theory is only an interior process produced, as geometers say, or the effect of a foregone metaphysical theory. Swedenborg saw gravity to be only an external of the irresistible attractions of affection and faith. Swedenborg said : " There is nothing existing in human thought, even though relating to the most mysterious tenet of faith, but has combined with it a natural and sensuous image." And again : " Names, countries, nations, and the like are not at all known to those who are in heaven : they have no idea of such things, but of the realities signified thereby." A symbol always stimulates the intellect ; therefore is poetry ever the best reading. The very design of imagination is to domesticate us in another, in a celestial nature. This power is in the image, because this power is in Nature. It so affects because it so is. All that is wondrous in Sweden- borg is not his invention, Init his extraordinary perception : that he was necessitated so to see. The world realizes the mind. Better than images is seen through them. The selec- * Compare Swedenborg's statement in D.Z. W., No. 52 : "That there is a correspondence of man's will and thence of his under- standing with all things of the vegetable kingdom, and of his ultimate life with all things of the mineral kingdom." i64 EMERSON AND SWEDENBORG. lion of the image i.s no more aluitvarv than the power and .significance of the image. The selection must follo-\v fate. Poetry if perfected is tlie only verity ; is the S])eecli of man after the real and not after the apparent. And poetry is the only verity ; the expression of a sound mind speaking after the ideal, and not after the apparent. As a power, it is the perception of the symholic character of things, and the treating them as representative ; as a talent, it is the magnetic tenaciousness of an image, and liy the treatment demonstrating that this pigment of thought is as palpable and oljjective to the poet as is the ground on which lie stands, or the walls of houses about him. And this power apj^ears in Dante and Shakespeare. In soiiie individuals this insight, or econd sight, has an extraordinary reach, which compels our wonder, as in Belimen, Swedenborg, and William Blake the painter. Nature is a true idealist. When she serves us best, when, on rare days, she speaks to the imagination, we feel that the huge heaven and earth are but a web drawn around us ; that the light, skies, and mountains "are l)ut the iviinted vicissi- tudes of the soul." Compare ^vith this Swedenborg's statement quoted above from D.L.W.^ No. 63, that "In the spiritual world the angel standing in the midst of the three kingdoms and seeing all these varieties about him knows that they are re]:)resentations of himself, and sees his image in them as in a glass." Homer, Milton, Hafiz, Herbert, Swedenborg, Wordsworth, are heartily enamoured of their sweet thoughts. Moreover, they know that this correspondence of things to thoughts is far deeper than they can penetrate — defying adequate expres- sion : that it is elemental, or in the core of things. As soon as a man masters a principle, and sees his facts in relation to it, fields, waters, skies, offer to clothe his thoughts in images. The thoughts are few ; the forms manv ; the large voeabu EMERSON AND SWEDENBORG. 165 lary or many-coloured coat of tlie indigent unity. The savans nre chatty and vain ; hut hold them hard to principle and ilefinition, and they become mute and near-sighted. What is motion ? what is beauty ? what is matter ? what is life ? what is force ? Push them hard, and they will not be loquacious. They will come to Plato, Proclus, and Swedenborg. The invisible and imponderable is the sole fact. VII. swedexborg's definition. In conclusion I desire to give a few extracts from Swedenborg's own scientific definition of the Imagination as found in his work entitled "The Soul, or Rational Psychology," a work to which Emerson probably did not liave access, as it was not translated from the Latin at the time of his writing, but first appeared for English readers in the volume published in New York in 1887. Space will not admit of my giving more than the briefest sketch of the chapter devoted to this subject, but it will sufiice to give a rough idea of the author's treatment of the Imagination after his method of physiological psychology. It need hardly be said that the Imagination here treated of by Swedenborg is not to be identified with that poetic or creative inner sight of which Emerson treats in his brilliant essay. Emerson, indeed, when he says that " poetry is the only verity," is speaking of something far different from mere fancy or fiction produced arbitrarily from mental images. Poetry, in the serious and sublime sense in which Emerson speaks of it, is nothing less than the creative power of Truth itself when apprehended by the vision of the higher intellect, or the reason illumined with spiritual light, and impelled into utterance by the delight of expression, or of making objective to others that which is given to one's self. The highest example 1 66 EMERSON AND SWEDENBORG. of this jDoetry is, of course, the Divine Word or Logos itself, by " whom all things were made," being itself the very activity of the Divine Love through the Divine Wisdom in the creation of a phenomenal world. But on the human plane the process is analogous, and the poet's office is always to make worlds in which man shall see himself reflected. To this function the Imagination treated of scientifically by Swedenborg is only an in- strument, a furnisher of materials in those products of the mind which first result from the sensuous impressions from without coming in contact with the constructive and unifying power of the " j3ure intellect " from within. The following extracts are from the concluding chapter of the First Part of the work on " The Soul," the pre- ceding chapters having treated of the several senses in their order. The chapter is entitled, " Perception, Imagi- nation, Memory, and their Ideas," and it is followed by the chapter which introduces Part II., and is entitled " The Pure Intellect." A mere skeleton of the argument is given in tlie following : — Words which are heard are as it were instantly seen ; for words represent so many forms, f[uantities, qualities, move- ments, accidents, which are usually objects of vision. But whatever is seen is also taken in by a certain interior sight or imagination, that is, it is perceived. Thus modes of sound . pass over into modes of sight, these into ideas of imagination or material ideas, these again into rational ideas or into so many reasons, from which analytically considered arises the intellect. . . The imagination is therefore an internal sight which corresponds to the external ; for the eye is only the organ or instrument of vision, the genuine vision itself residing in the brain or in the common sensory. The pai'ts of external sight are called ima-vs ; but Wx'a^ parts of internal— sight are cnlted ideas, l)y soiu^-^nfttefial EMERSON AND SWEDENBORG. 167 ideas. . . . Tlie external sight contemplates the figures of objects, as for instance one wall of a palace after another ; but the internal sight observes at once all these things which to the eye are presented successively, or during the passing of time. Other illustrations here follow : — ■ Hence it follows that the internal sight or the imagination is in a degree proportionately superior, prior, interior, simpler, and more perfect than the external siglit. The images themselves of the sight are elevated along the fibres of the optic nerve even to all the cortical glands of the brain. . . . Tlie gland which is the organ of sight or of the imagination, adapts itself at once most perfectly to receiving its object; thus it undergoes a change of state very nearly corresponding to the inflowing image or object. This change, which the gland receives and to which it adapts itself at the impulse of any visual image, is called an idea. It can no longer be called an image, since it partakes of a certain superior and more perfect form as well as of intelligence. In this way the visual image is converted and passes into the corresponding idea of the imagination, or the external and inferior sight into that which is eternal or superior. Memory is all that which is produced by the imagination ; it is the mutability of state itself. A particular mutation in potency is a part of the memory; a particular mutation in act is a part of the imagination. Therefore the ideas of the memory are the same as the ideas of the imagination, and the imagination may be called the active mejuory. . . . All parts of the imagination are insinuated through the senses alone, but inasmuch as their order, their harmony, and their form does not depend on the sensory, it follows that something more than memory alone is required for the imagination. For it is not owing to the memory that those ideas are called forth and rightly put together. This is rather the result of the pure intellect itself or of the soul. Hence it follows that the imagination can exist so far as there is a communication of the pure intellect with the idea of the memory. i6S EMERSON AND SIVEDENBORG. Ill a subsequent chapter Swedenborg treats of the human intellect as the organ of thought, lying as it were midway between the pure intellect above and the imagi- nation below, and partaking of both. Here we read : — Imagination, therefore, only takes in the form of an object or of objects, and its qualit}', according to the order, the position, tlie connection of the parts or ideas ; but the thought draws forth not the material form itself of the parts, but out of such a form, or from similar forms, it obtains a certain sense not in the visible parts, nor in the connection of the parts, but lying hidden within ; wherefore the thought is said to understand, and the imagination to perceive. Understanding is a superior perception and an inmost sen- sation. Thought closely succeeds perception, for when we call forth ideas of memory one after anotlier, particular and general, that operation is called thought, or a turning and resolving of the mind toward every part. When ideas or reasons are turned and revolved in thought they are l)rought into the form of some equation ; this equation is called a judgment. The more perfect the form of the equation, the more similar and harmonious the things to be found in it, so much the more perfect is the judgment. But it belongs to tbe pure intellect to perceive similitudes, consistencies, harmonies, and truths ; hence it is an exact judgment when the rational mind has called the purer intellect into a closer intercourse. It follows that we are able to come nearer and nearer to the pure intellect, and indeed by means of universal ideas and a certain passive power ; that as we remove particular ideas or withdraw the mind from limitations — from the more l)r()ken, limited, iind material ideas, and at the same time from loves and desires which are purely natural — then the human intellect, quiet and free from foreign disturbance, and dwelling alone with its own, and what belongs to pure intel- lect, causes that our mind shall not suffer other changes or give forth (jther reasons tlian these wliioh accord with the EMERSON AND SWEDENBORG. 169 ideas of pure intellect. On this account our intellect experi- ences an inmost tranquillity and joy ; for then this concur- rence appears like the influx of a certain light of intelligence illuming the whole sphere of thought ; and in a kind of un- animity, I know not whence, it constrains the whole mind, and inmostly dictates what is true and good and what is false or evil (Xos. 63-94). In this subtle but beautiful analysis of the power of thought and of conclusion we see how Swedenborg, here as elsewhere the law-oiver, defines with scientitic accuracy and thoroughness that faculty which Emerson contents himself with calling by beautiful names, and admiring in its operation and its results. Here, as elsewhere, we have in Swedenborg the philosophical insight into the interior laws and relations of mental operation, which enabled him to truly unlock the " secret of the world " as no philo- sopher or poet has done before or since. These principles, enunciated by Swedenborg, and illustrated by the whole course of his philosophical and theological writing, drop- ping like prolific seeds into the minds of Emerson and a whole generation of poets contemporary with him, in- cluding the Brownings and Tennyson, have blossomed out into the fair field of modern literature, until in the rich bloom and fragrance we cease to look within for the seed or the furrow, and the poet brilliant in words entrances the world's gaze, while the silent poet, the maker of the great thoughts, is easily passed by and for- gotten. For this, however, let Emerson be ever honoured — that up to the measure of his ability to understand Swedenborg, and so to intelligently admire him, he did so with all openness and frankness, withholding no whit, consciously, of that which constituted his own indebted- ness to the tjreat seer, his acknowledcred master. viir. APPEAEANCE AND EEALITY.* THE leading ^vork of metaphysical interest in recent years, for readers on both sides of the Atlantic, has probably been Bradley's " Appearance and Reality." At Oxford, in England, as at Harvard here, the book has been taken up with an enthusiasm quite new in this field of study. Although we do not propose to enter upon any extensive review or critique of the book here, it is not imi:)roper, and it may be useful as briefly as possible to bring the book into the range of vision from a New Church standpoint, and this perhaps can best be done by introducing, by the side of Bradley's confessed want of a principle of unity in knowledge, the clear and beautiful theory of the soul as propounded by Sweden- borg in his " Rational Psychology," written nearly a century and a half ago. The problems Avith which Brad- ley here confronts us are met by Swedenborg in a lucid and simple theory — that of the soul or life as the one principle of unity, the one great copula^ or bond between subject and predicate, that element which alone enables the mind to form a judgment, that is, to assert one thing of another, to preserve identity amid variables, the con- * A Metaphysical Essay. By F. H. Bradley, LL.D., Glasgow, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. New York : The Macmillaii Company. APPEARANCE AND REALITY. 