3 1822 01208 2079 LIBRARY I UNIVERSITY OF 1 CALIFORNIA i, SAN DIEGO J S 9?I J?3 St m';.','J,:..9'..f*!.!';0?NIA SAN DIEGO 3 1822 01208 2079 Ul Tn ^ -^ SOCIETY THE REDEEMED FORM OF MAN, THE EARNEST OF GOD'S OMNIPOTENCE IN HUMAN NATURE: AFFIRMED IN LETTERS TO A FRIEND By henry JAMES. " Man during his earthly life induces a form in the purest substances of his interiors, so that he may be said to form his o\vn soul, or give it quality-; and according to the form or quality of soul he thus gives himself will be his subsequent receptivity to the Lord's inflowing life : which is a life of love to the -whole hiimati race." BOSTON: HOUGHTON, OSGOOD AND COMPANY. die EiljjrBiTie JPrcBg, Cambrttse. 1879. Copyright, 1879. By henry JAME S. ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE. CONTENTS LETTER I. PAGE Antagonism between the ideas of human freedom and human destiny 3 " Destiny " fatal to nature as well 16 LETTER II. History a struggle between man's race force and his personal force 17 The struggle is inherent in man's creatureship 20 His spiritual creation exacts his previous natural formation 22 To what creative excellency is this exaction owing ? 24 LETTER III. The meaning of Infinite Love 26 It means, freedom from self-love, and hence stamps self-love unreal 28 Inferiority of science to philosophy as an intellectual culture 30 Man unreal in se, and made real only by natural redemption 32 Primacy of the heart in belief 34 LETTER IV. Divine truth has first to create the intelligence it afterwards en- lightens 35 Its force purely regenerative 38 Persistent Judaism of the Church 39 " Professional " religion the true Antichrist 40 Ritualism, revivalism, radicalism 42 IV CONTENTS. LETTEK V. Sudden demoralization of tlie writer 43 Almost complete moral imbecility 46 Charm of English landscape 47 Growing delight in nature, and disgust with oneself 48 A friend's account of Swedeuborg 50 I am much interested 51 I resolve to read him 52 LETTER VI. A few explanatory words about Swedenborg 53 LETTER VII. Further observations about Swedenborg 64 LETTER VIII. My moral death and burial 70 Profound moral illusion under which I had been living 72 My relief from it equivalent to my belief in the incarnation 74! The moral law essentially typical and prophetic 76 Its votaries make it utterly flat, vapid, and spiritless 78 The law a present stench in the earth 80 LETTER IX. Difference between the real Jew and the Christian imitation 81 "We live not under a literal but a spiritual Divine administration ... 84 Growing indifference of men to their civic repute 86 Our current ecclesiastical culture frivolous and unmanly 88 The horse-car our true Shechinah at this day 90 Christ's precise work on earth 92 LETTER X. Swedenborg's interpretation of the gospel 93 The origin of spiritual evil 9G CONTENTS, Creation inevitably contracts soil on its subjective side 98 Creation as a spiritual work of God is plainly miraculous, and therefore admits no witness but that of life or consciousness 100 LETTER XI. Objection to miracle 104 Miracle is bad science, but very good philosophy 106 My own intellectual attitude towards miracle 112 Infirmity of the critical or sceptical understanding 118 Swedenborg an out-and-out realist 124 LETTER XII. Creation a spontaneous work 125 Nature unreal and impersonal 127 It is a functioning of Divine Love towards our spiritual manhood 130 The educative use of our natural experience 132 Genesis of this absurd cosmological " Nothing " 134 Creation as a letter an immense fallacy 136 Creation has no locus in quo but the human consciousness 138 Its sole and total method : Redemption 140 LETTER XIII. God the sole subject in creation, man the sole object 141 Creation only a philosophic name for our natural redemption 144 What do we mean by the term Nature ? 146 Nature a strictly subjective, or metaphysical existence 148 Concrete uses of the word 150 Nature realizable to thought, but not to sense 152 Human nature is the sphere of man's subjective relations 154 It has no existence but as the attribute of a subject 156 Humanity not a material fact, but a spiritual truth 158 Human nature the living link between God and man IGO Our selfhood inexplicable without the creator's natural incar- nation 162 Vi CONTENTS. LETTEE XIV. Personality the true ground of unbelief 164 Natural iucarnation the only method of spiritual creation 166 History nothing else than a theatre of Divine revelation 174 Spiritual value of miracle as a scientific irritant 178 LETTEE XV. Human nature vs. the human person 180 The church, the main citadel of existing evil and falsity 182 Claim of a personal interest in Christ preposterous 184 Swedenborg's doctrine of the constitution of the church 186 Statements in regard to the prehistoric church 188 Innocence of a natural inclination to selfhood 190 Unhandsome pre-natal developments of the church 192 Creation essentially miraculous 194 LETTEE XVI. Our selfish and worldly loves made evil by the influence of proprium 195 The excess of them even not hateful to God, because he utilizes it in the hells 198 The only intolerable evil to God is propriura, selfhood, or self- righteousness 200 Tor this is spiritual or living evil ; and fatal, if allowed, to the human race 201 The church alone produces this desperate evil in men 204 Conscience the evidence of an infinite and a finite struggle in our nature 206 The church a mere rudimentary exponent of conscience 208 Change of plan 210 LETTEE XVII. Laws of the spiritual creation 211 Spiritual creation inert without the creature's natural constitution 214 CONTENTS. vii Implication of nature in creation gives it all its interest to the heart 218 Spiritual creation interpreted by the doctrine of evolution 220 Difference between the philosophic and the scientific idea of it 222 Evolution relatively a spiritual flower ; involution its natural stem 22i Science essentially ministerial, not magisterial to the mind 226 Nature neither begins nor ends anything 228 LETTEE XVIII. The forte and foible of science 229 Nature's first lesson to the intellect 231 Difference between physical and natural existence 232 The philosopher has no call to look at nature outwardly 234 Science has no perception of the spiritual ends of nature, and therefore confounds nature with physics 236 It claims that natural existence is identical with spiritual being . . . 240 Professor Huxley as a philosopher 242 What protoplasm symbolizes to the intellect 244 Physicism a providential gospel 246 LETTEE XIX. Swedenborg's philosophy of nature 247 Good and evil the mere earth of the finite consciousness 250 Heaven and hell have only a subjective truth 252 Subjective genesis of hell in man 254 Hell is always heaven to the evil man but when he is forced not to do evil 256 Human nature the sole sphere of creative power 258 LETTEE XX. Creation a fusion of God and man 260 It includes creator and creature quite equally 262 Deism as a philosophy is a gross absurdity 264 Creation consists spiritually in divinizing the created nature ; and so redeeming it from the power and taint of evU 266 Vlll CONTENTS. The evil of human nature is subjective consciousness 270 Man's moral evils are not the true evil of his nature 272 That consists in exteriorathig the creator to tlie creature 274 LETTEK XXI. Illusory genesis of selfhood 276 Effect of the illusion in necessitating a Divine-natural order of life 278 This order alone releases man from the evils incident to his selfhood 280 Superiority of living knowledge to mere science for creative ends 282 Science or learning flatters the illusion of selfhood 284 The object in knowledge glorifies the subject out of self-conscious- ness 286 The rule of our natural knowledge the rule of our natural life 288 Our nature — what? and how constituted ? 290 The church's testimony to the Christian facts 292 The realm of fact inferior to the realm of truth 294 Unhappy results to the intellect in tetheriag it to sense 296 Attitude of men of science 298 Difference between science and faith 299 The gospel untrue tidings to every one who does not first find it good 300 Man's allegiance henceforth due to Divine-natural good alone 302 LETTEK XXII. The state culminates in the republic 304 The republic ends our political life 306 The angels an imperfect work of God 307 Swedenborg's indictment of the angelic personality 308 He shows it severely ministerial to a work of God in human nature 310 Man's private selfhood the only inveterate enemy of God 312 Is our natural alienation from God, a fact of science ? 314 Or is it a truth of our personal consciousness merely ? 316 Our inherited theology sottish and suffocating 318 The Drvine-naiural humanity alone worthy of men's acknowledg- ment 320 CONTEXTS. ix Selfhood the natural birthmark or congenital stigma of the creature 322 An implication, not an explication of the spiritual creation 324 A dense mask behind which God effects our natural redemption... 326 A mere generalized form of man's natural contrariety to God 328 Impossible to believe any longer in God's sMpenminval attributes... 330 God a practical power adequate to all man's natural (or impersonal) needs 332 He never poses for men's admiration 334 LETTER XXIII. A higher and lower order of knowledge in man 335 Science self-disqualiQed as a research of being 338 The spiritual being of things distinct from their natural existence. . . 340 We achieve the love of our kind only by practically unloving self. . . 342 Spiritual creation unreal unless based in the created nature 344 Implication of the creature's nature in creation, alone makes it real 34G Swedenborg describes creation as a house of three stories 348 Miracle a sensuous symbol of the creative infinitude 350 LETTEE XXIV. Science terrene, sense subterrene 352 Essential or spiritual, and existential or natural, Divine manhood 354 The subjective element in experience intrinsically evil and perishable 356 Science a perpetual strainer for the imbecile judgments of sense ... 358 Not sense, but selfhood, the chief obstacle to man's spiritual welfare 3G0 Nirvana, or self-extinction, impossible to created or self-conscious existence 362 The gospel facts worthless save as a revelation of God's infinitude 364 The scientific or ontologic hypothesis of being fundamentally stupid and void 366 How man realizes immortality 368 A personal reminiscence 369 Anecdote of a murderer's mundane post-mortem perturbations 370 No degree of post-mortem experience equivalent to immortal Ufe. . . 372 CONTENTS. Immortality depends upon no personal favour of God to us 374 Christ's unique lustre, that he despised man's moral rigliteousness 376 No man a creature of God in his own right, or independently of others , 378 God's new cliurch a thoroughly new natural spirit or life in man... 3S0 LETTER XXV. Church development of our nature 382 Christianity spiritually fulfilled in the events of our own history . . . 384 Christ's spiritual foes are they who greatly exalt his finite person 386 Error in point of philosophy of the moralist or statesman : that he thinks civilization based upon the absoluteness of morality ... 388 The church primarily and inveterately hostile to moralism 392 The latest church development proves its utter spiritual decease... 394 Our highest morality claims no higher sanction than prudence 396 Moral offences not contrary to nature but to culture 398 Meaning of our civic constitution 400 It is a mere steward of man's spiritual destiny 402 It utterly misapprehends its providential function 404 The spiritual form of our nature or creation is social 406 But we are born desperately unsocial or selfish 408 The personal illusion sole root of hell in us 410 LETTER XXVI, Moralist and churchman defined 412 The root-error in both the same, but more curable in the former... 414 It is more superficial in the one, and more substantial in the other 416 All manner of sin forgiven to men but that against the Holy Ghost 418 Self-righteousness the outgrowth of a church-soil in our nature . . . 420 Both "the church" and "the world" a mere germination of hu- man nature 422 " Church " and " world " a distinctively natural development in man 424 "Church" Sind"yvor]di" naturalieicts 426 CONTENTS. XI LETTER XXVII. We do not inherit human nature, but attain to it by regeneration 427 Our natural history is a divinely redemptive process 430 Human nature is a universal realm of consciousness in man 432 Human nature not the spiritual creation, but reveals it 434 She fills out our imreal persons with valid human substance 436 She is the life of law or order in all lower existences 438 She is inwardly instinct with love and therefore loathes asceticism 440 But only as a moral force she shows her true infiniting tenderness 442 LETTER XXVIII. Human nature metaphysical 444 God alone is man either in substance or in form 446 The creative power iu men contingent upon their nature taking form 448 Nature the sphere of redemption in man 450 The inward meaning of creation is man's deliverance from evil ... 452 Man's freedom and rationality do not make him man : they merely qualify him to become man 454 God is entirely without a power of independent action 458 Our moral and rational manhood not a real but a typical manhood 460 Christ crucified the only adequate revelation of God in humanity... 462 The church and the world purely subjective realities in man 464 They are the simple machinery of our natural evolution 466 The existing world-wide tragedy of human life is that church and world persist in burrowing in men's private conscience 468 States no sooner become united than society is inaugurated 472 The only obstacle to God's kingdom is the hypocrisy of the church 474 The late collapsed Mr. Moody or present distended Mr. Cook 476 The author takes an affectionate leave of his correspondent, by a citation from Swedenborg 478 Appendix A 481 Appendix B. Proprium or selfhood, the source of all evil 484 LETTER I. 'Y DEAR ERIEND: — You know that I am not in good health. Ever since my illness of last May, now more than a year ago, my nerves are easily unstrung by protracted labor, and I am consequently not very sure beforehand that I can meet the demands of your recent letter as well as I should like to. Still I am persuaded that even for weary nerves there is no sedative so sovereign as the reconciling truths we are going to consider, and I hope there- fore that our conference will not, on the whole, prove tedious or enervating to either of us. I will quote a few lines of your letter in order that by my comment upon them I may pitch the tune of our subsequent discussion, or indicate the har- monic issues to which I would have it lead. You say : "I cannot bear to think with any purpose of my private regeneration after having so long com- mitted all my Godward hopes to the destiny of my 4 ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THE IDEAS OF race. Least of all should I be likely to entertain that question just now, when the labors of Messrs. Moody and Sankey, and the rhetoric of Rev. Joseph Cook, seem providentially intended to show us the vulgar egotism and the blatant unbelief in the Divine name, with which it is almost sure to be associated." Now I have as little respect for Messrs. Moody and Sankey, and for their flashy, histrionic colleague, as you can desire, and think oui* daily papers might easily furnish better food to their readers than the puerile stuff they give us as reports of these men's sensational sermons and lectures. But what interests me chiefly in the extract from your letter is the general sentiment of preference you exhibit for a fixed life of relation to God over one of a free and spiritual character : that is, for a life of passive submission to your race-destiny, over one of active private regeneration. You have always one great merit, that of knowing well your own mind. But I take the liberty of offering you a few considera- tions in regard to this sentiment of preference you express, which perhaps you have not done justice to, and which may therefore lead you in the pres- ent case to an improved knowledge of your own mind. Let me ask you then, in the first place, what good HUMAN FREEDOM AND HUMAN DESTINY. 