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power is commensurate with his will, and is sufficient for all and overfloweth ( shineth in darkness, and is not contained therein, or comprehended by the darkness.)

This was Heraclitus, whose book is nearly six hundred years older than the Gospel of St. John, and who was proverbially entitled the Dark ( OKOTELVÒS') But it was a darkness which Socrates would not condemn, and which would probably appear to enlightened Christians the darkness of prophecy, had the work, which he hid in the temple, been preserved to us. But obscurity is a word of many meanings. It may be in the subject; it may be in the author; or it may be in the reader;—and this again may originate in the state of the reader's heart; or in that of his capacity; or in his temper; or in his accidental associations. Two kinds are especially pointed out by the divine Plato in his Sophistes. The Beauty of the Original is beyond my reach. On my anxiety to give the fulness of the Thought, I must ground my excuse for construing rather than translating. The fidelity of the Version may well atone for its harshness in a passage that deserves a meditation beyond the ministry of words, even the words of Plato himself, though in them, or no where, are to be heard the sweet sounds, that issued from the Head of Memnon at the Touch of Light." One thing is the Hardness-to-be-understood of the Sophist, another that of the Philosopher. The former retreating into the obscurity of that which hath not true Being, (Toũ μù övτos) and by long intercourse accustomed to the same, is hard to be known on account of the duskiness of the place. But the philosopher by contemplation of pure reason evermore approximating to the idea of true Being (rov orroç) is by no means easy to be seen on account of the splendor of that region. For

the intellectual eyes of the Many flit, and are incapable of looking fixedly toward the God-like."

There are, I am aware, persons who willingly admit, that not in articles of Faith alone, but in the heights of Geometry, and even in the necessary first principles of Natural Philosophy, there exist truths of apodictic. force in Reason, which the mere Understanding strives in vain to comprehend. Take, as an instance, the ascending series of Infinites in every Finite, a position which involves a contradiction for the Understanding, yet follows demonstrably from the very definition of Body, as that which fills a space. For wherever there is a space filled, there must be an extension to be divided. When therefore Maxims generalized from Appearances (Phænomena) are applied to Substances; when Rules, abstracted or deduced from the Forms in Time and Space, are used as measures of Spiritual Being, yea even of the Divine Nature which cannot be compared or classed; ("For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways, saith the Lord." Isaiah lv. 8.) such Professors cannot but protest against the whole Process, as grounded on a gross Metathesis έις ἂλλο γενος. Yet still they are disposed

to tolerate it as a sort of sanative counter-excitement, that holds in check the more dangerous disease of Methodism. But I more than doubt of both the positions. I do not think Methodism, Calvinistic or Wesleian, the more dangerous disease; and even if it were, I should deny that it is at all likely to be counteracted by the rational Christianity of our modern Alogi (Móyos miséws aλoyos!) who, mistaking Unity for Sameness, have been pleased by a misnomer not less contradictory to their own tenets than intolerant to those of Christians in general, to entitle themselves

UNITARIANS.

The two contagions attack each wholly different class of minds and tempers, and each tends to produce and justify the other, according as the predisposition of the patient may chance to be. If Fanaticism be as a fire in the flooring of the church, the Idolism of the unspiritualized Understanding is the dry rot in its beams and timbers. Ύβριν χρὴ σβεννύειν μᾶλλον ἢ πυρκαΐην: says Heraclitus. It is not the sect of Unitarian Dissenters, but the spirit of Unitarianism in the members of the Established Church that alarms me. To what open revilings, and to what whispered slanders, I subject my name, by this public avowal, I well know: ἀπίρους γαρ τινὰς εἶναι ἐπιςύφων Ηράκλειτος, φησιν, ἀκοῦσαι ουκ ἐπιταμένους ουδ ̓ ἐιπεῖν· ἄλλα καὶ, κύνες ὡς, βαΰζουσιν ὃν ἂν μὴ γινώσκωσι.

(E.)

The term, Idea, is an instance in point; and I hazard this assertion, together with the preceding sentences, in the full consciousness, that they must be unintelligible to those who have yet to learn, that an Idea is equi-distant in its signification from Sensation, Image, Fact, and Notion: that it is the antithesis not the synonyme of dwhov. The magnificent son of Cosmo was wont to discourse with Ficino, Politian, and the princely Mirandula on the Ideas of Will, God, and Immortality. The accomplished author of the Arcadia, the star of serenest brilliance in the glorious constellation of Elizabeth's court, our England's Sir Philip Sydney! He the paramount gentleman of Europe, the poet, warrior, and statesman, held high converse with Spencer on the Idea of Supersensual beauty; on all "earthly fair and amiable," as the Symbol of that Idea; and on Music and Poesy as its living Educts! With the same

genial reverence did the younger Algernon commune with Harrington and Milton on the Idea of a perfect state; and in what sense it is true, that the men (i. e. the aggregate of the inhabitants of a country at any one time) are made for the state, not the state for the men. But these lights shine no longer, or for a few. Exeunt: and enter in their stead Holofernes and Costard! masked as Metaphysics and Commonsense. And these too have their Ideas! The former has an Idea, that Hume, Hartley, and Condillac have exploded all Ideas, but those of sensation; he has an Idea that he was particularly pleased with the fine idea of the last-named Philosopher, that there is no absurdity in asking, What color Virtue is of? inasmuch as the proper philosophic answer would be black, blue, or bottle-green, according as the coat, waistcoat and small-clothes might chance to be of the person, the series of whose motions had excited the sensations, which formed our idea of virtue. The latter has no idea of a better-flavored haunch of venison than he dined off at the Albion, he admits that the French have an excellent Idea of cooking in general, but holds that their best cooks have no more Idea of dressing a turtle than the gourmands themselves, at Paris, have of the true taste and color of the fat!

It is not impossible that a portion of the high value attached of late years to the Dates and Margins of our old Folios and Quartos, may be transferred to their Contents. Even now there exists a shrewd suspicion in the minds of reading men, that not only Plato and Aristotle, but even Scotus Erigena, and the schoolmen from Peter Lombard to Duns Scotus, are not such mere blockheads, as they pass for with those who bave never perused a line of their writings. What the

results may be, should this ripen into conviction, I can but guess. But all History seems to favor the persuasion, I entertain, that in every age the speculative Philosophy in general acceptance, the metaphysical opinions that happen to be predominant, will influence the Theology of that age. Whatever is proposed for the Belief, as true, must have been previously admitted by Reason as possible, as involving no contradiction to the universal forms (or laws) of Thought, no incompatibility in the terms of the proposition; and the determination on this head belongs exclusively to the science of Metaphysics. In each article of Faith embraced on conviction, the mind determines, first intuitively on its logical possibility; secondly, discursively, on its analogy to doctrines already believed, as well as on its correspondencies to the wants and faculties of our nature; and thirdly, historically, on the direct and indirect evidences. But the probability of an event is a part of its historic evidence, and constitutes its presumptive proof, or the evidence a priori. Now as the evidence a posteriori, requisite in order to a satisfactory proof of the actual occurrence of any Fact stands, in an inverse ratio to the strength or weakness of the evidence a priori (that is, a fact probable in itself may be believed on slight testimony) it is manifest that of the three Factors, by which the mind is determined to the admission or rejection of the point in question, the last must be greatly influenced by the second, and that both depend on the first, not indeed as their cause or preconstituent, but as their indispensable condition; so that the very inquiry concerning them is preposterous (=σόφισμα τοῦ Υτερου Πρότερου) as long as the first remains undetermined. Again: the history of human opinions (ecclesiastical and philosophical history)

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