171 slant amid the clianfancf. However frank, sincere, and attractive is the style of Bradley's discussion, we can hardly imagine a reader concluding any chapter in it without a feeling of dissatisfaction. The ground of this dissatisfaction will be found, we think, in this lack of a principle of unity. We are forever brought up against the dead wall of the old dilemma : " If you predicate what is different, you ascribe to the subject what it is not ; and if you predicate what is not different, you say nothing at all" (p. 20). This dilemma is the prevailing difficulty underlying each discussion in its turn through- out the whole work ; it is presented in a peculiarly tangible form in the discussion of time and space, and of motion and change. It is clear at a glance that these in- volve the permanent in the variable ; and the question i& always. How can A remain A, and he something not A ? The functions of the soul as the unifier of the succes- sive and the simultaneous, and of plurality and unity, is described in a remarkable chapter in Swedenborg's work already referred to. In that work he outlines the following scale of ideas in their subordination, beginning wuth the lowest or those " appearances " of sense- impressions, with all their multiformity and discord : The ideas of bearing are modes, modulations, words. The ideas of sight are images and objects. The ideas of the memory or imagination are properly called ideas. The ideas of the intellect are called reasons. The ideas of the pure intellect are the first natural truths. The ideas themselves of the soul are spiritual truths {The Soul, No. 138). The "pure intellect" influences the sphere of " thought " just as the images of sight influence the forming of the 172 APPEARANCE AND REALITY, littered word which describes thein. It is not influx of matter into matter, but a correspondence between the •different planes of consciousness in the same mind {vidt jS'o. 139). Now, omitting the other steps of the process upward from the sense-impression of diversity into the .soul's impression of unity, we may form an idea of the pro- <,'css from the following description : first, of the synthesis that takes place in the imagination, and then of the higher synthesis that takes place in the pure intellect. It is in the soul, the pure intelligence, that entire unity is reached (r/JeNos. 127-130, 139). Thus 8wedenborg says of the imagination or internal vision : — The external sight beholds in a city one house after another, squares, streets, temples, monuments, its legislature, its inhabi- tants ; but the internal sight sees these several things all in- stantaneously, and not in succession. . . . Thus the external sight takes in only one part of the several objects after another, Avhile the internal vision takes them in simultaneously, so that in a moment it may traverse a j)alace, a city, the starr}^ heavens, and contemplate in one compound idea that which was presented to the eye in its particulars. Thus the total complex of the one differs infinitely from that of the other, so that something infinite or perpetual is as it were superadded as contributing to superior form in respect to that immediately below it. Hence it follows that the internal sight or the imagination is, in a degree, proportionately superior, prior, interior, simpler, and more perfect than the external sight {Tlie Soul, No. 94). Sensations do not supply any other objects than those which are ])arts of the imagination ; but to analytically reduce those into forms, and thus to conceive and put forth new forms, which again are ])ails of a sid^lime thought, and in these to ■observe truths, verisimilitudes, and probabilities from their •connecti(>n ami oi'der alone — this is not a function of the sen- APPEARAXCE AND REALITY. 173 sations, Init of tlie pure intellect ; neither is it a proces.-i; of tliouglit itself, for tlie tliouL,flit is wliat is reduced into such a form, and so it is a result from that intellect which is prior and which produces the intellectual or rational ideas of the thought (No. 129). That all real ideas, or what Bradley would call ideas that have Reality, and thus all true science, must rest upon this unity of knowledge which exists in the pure intellect, and this by virtue of an influx from the Soul, and even from the Divine, is thus demonstrated by Sweden- borg : — For the pure intellect does not first inform itself from other sources how and in what manner it shall act, but from itself and in itself it knows these measurements, laws, rules, and truths, and other things, which are found to be contained, although imperfectly, in the thought, in the imagination, in the external sensation, in the action, and in the several organs. In all of these there lies hidden what is the inmost and most abstruse in all the sciences, as in the first philosophy, in logic, in anthropology, in dialectics, in physiology, in physics, in geometry, in mathematics, in mechanics, in optics, in acoustics, in chemistry, in medicine, in jurisprudence, in ethics, in grammar, and in many others of whatever name. "\A"e may clearly behold an example and a summary of the sciences in our whole organic system in its several members, parts, and operations, all of which must flow and exist, not from them- selves, hut from some efficient cause in which such a science is, or which is the science itself, tlie order, truth, harmony, and form of forms. These are all universal terms which apply to the pure intellect. Thus inmostly in ourselves we possess a most perfect knowledge of all natural things ; and yet we seek, with much anxious effort, how to learn some part of this very know- ledge, or of this that is already within us, and so to draw this hidden knowledge out of shadow into light. Thus the pure intellect can be called the science of the natural sciences ; for 174 APPEARANCE AND REALITY. nil single sciences are but imrts of some universal science ivliich we call the jjhilosojjhij or matliesis of universals (No, 131). Tlie pure intellect eoinprehencls simultaneously that wliicli thought or our rational mind comprehends successively : the premises and antecedents, for instance, at the same time with the consequent, as in a conclusion or an analytical equation — principles and causes at the same time with the principiates and causates ; and also effects : for it views even effect as already existing in its efficient cause, thus everything to be formed as already formed, and everything already formed as to be formed ; nor does it hesitate in thinking out the means, for it takes in the whole complex. A defect alone of instru- mental causes hinders its act, for it contemplates all things past as i^resent, and at the same time those future things which tivideutly flow connectedly and according to natural order. Thus concerning the operations of this pure intellect we can neither predicate movements nor degrees ; thus neither time,, space, place, movement, celerity, nor any of those things whicli suppose succession and distance ; for its form is the first of Nature, and from this as a beginning, or beneath it, the acci- dents and qualities of Nature descend and arise (No. 132). The pertinency of these quotations from Swedenborg in connection with Bradley's discussion will appear to all wdio have followed this author's wearisome journey through all the realms of knowledge in search of a prin- ciple of unity, or that which shall give reality or certainty to our asserting a predicate of any subjects. In conclusion it must be said that notwithstanding Bradley's concluding assertion of the Spirit as the only reality, the tendency of his work is on the whole nega- tive and destructive. He not only classes the soul, truth, goodness, even God, among the appearances or those ideas that lack perfect reality, but he inclines to doubt the soul's immortality, thinking that this rests upon a mere margin of the possible, rather than on any strong proba- APPEARANCE AND REALITY. 175 Lility even. The tendency of the book is to pure skepti- cism, to doubt as a necessity and as the normal attitude of the soul. His recognition of a Whole, a Perfect Reality, a Spirit, is of little practical consequence, seeing that this is something from which the human mind as such is forever shut out. There is no bridge between the finite and the infinite, no revelation from the Divine to the human. How different his conclusions would have been could he have known and acknowledged Sweden- borg's great underlying metaphysical and psychological doctrine, that " man is not life, but he is a recipient of life, into the twofold recejDtacle of the will and the under- standing." IX. PEOFESSOE JAMES ON THE WOETH OF LIVING. THE article by Professor Williani James, of Harvard University, entitled " Is Life AVorth Living 1 " in the October number of the International Journal of Ethics, has called forth many lively comments, and is likely to awaken not a little animated discussion among psychologists, in which body of thinkers Professor James has held an eminent place. The treatise is remarkable, not merely for the strong reaction it exhibits against the agnosticism which forbids on principle a trust in the supernatural, and for its positive and direct appeal to re- ligious faith, but also for tlie ground assumed for this religious faith. This ground is simply that of a distinct and discrete spiritual order of things to be accepted as the only true solution and reason of the natural order. Pro- fessor James enters fully into the agnostic's criticism of what was called "natural theology," and shows up the weak points of nature when set up to worship as an idol of clemency and goodness and wisdom. He thus disarms " science " of all the old weapons, recently so valiantly brandished in attacking what was called the theological argument, and now strikes out boldly for a new position from which to view the whole conflict, and see a way out of it; and this position is none other than a religious THE WORTH OF LIVING, 177 faith, founded upon the acknowledgment of the discrete degree between the natural and spiritual orders of being. It is easy to imagine that the thrust in this article which will be most severely felt by the scientific agnostic, wall be not so much the physical as the psychological one. The devotees of pure science are exhibiting less confi- dence than they ditl even a few years ago in their having arrived at any final facts, either in the nature of matter or the laws of the cosmic process, but they are hardly pre- pared to have their very thinking apparatus itself taken to pieces, and a scale of value established between diffe- rent kinds of knowing. Professor James even pierces to the foundations of belief itself, and the relation of belief to life, na}', to the very existence of things. He goes in one place to an extreme of subjectivism, where, he says : — I confess I do not see why the very existence of an invisible world may not in part depend on the personal response which any of us make to the religious appeal. God Himself, in short, may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity (p. 23). While this has a mystic sound, and seems to be a ven- ture upon very dangerous ground, and to lay the writer's whole position unnecessarily open to the charge of an- thropomorphism, yet we cannot but be struck w^ith the profound truth and force of the position taken, that truth is not an abstraction of mere thinking, but is actually a form of conduct ; and tliat the more the mind conforms itself to the truth in the aims of living, the more does it arrive at actual knowledge of the inner reality. This veritable substance of things whose form is the truth, is the Divine Good itself lying at the inmost source of the RI 178 PROFESSOR JAMES ON world anil its order. Thus Professor James says, speak- ing of belief : Our faculties of belief were not primarily given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withal : they were given us to live by. And to trust our religious demands means first of all to live in the light of them, and to act as if the invisible world which they suggest was real. The bare assurance that the natural order is not ultimate, but a mere sign or vision, the external staging of a many- storied universe, in which spiritual forces have the last word, and are eternal — this bare assurance is to such men enough to make life seem worth living, in spite of every contrary pre- sumption suggested by its circumstances on the natural plane. Destroy this inner assurance, vague as it is, however, and all the light and radiance of existence is extinguished for these persons at a stroke. Often enough the wild-eyed look at life, the suicidal mood, will then set in. To provide a cure for tliis nielanclioly, this suicidal mood, which prevails with so many at the present day, is the avowed object of the address before us.^ Professor James calls the prevailing pessimism a " religious disease," and he appeals confidently to religion to heal it. This religious disease, he says, " consists in nothing but a reli- gious demand to which there comes no normal religious reply." Xow, to present the needed reply the author advances by several steps. For the miseries of this w^orld and the unsatisfactoriness of life one seeks a solution first in "an intellectual loyalty to what are called the hard facts of science." " One craves acquiescence and communion with the Soul of things." But when the mind is pent in to "hard facts," especially as science now reveals them, this ■^ The article was first delivered as an address, before the Young Men's Christian Association of Harvard University. THE WORTH OF LIVING. 