5 our race-destiny is going to do us individually ? Our race-destiny is thoroughly incapable, I am happy to say, of furnishing a destiny for the individual man. We are not the race, but individuals embraced in it ; and though there is beyond doubt a race-destiny for man, there is no such thing as an individual destiny. Human individuality is constituted by freedom and rationality; and if therefore a certain destiny were imposed upon it to fulfil, either by deity or demon, it would immediately collapse. If I am really des- tined to undergo a certain mental development, end- ing in my spiritual manhood, just as I am destined to undergo a certain physical growth ending in my natural manhood, it must be because I have no self- hood — that is, no freedom and rationality — where- with to work out my spiritual manhood. In short, to have a fixed " destiny " is not to be a free and rational subject, and therefore to be without indi- viduality; and to be without individuality is to be destitute of spiritual possibilities, and claim only nat- ural. I repeat, then, that the human race alone, and not any individual subject of it, claims a Divine "des- tiny," because the race has only an indefinite or uni- versal personality, and of itself therefore is only fit to minister to a defined or individual one. But the individual man, because he is by creation free and G ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THE IDEAS OF rational, is ij)so facto the arbiter of his own spirit- ual life and character : that is, he either remains what he already is by derivation from his past an- cestry, and the circumstances of his own position, or else he becomes a new and regenerate form of life, according to his own pleasure. Thus your and my private regeneration is not an outcome of destiny in any sense of the word. No doubt, we may picture the heart of God as very much interested in every man's private or spiritual regeneration. But then at the same time we must take extreme good care not to represent Him as in- terested in it to the extent of "destining" any of us for it, as the sect of Universalists holds ; or what is the same thing, imposing it upon any of us contrary to his own good will and pleasure ; because obviously that would be to represent Him as violating the express means He has appointed for bringing it about, and so defeating the realization of it. For what does our spiritual regeneration mean? It means — our new birth, or our getting a new heart and mind: that is, a different one from that we are actually born to, or inherit from our forefathers. As this old heart and mind take place in us with- out our own privity or consent previously asked, so our new birth signalizes its own superior lustre or more intimate nearness to us, by conditioning itself HUMAN FREEDOM AND HUMAN DESTINY. 7 upon our private freedom and rationality, or accom- modating itself to our secret hearts' demands, de- rived from culture. This is what to every man, spiritually exercised, makes his private regeneration a question of such vital moment, namely : that his deejped instincts of manhood are met hy it, and hy it alone. For ex- ample, my inherited personality is full of stain or frailty derived from some or other of my progeni- tors, so that I find myself, when tempted, not only liable but sure to succumb to theft, false witness, adultery, or murder. Now in this state of things it is evident that unless there be some Divine reve- lation in our nature and history making me aware of this tendency to evil in me, and prompting me to combat it, I am as good as gone to all eternity. For I have no intuitive conscience of the difference between good and evil, but only an empirical or acquired one. As far as my personal intuitions go I unhesitatingly deem good evil and evil good. Our moral conscience is a Divine endowment of our na- ture exclusively, utterly beyond the sphere of our personal intuitions ; and we come into the experience of it accordingly only through the intercourse of our kind. It is notorious to every man of thoroughly educated experience, that when he is tempted to bear false witness, to steal, to commit adultery, or murder, 8 ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THE IDEAS OF the whole pressure of the temptation lies in the fact that these damnable things seem ravishingly good to him and not evil. Other men, interested in pre- venting me doing them may denounce them as evil. But I in my secret heart, when tempted by these unhandsome things, cannot help pronouncing them good, the most intimate and exquisite good I know, in fact ; and I inwardly renounce the doing of them only out of deference to the Divine law forbid- ding me to do them under penalty of death. I repeat then, that it is this strictly redemptive effort of God in our nature, which alone qualifies me to realize my deepest human instincts, or learn in what consists my true freedom and rationality. Before being inwardly born — before being spirit- ually quickened — I have no misgiving as to my appetites and passions forming in me only a condi- tional or limited good. They seem so much my nearest good, that I feel no higher exercise of free- dom or selfhood possible to me, than to obey them nnreservedly, or whenever they demand satisfaction. And I have no sort of a suspicion, until I receive my information from others, that I am then mean- while, in spite of my apparent selfhood or freedom, the wretched slave of my personal orgaiiization. It seems at this period so like free action to give way to my appetites and passions regardless of any HUMAN FREEDOM AND HUMAN DESTINY. 9 higher law, and my nascent unripe sense of self- hood or personality is so fostered by it, that I can- not help yielding for a while to the deceptive seem- ing : but it is wholly a seeming, destitute of the least vital truth. Sooner or later this felt freedom — this apparent rationality of mine — confess them- selves a burdensome and abject servitude, from which there is no release but in the fetterless air of the spir- itual world. In fact, dear friend, our inherited self- hood or freedom — the selfhood that comes to us from birth, or is derived to us from our special an- cestry — is a mere provisional base for a Divinely- given selfhood or personality, which comes to us through the natural redemption wrought in us by the Lord Jesus Christ : and it is literally next to nothing, if it refuse to operate as such base. Admitting then that we have to the fullest extent a "destined" or unfree life of God in our race: I ask afresh how does that supply the wants of our free spiritual or highest culture? And can a man really be so false to the instincts of his proper man- hood as deliberately to prefer a "destined" hfe, even at the Divine hands, to one of freedom? I know my good friend Emerson has long been sing- ing us songs set to this indolent tune, and that many feebler warblers reflect his inspiration. And I know besides, that our orthodox churches give 10 ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THE IDEAS OF out SO decrepid a doctrine of the Divine name, and our Unitarian or rationalistic pulpits in their turn reply to it in so scant and penurious a strain, that the common mind has grown altogether tired of the senseless jangle, and prefers to take its very unexacting religion and philosophy at the hands of a poet, and that too a pantheistic one. But you don't belong to the common or scientific crowd of men, shut up like so many gregarious sheep to the pens of sense. You are a person first of all of sincere, original thought, taking nothing on trust from other men, despising the servile limits of sensuous obser- vation by which their intellect is bound, and think- ing out your own conclusions according to the free range of sympathy and intelligence God has given you. And you accordingly can never permanently consent to sell your Divine birthright of freedom, for the paltry mess of pottage these respectable senti- mentalists offer you under the name of "destiny." Besides, so active an intellect as yours ought by this time to know that we can have no positive but only a negative action upon this destined life of our race, because our race interests belong exclusively to God, and He is absolute over them. We have no power to promote our race destiny, but by our spiritual regeneration. Everi/ man lolio becomes regenerate by abstaining from the commission of evils, in virtue HUMAN FREEDOM AND HUMAN DESTINY. 11 purely of their contrariety to the Divine name, does indirectly promote his race-evolution, lecause he ceases any lonyer actively to obstruct and retard it. Our natural evolution, or our race-destiny, is to put on Divine form and order; and this form and order undeniably consist in each man seeking supremely the good of the whole, and in all men seeking supremely the good of each. It is manifest then that the regenerate person does indirectly promote this race-evolution, inasmuch as he alone freely abstains from conflict with his fellowman. But this is all he does towards it, and a fortiori all and more than all that any one else does towards it. The man who lives in practically selfish relations with his kind, seeking himself first and his neighbor last, does ab- solutely nothing for his race or nature but retard its due and orderly evolution. And when it is evolved, he will do nothing spiritually to promote its well-being, because although he will then be in- hibited from any moral conflict with his fellows, he will cultivate no spiritual sympathy with them. What then? Do I urge you to cherish an intel- lectual indifference to your race-destiny? God for- bid ! I should in so doing be utterly faithless to my own best inspiration. I find it unspeakably blessed to believe that there is a 'DWiiiQ-natnral destiny for man slowly but surely working out, which 12 ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THE IDEAS OF no spiritual wickedness in high places, nor any per- sonal stupidity and egotism on our part, can seri- ously compromise. Why? Because this benign conviction gives me the indispensable stay or guar- antee which my meagre individual faith and hope in God demand as a basis. I could of course have no spiritual or private hope for myself in God, unless it were built upon His natural or public mercy to my race : for how shall any man this side of hell ever deem himself a fitter object of the Divine complacency than any other man, especially than all men? My moral freedom — my freedom to be good or evil at my pleasure, subject only to what is due to other men — is full of the divinest benignity to my nature, because the development of that nature in all Divine form and order is condi- tioned upon it. The actual distinction of heaven and hell, in fact, is conditioned upon it; which distinc- tion is no less vital to spiritual order. So that the interests of both worlds, natural and spiritual alike, may be said to demand it. But my moral freedom is but a quasi freedom after all, and therefore how- ever it may condition my true or spiritual freedom, is heaven-wide of constituting it. My moral free- dom consists in my ability, under the pressure of any mercenary motive, to abstain from false-witness, theft, adultery, and murder. My spiritual freedom HUMAN FREEDOM AND HUMAN DESTINY. 13 endows me with a totally new motive of action, which is the love of God and my neighbor, or the power of immortal life ; and so not only enables me to abstain with disgust from these unholy things, but to do with relish the exact opposite. The element of will or choice is everything in the moral life, and the fussy votaries of it accordingly are absurdly tena- cious of their personal merit. But this element of will or choice scarcely enters appreciably into the spiritual life, unless into the lowest forms of it ; and in all the higher or celestial forms it is unknown. I rejoice then with unspeakable joy in this order- ing of our natural destiny at God's hands — this final and decisive adjustment of men's outward and warring relations — because in the first place it authenticates every deepest breath of man's regene- rate hope and aspiration towards God, and in the second place forever exempts men from the tempta- tion again to seek their own welfare by the methods of vice and crime. But apart from these considera- tions — apart, in other words, from its power to illus- trate the Divine name — I have no thought nor care about our natural destiny. Especially when invited to regard it, as so many men at this day do, in the light of a full satisfaction to men's faith and hope in God, it seems to me inexpressibly revolting. For after all is said that can be said, it is a mere reduc- 14 ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THE IDEAS OF tion to order of man's natural or constitutional life, with the • spiritual, functional, or infinite side of his being left out. And are men content to deem them- selves cattle, that they expect no higher boon at the hands of the Divine Natural Humanity but an unexampled provision for their board and lodging? Understand me then, and understand my books. / stronglij ajjirm a Divine destiny — a Divine-nat- ural order — for mankind, hut I ajjirm it in the in- terest of the Divine name alone, which the church obscures, by practically cutting off men's secular hope towards God, unless it claims a sanctimonious basis. In short I have no interest in maintaining this truth of a Divinely appointed destiny for the race, but the interest of Divine justice or righteous- ness. Of course no one can deny that it is infi- nitely pleasanter to think of men living together in outward harmony, than living like pigs in a sty, where every one is bent upon grabbing as much as he can from his neighbor, or pushing away his unfortunate neighbor from the trough altogether. But the outward order of human life is, after all, supremely pleasant to me, because it discloses an eternal Divine rest and refreshment for the inward man, or indicates at least the method by which the individual conscience attains to spiritual peace in God. If our natural evolution did nothing to reveal HUMAN FREEDOM AND HUMAN DESTINY. 