When we consider Spirit, we see that the views already presented do
not include the whole circumference of man. We must add some
related thoughts.
Three problems are put by nature to the mind; What is matter?
Whence is it? and Whereto? The first of these questions only, the
ideal theory answers. Idealism saith: matter is a phenomenon, not a
substance. Idealism acquaints us with the total disparity between the
evidence of our own being, and the evidence of the world's being.
The one is perfect; the other, incapable of any assurance; the mind is
a part of the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, from
which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day.
Idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles
than those of carpentry and chemistry. Yet, if it only deny the
existence of matter, it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit. It
leaves God out of me. It leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my
perceptions, to wander without end. Then the heart resists it, because
it balks the affections in denying substantive being to men and
women. Nature is so pervaded with human life, that there is
something of humanity in all, and in every particular. But this theory
makes nature foreign to me, and does not account for that
consanguinity which we acknowledge to it.
Let it stand, then, in the present state of our knowledge, merely as a
useful introductory hypothesis, serving to apprize us of the eternal
distinction between the soul and the world.
But when, following the invisible steps of thought, we come to
inquire, Whence is matter? and Whereto? many truths arise to us out
of the recesses of consciousness. We learn that the highest is present
to the soul of man, that the dread universal essence, which is not
wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each
entirely, is that for which all things exist, and that by which they are;
that spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is
present; one and not compound, it does not act upon us from without,
that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves:
therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not build up
nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree
puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the old. As
a plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the bosom of God; he is
nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws, at his need,
inexhaustible power. Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man?
Once inhale the upper air, being admitted to behold the absolute
natures of justice and truth, and we learn that man has access to the
entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the finite. This
view, which admonishes me where the sources of wisdom and
power lie, and points to virtue as to
"The golden key
Which opes the palace of eternity,"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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