The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 2 (of 2)Hügel, Friedrich, Freiherr von
Religion
The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 2 (of 2)
Hügel, Friedrich, Freiherr von
Catherine, of Genoa, Saint, 1447-1510
In the next place, we must beware against exalting the Objective
against the Subjective, or the Subjective against the Objective, as
if Life, Reality, and Truth consisted in the one rather than the
other. Because the subjective element is, on the first showing, a work
of our own minds, it does not follow (as we shall see more clearly
when studying the ultimate problems) that its operations are bereft
of correspondence with reality, or, at least, that they are further
from reality than are our sense-perceptions. For just as the degree
of worth represented by these sense-perceptions can range from the
crudest delusion to a stimulation of primary importance and exquisite
precision, so also our mental and emotional reaction and penetration
represent almost any and every degree of accuracy and value.
And, above all, as already implied, the true priority and superiority
lies, not with one of these constituents against the other, but with
the total subjective-objective interaction and resultant, which is
superior, and indeed gives their place and worth to, those ever
interdependent parts.
Now, in the general human experience, the Objective element is
constituted, in the first instance and for clear and ready analysis,
by the sense-stimulations; and, after some mental response to and
elaboration of these, by the larger psychic moods; and later still, by
the examples of great spiritual attitudes and of great personalities
offered by other souls to the soul that keeps itself open to such
impressions. And though the sense of Reality (as contrasted with
Appearance), of the Abiding and Infinite (as different from the
Passing and the Finite), are doubtless awakened, however faintly and
inarticulately, in the human soul from the first, as the background and
presupposition of the foreground and the middle-distances of its total
world of perceptions and aspirations: yet all these middle-distances,
as well as that great background and groundwork, would remain
unawakened but for those humble little sense-perceptions on the one
hand, and intercourse with human fellow-creatures on the other. And in
such intercourse with the minds and souls, or with the literary remains
and other monuments of souls, either still living here or gone hence
some two thousand years or more, a mass of mental and moral impressions
and stimulations, which, in those souls, were largely their own
elaborations, offer themselves to any one human mind, or to the minds
of a whole generation or country, with the apparent homogeneity of a
purely objective, as it were a sense-impression.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account