15 and guarantee our inward and immortal joy in God, I for one should be obdurately indifferent to it. If my life is to be spiritually snuffed out at last, I should very much prefer to have beforehand no nat- ural glimpse of peace and order, arising from the Divine subjugation of heaven and hell, to mislead me into making false inferences. I have now said nearly enough to make my mean- ing on this subject clearly intelligible to you. I am not, you perceive, the least indisposed to believe that I am " destined " by the Divine providence — either in my own person or the persons of my descend- ants — to the possible enjoyment of health, wealth, and all manner of outward prosperity, in the evolu- tion of a final natural order for man on the earth, or the development of a united race-personality. But I am utterly averse to believing that ''destiny'' has anij the least hand in, or jmwer over, my inioard rela- tions to infinite goodness and truth, or my instinct of spiritual freedom. Every such sentiment indeed I trample under foot with a resolute and hearty good will, for it aims to obscure the very central glory and most dazzling effulgence of the creative name. Let me here say besides, very briefly, though the theme well deserves a Letter to itself, that if I could feel that I had been "destined" to love goodness and truth in spite of the preternatural sweetness to my 16 "DESTINY" FATAL TO NATURE AS WELL. heart of evil and falsity, the sentiment of an inmost freedom and rationality which now qualifies my manhood, would instantly wither at its source, and even my nature disown its proper life or selfhood. For my nature derives its total power to function from the spiritual world, and if you ex- haust that world — the world of man's substantial freedom or individuality — of its hold upon my affec- tion and faith, you a fortiori reduce my natural life to inanition, and relegate me, its conscious subject, to instant unconsciousness. LETTER II. UT our (lifFerence, according to your own showing, is far more vital, intellectually, than any we have yet apprehended, be- longing rather to the realm of thour/U than that of sentiment. You say, for example : " I am told on every hand that you believe in Jesus Christ as the only God. If this be true I cannot help expressing my disappointment." And then, after saying that you have not so understood my books, you continue in words following : " You mean by Christ more than any one human person- ality. You don't identify God with any person whatever, but with all human nature. I never should suspect you of the narrowness here imputed to you. But how can I feel sure that I am right about your belief, when all your readers with whom I am acquainted feel sure that I am wrong ? " My books are too small a thing to excite contro- versy, but at least let me express my mortification 18 HISTORY A STRUGGLE BETWEEN MAN'S that to a reader of your perspicacity they should have borne an uncertain sound on the point in ques- tion. This comes in part perhaps of your overlook- ing the sharp discrimination I habitually make between nature and person, or between what is real and what is merely phenomenal in human existence ; but I must confess that on the whole your criticism is damaging to my self-love. Let me then try again to expose to you the philosophic ground of my con- victions on this subject, and to this end indulge me with a brief backward glance at the history of the human mind, by way of getting a starting-point com- prehensive enough to show in the sequel where the philosophic truth comes in. Since time began two races have struggled fol- pre- cedence in the womb of humanity, one of which we may call the child of bondage, the other the child of freedom ; one embodying the interests of man's outward or conscious life, the other those of his in- ward or unconscious life ; one representing his nat- ural or race-force, the other his spiritual or personal force. In history this antagonism in human thought and life has been variously symbolized : now as the actual or old Jerusalem in contrast with a new Jeru- salem which is yet to come ; now as a legal Divine economy in opposition to a gracious one; now as a visible or figurative order of human life in opposi- EACE FORCE AND HIS PERSONAL FORCE. 19 tion to an invisible or real order; finally and in brief, as the icorld and the church. " The world " and " the church," then, have been symbols of thought to man, growing out of the fun- damental needs of his intellect : what precise intel- lectual needs do these opposing symbols attest or stand for? " The world" represents the interests of human universality — say human nature in short; "the church" represents the interests of human individu- ality — say human regeneration, in short. Thus we may say that the icorld stands for the fatal side of human life, those interests of man which relate him willy-nilly to his fellowman, and therefore place him more or less in the voluntary category, or under the rule of duty, of force, of necessity, of destiny. And tlte church on the other hand symbolizes the free side of human life, those interests of man which relate him primarily to his infinite source, and which exalt him therefore into the category of spontaneity, or express — all duty done and all destiny achieved — the reign thenceforth of taste, of culture, of in- ward attraction or delight, of immortal life in short. Human regeneration is doubtless the sole spiritual end of God's creative providence ; as the human race is its sole incidental natural end. And as the highest Divine blessing for the regenerate man is freedom, 20 THE STRUGGLE IS INHERENT SO the highest Divine blessing for the race is, inci- dentally, an order competent to secure such freedom. But I repeat that we cannot be too particular in denying "the world" and "the church" any final validity, and restricting them to a purely symbolic virtue. In their material or technical aspect they are plainly irrelevant to the grand ideas they sym- bolize : what calls itself " the church," for example, being notoriously so devoted to the pretence of order, as to carry it to the pitch of ritualism or supersti- tion ; and what calls itself " the world" so devoted to the pretence of freedom as to run it into radical- ism, so contemning the order which alone saves free- dom from license. Nevertheless in their symbolic character they have been of incalculable succulence to the intellect, as without the vital contrast and oppugnancy which they have always represented to human thought, human progress would have proved abortive, or perished in its cradle. And now having secured our needful starting- point in the brief historic generalization here given, it only remains to inquire further in this connection why this sharp discrimination between nature and spirit, or between the universal and individual in- terest in human life, should have been so vital to the mind, as to make all history resound with it ? To tell the great truth in one very brief word: m MAN'S CREATURESHIP. 21 it is because man is the creature of God, and is essen- tially therefore a divided personality ; one aspect of it relating him to his own nature or his fellow-man, so giving him conscious or finite and phenomenal existence ; the other aspect of it relating him to God or his spiritual source, so giving him real or uncon- scious and infinite being. Understand me. If man be in truth a creature of God, then two things be- come at once necessary: 1. That he possess real or unconscious being only in God ; and 2. That he possess conscious or phenomenal existence exclusively in himself. Because if his real or unconscious being were not in God but in himself, then he himself would instantly cease to exist or appear; and if his conscious or phenomenal existence were not in him- self but in God, then he would himself instantlij cease to he. In the one case he would forfeit natural ex- istence; in the other he would forfeit spiritual being. This fact, then, of man's creatureship — that is, the bare fact that his real being lies in the Divine perfec- tion, and that he only claims in himself phenomenal or unreal existence — requires that his history pre- sent that duality of movement which exhibits him now as a spiritual or individual force, now as a natu- ral or universal one. Accordingly it is sheerly im- possible to deal with man intelligently or intelligibly 22 HIS SPIRITUAL CREATION EXACTS upon any other logical basis than this of his crea- tureship : that is to say, upon the basis of his refer- ring his true or spiritual being infinitely away from himself, namely : to God ; and claiming to himself instead a mere natural, phenomenal, or shadowy ex- istence. At all events this is the view which I find myself forced to take of man's being and history, that is, of his spiritual origin and his natural des- tiny; and it is especially the view which I shall try to enforce throughout the present letters. Very well then : so far at least there is no room for misunderstanding. No one can deny that his- tory demonstrates a divided empire in man. Every man of experience or observation knows that man is subject to a double law, one outward, natm-al, con- stitutional, so to speak, relating him whether he will or not to his fellow-man ; the other inward, spirit- ual, creative, so to speak, relating him freely to God. The first of these laws has respect to man as a whole, or in a universal aspect, obeying the empire of neces- sity. The second has respect to him only in his in- dividual capacity, obeying the inspiration of freedom. I repeat then : so far there is no ground for misun- derstanding between us. But now I am going to say something which per- haps neither experience nor observation has made plain to you, and which may therefore give rise to HIS PREVIOUS NATURAL FORMATION. 23 misunderstanding, if I do not very fully explain my- self. You know that I have traced the fact of man's divided existence to the truth of his creatureship, which requires on the one hand that he possess spir- itual or invisible being in his Creator, and on the other natural or visible existence in himself. Because if man possessed only spiritual being in his Creator, he would be without any ground of consciousness in himself, and hence without any recognition of the dif- ference between him and God. And if he possessed only natural or visible existence in himself, he would manifestly be uncreated. At all events he would then have no pretension, as now, to deem himself the creature of an infinite power. I do not hesitate to say therefore that his peculiar creatureship implies this double bond of spiritual or infinite being, and of natural or finite existence. But if such be the implication of man's creature- ship, the phenomenon must of course attribute itself to something in the creative perfection. There is ob- viously nothing in the creature which has not its sole raison d'etre in the greatness of the Creator ; and if we would ascertain accordingly why it is that man has always worn a divided aspect — here exalting himself above the neighbor, there subjecting himself to the neighbor — we must seek our answer only in the excellence of the creative name. Let us ask 24 TO WHAT CREATIVE EXCELLENCY therefore, to what essential excellence of the crea- tive name it is owing, that man, its creature, should inevitably wear to himself a finite and phenomenal aspect, or feel a conscience of limitary relations with God and his fellow-man? It is owing very obviously to nothing else than the infinitude of the creative Love : which requires that the Creator in creating or imparting life to His creatm^es should first of all endow them with self- hood, or subjective consciousness, in order that such consciousness in giving them quasi or phenomenal projection from Himself, may ever after serve them as an infallible negative basis or mirror of all posi- tive Divine knowledge. And selfhood, or subjec- tive consciousness, being contingent as it is upon the perception of a controlling object, in relation to which alone it is either good or evil, we have the entire moral history of the race provided in this antagonism of inward and outward, subject and ob- ject, man and nature, which is incidental to the very idea of creation. But here you will ask me to be more explicit. You will ask me to explain to you in a less cursory manner than I have done in the last paragraph, why the infinitude of the Creator requires Him, as I have said, to endow His creature with selfhood, or subjective life? To answer this we must take a IS THIS EXACTION OWING? 25 new Letter. Permit me, however, meanwhile to say, that after the frank exposition ah'eady given you can have no longer any excuse for doubting that I at least, whatever others may do, not only value human freedom in its higher aspect, as the culminat- ing miracle of the spiritual creation, or what alone renders the creative name eternally adorable ; but regard it also, in its practical aspect, as the highest blessing capable of being bestowed by God upon man : as that blessing indeed which alone keeps every other blessing from becoming nauseous. Not moral or finite freedom — not a mere freedom of choice between good and evil, though this is of inestimable value as a basis of the other — but a positive or infi- nite freedom, which is without any ratio or limit, being identical with God's own presence in the created nature, and is felt in the created bosom, therefore, as the spontaneous prompting of its own spirit. LETTER III. ^Y DEAR FRIEND: — To our natural, uneducated apprehension of Divine things, a proper inference from God's spiritual infinitude or perfection would be, that He might at once bestow what life He listed upon His creatures : if need were, a real and imperishable one. But an enlightened reason teaches us that every such judgment is superstitious or profane, springing from grossly sensuous notions of the Divine infinitude. We naturally think of God as the power of an out- ward life, and measure His good-will by his readi- ness to bestow all manner of outward prosperity upon His favorites. But He is in truth and pre- eminently the power of an inward life in man : that is to say, a life so little accentuated to the senses as to seem more innocent than infancy : and where there is no susceptibility in man to this inward life, His power of outward benefaction is thwarted. It is these sensuous prejudices of ours with respect THE MEANING OF INFINITE LOVE. 27 to the Divine power which lead us to put such an exaggerated estimate as we do upon the gift of self- hood, as the suni of all God's outward bounty to the race; when the gift in question is without any objective reality, being one of pure subjective seem- ing. We want to know accordingly what precise exigency of the creative infinitude or perfection it is, which thus prevents the omnipotent Creator from fully authenticating the selfhood of man, or making him (in himself) anything but a mere form of sub- jective or seeming life. In other words our present business is to consider the creative infinitude, in order to ascertain the ground of its signal incapacity to con- fer upon its creatures (in themselves) any other than a subjective, personal, finite, or phenomenal conscious- ness. We are in the habit of saying that God the Cre- ator is infinite Love, but I doubt whether we are as prompt to understand all that is implied either in the qualifying adjective or the qualified noun. We say, indeed, that the Creator is Love, because He manifestly communicates life or being to other existences, who can have no manner of claim upon Him but what they derive from His own bountifid nature. But when we say His love is infinite, do we do so only by way of characterizing its pure quality, as being unalloyed by any fibre of self-love ; 28 IT MEANS, FREEDOM FROM SELF-LOVE, that is to say, by any sentiment of conflict between Himself and others? Obviously there can be no essential or substantial conflict to the creative intel- ligence between Himself and His creatures, since He furnishes their sole and total being or substance. And any conflict which does ensue between them, therefore, must be purely formal or phenomenal, ex- isting to the created apprehension alone, and in- volving no compromise of the creative infinitude. This is accordingly the only ground of our ascrib- ing infinitude or perfection to the creative Love : that it is ineffably pure love, or love so wholly un- like ours, as to be absolutely free from any set-off or drawback of self-love, or even of transient self- regard. We say a thing is wfnite, which has no subjective limitation, no limitation ab intra. And we say it is absolute, as having no objective limita- tion, no limitation ab extra. Now the Creator is in se, or essentially, both infinite, as being void of subjective relations ; and absolute, as being void of objective relations ; and it is only in His existential relations to the finite understanding of His own creatures, that we apply these terms to Him, in order to express our approximate sense of His per- fect being, and so, in the best way we know how, differentiate Him from ourselves. Now this infinitude of the Creator constituting AND HENCE STAMPS SELF-LOVE UNREAL. 