179 craving will breed pessimism as easily as it iDreeds optim- ism, when it inspires religious trust and fancy to wing their way to another and a better world. But pessimism is a religious disease, because its source is in man's reflec- tive faculty, and therefore it is in reflection that it may be healed. Xature, and so the science of nature, has nothing in itself either to establish or to destroy the idea of a supreme good ruling all things. For this we must go to a cause, something within or higher than nature. The physical order of Nature, taken simply as science, knows it cannot be held to reveal any one harmonious spiritual intent. It is mere loeather, as Chauncey "Wright called it — doing and undoing without end. Now, I wish to make you feel that we have a right to believe that the physical order is only a partial order : we have a right to supplement it by an unseen spiritual order, which we assume on trust, if only thereby life may seem to us better worth the living again. But as such a trust may seem to some of you sadly mystical, and execrably unscientific, I must first say a word or two to weaken the veto which you may consider that science opposes to our act. While we admit that the writer makes easy work of showing the absurdity of the claims of modern science to infallibility even in its verdicts on natural things, we ob- serve that he nowhere lays down any other than a subjec- tive reason for a faith in the spiritual order. Nowhere does he appeal to revealed truth, or to the Scriptures, or any other source of historic or evidential proof, of the existence of another world or of life after death. We have no fault to find with Professor James for going no farther than he could honestly go in his valiant and gene- rous plea for a man's psychological right to a religious belief. If a thinker had no stake in the unkn«jwn, no vital needs, I So PROFESSOR JAMES ON to live or to languisli according to wliat tlie unseen world con- tained, a philosophic neutrality, and refusal to believe either one way or the other, Avould he his wisest cue. But, unfor- tunately, neutrality is not only inwardly difficult, it is also outwardly unrealizable, when our relations to an alternative are practical and vital. This is because, as the psychologists tell us, helief and doiihf are living attitudes^ and involve conduct on our imrt. We emphasize the last words as very important in any case, and as stating what Professor James calls our right to believe. But when he says that " we have a right to supplement the partial physical order by an unseen spiritual order which we assume on trust, if only thereby life may seem to us better worth living again," it seems to us the writer steps from a strong to a comparatively weak argument^ and one that unnecessarily exposes his whole position to the assaults of his opponents. For it not only introduces- the "interested motive," allowing it to bias our conviction of the truth, or to induce us to believe a thing simply be- cause we want to believe it, but it departs from the much stronger psychological position that belief is something vital because it is the form of conduct. This is equivalent to saying that truth is tlie form of good, and that, as one voluntarily submits himself to the truth, he becomes conscious of the good which is its substance, and that sO' the religious demand receives its normal answer. But to say that we may " assume on trust " a spiritual order, if life seems better worth living thereby, seems an altogether inadequate statement of the real ans^ver to the religious demand. The religious demand is for a knowledge of an underlying purpose or end, a Divine Love as the Final Cause of the universe, and its life. This knowledge or THE WORTH OF LIVING. i8i conviction once obtained, a belief in the spiritual order of tlie universe and its compensations for the natural disorder, easil}^ follows. But what shall be the ground of this knowledge ? Shall it be merely our desire so to know % Does not the religious demand for a knowledge of a Divine purpose underlying the world mean equally a demand for a revelation of that Divine purpose to human minds in various grades of symbolism or parable according to suc- cessive conditions of the race % And if we may " accept on trust " a belief in the supernatural, may we not accept as legitimately " on trust " the fact of a written revelation y Swedenborg ; to the strong religious bias in Kant, Fichte, AFFECTED BY NATIONALITY. 195 Schelling, and Hegel, as compared with their contempor- aries in France ; to the spectacle of the English Xewton in his later years turned into a searcher for an inner mystic sense in the Bible, and the German Kepler, listening with a Pythagorean ear to hear the heavenly harmony of the spheres. While the tendency of the French schools of thought has been on the whole material- istic and skeptical, that of the German has been idealistic and constructive. Both shared in the struggle to throw off the fetters of tradition, and to breathe the free atmos- phere of the new age. The Teuton sought in the Refor- mation the overthrow of religious tyranny; the Celt in the French Revolution, the modification of civil govern- ment ; of the two, the religious conflict was the deeper and more vital. To trace the currents of the two influences in the state, the church, and literature, would be to write the history of the civilization of Europe. Xaturally, in the south, we find the Hellenic objectivity asserting itself over against the moody introversion of the northern mind. The long wars of the Guelpli and Ghibelline factions were nothing •else than the struggle between these two devotions, that of the Guelph to the sensuous paganism of a corrupt papacy, that of the Ghibelline to the spiritual rule of united church and empire. Of this struggle of race elements I have remarked elsewhere : " In the ever- widening antagonism between the spirit and the flesh, between the subjective conception of Christianity on the one hand, as represented by the Teutonic race and the Empire, and the sensuous and objective on the other, as represented by the Italic race and the Pope, may we not •■discern the reason why the Italian people in the lowest 196 PHILOSOPHY AS deptlis of their sensual corruption were largely and power- fully Guelpli in their sympathies, and why the exiled and lonely Avriter of the Divina Comniedia was a Ghibelline'?"* This deep-seated aversion to Teutonic spiritualism seems to find expression in the great modern exponent of the Hellenic reaction in Italy, Giosue Carducci. In one of his sonnets to Dante, the poet thus reveals the conflict within him between his intellectual reverence for his Master and his native dislike to that interior religion of which Dante was the vast and lonely monument : Dante, why is it that I adoring Still lift my songs and vows to thy stern fece, And sunset to the morning gray gives place To find me still thy restless verse exploring % Lucia prays not for my poor soul's resting, For me Matilda tends no sacred fount, For me in vain the sacred lovers mount O'er star and star, to the eternal, soaring. 1 hate the Holy Empire, and the crown And sword alike, relentless would have riven From thy good Fi-ederick on Olona's plains. Empire and Church to ruin have gone down. And yet for them thy songs did scale high heaven. Great Jove is dead. Only the song remains, f In a still more pronounced form the Hellenic spirit declares itself in the following lines from the same poet : Farewell, Semitic God : the mistress Death May still continue in tliy solemn rites, far-otf King of spirits, whose dim shrines Shut out the sun. * Introduction to the Poems of Giosue Carducci, p. 24. t Levia Gravia. AFFECTED BY XATIONALITY. 197 Crucified Martyr I Man tliou crucifiest : The very air thou darkenest with tliy gloom. Outside, the heavens shine, the fields are lauahins And flash with love. The eyes of Lydia — Lydia ! I would see thee Among the chorus of white shining virgins Tliat dance around the altar of Apollo In the rosy twilight. Gleaming as Parian marble among the laurels, Flinging the sweet anemones from thy hand, Joy from thine eyes, and from thy lips the song Of a Bacchante ! * Not the least interesting phase of this dual tendency of the European mind is found where the two influences are united in a single genius, as was conspicuously the case with Goethe, of whose " Hermann and Dorothea " Pro- fessor Dowden has said : " h\ this representative poem Goethe is more than elsewdiere a Greek in the bright parity of his art and its fine simplicity of outline ; here also more than elsewhere in the body of thought and feeling he is a German of the Germans. It follows as a matter of course that a nationality so complex as that of Anglo-Saxon, modern England will exhibit rather a synthesis of philosophic schools of thought than any single tendency. AVe must expect to find in English philosophic writing the pronounced critical and skeptical tendency of the French, together with the earnest search for interior truth, and at the same time the moral application which belongs to the Anglo- Saxon type of mind. The wide range of race elements in the modern Englishman would seem to fit him pecul- * Odl Barhctre. ig8 PHILOSOPHY AS iarly for becoming the exponent of a universal school of philosoph}', wherein all the diverse elements are reunited in a symmetrical and complete whole. That such has already been the case would be a presumptuous claim to make. It ma}', perhaps, at most be said that in philo- sophy English writers have exhibited all extremes of thought, but as yet only in fragmentary forms, not arriv- ing thus far at any philosophic unity. Like the com- mingled nationality itself, in wJiich there are to be traced the race elements of the native Celt, the invading Scan- dinavian, the Roman, the Celt as modified by the Norman and the Norman by the Celt, and these both modified by the modern Latin influence, we find in English philosophic thought, strains that have been potent in the philosophy of other lands. Yet Ave cannot help feeling that every one of these contributed elements assumes in England and in Scotland a certain hue of its own which differen- tiates it from the same elements in France or Germany. The intellectual idealism of Descartes puts on a sober garb of practical reflection in Locke and Berkeley : lead- ing ultimately to the skepticism of Hume and Mill, and later to the agnosticism of Huxley and Spencer. As a counteracting influence, we have in modern England no Papacy with its dogma or index, nor anything precisely equivalent to the lofty religious idealism of the German speculative schools. Yet it can hardly be denied that a certain deep religious sentiment is latent in all forms of serious thought among Englishmen, which warranted Taine in tracing in them, derived from their Teutonic ancestors and from the dreary environment of their northern skies, a Semitic awe of the unknown, and a mood for withdrawing tlie mind to interior contemplation; AFFECTED BY NA TIONALITY. 1 99 so to tlie foreign, observer the Anglo-Saxon seems even to " take his jDleasures sadly." There is in the English- man this otherwise indefinable Teutonism that distin- guishes such rationalists and skeptics as Tyndall, Huxley, Darwin, and Matthew Arnold from the followers of Voltaire and Baron Holbach and Helvetius. "While we may not find in the complex English mind the instrument for conceiving as yet the perfect philosophy, we cannot but be struck with one remarkable service to philosophy which our Anglo-Saxon race seems peculiarly destined to perform. I refer to the test by experiment. Our race is the road-builder for the modern world as Rome was for Greece. If we may claim any contribution to the progress of learning as peculiarly our own, it is certainly that of emphasizing empiricism, of exalting experience as the school of true wisdom. Thus equipped, the Englishmen Hobbes and Bacon and Newton called the philosophers of the world, ancient and modern, to the bar of judgment ; and in this way the Anglo-Saxon mind seems instinctively to seek the ultimate solution of all speculative problems. Starting with what is called Bacon's inductive method, of learning from facts rather than from a priori assumption, this method stretches in a continuous chain through the sensationalism of Locke and Hume into the subsequent doctrines of association, and so into the vibrational theories of modern psychology : in science it finds all along its companion in the gradually developing theory of evolution. In this relation of a practical approver by facts of experience, of what others have conceived in theory, we see the Anglo-Saxon race to- day occupying a kind of third place in a trinal system,, like that of a body in relation to the soul and the mind. 200 PHILOSOPHY AS AVliile not the avenue of the greatest inspirations of religion or of pure intellect, may not the humble but not less noble destiny of the race be to bring into practice and to i^rove on the final plane of use the products of speculative thought advanced elsewhere, to be the exemplar in doing of that which others have been content in loilling and in thinking ? In this regard the Anglo- Saxon seems to occupy a position somewhat analogous to that of the Roman nation in relation to the Greeks. Greek civilization was born in a beautiful dream in Athens : it took practical Roman muscle and Roman arms to make that dream so real a thing that it should glow like living fire through all the darkness of coming ages, transforming barbarous peoples into orderly and prosperous nations, and finally taking shape again in the forms of free government, which are the distinct political garb of the Anglo-Saxon race of to-day.* Of America it is hardly necessary to speak, as having exhibited as yet any distinct phase of this Anglo-Saxon influence on philosophic thought. Freedom from the insular traditions of the mother country and the vast accessions of distinctly foreign elements, such as the mother nation has never known — the African, the Chinese, the Italian, and the various types of the Slavonic race — must ultimately produce some modifications in the mental type beyond a doubt. It may be that the very freedom from traditions of the past will leave this people like new soil, readier to receive pure inspiration from above, and that the mental training of the ages will have ■^ For further illustration contrast Calvin ami Luther, who show the dualism even in Protestant Theology : and in America, Jonatlian Edwards and the " Transcendentalists." AFFECTED B V NA TIONALITY. 