The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 1 (of 2)Hügel, Friedrich, Freiherr von
Religion
The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 1 (of 2)
Hügel, Friedrich, Freiherr von
Catherine, of Genoa, Saint, 1447-1510
These four characteristics of Universality, Conversion, Unification,
Transcendence, we find them together in Greek philosophy once, and once
only, namely in Plato. Twice again we have indeed a world-embracing,
world-moving scheme placed before us, and in each case two of these
four characteristics reappear in a deepened and developed form. For
Aristotle works out, more fully and satisfactorily than Plato, the
characters of Universality and of Unification; especially does the
latter find a great improvement. And Plotinus insists, even more
constantly and movingly than Plato, upon Conversion as a necessary
means, and upon Transcendence as a necessary characteristic of all
true philosophy. But Aristotle has lost the Conversion from out of
his scheme, and also the Transcendence conceived as at the same time
immanent in the world; and Plotinus has lost the Universality, and the
Unification conceived as a Unity in Multiplicity.
4. _In Aristotle._
As to Aristotle, the improvements upon Plato are marked and many.
There is the doctrine of the non-existence of the General apart from
the Particular; the doctrine of Matter as not simple Non-Being, but
as Not-yet-Being, the Possible, the Not-yet-Actual, which is waiting
the presence of the Form to give it the Actuality for which it is
destined, since Matter requires Form, and Form requires Matter; and
the doctrine, here first fully developed, of Motion, the Moved and the
Moving.
Since all Motion, Change, Natural Life spring from Form (and a
particular Form), working in and with Matter (a particular and
appropriate Matter), the ultimate First Moving Cause must Itself be
all-moving and all-unmoved, that is, it must be Pure Form. We thus get
the first at all adequate philosophical presentation of Theism: for
this Pure Form is then shown to be eternal, unchanging, all thought,
self-thinking, and absolutely distinct from the world which it moves.
In all other real Beings the Form has, in various degrees, to contend
with the manifold impediments of Matter; and in proportion to the
Form’s success, does the resultant Being stand high in the scale of
Creation. The plant, with its vegetative and plastic soul, stands
lowest in the scale of organic life; next comes the animal, with its
sensitive and motive soul; and highest stands man, with his rational
and volitional soul. And each higher Being takes over, as the lower
part of his own nature, the functions and powers of the lower Being;
and hence, since all Beings constitute so many several parts of the
world’s systematic whole, they are all deserving of the closest study.
And Man, destined to be the highest constituent of this whole, can
become so only by moving as much as may be out of his entanglement in
the lower, the passive functions of his soul, and identifying himself
with his true self, with that active power, that pure reason which,
itself pure Form, finds its proper objects in the Forms of all things
that are.
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