29 Him (in Himself) the all of being that exists, stamps the creature {m himself) a mere appearance or im- age of being, an abject phenomenal form or sem- blance of being, without a particle more reality in itself than the shadow which your or my person projects upon the ground, has in itself: that is, no philosophic, but a mere sensible or scientific reality. The creature exists sensibly to himself no doubt, and therefore claims to himself a scientific reality; but this existence, at best, is a strictly phenomenal or contingent existence, requiring an objective base or background to give it projection, or render it con- scious. The creature is rendered self-conscious by virtue of his subjection to his own body, or the out- lying world inherent in his bodily senses ; and so far of course is an authentic datum of science. But the inferiority of science to sense as a basis of spir- itual culture is signally evinced by the fact, that the testimony of sense is indisputable, while that of science is nothing if not disputable. Sense gives us all the existence we know ; science deals with the inferences or judgments which such existence renders probable, and hence presents an every way unstable or perilous, not to say impossible, base to men's spir- itual culture. For if spiritual truth is built, not upon the solid rock of natural fact, but upon the shifting sands of men's opinion, it would be absurd 30 INFERIORITY OF SCIENCE TO PHILOSOPHY for US to attempt cultivating or even cherisliing it, as it could never get body enough to become recog- nized by us, let alone loved. In spite, then, of the scientific authentication it claims — rather, let me say, in virtue of such au- thentication — created existence must be of a purely contingent, phenomenal, conscious character ; that is to say, can never be thought to include in itself its own being or substance. To make it include its own being or substance would be to pronounce it uncreated, in which case it would no longer be a product of infinite power but would itself possess infinitude. Creature would become converted into creator, in short : than which nothing more needs be said to demonstrate the logical absurdity of the position. The exact infirmity of science, regarded as a final or proper intellectual discipline of man, is that it is bound by its own limitation to ignore crea- tion, or make no account of the distinctively Divine implication in existence. This must forever estab- blish its essential inferiority to philosophy as an in- tellectual cidtus. For the precise and characteristic research of philosophy is just that spiritual or crea- tive element in all existence which science is bound by the interests of self-preservation to overlook. Phi- losophy is nothing but a pursuit of the essential ends and causes that underlie and explain phenomena. AS AN INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. 31 Science confines herself only to phenomena and their relations, that is, to what is strictly verifiable in some sort by sense ; and so stigmatizes the pursuit of being or substance as fatal to her fundamental principles. Philosophy, in short, is the pm*suit of Truth, super- sensuous truth, recognizable only by the heart of the race, or if by its intellect, still only through a life and power derived from the heart. ' Science has no eye for truth, but only for Fact, which is the appearance that truth puts on to the senses, and is therefore intrinsically second-hand, or shallow and reflective.! To derive one's chief intellectual nur- ture from science, consequently, would be as unwise as to seek to know a man through a persistent study of his old clothes. It is, accordingly, a truth no way surprising to Philosophy that the creature, quel a creature, must be absolute nought in se, and become both conscious and cognizable only by virtue of the creative being or substance dwelling in him as him- self: that is, in spiritually despised, rejected and cru- cified form. For the Creator in order to communi- cate His own wealth of being to the creature, is first obliged to give the creature a quasi or supposititious standing before Him, by making him at least self- conscious, or phenomenal to himself; and then by gradually revealing to him the abysmal death that is incident to this quasi or finite existence, win him 32 MAN UNREAL IN SE, AND MADE REAL to that hearty disgust of himself which is the inex- pugnable condition of his knowledge of — and sin- cere relish for — Divine things. I have shown you then that the creative power is inhibited by its own strict infinitude or perfec- tion, from allowing its creature any life more real than that of selfhood, or mere subjective seeming : because to do this would be to disjoin its creature from itself, or render him independent of his sole source of life. I confess I do not see how, if you acknowledge the truth of creation at all, but espe- cially acknowledge it to be spiritual or living, you can help agreeing with what I have said. And if you agree with me that man — being a creature — is not, and in the very nature of things, can never be, his own spiritual being or substance : then, as it strikes me, the main obstacle will be removed to our general agreement in the fundamental postulate of Christianity, which is the sole Divinity of Christ's Humanity. That is to say, we shall both alike be able to perceive, that as all men like you and me naturally feel that personal or egoistic substance (being the least material or most vitalized substance they know) is veritable Divine substance, and does really constitute their own deeply recognized and highly prized Divine being : so the most urgent obli- gation which this natural hallucination of the created ONLY BY NATURAL REDEMPTION. 33 intelligence imposes upon the Creator, is eventually to redeem His creature from the overpowering bond- age of self, and the utter spiritual blight it en- genders, by fully incarnating His own perfection in the nature of the creature, and from that "coign of 'vantage" gradually glorifying the consciousness of the latter out of personal into race dimensions; out of selfish into social form and order. Now I shall not affront your self-respect by affect- ing to demonstrate the truth of God's natural humanity scientifically : in the first place, because it is not a fact of sense, and therefore escapes the supervision of science; and in the second place, be- cause in all this correspondence, I am anxious to conciliate your heart primarily, while your head is quite a subordinate aim. I cannot tell you a single reason, unprompted by the heart, why I myself be- lieve the truth in question, or any other truth for that matter ; and so far as my own pleasure is con- cerned, accordingly, I would not give a fig for your acknowledgment of it, if the acknowledgment did not betray a like cordial source. In fact, I believe it simply because I love it, or it seems adorably good to me; and once having learned to love it, I could not do without it. It would in truth kill me, intel- lectually, to doubt it. So you see I am at least dis- interested in my advocacy of the truth. I recom- 34 PRIMACY OF THE HEART IN BELIEF. mend it to you for its own sake exclusively, and not at all for yours. It may indeed, for aught I know, prove as odious to you as it is precious to me ; and God forbid that I should take it upon me to say you nay, Avhatever way your heart inclines you. To my experience this is the only thing that in the long run authenticates truth to the intellect — the heart's sincere craving for it. I find that truth unloved is always at bottom truth unbelieved, however much it may be "professed." In short, I am persuaded that there is no more galling bondage known to the intellect, than that of truth unsanctioned and unsoft- ened by affection ; and I don't the least wonder at Swedenborg — when describing men in a freer world than this, however — saying that they willingly plunge into the depths of hell to be rid of it. "^ " " ■' *' " " " I II i» a LETTER IV. *REE your mind, then, at once and utterly, so far as I am concerned, of all apprehen- sion of being reasoned into truth, or hav- ing your understanding coerced against your heart's consent. Ratiocination is doubtless an honest pastime, or it would not be so much in vogue as a means of acquiring truth. But the truth we are elucidating is Divine, and therefore is great enough to authenticate itself, or furnish its own evi- dence. Divine truth, to be sure, must always be unpopular or out of fashion, so long as God is the simply merciful or magnanimous being He is. But if it had to be acquired at the same cost to mind and body that scientific truth exacts, — if the result involved an equally wide field of sensible induction, an equally studious observation of particulars, the same painstaking investigation of evidence, and the same power to formulate a just conclusion, — there would be still fewer persons to pursue it, and com- 36 DIVINE TRUTH HAS FIRST TO CREATE paratively few of these again would feel very secure of their results. But the case is widely dififerent. Divine truth, simply because it is Divine, has first to create the intelligence that recognizes it, and therefore releases its votaries from that costly and toilsome research which is demanded by science. It takes nature or the senses for granted, and the will and understand- ing in man : but that is the sum of its exactions. For it propagates itself by the method of Revelation exclusively : that is, by gradually unveiling to human intelhgence the spiritual sense or meaning which is latent in all natural symbols : and hence desiderates no preparation in its disciples but a modest and docile intelligence. Its entire aim is to lay a foun- dation for men's spiritual life, by first disabusing them of their sensuous prejudices, and the selfish, untender science which is begotten of these; and consequently it makes no direct appeal to their con- ceited intelligence, but seeks to cure their spiritual disability by first purifying their hearts of the evil loves which engender it. Thus the sole disciplinary apparatus of Divine Truth is detergent or purgative, being fully embodied in the ten commandments. He would very grossly mistake the purpose of "the moral law," as we term it, which is the basis of our existing civili- THE INTELLIGENCE IT AFTERWARDS ENLIGHTENS. 37 zation, who should fail to discern its intensely spirit- ual animus, as intended above all things to bring about a change of heart in the votary. By the irre- sistible bent of their finite nature the affections of men are obdurately set upon perishing things, and the main design of the law therefore is to convince them of this death-bearing nature they carry about in themselves, and fix their attention upon a great natural deliverance to be accomplished for them in the fulness of time by the infinite Divine mercy. Thus in the sacred or symbolic Hebrew Scriptures, the law is always prefaced by the assertion of a great figurative redemption Divinely wrought. " And God spake all these words, saying : /, the Lord thg God, have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage!' This is the law's supreme sanc- tion, and its invariable challenge to the imagination of its votary, that the spiritual Creator of men — He who is their true but unseen being — is their nat- ural Redeemer as well, giving them deliverance first from the infirmities and corruptions incident to their finite generation, as the indispensable condition of their truly fulfilling it. Then in strict accordance with this majestic proem, the letter of the law goes on to indicate to its intelligent subject, first, those dispositions of heart and mind which befit this great deliverance : namely, a sentiment of tender awe and 38 ITS FORCE PUEELY REGENERATIVE. reverence for his adorable Divine Redeemer, of deference to his natural elders and superiors, and of brotherhood or impartial fellowship to his natu- ral equals : and, secondly, sums up and stigmatizes to his eternal abhorrence the four or five generic forms of evil action which alone perpetuate the sway of his old nature, and therefore vitiate his experience of the regenerate life. And now mark what the comment of the New Testament upon this Old Tes- tament legal Divine administration is, namely : that every subject of the law — who so far failed to sym- pathize with its spiritual scope as a discipline of the heart in man in including all men without excep- tion under sin, as nevertheless to make a boast of its letter in giving some men a conscience of righteous- ness — was Divinely rejected. Of course we no longer live under a literal admin- istration of Divine things, but an overtly spiritual one. But our ecclesiastical leaders are apparently blind to this patent fact, being determined to eter- nize this inveterate Jewish itch after a carnal right- eousness, such as may distinguish Christians out- wardly no less than inwardly from other men. The skulking and beggarly way they take to gratify this evil concupiscence, is by reorganizing the law — considered as the unchanged and indefeasible ground of man's justification — under the specious mask of PERSISTENT JUDAISM OF THE CHURCH. 