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
Such science again will help to stimulate those other, deeper
activities of human nature, which have made possible, and have all
along preceded and accompanied, these more superficial ones; and this,
although such science will doubtless tend to do the very opposite, if
the whole nature be allowed to become exclusively engrossed in this
one phenomenal direction. Still it remains true that perhaps never has
man turned to the living God more happily and humbly, than when coming
straight away from such rigorous, disinterested phenomenal analysis, as
long as such analysis is felt to be both other than, and preliminary
and secondary to, the deepest depths of the soul’s life and of all
ultimate Reality.
And finally, such science will correspondingly help to give depth and
mystery, drama and pathos, a rich spirituality, to the whole experience
and conception of the soul and of life, of the world and of God.
Instead of a more or less abstract picture, where all is much on the
same plane, where all is either fixed and frozen, or all is in a state
of feverish flux, we get an outlook, with foreground, middle distances,
and background, each contrasting with, each partially obscuring,
partially revealing, the other; but each doing so, with any freshness
and fulness, only in and through the strongly willing, the fully active
and gladly suffering, the praying, aspiring, and energizing spiritual
Personality, which thus both gives and gets its own true self ever more
entirely and more deeply.
4. _Science to be taken, throughout our life, in a double sense and
way._
In such a conception of the place of Science, we have permanently
to take Science, throughout life, in a double sense and way. In the
first instance, Science is self-sufficing, its own end and its own
law. In the second instance, which alone is ever final, Science is
but a part of a whole, but a function, a necessary yet preliminary
function, of the whole of man; and it is but part, a necessary yet
preliminary part, of his outlook. Crush out, or in any way mutilate or
deautonomize, this part, and all the rest will suffer. Sacrifice the
rest to this part, either by starvation or attempted suppression, or by
an impatient assimilation of this immense remainder to that smaller and
more superficial part, and the whole man suffers again, and much more
seriously.
And the danger, in both directions,--let us have the frankness to admit
the fact,--is constant and profound: even to see it continuously is
difficult; to guard against it with effect, most difficult indeed.
For to starve or to suspect, to cramp or to crush this phenomenal
apprehension and investigation, in the supposed interest of the
ulterior truths, must ever be a besetting temptation and weakness for
the religious instinct, wherever this instinct is strong and fixed, and
has not yet itself been put in the way of purification.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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