20 1 enabled the American mind to grasp and to develop with new ability the great problems of being and of conduct. Let us hope that it may never lose its Anglo-Saxon pro- vincialism of finding the test in doing, of proving all things, and holding fast to that which is good. xr. JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. WITH Browning and Ruskin, Symonds formed a third in a triad of writers who have filled a unique place in English letters, that of interpreters to the Anglo-Saxon mind of the life, the art, and the literature of Italy. The large part that Italy has played in the culture of the English mind, suggests the inquiry whether there be not something complementary in the race quali- ties of the two i^eoples that may account for their com- bination in almost every phase of the English intellectual life. Since those early days when Chaucer sang of the springtime desire to " gon on pilgrimages," something has seemed to impel the Englishmen to seek foreign skies, and none have had for him the same attraction as those of Italy. Shelley, Keats, and Byron breathed there an atmosphere that Avas wanting in the beclouded island of green fields and hedges. It may be questioned whether the famous beauty of the Italian skies does not owe its celebrity more to the contrast these skies presented to those of the Englishman's home in the days wlien he first began to travel abroad, tlian to any atmospheric advantage they possess over the skies of other lands than England. The soft airs and dreamy, luxurious langour of the southern land supplied a need peculiarly felt by the restless energy JOHN ADDINGTON S YMONDS. 203 which characterizes the Anglo-Saxon nature. This need exists equally in the mental constitution. For a large part of our heritage in English literature we are indebted ta the charm exerted by these Italian skies. When the sojourn to which they invited was not a bodily one as in Chaucer's case, but a mental residence, as in Shakespeare's, it seems hardly less real. From Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Dante, a colour and brightness and grace came into English letters that could have been derived from no other source ; no other mind has shown the readiness of the English fur absorbing these qualities. Venice and Yerona, and even the Rome of the Caesars, live as vividly in the pages of Shakespeare as in the vision of the tourist of to-day ; with Italy left out, not only the subject-matter, but the whole tone of our modern English literature must have been essentially different from what they now are. This search for what is wanting in the northern race- character cannot be classed as a cosmopolitan trait in the Englishman. The English writers who, like the three first named above, have spent the larger part of their literary lives abroad, although they have lived in many lands, have found little to write on outside of Italy. England possesses no considerable body of criticism treat- ing of the distinctive art life of France, Germany, Spain, or Russia. Carlyle entered with a literary spirit into the study of German letters and philosophy, and the political aspects of the times of Frederick and Xapoleon. Gibbon and Hallam have produced their monumental reviews of the growth of European states and letters ; but the works of these writers exhibit rather the laborious execution of a self-imposed task than the tlirill of delight in spontan- eous expression. Italy, on the other hand, has exercised 204 JOHN ADDINGTON S YMONDS. that peculiar charm attributed to the waters of Trevi's fountain — once tasted, they allow the pilgrim no rest until he returns to drink again. It is not so much to a migratory habit of mind therefore that the Englishman's love of Italy is due, as to the peculiar hunger of the Teutonic nature for elements which belong to the Hellenic races of the south, and wliich have borne their richest fruits in the Italy of the classic and mediaeval periods. This longing found utterance often in the poems of Wordsworth and Keats ; sirendike it drew Shelley to the fatal shores of Spezzia, and it has filled volumes of recent English criticism with the minutest accounts of Italian life, art, and letters, until the cracks and stains in the marbles of Venice, and the cloisters and shrines of Rome and Florence, not to speak of the events that lie behind these, are more familiar to many an Englishman to-day that they are to the natives tJiemselves. The power of this Italian fascination over the English mind is peculiarly exemplified in Symonds, as he began his literary career with a purpose (juite foreign to that which irresistibly drew him. Born at Bristol in 1840, and obtaining his schooling at Harrow, he found him- self in 1860 at Balliol College in Oxford, where he won a prize by an essay on tlie subject assigned — the Renaissance. He took his degree in 1862, the year in which Walter Pater received his at Queen's. Prophetic as this prize-subject seems of his future labours, it was not until ten years later that Symonds wrote his "Intro- duction to the Study of Dante," in which the keynote of his true genius and literary yearning is struck. ^lean- while, after editing for publication the works of his father, John Addington Symonds, a physician of culture and of JOHN ADDIXGTON SYMONDS. 205 literary repute in the west of England, he conceived the ambitious design of writing a history of the drama in England during the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. On this he laboured during the years from 1862 to 1865, and later at intervals, but with little satis- faction ; he abandoned the enterprise, he confessed twenty years later, as one too big for him. That it was a forced labour is all too evident from a single line in his pleasing " Notes of a Somersetshire Home," recently re-issued in the volume entitled, "In the Key of Blue." In this he writes under date of August 1869, in a passage descriptive of a beautful rural landscape: "All this I saw — but to me, now, a primrose is a primrose and a field a field. For this, for everything I am out of tune. Why so, faint heart % A sore brain, bad thoughts, and discontent. I would not so much mind if I could do all my work, but even there I fail. I toiled at Marston's comedies to-day,. and wrote such antiquated nonsense ! " Here, besides the undertone of discontent and longing which his studies hitherto had failed to appease, we notice the sad intimation of that disease which was to undermine his constitution, drive him into exile, and for twenty-five years lay its ever heavier burden on his spirit, bravely struggling all the while to do its work. That work,, however, was not to write the history of the English drama, but to study the world's drama on a much wider stage than that of his native isle. The courage that failed him in his researches about Marston revived under the strange and delightful inspiration of the Italian Renais- sance. Nearly twenty years later, in the solitude of his Alpine home, he resumed these English studies, and published in 1883 the "Critical Studies on the Condition 2o6 JOHN ADDING TON S YMONDS, of the English Drama," and in 1884 "Shakespeare's Predecessors in Englisli Drama." It was with the "Introduction to the Study of Dante," in 1872, that Symonds really set out on that voyage of •discovery which was to lead him to sucli fascinating shores in the study of the Hellenic spirit in ancient and modern literature. Since 1865 he had been writing from time to time for the "Xorth British" and "Westminster Reviews," the "Studies on the Greek poets," which appeared in a volume in 1873. These studies form the literary transition from the atmosphere of Oxford to that of Florence. In themselves they constitute a kind of revival. "I have not attempted," he says, "a complete and systematic review of Greek Poetry. I have not aimed at exhaustive discussions of the poems selected. To bring Greek literature home to the general reader, and to apply to Greek poets the same sort of criticism as that which modern classics receive, has been my object. It is possible that with this aim in view I may have been led into extravagances of style, but some great divergence from received methods of treatment is excusable in a critic who desires to stimulate the interest and the sympathies of his audience for works of art which are at the same time both old and unfamiliar." The change from romanticism and criticism to the modern scientific realism, which has so coloured the whole field of English writing of late years, finds nowhere a better exemplification than in Symonds. In this regard liis literary biograpliy acquires an almost typical signifi- cance. In the charming book of essays, "In the Key of Blue," we see the robust sweetness of English youth, with its love of nature, its warm comradeship, its passion for JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. 207 mankind, its tender memory and regard for venerable tradi- tions, such as spoke in Wordsworth, and in the younger Tennyson. At Balliol, Swinburne had preceded Symonds by three years. The world had not yet received the shock of modern materialism, nor of the carnal school of letters in its full force. The Newdegate prize for English verse which Symonds won at Balliol had been taken by Ruskin at Christ Church in 1839. The influence was still poAverful of the school of the Pre-Raphaelites, embracing such names as Dante, Gabriel Rossetti, Millais, and Holm an Hunt. In this atmosphere were spent tliose brooding years in the home at Clifton, of whose unsatisfied yearn- ings, mingled witli a real sense of the sweetness of present life, Symonds' essays bear so pregnant witness. It was during these years of transition that he wrote the " Intro- duction to the Study of Dante ; " later came the first part of that monumental contribution to English letters, the *' History of the Renaissance in Italy." Many who read these lines will recall the days when the name "Pre-Raphaelite" had a certain unearthly sound, as of something almost holy ; when through England, in Church, and in letters, there was felt a momentary thrill of the piety of a bygone age, and the mad haste for pro- gress was checked to contemplate the treasures of the past which had been too ruthlessly ignored and buried. The crusade for the recovery of the ideal was mainly a religious one — a passion for the revival of a soul within what had become a dreary and lifeless formality. Any- thing not modern was hallowed, but with too little discrimination between what was wortli reviving and what was not. Ruskin had made the blood stains on the stones of Italy sacred, and the very deformities of 2o8 JOHN ADDINGTON S YMONDS. Giotto and Fra Angelieo were endowed with a kind of heavenly grace. But the heart of English youth was not long to rest satisfied with such a re-action as this. The soul worth reviving must he of richer stuff. Among those who sought for this truer soul, and never abandoned the search, through long years of labour under the steady encroachment of physical disease, was John Addington Symonds. IS'ot content Avitli this flight into the ideal, remote from nature and abhorrent to her, and equally out of sympathy with those who would confound the soul with matter and unintelligent force, Symonds would find his ideal within the material world, the soul of things embodied in the world we see, and touch, and know. The soul he sought was therefore a scientific, in place of an imaginary or a religious, ideal ; and the search for this characterized and shaped the entire course of his future study and writing. This inner soul or intelligence of things can alone give form to history, or enable any class of things to be contemplated as a whole. In his essay on " Art and Letters " in the "Essays Speculative and Suggestive" (1890), he described this period of his life, full of momentous decisions, and the conflicting eddies of opinion to which his mind was subjected : — " When I was a young man in the sixties I remember that we students of European culture had to choose between connoisseurs and metaphysicians for our guides. On the one hand were the people who praised the ' Corregiosity of Correggio,' or 'swore by Perugino,' or promulgated the preciousness of Fra Angelieo, as though Correggio, Perugino, and the Dominican painter of San Marco were respectively descended from the skies to instruct an unintelligent world. On the other hand were JOHN ADDING TON S YMONDS. 209 the formal theorists who constructed a scheme of art upon subjective principles. They made us direct our minds to the idea — to the Begriff in art — and having therein obtained a concept, we were invited to reject as valueless whatever would not square with the logical formula. Between these, the pure connoisseurs and impure metaphysicians, Goethe emerged like a guiding star. The felicitous summary of criticism, Im Ganzen, Guten^ Sclwnen resolut zu lehen — ' To live resolutely in the Whole, the Good, the Beautiful ' — came like a deliverance. Instinctively we felt that the central point for us, if we would erect criticism into a science, was not caprice nor personal proclivity nor particular taste, but a steady comprehension of the whole." It was thus to Goethe that our young student of the Elizabethan drama owed that longing for a view of " the whole," and a realization of the "good and the beautiful " that " came for him like a deliverance," and that led him from his studies in the Greek poets to the history of the Renaissance in Italy. Here he could take a view of the world broad and comprehensive enough, in its great creative and era-making influences, to satisfy a truly philosophic desire. He realized that to treat so great a theme as the Revival of Learning, and the consequent remaking of the civilization of all Europe, he must use methods new to historians ; he must deal with fragments only, but in such a way that they should contribute to unit}^ of view of the whole. Things insignificant receive vitality from their connection with things of central importance, while much that stands out large at first fades in importance when seen in relation to the whole and its form. The idea that he was constructing such a 2 1 o JOHN A DDING TON S YMONDS. "whole" was itself a constant inspiration and source of strength in the midst of labours, otherwise fatiguing and void of interest. Thus he writes regarding his scrupulous practice of consulting authorities at first hand : — "To me it had been a labour of love to record even the bare names of those Italian writers who recovered for us in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the everlasting consolations of the Greek and Latin classics. The thought that I was tracing the history of an achievement fruitful of the weightiest results for the modern civilization has sustained me in a task that had been sometimes tedious. The prosaic details of obscure biographies and long-for- gotten literary labours have been glorified by what appears to me the poetry and the romance of it all." But there was needed something besides that vision of the whole which gave poetic unity and romance to historical discovery. The new spirit of the age demanded a knowledge of the law which governs this whole, deter- mining the relation of the parts and forming out of them a true unit. Taine had come nearer than others to a true method of history in studying climate and social environ- ment as agents in producing character, and shaping political and literary epochs. But Symonds found him too mechanical. He did not allow sufficiently for the development of the individual. iJ^either Tiraboschi, whose " Storia della Letteratura" he acknowledges as the basis of all researches bearing on the Revival of Learning, nor Ruskin, nor Hallam sees or studies a " pro- cess in the past." It was the theory of Evolution as developed by Darwin and Herbert Spencer that gave to Symonds what he chiefly needed — a law of development. This theory made a "decisive impact on the mind of JOHN A DDIXG TON S YMONDS. 