39 a Christian " profession," or the duty which believers owe their faith "to profess Christ" before the world, and so mortify the secular spirit within them. And we may frankly appeal accordingly to any of the more flagrant types of the Christian "profession" among us, to confirm and illustrate the New Testa- ment affirmation of the profound spfritual death and damnation that inhere in every attempt to compass a literal or personal holiness at the Divine hands. I will not cite the frequent testimony of our newspapers to show how common an instinct of the public mind it is to feel, that a man's practical morality invites close scrutiny the moment he be- comes any way conspicuous as claiming a profes- sional sanctity. And it is in fact growing a ludi- crous spectacle, to see how an almost fatal Divine 7iemesis pursues those who abound in the ways of the current self-righteousness, or achieve a place of honor in the ranks of technical piety, until they turn out very often an actual stench in men's nostrils for their grossly immoral practices. But I prefer to shut my eyes to these catastrophes in the moral or subjective sphere, in order to look behind them at what may be regarded as their root. The moral experience of man has been hitherto completely sub- servient to the needs of his spiritual freedom, or his growth in humility and tender reverence for the 40 "PROFESSIONAL" EELIGION Divine name; and now that this freedom is inflow- ing into the hmnan mind in unexampled measure, it is not to be wondered at that those who are insensible and indifferent to the Divine substance should be equally insensible and indifferent to the genuine morality which has been its human type. But, bad as these moral obliquities are, I am per- suaded that the interests of spiritual religion are far more deeply compromised in the Avorld by those of its "professors" who are not practically immoral, but con- trive on the contrary to enjoy the esteem of their friends while they live, and to die — when they die — in the odor of a corrupt conventional sanctity. The only danger to the spirit of religion (and this is a danger that besets every inward grace of man- hood) comes from the effort of the soul to assume and cherish a devout 5^^-consciousness ; or so to abound in a religious sense, as to incur the imputation of religi- osity or superstition. This is the inalienable vice of professional religion, the only sincere fruit it is capa- ble of bringing forth. The evil spirit which rehgion is primarily intended to exorcise in us is the spirit of selfhood, based upon a most inadequate apprehen- sion of its strictly provisional uses to our spiritual nurture. The gradual conquest or slaying of this unholy spirit of self in man is the sole function Mhich religion proposes to itself during his natural THE TRUE ANTICHRIST. 41 life; and without taxing our co-operation too se- verely, it yet gives us enough to do before its benig- nant mission is fully wrought out. Such being the invariable office of the religious instinct, profes- sional religion steps in to simulate its sway, and with an air all the while of even canting deference, pro- ceeds to build again the things which were destroyed, by reorganizing man's selfhood on a more specious or consecrated basis, and so authenticating all its unslain lusts in a way of devotion to the conventicle, at least, if not to the open, undisguised world. •■ Professional religion thus stamps itself the devil's subtlest device for keeping the human soul in bond- age. Religion says death — inward or spiritual death — to the selfhood in man. Professional relig- ion says: "Nay, not death, above all not inward or spiritual — because this would be living — death, and obviously the selfhood must live in order to be vivi- fied of God. By no means therefore let us say an inward or living death to selfhood, but an outward or quasi death, professionalhj or ritually enacted, and so operating a change of base for the selfhood. Self- hood doubtless has been hitherto based upon a most unrighteous enmity on the part of the world to God, and has of itself shared the enmity. Let man then only acknowledge, professionally or ritually, this wicked enmity of the world to God, and he may 42 RITUALISM, REVIVALISM, RADICALISM. keep his selfhood unimpaired and unchallenged, to expand and flourish in secula seculorum." Professional religion, I repeat, is the devil's mas- terpiece for ensnaring silly, selfish men. The ugly heast has two heads : one called Ritualism, intended to devour a finer and fastidious style of men, men of sentiment and decorum, cherishing scrupulously mod- erate views of the difference between man and God ; the other called Revivalism, with a great red mouth intended to gobble up a coarser sort of men, men for the most part of a fierce carnality, of ungovern- able appetite and passion, susceptible at best only of the most selfish hopes, and the most selfish fears, towards God. I must sa}'-, we are not greatly dev- astated here in Boston — though occasionally vexed — by either head of the beast ; on the contrary, it is amusing enough to observe how afraid the great beast himself is of being pecked to pieces on our streets by a little indigenous bantam-cock which calls itself Radicalism, and which struts, and crows, and scratches gravel in a manner so bumptious and per- emptory, that I defy any ordinary barnyard chanti- cleer to imitate it. But I am forgetting to answer your doubt in relation to the Christian truth, which is the wholly spiritual truth of God's natural humanity. LETTER V. DEAR FRIEND: — I will introduce what I have to say to you in regard to ■|fe!^y|^' the genesis of my religious faith, by re- citing a fact of experience, interesting in itself no doubt in a psychological point of view, but particularly interesting to my imagination as mark- ing the interval between my merely rationalistic in- terest in Divine things, and the subsequent struggle of my heart after a more intimate and living knowl- edge of them. In the spring of 1841 I was living with my family in the neighborhood of Windsor, England, much absorbed in the study of the Scriptures. Two or three years before this period I had made an im- portant discovery, as I fancied, namely : that the book of Genesis was not intended to throw a direct light upon our natural or race history, but was an altogether mystical or symbolic record of the laws of God's spiritual creation and providence. I wrote 44 SUDDEN DEMORALIZATION a course of lectures in exposition of tins idea, and delivered tliem to good audiences in New York. The preparation of these lectures, while it did much to confirm me in the impression that I had made an interesting discovery, and one which would ex- tensively modify theology, convinced me, however, that a much more close and studious application of my idea than I had yet given to the illustration of the details' of the sacred letter was imperatively needed. During my residence abroad, accordingly, I never tired in my devotion to this aim, and my success seemed so flattering at length that I hoped to be finally qualified to contribute a not insignificant mite to the sum of man's highest knowledge. I remember I felt especially hopeful in the prosecution of my task all the time I was at "Windsor; my health was good, my spirits cheerful, and the pleas- ant scenery of the Great Park and its neighbor- hood furnished us a constant temptation to long walks and drives. One day, however, towards the close of May, hav- ing eaten a comfortable dinner, I remained sitting at the table after the family had dispersed, idly gazing at the embers in the grate, thinking of noth- ings and feehng only the exhilaration incident to a good digestion, when suddenly — in a lightning- flash as it were — " fear came upon me, and trem- OF THE WRITER. 45 bliiig, which made all my bones to shake." To all appearance it was a perfectly insane and abject terror, without ostensible cause, and only to be accounted for, to my perplexed imagination, by some damned shape squatting invisible to me within the precincts of the room, and raying out from his fetid personality influences fatal to life. The thing had not lasted ten seconds before I felt myself a wreck, that is, re- duced from a state of firm, vigorous, joyful man- hood to one of almost helpless infancy. The only self-control I was capable of exerting was to keep my seat. I felt the greatest desire to run inconti- nently to the foot of the stairs and shout for help to my wife, — to run to the roadside even, and ap- peal to the public to protect me; but by an im- mense effort I controlled these frenzied impulses, and determined not to budge from my chair till I had recovered my lost self-possession. This pur- pose I held to for a good long hour, as I reckoned time, beat upon meanwhile by an ever-growing tempest of doubt, anxiety, and despair, with abso- lutely no relief from any truth I had ever encoun- tered save a most pale and distant glimmer of the Divine existence, — when I resolved to abandon the vain struggle, and communicate without more ado what seemed my sudden burden of inmost, impla- cable unrest to my wife. 46 ALMOST COMPLETE MORAL IMBECILITY. Now, to make a long story short, this ghastly con- dition of mind continued with me, with gradually lengthening intervals of relief, for two years, and even longer. I consulted eminent physicians, who told me that I had doubtless overworked my brain, an evil for which no remedy existed in medicine, but only in time, and patience, and growth into improved physical conditions. They all recommended by way of hygiene a resort to the water-cure treatment, a life in the open air, cheerful company, and so forth, and thus quietly and skilfully dismissed me to my own spiritual medication. At first, when I began to feel a half-hour's respite from acute mental an- guish, the bottomless mystery of my disease com- pletely fascinated me. The more, however, I wor- ried myself with speculations about the cause of it, the more the mystery deepened, and the deeper also grew my instinct of resentment at what seemed so needless an interference with my personal lib- erty. I went to a famous water-cure, which did nothing towards curing my malady but enricli my memory with a few morbid specimens of Eng- lish insularity and prejudice, but it did much to alleviate it by familiarizing my senses with the ex- quisite and endless charm of English landscape, and giving me my first full rational relish of what may be called England's pastoral beauty. To be sure CHARM OF ENGLISH LANDSCAPE. 47 I had spent a few days in Devonshire when I was young, but my delight then was simple enthusi- asm, was helpless aesthetic intoxication in fact. The " cure " was situated in a much less lovely but still beautiful country, on the borders of a famous park, to both of which, moreover, it gave you unlimited right of possession and enjoyment. At least this was the way it always struck my imagination. The thoroughly disinterested way the English have of looking at their own hills and vales, — the indiffer- ent, contemptuous, and as it were disowniiig mood they habitually put on towards the most ravishing pastoral loveliness man's sun anywhere shines upon, — gave me always the sense of being a discoverer of these things, and of a consequent right to enter upon their undisputed possession. At all events the rich light and shade of English landscape, the gorgeous cloud-pictures that forever dimple and di- versify her fragrant and palpitating bosom, have awakened a tenderer chord in me than I have ever felt at home almost ; and time and again while living at this dismal water-cure, and listening to its end- less "strife of tongues" about diet, and regimen, and disease, and politics, and parties, and persons, I have said to myself: The curse of manldnd, that which keeps our manhood so Utile and so depraved, is its sense of selfhood, and the absurd abominable 48 GROWING DELIGHT IN NATURE, oj)inionativeness it engenders. How sweet it would be to find oneself no longer man, but one of those inno- cent and ignorant sheep pasturing upon that placid hillside, and drinking in eternal deio and freshness from nature's lavish bosom ! But let me hasten to the proper upshot of this incident. My stay at the water-cure, unpromising as it was in point of physical results, made me con- scious erelong of a most important change operating in the sphere of my will and understanding. It struck me as very odd, soon after my breakdown, that I should feel no longing to resume the work which had been interrupted by it ; and from that day to this — nearly thirty-five years — I have never once cast a retrospective glance, even of curiosity, at the immense piles of manuscript which had erewhile so absorbed me. I suppose if any one had desig- nated me previous to that event as an earnest seeker after truth, I should myself have seen nothing un- becoming in the appellation. But now — within two or three months of my catastrophe — I felt sure I had never caught a glimpse of truth. My present consciousness was exactly that of an utter and plenary destitution of truth. Indeed an ugly suspicion had more than once forced itself upon me, that I had never really wished the truth, but only to ventilate my own ability in discovering it. I was getting sick AND DISGUST WITH ONESELF. 49 to death in fact with a sense of my downright intel- lectual poverty and dishonesty. My studious mental activity had served manifestly to base a mere " castle in the air," and the castle had vanished in a brief bitter moment of time, leaving not a wrack behind. I never felt again the most passing impulse, even, to look where it stood, having done with it forever. Truth indeed! How should a beggar like me be expected to discover it? How should any man of woman born pretend to such ability? Truth must reveal itself if it would be known, and even then how imperfectly known at best ! For truth is God, the omniscient and omnipotent God, and who shall pretend to comprehend that great and adorable per- fection ? And yet who that aspires to the name of man, would not cheerfully barter all he knows of life for a bare glimpse of the hem of its garment ? I was calling one day upon a friend (since de- ceased) who lived in the vicinity of the water-cure — a lady of rare qualities of heart and mind, and of singular personal loveliness as well — who desired to know what had brought me to the water-cure. After I had done telling her in substance what I have told you, she rephed : " It is, then, very much as I had ventured from two or three previous things you have said, to suspect : you are undergoing what Swedenborg calls a vastaUonj and though, natiu-ally 50 A FRIEND'S ACCOUNT OF SWEDENBORG. enough, you yourself are despondent or even despair- ing about the issue, I cannot help taking an altogether hopeful view of your prospects." In expressing my thanks for her encouraging words, I remarked that I was not at all familiar with the Swedenborgian tech- nics, and that I should be extremely happy if she would follow up her flattering judgment of my con- dition by turning into plain English the contents of the very handsome Latin word she had used. To this she again modestly replied that she only read Swedenborg as an amateur, and was ill-qualified to expound his philosophy, but there could be no doubt about its fundamental postulate, which was, that a new birth for man, both in the individual and the uni- versal realm, is the secret of the Divine creation and providence : that the other world, according to Swe- denborg, furnishes the true sphere of man's spiritual or individual being, the real and immortal being he has in God ; and he represents this world, conse- quently, as furnishing only a preliminary theatre of his natural formation or existence in subordination thereto ; so making the question of human regenera- tion, both in grand and in little, the capital problem of philosophy : that, without pretending to dog- matize, she had been struck with the philosophic interest of my narrative in this point of view, and had used the word vastation to characterize one of I AM MUCH INTERESTED. 