The philosophy of life, and philosophy of language, in a course of lectures. Friedrich von Schlegel

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СКАЧАТЬ The understanding which women possess is not so much dry, observant, cool, and calculating, as it is vivid and intuitively penetrating. And it is exactly this vividness of intellect that, when speaking of individuals, we call mind or spirit.

      Another line of thought will, perhaps, lead us more directly and nearer to the end we have in view. The external influence of women on the whole human community is, for the most part (for here, too, there are great and memorable exceptions) confined to a narrow sphere of the immediate duties of the affections, or to similar relations in the wider social circle. So, too, is it inwardly as regards the consciousness. All the faculties of women and their several manifestations lie, if I may so express myself, close together, and, as it were, in a friendly circle around the loving soul, as their common center. With regard, then, to the comparison of the two sexes and their mental differences, I would venture to observe, that on the one side it seems to me that a certain harmonious fullness of the consciousness is the preponderating character; and, on the other, its eccentric evolution. Not that I mean that in the sex which is pre-eminently called to outward activity, the mind loses its grand center in the inner life, or, comet-like, delights to wander in vast, irregular orbits, as is, indeed, commonly enough asserted. My meaning is, simply, that the masculine mind will ever dare, as, indeed, it ought, to move in wider circles than the feminine. The extremes of the consciousness, if the expression be allowable—the farthest poles both of reason and fancy—are, so to speak, the property of the more active sex; while the harmonious union and contact of both in the soul belong to the more sensitive. All such general and characteristic sketches, however, must always be most imperfect. Still I believe it may be safely and truly said, that, with highly-favored dispositions and noble natures (and these must be always supposed and taken for the foundation of such general remarks), the gain to be derived from this intellectual community and influence, in which one individual consciousness completes the other, must be sought in the one sex in a greater development of mind and elevation of soul, and in the other in a more harmonious adjustment and softening of the mental powers, and in a far more sensitive excitement of the soul’s susceptibilities. But in this most intimate of unions, when regarded as divinely blessed, and when in reality it appears to be so, then on either side both mind and soul are, as it were, twice combined and joined together in closest association, and, if we may say so, even married and wedded together. Consequently, while external life derives from marriage its moral foundation and origin, the internal life of man is, as it were, mentally renewed by it, or fructified afresh and redoubled.

LECTURE III.

       OF THE SOUL’S SHARE IN KNOWLEDGE; AND OF REVELATION.

       Table of Contents

      IN the first Lecture our attention was directed to the thinking soul as the center of the whole human consciousness; while in the second, I attempted fully to set before you, and to delineate, the loving soul as the true middle point of the moral life. The object of our present disquisition will be to ascertain the part which the soul takes in the knowledge to which man is able to attain. The general element, indeed, which the soul furnishes as its contribution to human knowledge, is not indeed very difficult to determine; but when we come to details, there is much that requires to be well weighed and pondered.

      Now, the soul furnishes the cognitive mind with language for the expression of its cognitions; and it is even the distinctive character of human knowledge, that it depends on language, which not only forms an essential constituent of it, but is also its indispensable organ. Language, however, the discursive, but at the same time also the vividly figurative language of man, is entirely the product of the soul, which in its production first of all, and pre-eminently, manifests its fruitful and creative energy. In this wonderful creation the two constituent faculties of the soul—fancy and reason—play an equal and co-ordinate part. From the fancy it derives the whole of its figurative and ornamental portion, and also its melodious rhythm and animated tone. And, moreover, its inmost fundamental web and the primary natural roots belong also to man’s original deep feeling of sympathy with outward nature, and therefore to fancy, unless perhaps some would prefer to ascribe them at once to the soul itself, as still more profoundly and intimately akin to nature. To the reason, on the other hand, language owes its logical order, and its grammatical forms and laws of construction. Which part is the more important, or more highly to be esteemed, is a question whose solution will vary according to the point of view which in any case may be adopted as fundamental, or to the different relations under which the whole shall be considered. Both elements, however, are equally essential and indispensable. In all the instances already considered of the reciprocal relation of reason and fancy we found almost invariably a decided preponderance of one or the other; but neither there nor elsewhere will reason and fancy be found combining in such harmonious proportions, or working so thoroughly together, or contributing so equally to the common product, as in the wonderful production of language, and in language itself. And this is the case, not only with language in general, but also with all its species and noblest applications. Now this dependence of the cognitive mind on its organ of language, discursive indeed, but yet almost always figurative—this close and intimate connection between man’s knowledge and his speech—is even the characteristic mark of human intelligence. But the fault of most of the mere speculative thinkers lies even in this, that they abandon the standard of humanity, by seeking to wrest, and to conquer an unhuman, if we may so say, i.e., a wholly independent and absolute knowledge, which, however, it is not in their power to attain to, and in pursuit of which they lose the certainty which lies within their reach, and so at last grasp nothing but an absolute not-knowing, or an endless controversy. If, as we can not but suppose, a communication does take place among those spiritual beings, who in intelligence are preferred to man, then must the immediate speech of these spirits be very different from our half-sensuous half-rational, half-earthly half-heavenly language of nature and humanity. For, even as spiritual, it can not but be immediate—never employing figure and those grammatical forms which human language first analyzes, to form again out of them new and fresh compounds. According to the two properties which constitute the essence of mind [geist], it can only be a communication, a transmission, an awakening or immission of thought—some wholly definite thought—by the will, or else the communicating, exciting, and producing by the thought of some equally definite volition. It may be that something of this, or at least something not absolutely dissimilar, occurs in human operations. It is possible that this immediate language of mind, as a secret and invisible principle of life—as a rare and superior element—is contained also in human language, and, as it were, veiled in the outer body, which, however, becomes visible only in the effects of a luminous and lofty eloquence, in which is displayed the magic force of language and of a ruling and commanding thought. Taken on the whole, however, human speech is no such immediate and magically-working language of mind or spirit. It is rather a figurative language of nature, in which its great permanent hieroglyphics are mirrored again in miniature, and in rapid succession. And it retains this natural and figurative character even in the ordinary form of rational dialogue, which must observe so many varieties and details of grammar, of which superior intelligences have no need for their immediate intercommunion, but in which, as in all other human things, many greater or less grammatical oversights creep in and give rise to important consequences in science and thought, and also in life itself. But in the next place, language is intimately connected and co-ordinate with tradition, whether sacred or profane, with all the recorded fruits of human speculation and inquiry. And as the word is the root out of which the whole stem of man’s transmitted knowledge, or tradition, has grown up, with all its branches and offshoots, so, too, in the eloquent speech, in the elegant composition, and even in all lofty internal meditation—which form, as it were, the leaves, flowers, and fruits of this goodly tree of living tradition—it is again the word by which the whole is carried on and ultimately perfected.

      But now, in order to develop still more completely, and more accurately to ascertain the part which the soul, as the creator of language, contributes to human cognition and knowledge, it will be necessary to examine nicely the essence of reason, and especially in relation to its collateral and closely-connected, but subordinate СКАЧАТЬ