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

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СКАЧАТЬ of the planets, yet the earth has entered into the list, and the deficient member of the system having been discovered, we have again seven planets, as in the olden belief. For it is, to say the least, highly improbable that any new planetary body will ever be discovered beyond Uranus,[22] and as for the small bodies which are situate between Mars and Jupiter, it is pretty generally acknowledged that they are not properly to be counted as planets, from which they are even distinguished by their very names by some astronomers.

      And as little ground is there to take exception or offense at modern astronomy, even on that side of it where difficulties were originally most felt and mooted. For Holy Writ was neither written exclusively nor designed pre-eminently for astronomers. In these matters, therefore, as in all others, it speaks the ordinary language which men employ among themselves in the business of daily life.

      Now we know that in the pulse of the organic body its regular beating is occasionally interrupted by a hurried circulation or a momentary stoppage. Is it not in the same way possible that the pulsatory revolutions of the great planetary world do not observe, like a piece of dead clock-work, a mechanical uniformity, but are liable to many deviations and irregularities? If, then, a similar stoppage to that which sometimes occurs in the pulse of man, be here also supposable, as produced by a superior power and external influence, then in the case of such an extraordinary interruption, it is a matter of indifference whether it be said of this wonderful moment that the sun stood still, or (as seems to be the fact) that the earth was held in check and rested in its orbit. And, in like manner, for the changing phenomena of the astronomical day, the common expressions are equally true with the scientific, and equally significant. The sun’s rise, the morning dawn, is, for all men, a figure, or, rather, a fact of pregnant meaning, while the setting sun fills all hearts with a melancholy feeling of separation. Equally true, however, is it, and in a symbolical sense it conveys perhaps a still more serious meaning, when we say, in scientific language, “The earth must go down before the sun can rise;” or, “When the earth goes up, then is it night, and darkness diffuses itself over all.” Or if, perhaps, in the new and quickening spring, instead of the old phraseology, “The sun has returned, has come near to us again,” we were to say, “The earth, or at least our side of it, is again brought nearer to the sun,” would it not be as beautiful and significant a description? And happy, indeed, are those periods of the world wherein, to speak in a figurative but moral sense, that earth-soul which rules in the changes of time—the so-called public opinion, has declined toward, and approached more nearly to, its sun.

      It is a remarkable, not to say wonderful, fact, that in ancient times the Pythagoreans held the same system of the universe which modern astronomy teaches, though, perhaps, they were not acquainted with the mathematic calculations of its distances. But still more surprising is it, that while they were thus perfectly acquainted with the number of the planets, and even arranged them in the same order that they are placed by modern astronomers, they admitted into their system two stars which we have not. One of these, as the sun of the gods [Geister-sonne],[23] they placed high above the visible sun. The latter, which they named the “counter-earth,” (αντἱχθν) was placed directly opposite to the real earth. It would seem, therefore, that they regarded these two bodies as the invisible centers of the whole sidereal universe, and, as it were, the choir-leaders or choragi of the apparently orderless and scattered host of heaven. Are these two stars now extinct? or is their light too pure and ethereal to penetrate our dense and thickened atmosphere; or, like so much besides, was it little else than a still surviving tradition from the primitive world? This, however, must ever remain conjectural. As for the fact itself, that the Pythagoreans did so teach, and understood by these names, not merely figurative symbols, but real stars, has been placed beyond doubt by modern investigations into the Pythagorean doctrines. At any rate, their knowledge of these stars must have been acquired by some other means than the telescope of modern astronomy, with which, in fact, they were not acquainted, and nothing but some new observation or phenomenon in the sidereal heavens can ever throw light on this matter. And who shall say that even our present astronomical science shall not advance still further, and that it has not closed too soon, and been in all too great a haste to sum up its doubtless most elaborate and complicated calculations?

      Thus did the mind of man advance the first step toward the maturity of physical science, by attaining to a more comprehensive survey of the mundane system, and a more accurate knowledge of his own habitation, of this earthly planet. The next step in this sluggish progress was made by the chemical discoveries of modern times, and especially of the French chemists. In a merely negative point of view, these have been important, as establishing the fact that the old elements, water, for instance, and air, which had long been regarded as simple, are themselves decomposable into other constituents and aeriform parts. And, indeed, that such great powers of nature as these are, and must ever remain so long as the present constitution of the world shall last, could only subsist in the reciprocal dynamical relation of several conflicting forces, a profounder glance at nature would of itself have conjectured and presupposed. But in a positive sense, this second step has carried us very far toward the understanding of the hieroglyphics of nature. Those primary elements of things discovered and numbered by that chemical analysis which has subjected to its experiments almost every form and species of matter, constitute, as it were, the permanent material letters and consonants of the natural world around us. On the other hand, the vowels of human language are represented by the fundamental facts of the magnetism of the earth, together with the phenomena of electricity, the decomposition of light, and the chemical chain of the galvanic pile, in which the inner life of the terrestrial force, and of the eternally-moving atmosphere, as well as the soul whose pulse beats therein, finds an utterance, like a voice out of the lowest deep. And thus, by means of an alphabet of nature, which, however, is still most imperfect, we may hope to make a beginning, at least, and to decipher one or two entire words. But modern chemistry has made a more important advance toward a right understanding of nature as a whole. By analyzing and decomposing all solid bodies, as well as water itself, into different forms of a gaseous element, it has thereby destroyed forever that appearance of rigidity and petrifaction which the corporeal mass of visible and external nature presents to our observation. Every where we now meet with living elemental forces, hidden and shut up beneath this rigid exterior. The proportion of aqueous particles in the air is so great, that, if suddenly condensed, they would suffice for more than one flood. And a similar deluge of light would ensue, if all the luminous sparks which are latent in the darkness were simultaneously set free; and the whole globe itself would end in flame, were all the fiery elements that are at present dispersed throughout the world to be at once disengaged and kindled. The investigation of the salutary bonds which hold together these elementary forces in due equilibrium, controlling one by the other, and confining each within its prescribed limits, does not fall within the scope of our present inquiries, as neither does the question, whether these bonds be not of a higher kind than naturalists commonly suppose? More immediately connected with, as also more important for our general subject, is the result which chemical analysis has so indubitably established, that in the natural world every object consists of living forces, and that properly nothing is rigid and dead, but all replete with hidden life. This colossal mountain range of petrified mummies which forms nature on the whole—this pyramid of graves, piled one over the other, is therefore, it is true, a historical monument of the past—of all the bygone ages of the world in the advancing development of death; but nevertheless, there is therein a latent vitality. Beneath the vast tombstone of the visible world there slumbers a soul, not wholly alien, but more than half akin to our own. This planetary and sensible world, and the earth-soul imprisoned therein, is only apparently dead. Nature does but sleep, and will, perhaps, ere long awake again. Sleep generally is, if not the essence, yet, at least, an essential signature and characteristic of nature. Every natural object partakes of it more or less. Not the animals only, but the very plants sleep; while in the vicissitudes of the seasons, and of their influences on the productive surface of the earth, and, in truth, on the whole planet, a perpetual alternation is perceptible between an awakening of life and a state of slumbering repose. Whatever, consequently, partakes, and requires the refreshment of sleep, belongs, even on that account, to nature. Painters, indeed, have given us СКАЧАТЬ