51 the stages of the regenerative process, as she had found it described by Swedenborg. And then, finally, my excellent friend went on to outline for me, in a very interesting manner, her conception of Swedenborg's entire doctrine on the subject. Her account of it, as I found on a subsequent study of Swedenborg, was neither quite as exact nor quite as comprehensive as the facts required ; but at all events I was glad to discover that any human being had so much even as proposed to shed the light of positive knowledge upon the soul's history, or bring into rational relief the alternate dark and bright — or infernal aud celestial — phases of its finite constitution. For I had an immediate hope, amounting to an almost prophetic instinct, of finding in the attempt, however rash, some diversion to my cares, and I determined instantly to run up to Lon- don and procure a couple of Swedenborg's volumes, of which, if I should not be allowed on sanitary grounds absolutely to read them, I might at any rate turn over the leaves, and so catch a satisfying savor, or at least an appetizing flavor, of the possible relief they might in some better day afford to my poignant need. From the huge mass of tomes placed by the bookseller on the counter before me, I selected two of the least in bulk — the treatise on the Divine Love and Wisdom, ♦'^nd that on the Divine Providence. 52 I RESOLVE TO READ HIM. I gave them, after I brought them home, many a random but eager glance, but at last my interest in them grew so frantic under this tantahzing process of reading that I resolved, in spite of the doctors, that, instead of standing any longer shivering on the brink, I would boldly plunge into the stream, and ascertain, once for all, to what undiscovered sea its waters might bear me. I^S^!S^ m^m^ms. ^r K«Ji3*^J3?w^3*S^^J^to»5^ f^ ^^^^ f^^ f|W--j^*|Jl^S^^- m LETTER VI. 'Y DEAR FRIEND: — I read from the first with palpitating interest. Mj heart divined, even before my intelHgence was prepared to do justice to the books, the unequalled amount of truth to be found in them. Imagine a fever patient, sufficiently restored of his malady to be able to think of something beside him- self, suddenly transported where the free airs of heaven blow upon him, and the sound of running waters refreshes his jaded senses, and you have a feeble image of my delight in reading. Or, better still, imagine a subject of some petty despotism con- demned to die, and with — what is more and worse — a sentiment of death pervading all his conscious- ness, lifted by a sudden miracle into felt harmony with universal man, and filled to the brim with the sentiment of indestructible life instead, and you Avill have a true picture of my emancipated condition. For while these remarkable books familiarized me 5i A FEW EXPLANATORY WORDS with the angelic conception of the Divine being and providence, they gave me at the same time the amplest rationale I could have desired of my own particular suifering, as inherent in the profound un- conscious death I bore about in xny proprium or self- hood. — Here let me interpose a few words of caution. I have not the least ambition to set myself up as Swedenborg's personal attorney or solicitor. Swe- denborg himself is not the least a fascinating per- sonality to my regard, and if I were able by skilful palaver to reason you out of an unfavorable into a favorable estimate of his personal genius and worth, I should prefer not to do it ; /because just in proportion as you concede any personal authority to a writer you are unlikely to be spiritually helped by him. I You are sure, in fiict, to be spiritually enfeebled by him. Besides, I am persuaded that, notwithstanding Swedenborg's personal limitations as measured by the taste of our day, his amazing books will suffer by no man's neglect, were he the most considerable man of his time in religion, in science, and in philosophy. And I should think myself very ill employed, therefore, in drumming up a regiment of raw recruits to dim their patient lustre, or degrade it to the glitter of the gutters. His books invite the most opposite appreciation, for they have all the ABOUT SWEDENBORG. 55 breadth and variety of nature in their aspect — now smihng with celestial peace, now grim with infernal storm and wrath. But they have always a light above nature, that is to say, not only above this realm of mixed good and evil which we call the natural world, but also above that realm of divided good and evil to which we give the name of the spiritual world ; and in this Divine light we may discern, if we are attentive, an objective reconciliation of infinite and finite, which shall finally blot all memory, either of a mixed or a divided good and evil, forever out of mind. At the moment I am speaking of — the moment of my first encounter with Swedenborg's writings — my intellect had been so completely vastated of every semblance of truth inherited from the past, and my soul consequently was in a state of such sheer and abject famine with respect to Divine things, that I doubt not I should have welcomed "the father of lies " to my embrace, nor ever have cared to scruti- nize his credentials, had he presented himself bear- ing the priceless testimony which these books bear to the loveliness and grandeur of the Divine name. Nor should I counsel any one, who is not similarly dilapidated in his intellectual foundations — any one who is still at rest in his hereditary bed of doctrine, orthodox or heterodox — to pay the least attention 56 A FEW EXPLANATORY WORDS to them. For on the surface they repel delight. They would seem to have been mercifully constructed on the plan of barring out idle acquaintance, and disgusting a voluptuous literary curiosity. But to the aching heart and the void mind — the heart and mind which, being sensibly famished upon those gross husks of religious doctrine whether Orthodox or Unitarian, upon which nevertheless our veriest swine are contentedly fed, are secretly pining for their Father's house where there is bread enough and to spare — they will be sure, I think, to bring infinite balm and contentment. I am confident that no such readers will ever care to discuss any ques- tion which is properly personal to Swedenborg. I disdain to argue, then, with you or anybody else, in regard to Swedenborg, on general or a priori principles. Think what you will, and say what you will, of his dogmatic pretensions — make him out if it please you, in the abundance of your self-satis- faction, either a knave or a fool or both — the judg- ment it is true may give out a strong subjective flavor, but I have something better to do than to argue it on its objective merits. Besides, I take it that no man is eager to argue a question about which he himself has not at least some secret misgiving. And I have no more misgiving, either secret or open, in regard to Swedenborg's teaching, than the new- ABOUT SWEDENBORG. 57 born babe has in regard to its mother's milk. He has moreover so effectually vulgarized to ray mind the inmost significance of heaven and hell by expos- ing their purely provisional character and contents, that I should feel myself wanting both in proper self-respect and proper homage to the Divine name, if I continued to cherish anything but a strictly scientific curiosity with regard to angel or devil; or viewed it as the consummation of my being to be eternally associated with the one and eternally separated from the other. In thus avowing my free conviction of the im- mortal services Swedenborg has rendered to the mind, I confess I should be greatly mortified if you looked upon this avowal as a " profession of faith " in him, or as an ascription on my part of any more dogmatic authority to him than I should ascribe in their various measure to Socrates or John Mill. He reports himself as interviewing, by special Divine appointment, spirits and angels and devils in re- spect to what they could attest each in their degree, whether consciously or unconsciously, of the prin- ciples of the world's administration. Thus he is at best a mere informer or reporter, though an egregiously intelligent one, in the interest of a new evolution of the human mind, speculative and praci- tical; and his testimony, therefore, to the spiritual 58 A FEW EXPLANATORY WORDS truth of the case, however much it may attract your confidence both in respect to its general competence and its palpable veracity, is not for an instant to be regarded as a revelation, or confounded with living Divine truth. The sphere of Revelation is the sphere, of life exclusively, and its truth is addressed not to the reflective understanding of men, but to their living perception. ; Truth, to every soul that has ever felt its inward breathing, disowns all out- ward authority,^ — disowns, if need be, all outward prohahility or attestation of Fact. The only witness it craves, and this witness it depends upon, is that of good in the heart ; and it allows no lower or less decisive attestation. Swedenborg, at all events, is incapable of the effrontery thus imputed to him. Nothing could have awakened a blush of deeper resentment on his innocent brow, if he could have foreseen the outrage, than the base spirit of sect, which in the face of his honest denunciations of it ventures to renew its unhallowed empire by clothing him with Divine authority. The pretension to authority in intellectual things belongs exclusively to the Romish Church; and it has of late grown so reckless and wanton even in that hysterical suburb, as to show that it has no longer any faith in itself, but is clung to only as a desperate commercial speculation. If, accordingly. ABOUT SWEDENBORG. 59 any taint of this spiritual dry-rot attached to these transparent books, I should advise you to send author and books, both alike, into the land of forgetfulness. It is not conceivable that the Divine providence should deliberately endow a quack to further his wise designs towards the intellect of the race. And every man in this day of restored spiritual liberty, and with the doomed papacy before him, who yet apes its blasphemy, so far as to claim either for himself or another a delegated Divine authority over the reason and conscience of men, must be a double- distilled quack ; that is, knave and fool both ; though he may not have perspicacity enough to suspect him- self of either obliquity. Indeed, none but a truly wise man ever suspects himself of being a fool, and none but a truly good man has courage to avow him- self a knave; so that if the world could once get fairly defecated of its unconscious knaves and fools, we should have only good men and wise left behind. At all events, Swedenborg is conspicuously free of this vulgarity. His own faith is vowed unaf- fectedly and exclusively to the one sole and consum- mate revelation of the Divine name, made in the gospel of Jesus Christ; and he is not such a silly and vicious he-goat, accordingly, as to go about peddling a rival revelation. His sole intellectual pretension is to emphasize the eternal lustre of the GO A FEW EXPLANATORY WORDS gospel to men's regard, by disclosing its interior or spiritual and philosophic contents, as they became known to him through the opening of his spiritual senses. Take particular notice, therefore : what any honest mind goes to these sincere books for is, not to find, any Divine warrant there either for his faith or his practice, for every man's own heart alone is competent to that question ; much less to discover in them any new deodorizing substance which will disguise the stale fetor of ecclesiasticism or sacerdo- talism, and so commend it anew to men's revolted nostrils ; but all simply to find light upon the philos- ophy of the gospel, or ascertain what its internal or universal and impersonal contents are, of the truth of which contents he himself is all the while his own sole and divinely empowered arbiter. And here a proper caution must be used, lest one run headlong into an exaggerated or superstitious estimate of Swedenborg's books, even from their own point of view. For it is past all dispute that Swedenborg himself had at best only a most general and obscure notion of the benefit which was to accrue to the mind of man, on earth and in heaven, from the last Judgment whose operation in the world of spirits he so minutely describes. The immediate chaotic or revolutionary effects of the Judgment ap- parently so absorbed his attention as to leave him ABOUT SWEDENBORG. 61 neither leisure nor inclination, even if he had had the power, to prognosticate its redeeming virtue upon the progress of the human mind. But he had no such prophetic faculty, even in reference to the events he was daily witnessing in the world of spirits, much less, therefore, in reference to the contingencies of God's order in this lower or universal world. In- deed, he tells us that when he asked the angels what iheir judgment was, as to the specific effects which would follow upon earth from the events occurring in the world of spirits, they were completely unable to satisfy his curiosity in that behalf. They replied, in effect, that tlicj/ knew just as little of the specific future as he did — future events being present only to the Divine mind — and that all they felt sure of in general was, that the old spiritual tyranny under which the human mind had bsen so helplessly stifled, being now at last effectually dissipated by the breaking up of the ecclesiastical heavens. Popish and Protestant alike, freethinking in religious things would be henceforth the divinely guaranteed basis of the Church on earth. And if freethinking or scepticism in religious things — the things of the intellect — be henceforth the normal attitude of the natural mind as a consequence of the last Judgment, surely' nothing could have well seemed more pre- posterous to Swedenborg than to think of ever again elevating the discredited banner of Authority. ' 62 A FEW EXPLANATORY WORDS Conceive of Swedenborg then, personally, as you will, and welcome. What alone I care about is not to interest your intelligence in anything that is per- sonal to the devout and estimable old seer, but in his performances. I feel, indeed, a perfect indiffer- ence to all his private claims upon attention. But my gratitude and admiration are immense for what he has done to flood the human mind with light out of inscrutable darkness, upon the question of our human origin and destiny ; upon every question, in fact, involved in a true cosmology, or permanent science of the relations which exist between the world of thought and the world of substance. But then, remember, there is no access to this light but through honest research, guided by the felt needs of your intellect, and not by any idle literary curiosity, or mere silly ambition to know Avhat other people know, and to be able to talk about what they talk about. Above all, let me counsel you to avoid, as you would avoid a fog, every flippant jackanapes who is ecclesi- astically ordained (or unordained by the holy Ghost) to minister truth to you. The ecclesiastical spirit, and the civic spirit bred of it, are now the only evil spirits upon earth, and they are no longer compati- ble with any living knowledge of truth. Indeed, no man can outwardly communicate truth to his neigh- bor, miUch less any whose profession it is to do so, ABOUT SWEDENBORG. 