2 1 1 Europe." It " lent the charm of biography and narrative to what had seemed so dull and lifeless a history of art and letters." In Symonds' conception of Evolution the spiritual and the ideal hold a large place, occupying a plane discrete, indeed, from the material, but nevertlieless everywhere immanent in it, and through it appealing to the mind of man. His view is Aristotelian rather than Platonic. No more interesting or suggestive instance of what we may call, in no fanciful sense, the poetic side of the great doctrine, is to be found than in Symonds' analysis of it in connection with the writing of history. He presents these views in one of the " Essays Speculative and Suggestive," entitled "The Philosophy of Evolution," Avarning his readers to leave this essay unread " until one or another of the following articles arouses in them some curiosity about the author's views of religion and man's relation to the universe." The " point of view " from which to see the whole in its unity is, he says, develop- ment. As we are led to infer that the new impulse given to his historical and critical studies came from these two forces, the poetic idea of " the whole " which Goethe gave him, and the law of development, it will not be out of place to dwell a little on these conceptions as he enter- tained them, before proceeding to examine the extensive work in which they are applied as a constructive method. The term Evolution has been itself during Symonds' generation the subject of an evolution hardly less interest- ing than that which it represents in the realm of natural science. Whether by " natural selection " or by some other and hidden law, the term has acquired meanings wider and deeper than those first attached to it, and these later meanings are not less likely to retain their hold in 2 1 2 JOHN A DDING TON S YAIONDS. popular usage. To the process of this evolution Symonds stands as a signal witness, and to its results he was himself no inconsiderable contributor. Lord Salisbury, indeed, in his recent Oxford address before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, speaks of "the comfortable word involution " as " one of those indefinite words from time to time vouchsafed to humanity, which have the gift of alleviating so many perplexities, and masking so many gaps in our knowledge ;" but his actual appreciation of the term finds a worthier and more serious utterance in his remark on Darwin's real achievement and dessert : " Before his time, the study of living nature had a tendency to be merely statistical ; since his time, it has been predominantly historical; The historical study of living nature, lifted above the plane of bare statistics, becomes a correlation of facts in accordance with some underlying law. This law stands at once for a unity, a whole, whatever the conception of this whole may be. With Symonds, the conception was of something essen- tially non-material. If not supernatural, since its imman- ence in all nature is one of its distinctive traits, like that of the soul in the body, it is yet separated from matter by a discrete degree. It is like thought at the back of speech, causing it, shaping it, giving it all its life and meaning, and yet forming no part of it, physically considered. Ta read history, not as detached words, but as a sentence revealing the connected thought of a great mind within it — this was the new ambition of Symonds' happily adapted genius; the world of facts was beginning to lose its lustre, and he plunged almost recklessly into his colossal labours on the " History of the Renaissance." The pressure of this idea of the "whole, the good, the beautiful" gave JOHN ADDING TON S YMONDS. 2 1 3 the poetic fervour so utterly different from the methodical elaboration of the statistical historian. It was more an enthusiasm than a method that governed his writing at the beginning. His idea of evolution was not then so distinctly formulated as it was at the time of the writing of the "Essays Speculative and Suggestive." The preface to this volume shows under what peculiar influences of isolation and solitary meditation these later writings were produced. But they reveal the bent of the author's thought and feelings during the long period of his historical labours ; it gave him the courage to persevere through wearisome researches, and was a constant revelation to him " of the poetry and romance of it all." These maturer philosophic reflections show that humanity is the solution of all study of the universe ; that its relation to man and to human development is the one key to the true knowledge of any thing or event. Hence the philosophy of Evolution may now be expected " to re-animate religion and to restore spirituality to the universe." The spiritual potency is internal ; it is seated in the organism of things ; it is not the legislation of some power extraneous to them. The universe is literally a perpetual becoming ; and spirituality is restored to nature as the latter is regarded as a manifestation of *' infinite vitality." Humanity forms the climax of a series of simple animated cells. As consistent evolutionists, admitting no " break," we must conclude that mind was perpetually present in the primordial elements out of which nature and man, as the crown of geological life in the universe, emerged. " Mind is the final synthesis of the biological functions. Applying the law of the corre- lation of forces, we may say that what heat is to motion, 2 1 4 JOHN ADDING TON S YMONDS. such was latent intelligence in inorganic life. One is transmitted and developed into the other. The triumph of the scientific method is in its showing man's true relation to the universe. It has driven us to a knowledge that we are a part of nature ; but if ' we ' are, then our conscious- ness is a part of nature, and so nature must have every- where and in all its parts what corresponds to a spiritual essence ; Law and God are all in all. . . . The needed new religious reconciliation is that which shall combine obedience to supreme law with devotion to humanity, or the dispensation of Jehovah with that of the Christ. The tendency of modern scientific ideas will be to spiritualize religion by elevating man's conceptions of God and of law. Evolution, allowing no break in continuity in the universe, silently forces us to the recognition of the universal mind. For no one mind is co-existent with the universe ; yet we reasonably infer from its presence in ourselves that there is mind in the universe below us and above us. We are compelled to adopt the hypothesis of a universal mind because of the manifest fact that we help to constitute the universe, which was and is and will be, before, around, and after our phenomenal existence." This essay closes with a translation of Goethe's Prcemium to "Gott imd Welt." Elsewhere Symonds quotes Goethe's doctrine of knowledge : " We know soul only through the body, and God only through nature. For everything which exists- necessarily pertains to the essence of God : therefore God is the one Being whose existence includes all things." The reader will perceive in the above utterances, especially in those regarding tlie latent intelligence and the consciousness in the universe of which we are "a part,'^ ideas which are foreign to ordinary statements of the JOHN AD DING TON S YMONDS. 2 1 5 theory of evolution, and which are doubtless a part of the " mystical habit " thus described in the preface : " Written in the isolation of this Alpine retreat, these essays express the opinion of surmising of one who has long watched in solitude, as from a ruined tower, the world of thought and circumstance and action. The peculiar influences of this life have bred in him a mystical habit of regarding man's relation to the universe. Forced by broken health to meditate upon the problems of approaching death, a student comes insensibly to think more of nature and the world, and less of humanity and self, than when he is swimming down the stream of competitive existence. The particular loses its importance in his range of vision. . . . I have not shrunk from committing myself to theories and surmises which are advanced in no dogmatic spirit. To suggest ideas, to stimulate reflection, is the object of a book like this." The " humanity and self " of which his serious reflections led him to think less are not either man in the abstract or mankind in the concrete shapes of the friends the writer loved, to whom his loving devotion only seemed to increase as his life drew to its close, but rather man has something apart from the solidarity of the world, that "beautiful and good and whole " of which Goethe speaks. Man's destiny is not reduced to the plane of material activity, but there is higher evolution before it. "What " latent intelligence " was to mind in the evolutionary series, the ratiocinative mind may be to some still higher form of being. "Mind is not necessarily ratiocinative in all its phenomenal manifestations, and man may not be the final product of nature. Existences higher in the scale of being may be endowed with intellects more fully organized than 2 1 6 JOHN ADDING TON S YMONDS. ours. Such may transcend the ratiocinative stage of mind." In the essay on Landscape, Symonds gives the most comprehensive description of the spirit which dominates his own historic and critical writing. " The modern intellect is o^Den to cosmic enthusiasm." This essay compares Wordsworth, Goethe, and Herbert Spencer, and cites passages from Wordsworth showing the two stages of nature-worship through which he passed. To the author's own mystic vision nature has become more and more the visible presence of the Divine. " It is the robe of life woven perpetually by God." It was this " cosmic enthusiasm " which inspired the " History of the Renaissance in Italy." l!^owhere else have the great underlying elements of modern civilization been focused upon the screen of history as in the Florence of the Medici. It was to the Avorld of art and letters, to all that is known as modern culture, what the Rome of the Caesars was to the world of politics. Symonds' studies in the Greek classics and Dante served as a fitting introduction to this great and brilliant field, where philosophic vision, scientific analysis, and poetic expression at once found their widest scope. Symonds has been criticised for a lack of thoroughness, and for the incompleteness which his works exhibit, but these objections lose much of their force if we judge the works by the author's statement of what was attempted. His list of authorities is a long one ; few, if any, of real importance are left out, and his readers will bear witness to the minuteness and carefulness of his references. For his "Age of Despots" he refers to all the Italian authori- ties, to the French Michelet, and the German Burckhardt's JOHN ADDING TON S YMONDS. 2 1 7 *' Cultur der Renaissance in Italien," and Gregorovius' "Geschichte der Stadt Rom." For the "Revival of Learning " he acknowledges his indebtedness especially to Tiraboschi and Yoight and Burckhardt, and refers to other Italian, as well as to English, French, and German sources. In the " Fine Arts," for architecture he cites Ferguson and Burckhardt's " Cicerone ; " for sculpture, besides the " Cicerone " he attaches especial importance to the "works of Charles C. Perkins on the "Tuscan Sculptors," and to those of Griiner on the " Italian Sculptors." For painting, his chief authorities are Vasari's " Lives," and Crowe and Cavalcaselle, with other French and Italian writers. In his art studies he tells us that he owes less to reading than to observation. " I am not aware of having mentioned any important building, statue, or picture which I have not had the opportunity of studying. What I have written has been first noted face to face Avith originals, and afterw^ards corrected, modified, or confirmed in a course of subsec|uent journeys to Italy." " In dealing with the Revival of Learning and the Fine Arts I have tried to remember that I had not so much to write again the history of these subjects as to treat of their relation to the Renaissance in Italy. I have regarded each section of my theme as subordinated to the general culture of a great historic period. . . . The historian of culture sacrifices much that the historian of politics w^ill judge essential, and Avill call attention to matters that the general reader may sometimes find superficial. He must submit to bear the reproach of having done at once too much and too little." The publication of the whole work on "The Ren- aissance in Italy" extended over the ten years 1875- 2 1 8 JOHN ADDING TON S YMONDS. 1886. Its five divisions, which appeared in this order, treated the Age of Despots, the Revival of Learning, the the Fine Arts, Literature, and the Catholic Reaction. By " Renaissance " the author means " the whole transition from the middle ages to the modern world." The word indicates a "new birth, a natural movement not to be explained by this or that characteristic, but to be accepted as an efifort of humnaity for which at length the time had come, and in the progress of which we participate. The history of the Renaissance is not a history of art, or of science, or of literature, or even of nations. It is the history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit manifested in the European races. ... It was not the arts, the inventions, the knowledge, and the books which caused the Renaissance. It ^vas the in- tellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence Avhicli enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them. The force thus generated still continues vital and expansive in the spirit of the modern world " (Preface of the " Age of Despots "). The volume on the Fine Arts repeats that the history of these arts is not the object, but a definition of their relation to the main movement of Renaissance culture. " I have had to explain the dependence of the arts on mediaeval Christianity at their commencement ; their general emancipation from ecclesi- astical control, their first attainment of freedom at the moment when the classical revival culminated," Only as we judge by this truly philosophic standard can we estimate the real success of Symonds' ojms vitta. The law of subordination of particulars to the whole, and of their progress in an order of development, naturally differentiates the work from tliat kind of history which JOHN ADDIXG TON S YMONDS. 