63 however skilled he may be to communicate scientific information. For truth is living, spiritual, Divine, being shaped to every one's intelligence only by what he has of celestial love in his heart. Thus Sweden- borg will doubtless give you any amount of inter- esting and enlightening information about the spirit- ual world, and its principles of administration. And this knowledge taken into your memory, or mental stomach, will constitute so much nutritive material to be intellectually assimilated by you, when the living truth itself has begun to germinate and sprout in your heart. But as to actually communicating the truth to you — or making it literally over to your imderstanding — Swedenborg is of course just as flatly incompetent to that function as every other man of woman born, and even more incapable mor- ally, if that be possible, than he w^as intellectually, of making any such blasphemous claim. LETTER VII. WY DEAR FRIEND: — I have not lost sight of my subject, as you doubtless by this time suspect, and we shall soon re- turn to it. But, as I told you in my first letter, my nervous force is very much abated at pres- ent, and I am obliged to write not exactly as I would, but as my defective energy permits me. Besides, even if my nerves were unimpaired, it would be within the strict logic of my theme to hold a little discourse with you about Swedenborg and the relation of my thought to his books, since he is the only man, as it seems to me, in human history who has shed any commanding or decisive light on the physiology of the soul. That is to say, his books set before you, as no other books have the least pretension to do, certain FACTS of spiritual oh^ervaiion and experience which must, if you read them with interested attention, very soon convince you that you, like all other men, have hitherto utterly misconceived the function of selfhood / FURTHER OBSERVATIONS. 65 in man, and hence have attributed an original or caus- ative influence, instead of a purely ancillary or minis- terial one, to morality in human affairs. Observe what I say. It is exclwswelij these facts of spiritual observation and experience, recounted by Swedenborg, which produce the effect in question, and not the least any reasoning of his own in regard to the facts. For this is what Swedenborg never does, namely, reason about the things he professes to have learned from angels and spirits. It may betoken great wisdom or great imbecility in him to your mind that he does not ; but such, nevertheless, is the fact. He never once, so far as I have observed, has attempted to throw a persuasive light upon the things he professes to have heard and seen among his angelic acquaintance. Indeed, his own intellectual relation to the facts is left altogether undetermined in his books. There can be no doubt that the things he learned diffused an atmosphere of great peace and sweetness in his breast, and this makes his books the most heavenly reading I know ; but there is no sign extant, that I can see, of any intellectual quickening being produced by them, on his part, in regard to the history or the prospects of the race. I am not going to be so dull, therefore^ as to promise you the very same intellectual results that I get from Swedenborg's books, even if you your- self actually have recourse to them. Indeed, nmlti- 66 FURTHER OBSERVATIONS tudes of people are said to read his books and bring away almost no intellectual result, — multitudes who resort to them with great apparent complacency, and get, no doubt, much incidental entertainment and instruction from them, and yet are quite blind to their proper intellectual significance, to the extent, I am told, many of them, of seeming acutely hostile to it when it is brought before them. All this, of course, because of the more or less vacant mind they bring to the reading of him ; or rather, their more or less unsympathetic hearts. Most of them come to the banquet of facts and observations Swedenborg spreads before them Avith an obvious gross hankering after ecclesiastical righteousness, and make the most, ac- cordingly, of every crumb they can pick up adapted to gratify that unmanly and dyspeptic relish. But if you bring human sympathies to the banquet in ques- tion, I can assure you, you will find no speck of that base, unworthy nutriment. Tor it cannot be too much insisted on, that no books address the reader's intellect so much through the heart as these of Swe- denborg do, all in confining themselves to giving him spiritual information merely. This is no doubt an endless stumbling-block to the mass of readers, who regard Swedenborg as a sort of intellectual tailor, whose shop they have only to enter, to find whatsoever spiritual garments their particular ABOUT SWEDENBORG. 67 nakedness craves, all made to hand. And when they find, as every one among them is sure to do who has any faculty of spiritual discernment, that there are absolutely no garments made up, but only an immense sound of the shearing of sheep and the carding of wool and the whirhng of wheels and the rattling of looms and the flying of spindles, and that every for- lorn wight who would be spiritually clad must actu- ally turn to and become his own wool-grower, weaver, and tailor, the great majority of course go away dis- gusted, and only those remain whose vocation for Truth is so genuine as to make any labor incurred in her service welcome if not pleasant. The case of course is far more hopeless when one goes in with absolutely no conscious nakedness to cover, but only to satisfy a vague outside curiosity about intellectual novelties, and make, perchance, a handsome addition to an already luxurious literary Avardrobe. But Swe- denborg is not now, and probably never will be, so much the mode as greatly to attract this style of cus- tomer. Ill fact, the whole existing conception of the man and his aims is a mistake. He is not at all the intellectual craftsman or quack the world takes him for. He is no way remarkable as a man of original thought, or even as a reasoner, unless it be negatively so, while as a man of experience, or a seer, his worth 68 FURTHER OBSERVATIONS is of the very highest grade, as imposing no kind of obligation upon your belief. His judgments doubt- less in regard to this world's affairs were those of his day and generation, and strike one as grown very antiquated ; but there is almost no fact of spirit- ual observation and experience he recounts which does not seem of really priceless worth to my imagination, as illmtrathig and eiiforcinr/ a neiv mind in man. If his books seem interesting to you also in this point of view, if they tend to enlighten you upon very many things which have puzzled you in your own mental pathway, or in respect to our race-origin and des- tiny, well and good ; no doubt you too are bound to an ultimate profitable commerce with them. And in this event you will find it unquestionably true that their main advantage to the intellect is, that they fur- nish it with truths which really nourish and quicken it, or irresistibly compel it to function for itself, and independently of foreign stimulus. His books, in fact, amount to nothing so much as to an intellectual wheat-field, of no use to any one who does not enter in to gather and bind his own golden sheaves, and then proceed to thresh and grind his grain, to bolt his flour, to mix his bread, to build it up and bake it in such shapely and succulent loaves as his own intel- lectual bread-pan alone determines. But revenons a nos moufons. I have said that the ABOUT SWEDENBORG. 69 main philosophic obligation we owe to Swedenborg lies in his clearly identifying the evil principle jn.. existence with selfhood. The Christian truth some- what prepares us for this ; but the church theology so overlays and systematically falsifies the truth, that we practically get little good of it. This theology, for example, identifies evil with a person called the Bevil and Satan, outside the pale of human nature, but inti- mately conversant with its secret springs, and both able and disposed to use his knowledge with the ma- lign purpose of corrupting all its subjects. Of course this conception was originally due to a very immature scientific condition of the mind, when men had not the least idea of good and evil as having an exclu- sively spiritual or subjective source. It befits, in fact, a strictly mechanical or material conception of the soul's relation to God, and only deepens the mystery it attempts to explain ; for if the good and evil of human life acknowledge no inward root, but betray a purely moral, voluntary, or personal genesis, it can only be because the creative relation to man is prima- rily in fault, being the power of an external, not an internal, life. And if God were the power primarily of an external life in man, and not altogether mediately tlirough an internal one, neither creature nor creator would ever invite, as they assuredly would never reward, the homage of an intellectual appreciation. LETTER VIII. ITI^OT^ BEAR PRIEND:— Without doubt I 'P*\/i'" ^^^ suffered intellectually from the same 'Eri^^J i or similar unworthy views of the crea- tive relation to man, as those I adverted to in my last letter. I had always, from childhood, conceived of the Creator as bearing this outside rela- tion to the creature, and had attributed to the latter consequently the power of provoking His unmeas- ured hostility. Although these crude traditional views had been much modified by subsequent re- flection, I had nevertheless on the whole been in the habit of ascribing to the Creator, so far as my own life and actions were concerned, an outside discern- ment of the most jealous scrutiny, and had accord- ingly put the greatest possible alertness into His service and worship, until my will, as you have seen — thoroughly fagged out as it were with the formal, heartless, endless task of conciliating a stony-hearted Deity — actually collapsed. This was a catastrophe MY MORAL DEATH AND BUEIAL. 71 far more tragic to my feeling, and far more revolu- tionary in its intellectual results, than the actual vio- lation of any mere precept of the moral law could be. It was the practical abrogation of the law itself, through the unexpected moral inertness of the subject. It was to my feeling not only an absolute decease of my moral or voluntary power, but a shuddering recoil from my conscious activity in that line. It was an actual acute loathing of the moral pretension itself as so much downright charlatanry. No idiot was ever more incompetent, practically, to the conduct of life than I, at that trying period, felt myself to be. It cost me, in fact, as much effort to go out for a walk, or to sleep in a strange bed, as it would ah ordinary man to plan a campaign or write an epic poem. I have told you how, in looking out of my window at the time at a flock of silly sheep which happened to be grazing in the Green Park opposite, I used to envy them their blissful stupid ignorance of any law higher than their nature, their deep unconsciousness of self, their innocence of all private personality and purpose, their intense moral incapacity, in short, and indifference. I would freely, nay, gladly have bartered the world at the moment for one breath of the spiritual innocence which the benign creatures outwardly pictured, or stood for to my imagination ; and all the virtue, or moral 72 PROFOUND MORAL ILLUSION righteousness, consequently, that ever illustrated our specific human personality, seemed simply foul and leprous in comparison with the deep Divine possi- bilities and promise of our common nature, as these stood symbolized to my spiritual sight in all the gen- tler human types of the merely animate world. There seemed, for instance — lustrously represented to my inward sense — a far more heavenly sweetness in the soul of a patient overdriven cab-horse, or misused cadger's donkey, than in all the voluminous calendar of Romish and Protestant hagiology, which, sooth to say, seemed to me, in contrast with it, nothing short of infernal. You may easily imagine, then, with what relish my heart opened to the doctrine I found in these most remarkable books, of the sheer and abject idhenome- nalitij of selfhood in man ; and with what instant alac- rity my intellect shook its canvas free to catch every breeze of that virgin unexplored sea of being, to which this doctrine, for the first time, furnished me the clew. Up to this very period I had lived in the cheerful faith, nor ever felt the slightest shadow of misgiving about it — any more, I venture to say, than you at this moment feel a shadow of similar misgiving in your own mind — that my being or substance lay absolutely in myself, was in fact iden- tical with the various limitations implied in that most UNDER WHICH I HAD BEEN LIVING. 