2 1 9 aims at a correct cataloguing of historic events in their chronological order. At the same time, the division of the work into parts necessitated a frequent repetition of the same subjects, as they are successively involved in the discussion of the several topics, which to the reader of the whole work in series sometimes becomes wearisome. The work as a whole is a growth ; the subject expands into vaster dimensions as the writer proceeds, and the temptation is always present to supplement in the later treatment the partial statement of the earlier volumes. To preserve a unity in so vast an accumulation of facts, to trace amid all these personalities, incidents, and forces a single controlling, all-shaping spirit of humanity^ required in the writer more of the inspiration of the poet than of the mechanical painstaking of the chronicler. Here the genius and the real merit of Symonds are con- spicuous, despite all that his critics say. He combines as few writers have done the functions of the historian, the critic, and the poet, and affords an almost unique example of effort to embrace the revolutionar}^ theories and methods of modern science without breaking with the aesthetic and ideal traditions of the past. Facts and authorities are not wanting, but accompanying these and inspiring them M^itli human interest is the informing spirit of the true poet and philosopher. Symonds cannot be said to have reached the rank of poet, to which he aspired, if we confine poetry to the art of versifying ; but of the higher mission of poetry, the imparting of form and beauty and human interest to the crude materials and fragments of knowledge, whether of history, science, or art, which lacked these in their isolation, few modern writers afford so happy an example. 220 JOHN ADDINGTON S YMONDS. As a verse writer his achievements are indeed far from inconsiderable. His line sense of form and melody •enabled him to present with a large measure of their original beauty the voluminous extracts from classical and Italian poets which his works contain. He has been the chief interpreter to English readers of the Sonnets of Michel Angelo, and in treating these he reveals his own susceptibility to the magic spell of that most subtle and most powerful of all poetic forms. Of these sonnets he says : " We now [in Guasti's edition of the originals published in 1863] read for the first time what the greatest man of the sixteenth century actually wrote, and are able to enter without the interference of a fictitious veil into the shrine of his own thought and feeling. His sonnets form the best commentary on Michel Angelo's •solitary life, and on his sublime ideal of art." Symonds in his own sonnets opens to the reader the book of his own heart. What his verses lack in the universality which betokens the great poet, they gain in the interest attaching to the writer's own life and moods. In this they violate the rules set up in his dissertation on the sonnet as a poetic form. " The true sonnet should inot embrace accurate self-delineation. It is a poem ex- pressing impressional thought in forms borrowed from personal experience. It is a meditative lyric, in whose peculiar stanza particular emotion takes the character of generality." He claims that the English sonnet is not an •exotic, but acclimatized and in accord with English genius. •" It is a monumental character possessed by no other form of verse." Their failure "to put on the form of gener- ality " constitutes the obvious shortcoming in Symonds' sonnets. They remain the expression of the personal JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. . 221 emotion which prompted them, and not of the broader heart of humanity which seems to find utterance in the sonnets of the great masters. A volume of verse entitled "Xew and Old" (1880), contains the long narrative poem, *' The Love Tale of Odatis," and a number of sonnets upon themes relating to mountain life, the love of the Alps, and problems of life and love. There are also sonnets on ]Milan Cathedral and the Venetian Gondolier, and the AVhitman-like " Ponte di Paradiso," on the meeting of souls. In 1882 appeared the Animi Fvjura or " Portrait of a Mind." It depicts the progressive experiences of a soul, and can hardly be read without the feeling that the verse is autobiographic. But the commingling of personal emotion with abstract discussion, which may perhaps be regarded as peculiar to the present scientific age, cannot be said to enhance the poetic value of these sonnets. Their argument is too formal for the spontaneous expres- sion of the soul's idea. In the sonnet on Personality the question is raised whether " each impulse is a cog-wheel in the cosmic plan." In another, married love and com- radeship are contrasted. The origin and purpose of sin are exhibited in the legend of the development of the dragon, with a certain Japanese cunning and vividness. The sonnet " On the Sacro-Monte " discusses faith and the creeds. Creeds die ; man remains : man dies ; other worlds upon worlds succeed. The time may come, nay, haply now is nigh, "When, as at Pentecost those fire-tongues fell, New creeds shall dawn doomed like the old to die ; . . . and still remains the soul . . . based secure 2 2 2 JOHN ADDING TON S YMONDS. On her own strength that dateless must endure Joying in Beauty, Goodness, God, the Whole. In the sonnet on Self-condemnation the argument is strongly put, that the origin of the moral judgment must be in something supernatural : — We need God to explain man. God once given. The problems that perplexed life find solution. The struggle between sensuous passion and pure spiritual love of the good and the beautiful is thus truly depicted : — EROS AND ANTEROS. 'Tis self whereby we suffer ; 'tis the greed To grasp, the hunger to assimilate All that earth holds of fair and delicate, The lust to blend with beauteous lives, to feed And take our fill of loveliness, which breed This anguish of the soul intemperate ; 'Tis self that turns to harm and poisonous hate The calm, clear life of love tliat angels lead. Oil, that 'Avere possible this self to burn In the pure flame of joy contemplative ; Then might we love all loveliness nor yearn With tyrannous longings ; undisturbed might live Greeting the summer's and the spring's return, Nor wailing that their hloom is fugitive. The series concludes with a number of sonnets on the Mystery of Mysteries, in which various theories of life and God are touched upon ; among them is the following enigma : — Man to the world, not it to man, was given : An ill is good for which some life hath striven. That one enriched with such a fund of learning and feeling, such a warm passion for humanity, should be a JOHN ADDING TON S YMONDS. 2 2 3 charming travelling companion, is an inference abundantly borne out by the " Sketches of Travel in Italy and Greece." In these volumes, as in those on the Renaissance, we seem to live the life of the cities we visit. We find ourselves steeped in the atmosphere, mental as well as material, of the times and the people. Symonds made the past live for us, not by ignoring the life of the present, but by entering with the present life and its wide glance into the dried and scattered remnants of the past, giving them shape and vitality, and a voice in the solution of the deep questions of this and of all times. His last years were spent almost wholly at Davos Platz in the high Alps, where he became a part of the simple life of the village community, and found his chief social enjoyment in intercourse with the villagers and the neighbouring peasantry. To two of these " colossal breasted " peasant friends and fellow-travellers he dedicated the volume of miscellaneous essays entitled "Italian Byways" (1883). Here we find in the " Winter ^STights at Davos " and " Bacchus in Graubunden " graphic pictures of his lonely winter home aniid the snows, and of the athletic sports of his peasant friends. The last great work on which Symonds employed his waning strength was his " Life of Michel Angelo." About the same time appeared the collection of papers of former years under the title " In the Key of Blue," and his brief treatise on Walt Whitman. In his interpretation of Whitman and in his interest in Tolstoi and Loti and other writers of the democratic school, Symonds seemed, at the end of his journey, to be looking with a prophetic gaze into a world at whose thres- hold only he had arrived. His enthusiasm for mankind 224 JOHN ADDIXGTON S YMONDS. could hardly fail to find the sound of these voices grate- ful in his ear like that of the morning symphony of a day he was not to see. " The world wants all sorts, and each sort to be of the best quality. . . . Full devoloped per- sonalities cannot co - exist without clash and conflict. Innovation works with conservatism, powers of revolution and of progress combine with stationary or retrogressive forces to keep the organism in a state of active energy. ... As Empedocles put it, both love and hate are necessary to the balance of the cosmic sphere. All the soldiers in all the armies, if they act with energy, sincerity, and disinterested loyalty, serve one Lord and Master. . . . The concord of divers instruments contributes the music of a symphony. The blending of distinct person- alities creates the finest mental and moral harmony. To some extent this is attained whenever human beings are associated. We suffer too much from the tyranny of majorities, the oppression of custom, the gregarious instinct of commonplace and timid persons." But cul- ture "tends to render one independent of conventional tyranny;" helps toward "the differentiation of indi- vidualities by enabling people to find out what they are made for, what they can do best. True culture is never in a condescending attitude. It knows that no kind of work, however trivial, ought to be regarded with con- tempt." A passage in the chapter on "The Cornice" in " Sketches and Studies " describes the impressions caused by the scenery and life of an old Ligurian roadside, and the incident here recorded is a reflection in miniature of Symonds' whole life : " Everything fits in to complete the reproduction of Greek pastoral life. The goats eat cytisus and myrtle on the shore : the narcissus, anemone, JOHN ADDING TON S YMONDS. 2 2 5 and hyacinth still tell their tales of love and death. Hesper still gazes on the shepherd from the mountain- head ; Pan sleeps in the noontide heat ; little villages high up are just as white, the mountains just as gray and shadowy, when evening falls. Xothing is changed — except ourselves." He comes upon a " tiny white chapel in the corner of an inclosure, where everything basked in sunlight and glittered with exceeding brilliancy of hue." Two iron-grated windows revealed a bare floor, a wooden praying-desk, black and worm-eaten, and an altar with candles but no flowers, and above the altar a square picture brown with age. "As my sight became accus- tomed to the gloom, I could see from the darkness of the picture a pale Christ nailed to the cross, with agonizing upward eyes and ashy aureole above the bleeding thorns. . . . Thus I stepped suddenly away from the outward pomp and bravery of nature to the inward aspirations, agonies, and martyrdoms of man — from Greek legends of the past to the real Christian present — and I remem- bered that an illimitable prospect has been opened to the world, that in spite of ourselves we must turn our eyes heavenward, inward, to the infinite unseen, beyond us and within our soul. Nothing can take us back to Phoebus and to Pan. Nothing can again identify us with the simple natural earth. ' Une immense esperance a traverse la terre ! ' " XII. UTILITY AND BEAUTY: OR, ART FOR ART'S SAKE IX THE LIGHT OF THE DOCTRINE OF DISCRETE DEGREES AND OF KANT'S DOCTRINE OF "FREE AND ADHERENT BEAUTY." WHETHER in all beauty there must be an element of utility is a long-vexed question. "That is truly beautiful which is useful," has long served as a kind of moral adage, against which, however, especially in recent times, there has arisen a re-action productive of some unwholesome results in present aesthetic tendencies both in literature and in the fine arts. Not a little light is thrown upon this subject by a study of Kant's discussion of the two kinds of beauty, the "free hesiutj," pulckritudo vaga, and the "adherent beauty," pulcliritudo adhcerens, occurring in the Critique of the Esthetic Judgment, in his work, " The Critique of the Faculty of Judgment." A brief resume of the doctrine of the two judgments, the aesthetic and the teleological, will be necessary in order to understand the special doctrine we propose to examine. The following, mainly from Ueberweg's statement in his "History of Philosophy," will serve our purpose : — In the, to us unknown, inner ground and reality of Nature UTILITY AND BEAUTY. 227 it is possible tliat the physico-meelianical and the " final " (teleological) relations of the same things may he united under one and the same principle. Such is the constitution of our understanding, that we can only regard Nature as a real whole when we view it as the effect of the concurrent forces of its parts. But an intuitive or sensible knowledge of all the parts of nature is of course not within the bounds of our limited experience. Because, then, we cannot know experimentally the whole of nature, and thus derive its idea or its purpose from our knowledge of the entirety of its operations, shall Ave therefore not conceive of nature as a whole at all, and form no idea of its end or purpose % On the contrary, Kant says that not only are we driven to our discursive understanding to form an idea of the whole, wdiich experience cannot give us, but that it is alone the idea of the whole that enables us to think of form and of the necessary connection of parts forming a whole. The discursive understanding can therefore only view the whole as a product, the idea of which is the cause of its possibility, that is, as an end realized. Such is the possibility of final or teleological judgment which Kant attributes to our understanding. " We are entitled to look upon all nature under the guidance of the principle of final cause." Unable, by the limitations of sense, to know nature as a whole empirically, and to infer from such a physical whole a cause or end, we can only view nature intellectually when we view^ it as a whole, and we can only view it as a whole when we view it as the product of an idea, and so as the result of an end or final cause. The judgment of the adaptation 228 UTILITY AND BEAUTY. of ends, causes, and effects, whether tacit or expressed, underlies therefore, all judgment of nature. With regard to the adaptation to end which comes into consideration in the aesthetic judgment, beauty, says Kant, is the form of adaptation in an object as perceived,, without any accompanying conception of an end to which it is adapted. In a beautiful flower, for example, we have a sense of adaptation without our being able ta assign to it any purpose as end. There is, says Kant, a distinction to be drawn between the free beauty and the adherent beauty. The free beauty is perceived apart from any conception of Mdiat the thing ought to be ; that is, without the conception of an end to which it is adapted. Adherent beauty implies a conception of an end, and hence the sense of adapta- tion to the end in the object perceived and a comparison of it with the perfection of the end as conceived. The latter is an intellectual judgment wherein the delight of the sense is controlled by that of reason. Hence, says Kant, tliis is not the free, pure judgment of taste ; only in the judgment of free beauty as such, without any regard to or comparison with end, is the judgment of taste a pure one. As to the universality of the judgment of taste, Kant teaches that the beautiful " claims the assent of all as a symbol of the morally good, and taste is therefore at bottom a faculty which judges of ethical ideas in their sensible manifestation." (See Ueberweg, II., pp.. 191-193.) It is to the fundamental identity of the aesthetic with the teleological judgments, implied in these condensed statements of Kant's doctrine, that I desire to call atteiv UTILIT V AND BE A UT Y. 229 tion, especially with a view to showing how in all the esthetic judgments as exercised in the several discrete planes or degrees of the mind, there is within the sense of the beautiful invariably the realization of an adapta- tion to an end and a looking to the good as the final €nd. That there is an element of utility in the beautiful has, I am aware, always been repellent to the aesthetic mind. This is for the reason that Kant has doubtless truthfully furnished in his distinction of the " free " from the "adherent" beauty. The logical judgment of conformity to a conception or plan being an intellectual exercise, interferes with the immediate and spontaneous delight of the sense of beauty itself. The restriction of art to the portraying of " what ought to be " beautiful has led to the re-action of what is called " Art for Art's sake," be it beautiful or not. But we are to remember here that the absence of a conscious judgment on our part as to the presence of adaptation in an object that gives us pleasure does not necessarily imply the absence of such adaptation in the object itself. The finality, the use as the ultimate end of the object, its adaptation to the good as its final end, may be there all the while, and yet we may have no thought of this in the immediate sense of pleasure, of a certain harmony of the thing perceived with an interior state of our, own being. There are probably three definable stages of the sense of beauty as related to this utilitarian judgment. I. The first we may call that in which only the sense of delight is perceived, without any thought of adapta- tion, or any conception of an end or use. Such may be the delight experienced by a child or a savage in seeing 2 30 UTILITY AND BEAUTY. the gorgeous 'colouring of a sunset, or of a flower, or of the plumage of a tropical bird. II. The second may be a sense of the beautiful wherein there is a simultaneous and spontaneous sense of adapta- tion to an end. Such, perhaps, we may call the delight in true architectural forms ; and also that produced by the drama, where we see noble language and noble actions portraying heroic motives and conveying great moral ideas. III. The third judgment of the beautiful may be called the purely intellectual or technical ; as when a practical engineer calls a locomotive engine a "beauty," and experiences an intense delight in his knowledge of the perfect ada^Dtation to its end or to a conception of its use, which is involved in the construction of each least part of the great machine. Here the technical sense of the beautiful we may say is entirely distinct from the beauty of mere form or colour delightful to the eye, or what Kant would call "free" or "pure" beauty. The beauty is wholly "adherent," being reflected from the sense of use. Still more remote from such pure beauty would be, for instance, the beauty in the eye of the practical surgeon of a fine surgical instrument which, an object of real delight to him because of its adaptation to- its use, is to the ordinary observer not only without beauty, but creative of feelings of pain and aversion. The question arises whether these two kinds of judg- ment are really antagonistic, one displacing the other, or whether they may exist together ; and, finally, whether the one may not be experienced tacitly while the other is- sensuously felt. AVhen we eat good bread we are en- tirely capable of judging that it is good without knowin UTILITY AND BE A UTY. 231 ill the least how to make such bread ourselves, still less knowing the laws of chemistry which are involved in the making of all bread both bad and good. Xow the enjoy- ment of the sweet and wholesome savour of the bread is not really affected at all by our knowing the fact, scientificalh^, that there is in the perfection of the bread a high degree of conformity to a perfect end, that of nutrition and of affording delight to the appetite. Shoidd the uses to be attained require that kind of adaptation which involves the use of things unpleasant and even revolting, still there, if the sense of the end as the good is sufficiently prominent, these revolting forms become themselves clothed with a kind of beauty of their own which is real, but which is perceptible only to the narrower circle of those who can enter into that end. This is the reason of the beautiful in tragedy, and in tales of self-sacrifice and martyrdom ; and of the grotes- que and hideous in architecture. There is in these an adaptation of processes of suffering and trial to the attainment of great moral ends. The end glorifies the means, and the mind rests in the moral beauty with such supreme satisfaction that the steps leading to it become themselves forms of beauty. ^Ve shall find a reconciliation then between the two elements, the sense of pleasure, and the sense of use or of finality in beauty, in the simple consideration of the depth to which the sense of beauty penetrates in the beholder. The aesthetic judgment is always a judgment of pleasure or pain ; and it is always teleological, that is, it rests finally, whether consciously or unconsciously, on a sense of adaptation to an end, which end is the good. But this sense penetrates in succession to three planes of 232 UTILITY AND BEAUTY. the mind, tlie sensuous, tlie intellectual, and the moral. On whatever plane it rests or is arrested, the aesthetic judgment takes its character accordingly, as free or adherent ; that is, whether as exercised on the plane of (I.) the merely pleasurable, (II.) the intellectual and rational, or (III.) the final and moral. I. That which appeals to the senses, simply awakening a delight from the harmony of an external object with a corresponding internal state, we may call the aesthetics of Taste; of pleasure and pain on the lowest, the sensuous, plane of the mind, or that which resides in the senses themselves. This is what Kant calls the aesthetic plane itself. II. But the sense of harmony in what is presented may strike deeper in, through the senses into the intel- lect and its reason. Here we experience the sense of the True^ or the delight of conformity with Truth, as means. The beautiful in science, in philosophy, in art, so far as it results from an intellectual judgment, is the aesthetic judgment consciously experienced in the intellectual plane of the mind. III. Finally, when the sense of the harmony reaches into the plane of will, and there awakens a delight be- cause of conformity with the G(jod as End, then the aesthetic judgment becomes at the same time teleological ; the morally beautiful is that which is adapted to the Good, and this adaptation justifies and beautifies the intermediate steps, many of which while necessary are in themselves not beautiful. ^Esthetics therefore in this the voluntary plane of mind becomes, as Kant declares, " the faculty which judges of ethical ideas in their sen- suous manifestation ; " or, reversing the statement, Ethics UTILITY AND BEAUTY. 233 is the moral ^Esthetics. The aesthetic judgment em- braces therefore on its three planes the judgment of I., the Beautiful : II., the True ; III., the Good. The beautiful is what Kant would call the " pure and free beauty," because intuitively felt and not concluded from reason. But in reality if we admit that all free beauty has an adherent beauty in the degree that the mind of the beholder sees the end in the means which have produced the effect, then even in the simple external beauty of sense, the beauty of the sunset, the flower, of the playing fountain, of glaciers, of frozen seas, of the plumage of birds, of the iridescent fish-scales, and the sea-shells and sea-weeds in all these forms of beauty, seemingly having no manifest use, we may conceive of there heiiKj a real beauty which consists, in the mind of a Divine artificer, in the very harmony heticeen these as fonns and covi'esjjondent tilings in the human mind, and as effecting their use svmpJij in the delight theij afurd to the afedions of man, through tliis harmony. For a man lives more from the aflections of his mind than from bodily nourishment ; and to feed the mind with beauty may be as jDOsitive and as clearly defined a purpose or use in the sight of a Divine Creator as to feed the mouth of man Avith bread. The question as to the existence of finality or of an end of use within all that is beautiful, even on the sensuous plane, therefore does not arise from the con- stitutive being of things, but from our imperfect judg- ment and the varying planes of our human perception. To a judgment or a knowledge that embraced all in one glance, seeing the end in the cause, and the cause in the effect, all would be seen as adaptation to the end ; and thus all would constitute a harmony. The universe 234 UTILITY AND BEAUTY. all would be a cosmos, a form of beauty. But this can only be realized by the Infinite ; and, more or less, by finite minds as they ascend more and more into those universal unities of judgment which bear a resemblance to the Infinite. XIIT. PEOGEESS IX THE DOCTETNE OF FIXAL CAUSES. SAVEDEXBOEG teaches us that without a knowledge of these three discrete degrees — end, cause, and effect — men can know nothing of the real nature, whether of man, of nature, of the sj^irit, or of God. While this may be interpreted to mean that without a knowledge that there are such discrete degrees men can form no right conclusion in science or religion, it is more sug- gestive and inspiring to effort if we understand that, together with the knowledge of the doctrine of degrees, there must be some knowledge of the degrees themselves. Into this knowledge of the contents of the three degrees- in their largest scope Swedenborg himself was permitted to enter, being intromitted into the spiritual world as the world of efficient or mediate cause, and by revelation of the Word into a knowledge of the nature of God, and thus of the ends of infinite love and wisdom, and so ta knowledge of the final cause of all things. For the knowledge of nature is the knowledge of effects, that of the spiritual world the knowledge of causes mediate, that of God the knowledge of the first or final cause, thfr knowledge of the end. In observing the progress of the Xew Church in tli& 236 PROGRESS IN THE world, wc ma}' expect to see this measured with some degree of accuracy by the progress in science and philosophy of the knowledges of these three degrees of being, since according to Swedenborg, without this knowledge there can be no true science and true theology, and without these tliere can be built up no new and rational system of Christian faith. I desire to present what seem to me evidences of progress in recent and contemporary science and phil- osophy, in the knowledge and doctrine of the end, as the final cause. We know that this end is volitional in its nature, partaking of the will rather than of the intellect, and while shaped by wisdom, yet having its origin and force in the infinite love of God. We know that God reveals Himself to man first by and in truth, into the intellect, and afterwards to the will ; first as truth, then as the good. This must be as true in the realm of knowledges in general as in that of religion, for we do not separate God from His world, or have one law of truth spiritual and another law of truth natural. And what I wish to note is that whereas in Swedenborg's own time and among his immediate predecessors, that is, in Leibnitz, Descartes, and Spinoza, God was asserted in an absolute sense and made the source in which all things are, something after the nature of the esse, infinite and eternal, of Swedenborg's True Ohridian Religion, Chapter I., it is not until in Kant that modern philosophy begins to enter upon its analysis of the Divine nature, and that it is first God as the intellect, God as the idea, as the supreme Power and supreme Thinker, that is most prominently brought to view. In Kant, we may say, God is represented as the great postulate of man's ability DOCTRIXE OF FINAL CAUSES. 237 to know, and as the unity of law which is the only basis of knowledge and of science. In the post-Kantian writers, Fichte and Schelling, this general principle of knowledge, or of the unity of knowledges in a supreme self-consciousness, becomes more and more endowed with the personality of the ego. In Hegel this self-conscious and self -active e(jo becomes identified with the idea, pure and simple, and the evolution of the universe and of man is simplj^ the logical evolution of the idea as a process of the Divine thought. All is intellect, all is form ; although at the close of his system there is a growing recognition of an element of love lying behind the idea and giving it its creative impulse. In Schopenhauer, however, the element of the will comes prominently into view, and his work on Tlie World as Will and Idea, or Will and Presentation, shows a growing insight into the true nature of mind in its causal relation to the world. Schopenhauer's will, however, is far from the true conception of the Divine will. Rather he would represent the " will to live " as the will to descend from the Divine absoluteness and impassivity into the human limitations and pains of finite existence, and hence his view of the world as evil and of death as good. But from this recognition of the will principle as evil, modern thought has during the last half of the nine- teenth century advanced more and more into the idea of the goodwill which lies behind the idea, and is the true motive force and fount of existence for all things. The most thorough modern exponent of this idea of God as the good first cause (for Aristotle taught it among the ancients), and the philosopher the most nearly in touch with Swedenborg's doctrine of God as the end, is Lotze, 238 PROGRESS IN THE the most eminent of the German philosophers since Hegel. These are some of his expressions : — In his Medical Psijcliology, which is described as a ■"physiology of spiritual life in distinction from the physiology of the body" {Uehenoeg II., j). 316), Lotze defines his idealism as meaning that " everything exists because, and only because, it has its necessary place in the import of an idea expressing some phase of the good, which idea constitutes the essence of the thing." In his MikroA'osmuSj Lotze treats of God and the world and restricts the realm of true reality to the living personal spirit of God and the world of personal spirits which he has created. Thus we have in Lotze, whom Erdmann regards as having completed the development of modern philosophy, the recognition of the trine of degrees : the good, the idea, the thing (the idea being called "the essence " because it embodies the good, and is embodied in the thing) ; and also the acknowledgment of the spiritual world as the real world whose reality is derived immediately from God. On the other hand, equally able exponents of the same fundamental doctrine, the importance of the doctrine of the end, are to be found in France, in Paul Janet, in his work on Fi7'st Causes, and in England, in the Duke of Argyll, in his Reign of Law and U7iity of Nature, both of which are too well known and easily accessible to require being quoted here. Among the recent writers who have devoted their attention especially to the subject of the will as supplying the universal source and cause of things, may be men- tioned Robert Schellwein, who in his WiUe und Erkennt- nisii, says : — DOCTRINE OF FINAL CAUSES. 239 The will (not the idea as commonly taught) is the ahsolute side of man. If he were only will he would be the cause of everything, and subject to no guidance ; but since he is also an individual related to other individuals, he is upon that side limited and dependent upon some other than himself. The relation between these two, the absolute and the individual will, furnishes at once the problem and the explanation of the different questions raised by philosophy. In an article on " Personality, the Thing, the Idea, the Person," in the Annee PhiJosophique, by Renouvier, the idea of a trinity of persons in God is criticized as making God's personality unintelligible, " for how can one person be the seat of several other persons "? " He says : — The evolutionistic doctrines of to-day reduce metaphysics to a kind of antique cosmogony using different images merely. Idealism fails to refer its ideas to the immediate consciousness which they imply, but treats them as simple data of experi- ence, divides them and separates them only to associate them again. We have here a kind of physical atomism without a unifying element, a theory which cannot explain mind. The theory opposed to realism takes as its starting-point con- sciousness, and not a principle of the external world. Every thought is related to a consciousness. The idea of a person extended to other consciousnesses became the general idea of the conscious being. There is no contradiction in the idea of God, provided the world is supposed to be finite and the Creator is conceived in correlation with the creation and its laws. Ikbal Kishen Sharga, a writer of Allahabad, India, treating of Berkeley's Theory of Perception, says that " Berkeley teaches that the true cause of an effect is not in the world of phenomena, of matter, or of things per- ceived, but in the world of things jDerceiving, of spiritual * substances ' forming the ultimate reality of the infinite 240 PROGRESS IN THE mind ; and mind, in so far as it is will, is the true cause called for." {Mind, January 1901, p. 129.) Ribot, in his essay on " The Creative Imagination '^ {U Imafjination Creatrice), asserts that " the imagination in the intellectual order is what the will is in the order of movements ; " whereupon his reviewer (in Philosophic Beview, March 1901) remarks that "the creative imagin- ation is the will, it is not merely analogous to it." Coming down to the philosophy of the immediate present, I need only cite such prominent authorities in England and in this country, as Dr. James Ward, of Cambridge University, England ; Professors Royce and James, of Harvard ; and Professor Ladd, of Yale Univer- sity, to show how real a factor the doctrine of ends has become in influential thought of our time, and how far from the truth we should be in resigning ourselves to the despondent conclusion that the light of the New Church in its doctrine of discrete degrees has been shining for over a century without producing any effect upon mankind. Dr. James Ward, in the preface to Naturalism and Agnosticism, says : — An inquiry into the character and mutual relations of abstract dynamics, molar mechanics, and molecular mechanics, seems to show that the modern dream of a mechanical first principle is as wild as the Pythagorean of an arithmetical one. . . . When at length naturalism is forced to take account of the facts of life and mind, we find the strain in the mechanical theory is more than it will bear. Mr. Spencer has blandly to confess that " two volumes of the Synthetic Philosophy are missing, the volumes that should connect inorganic with biological evolution." Turning to the great works of Darwin, we find, on the one hand, no pretence at even conjecturing a DOCTRINE OF FINAL CAUSES. 241 ineclianical derivation of life, and on the other, we find teleological factors implicating mind and incompatible with mere mechanism, regarded as indispensable (p. 9). Ladd, in his Theorij of Reality, comes very close to a direct assertion of the end as the first of the three necessary discrete degrees that make up being, when he says :— Really, to be a thing is to possess somehow the faculty or power of running through a certain series of changes, of actions, doings, and j^assive impressions, that correspond to the concept of that particular thing. The internal teleology or purposeness, in fact, of every real thing belongs to its very being as a thing (p. 375). That is to say that everything that exists must have its very being grounded in its end, or "final cause." Sclielling, as quoted by Ladd, says : — The peculiarity of nature rests on the fact that with all its mechanism it is full of purpose. To say that all such teleolo- gical statements of fact is anthropomorphic has absolutely no influence on a contention like ours. For our contention is just this, that the facts of man's most assured cognition are concrete examples of the rule of final purpose over things. Knowledge is not less trustworthy and things are not less real, when things are known to have such structures and such functions as to comport in reality with ideal ends (p. 373). Professor Royco, in his Tlip World and the Iivlividual, in his very initiatory definition of the "idea " states that it is " at least the partial expression or embodiment of a single conscious purpose. An idea appears in conscious- ness as having the significance of an act of will, and every conscious act at the moment you perform it not merely expresses, but is an idea " (p. 23). Thus he analyzes the act into the three degrees of will, idea, and action. In Q 242 PROGRESS IN THE his preface lie thus defines the change which his own philosophical conceptions have undergone. Speaking of his earlier works, Professor Royce says : — In my first book the conception of the absolute was defined in such wise as led nie to prefer quite deliberately the u>e of the term " thought " as the best name for the final unity of the absolute. While this term was thus so defined as to make thought inclusive of will and of experience, these latter terms were not emphasized proiuiuenlly enough, and the aspects of the absolute life which they denote, have since become centred in my own interests. The present is a deliberate effort to bring into synthesis more fully than I have ever done before the relations of knowledge and will in my conceptions of God (p. 9). The true definition of individuality implies three features : — I. An individual whole must conform to an ideal definition. II. The individual whole must embody this type in the form of immediate experience (intuitive). III. The individual whole must so embody the type, that no other embodiment would meet precisely the purpose, the will, fulfilled by this embodiment. It is the third of these features that is the really decisive one. The satisfied will, as such, is the sole principle of indivi- dualism. This is our theory of individuality. . . . The determinations of the infinite whole is given when the com- pletely conscious self knows itself as this being and no other ; and thus it knows when it views its whole wealth of life as the determinate satisfactions of its will. (Supplementary Essay, p. 587.) The unity of this vast mechanism, its regularity and com- pleteness, all point to the one supreme intelligence as their only sufficient reason ; while the inertness of all its parts equally points to Him as its prime mover and efficient cause. . . . Can we have the intelligible without intelligence? (Vol. II., p. 266.) Nature, as science regards it, may be described as a system whose parts, be they simple, be they complex, are wholly DOCTRINE OF FINAL CAUSES. 243 determined by universal laws. . . . Knowledge of these laws is an indispensable means to that subjugation and control of nature upon wliicli human welfare and advancement in a large measure depend. So far, the pursuit and acquisition of know- ledge is teleological, as truly so as other practical pursuits and achievements of human activity. But what of the concej)tion itself of svstematic unity and invariable conformity to law ? That too, I say, is teleological, as means to an end, knowledge. The conception of nature as a system of laws is an indispen- sable hypothesis or postulate ; for without it scientific experi- ence is impossible. The unity and regularity of nature jDroves that nature itself is teleological, and that in two regi3ects : I. It is conformable to human intelligence. II. It is amenable to human ends (p. 254). It is not enough that each man has understanding and purpose, but there must be a common understanding and purpose before there can be one peoj^le. A like accord between thinking and being is the condition witliout which knowledge is impossible (p. 250). Professor William James, in his The Will to Believ.e, says :— Neither moral relations nor moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them. In calling God personal, we do not mean to limit His nature to our conception of personality, but we do mean to attribute to Him those attitudes of thought and feeling which are the necessary iniplicators of moral being. If moral relations exist and the moral law exists only in us, they are subjective merely ; if they exist in the Divine Nature, they have objective and eternal reality. Dr. Gordon, a leading theological writer of this country, in his recent work on The New Epoch for Faith, says : — It is assumed that God works for ends. In this assumption there is a necessity of thought. In this way only can man know God, since man is himself a being of ends. . . . Man, 244 DOCTRINE OF FINAL CAUSES. as a being of ends, insists that his ultimate end shall niatcli his highest power. In no other way can man think of God. To him God is necessarily a being of ends. Teleology is in the warp and woof of humanity ; it must be in the warp and woof of Deity. Evolutionary science has but strengthened this view. Natural selection is but a mean disguise for ignorance, if it does not imply cosmical purpose. The move- ment of life from lower to higher is a movement upon ends. Will is the last account of the universe, and will is the faculty for ends. The moment that one concludes that God is, it appears certain that He is a being of ends. The universe is alive with desire and movement. Fundamentally through- out it is an expression of will (p. 15). It is believed that these quotations go to show a grow- ing tendency in contemporary thought to recognize in the existing world the three discrete degrees, that is, nature as eifect, the world of spirit as cause, and God as a Being of wisdom and love, consequently as a Person, in whose self-activity as pure love formed by pure wisdom, lie the ends or purposes of all things from eternity to eternity, and that in the growth of this doctrine science is pre- paring a way for the descent into men's minds and lives of a rational faith and a practical religion. Robert R. Sutherland, Printer, Edinburgh. rir