73 fallacious but still unsuspected quantity. To be sure, I had no doubt that this being or self of mine (whether actually burdened, or not burdened, with its limitations, I did not stop to inquire, but unques- tionably with a capacity of any amount of burden- some limitation) came originally as a gift from the hand of God ; but I had just as little doubt that the moment the gift had left God's hand, or fell into my conscious possession, it became as essentially inde- pendent of Him in all spiritual or subjective regards as the soul of a child is of its earthly father ; how- ever much in material or objective regards it might be expedient for me still to submit to His external police. My moral conscience, too, lent its influence to the same profound illusion ; for all the precepts of the moral law being objectively so good and real, and intended in the view of an unenlightened conscience to make men righteous in the sight of God, I could never have supposed, even had I been tempted on independent grounds to doubt my own spiritual or subjective reality, that so palpably Divine a law contemplated, or even tolerated, a wholly infirm and fallacious subject ; much less that it was, in fact, altogether devised for the reproof, condemnation, and humiliation of such a subject. I had no misgiving, therefore, as to the manifest purpose of the Law. The Divine intent of it at least was as clear to me as 74 MY RELIEF FEOM IT EQUIVALENT it ever had been to the Jew, namely, to serve as a ministry of plain moral life or actual righteousness among men, so constructing an everlasting heaven out of men's warring and divided personalities : and not at all, as the apostles taught, a ministry of death, to convince those lolio stood approved hy it of sin, thereby shutting up all men, good and evil alike, but especially the good, to unlimited dependence upon the sheer and mere mercy of God. It was impossible for me, after what I have told you, to hold this audacious faith in selfhood any longer. When I sat down to dinner on that memorable chilly afternoon in Windsor, I held it serene and unweak- ened by the faintest breath of doubt. Before I rose from table it had inwardly shrivelled to a cinder. One moment I devoutly thanked God for the inap- preciable boon of selfhood ; the next that inappreci- able boon seemed to me the one thing damnable on earth, seemed a literal nest of hell within my own entrails. Whatever difficulties then stood in the way of a better faith, they were infinitely milder and more placable than those inherent in the old one. In fact the old faith was itself the only obstacle in the path of the new. Take the one away, and the other be- comes inevitable. 1 If you admit the intrinsic or essen- tial phenomenality of selfhood — its utter unreality or non-existence out of consciousness — you are logi- TO MY BELIEF IN THE INCARNATION. 75 cally forced upon the triitli of the creative incarna- tion in the created nature — or the Divine Natural Humanity — as the sole possible method of creation, as the only truth capable of explaining nature and his- tory. ! When I ^2iy forced, I take for granted that you have some rational interest in the subject ; I take for granted that you deem nature and history worthy to be explained, and are not a mere sensualist so intent upon your own pleasure as to feel no capacity for inward satisfactions. In that case, I repeat, the only existing obstacle to yom' belief in the necessary incar- nation of the Creator in the created nature in order to the redemption and salvation of the human race from the empire of evil and falsity, will be dissipated by your coming to acknowledge the pure phenome- nality of consciousness, or to disbelieve in the spiritual reality of selfhood. Nothing hinders one believing in spiritual truth but the limitary influence of falsity. And so, conversely, nothing hinders a man succumb- ing to spiritual falsity but the liberating influence of truth. So that the only possible way for men to arrive at the spii-itual or living knowledge of truth, is by unliving their natural prejudices and prejudices of education. Now the deepest and most universal of these prejudices is that which makes selfhood the greatest of realities, and consequently inflates the heart of man with all manner of spiritual pride, 76 THE MORAL LAW ESSENTIALLY avarice, and cruelty. And it is accordingly the con- quest of this fundamental prejudice which best pro- motes our spiritual rectitude, or living conjunction with God. We are now at the very focus of our difference, and let me utter no word that shall not be clearly understood. Nothing can be farther from my desire than to weaken the authority of the moral law, con- sidered as the literal aspect of all true spiritual fel- lowship between man and man. When the sjairit of fellowship or equality between men is absent, then it behooves them, as they love their manhood and prize its salvation, to make much in their intercourse with one another of a strict conformity to the letter of the law. The spirit of human fellowship or equality is mutual love, and mutual love prompts only the most accordant action between all its subjects. But where mutual love does not as yet exist among men, but self- love only and love of the world, and positively accord- ant or harmonious action is therefore not to be expected from them, it becomes all-important to provide some natural symbol of these spontaneous manners — some purely negative and formal reminder of these ethics of the skies — whereby a faint perfume of the heavenly life may be kept up among men, and men thereby be prepared, in their turn, to recognize the Divine sub- stance itself when it is finally ready to come. TYPICAL AND PROPHETIC. 77 Now this precise propaedeutic function is exqui- sitely served by the letter of the law. For the sub- ject of this letter — out of sincere outward or formal reverence for the Divine name — is taught by it freely to abstain from false witness, theft, adultery, murder, and covetousness, since a reverential absti- nence from these evils is the only practicable moral equivalent or ultimate of the highest spiritual good- ness. To refrain ivhen temjjted from doing evil be- cause evil is contrary to the will of God, is the only outward rule of human conduct at all commensurate with inward love to God ; since it is the only rule which provides a formal basis for that spiritual hu- mility in man, which is the sole Divine end of the law for righteousness. Abstinence from evil, then, is a necessary condition of the spiritual or inward life in man; but it profits a man only in so far as it is reverential, or prompted by a formal and para- mount regard for the Divine will. A great many persons fulfil the law formally or outwardly, because it is reputable so to do, and promotes their civic ad- vantage ; and no doubt our infirm civilization is very much indebted to these people, of an insincere re- ligious character, who yet do all, and even more than all, that the spiritual man does in the way of pro- moting men's outward fellowship. Many persons also, who are not actuated by worldly motives, unaffectedly 78 ITS VOTARIES MAKE IT UTTERLY mistake the purpose of the law. They have no idea that its purpose is spiritual, being addressed to mak- ing its subjects humble, or giving them a conscience of death in themselves, but suppose that it was in- tended to confer actual life or righteousness upon them, by entitling all who obey it to permanent Di- vine honor, and all who disobey it to permanent Divine reproach. They have no perception that the law is essentially ministerial to the gospel revelation of the Divine love, being intended to soften the hard heart of its votary — to knead and supple it out- wardly — to inward Divine issues when they come. They conceive, on the contrary, that the law is its own end, being rather magisterial to the gospel than ministerial, since they regard the latter as being essentially substitutionary to the former, or view it in the light of a mere tardy Divine concession to men's weakness, after the former had sufficiently demon- strated their absolute want of strength. In short, their idea of the law is, not that it is purely pro- visional and educative, in order to prepare men for becoming spiritual out of natural, but that it is a Di- vine finality, addressed to the making men morally or actually righteous. And hence they value its formal moral letter infinitely above its inward or liv- ing spirit, contenting themselves with a mere actual abstinence from the evils it denounces, but caring FLAT, VAPID, AND SPIRITLESS. 79 very little about the temper of mind from which the abstinence comes. Acquit me then, I pray you, of any desire to diminish the prestige of the moral law, considered as ministering to the only true Divine righteousness in man, by helping to bring about a spirit of unaffected, unostentatious humility in his bosom. Eor this is the whole spiritual scope of the law, the only thing that for a moment sanctifies it, or makes it holy, to the recognition of the human heart : to conjoin the wor- shipper with God by freeing his heart from the evil spirits that hinder such conjunction ; and every man therefore who is not a spiritual sot, or whose heart is not dead to all Divine inspiration, gives it in this point of view his unqualified homage. But there comes a time when the moral law no longer ministers to the Divine life in man ; when it most distinctly does not produce a spirit of humility in its subject, but a spirit of pride and self-inflation. The law is now wrenched from its commanding spir- itual uses, which are all summed up in making the individual man think small things of himself, and employed by men as an instrument of their own material aggrandizement. When the law is thus wrested from its only proper Divine to purely human uses, from its exclusively spiritual to an exclusively material function, it becomes no longer an instru- 80 THE LAW A PRESENT STENCH IN THE EARTH. ment of mutual peace and unity among men, but of mutual self-seeking and warfare. Then the law from being confessedly Divine becomes the most undivine thing beneath the skies ; for then it ministers — as nothing else on earth has power to do — by its usurped Divine authority, to the inmost spirit of hell in man, to a spirit of pride and self-assertion and intolerance and lust and cruelty and revenge. It was originally given by God only to humble the pride of selfhood in man, that so the neighbor might become exalted in his regard. It is most undivinely used by man only as a cunning instrument ybr sujjpressing the neighbor, or subjecting him to one's boundless cupidity and avarice. It is no longer Divine, then, but out and out diabolic, confessing itself spiritually the only fortress of evil known to the human bosom. This is what secretly nauseates all good men with our legal righteousness, fills them with an inward loathing of our conventional respectability, sickens them to death with our technical " Church " and its flatulent senti- mentality, with our technical " State " and its dis- honest morality. This is what makes them inwardly hate our existing civilization as, spiritually, a thing of infamy, as the only thing which stands in the way of the Divine kingdom on earth ; and they would, themselves, gladly beat the drum and blow the trum- pet for its final burial out of human sight. LETTER IX. T DEAR FRIEND : — Don't imagine that my reference to the law in my last letter was intended merely or chiefly to illustrate what Paul says of the legal economy under which the Jew lived, namely : that it was designed only to give its subject a knowledge of sin. Doubtless this was an argument of great weight to the Jew, for he was the actual subject of a Divine kingdom, and if the law of that kingdom in its practical scope could be shown to be designedly subversive of the national hope to- wards God, his main opposition to the gospel consid- ered as dishonoring the law would of course fall to the ground. But this argument has no similar pertinence to us, who have never been subjects of a literal Divine regimen, and whose law consequently has always claimed a more or less strictly spiritual administration. To be sure, we have certain portentous Jewish phan- toms of our own to contend with — certain very orthodox Christian enemies of the Divine Spirit — in 82 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE REAL JEW the persons of our Popish and Protestant rituahsts, or high churchmen. But no one is in any danger of mistaking these worthless pretenders for authentic Divine persons, nor of gravely combating their eccle- siastical fopperies and gross covert disloyalty to the human ideal. They are not natural Jews, but only spiritual or spm-ious ones : only simulated or imi- tative ones. They are not the pure gold of the sanctuary, once famous but now vanished from earth forever : they are a mere counterfeit and pinchbeck image of it, with a view to impose upon simple and credulous imaginations. Their ecclesiastical preten- sion is in itself an inversion of the most fundamental principle of spiritual order, which is, that the natural in every case descend from the spiritual : while they, on the contrary, are the direct spiritual progeny of a very ugly and sordid natural parentage. Thus, they are by no means actually living under a specific Divine regimen, but only " making believe " that they are. They have not so much even as a q^iiasi Divine obli- gation on their consciences to do what they do ; they only act as if they had. This, you perceive, makes all the difference in the world between the honest natural Jew and our own dishonest spiritual ones, and shows moreover the admirable reason why Christ called these latter, in the persons of their representa- tive tj^pes at his day, "hypocrites," that is, actors, AND THE CHRISTIAN IMITATION. 83 unconsciously playing a part to which they are noway Divinely summoned. We may then safely leave all our spectacular prodigies in this line to Christ's con- cise characterization of them, assured that nothing of harm can ensue to any serious interest of the world from so strictly histrionic an activity. But the apostles had to deal with a much less effeminate and contemptible class of zealots, whose superstitious regard for their own law threatened, indeed, to stop the world's progress, so hearty and malignant was their opposition to that gospel which the apostles proclaimed, and whose sole burden was that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ. They esteemed their own law a living Divine one already as to the minutest jot or tittle of its letter, and this purported to bless them exclusively as children of Abraham. How could they conceive, then, that the law had, •as the apostles taught, a far more living, or inward and Divine spiuit, purporting to bless them only as they renounced their Jewish selves, and identified their interests with those of the Gentile world ? In fact, this tiresome and frivolous letter of their law inspired them with so frenzied and fanatical a regard as having a purely Jewish end, that it at last left them in all intellectual respects hopelessly blind and imbecile. It was a timely office in Paul, therefore, to remind his unenlightened countrymen of the deadly 84 WE LIVE NOT UNDER A LITERAL BUT animus of their law towards every one who boasted of its literal friendship. Even natural death, he ar- gued, would be harmless if it were not for the law. " The sting of death is doubtless sin : but then it is only the law that gives us a conscience of sin. The sole strength of sin is the law ; and every subject of the law, therefore, who sees its intention to be to give men a knowledge of sin and not of righteousness, will bless God that it was never a final dispensation, but at best a preparatory one for the gospel we now proclaim. The law may be best viewed, in fact, under the similitude of a respectable pedagogue, in charge of a school of turbulent urchins, whom if he can make even tolerably sensible of their own vast deficiencies in point of culture, he will deem his duty done towards them, and contentedly leave them to the chances of their future manhood." This, I repeat, was a very important truth to those to whom it was addressed, a typical " outside " people, subjects of an external Divine law, who were di- rected to an external Divine Saviour as the veritable end of their law for righteousness. In short, the Jew was notoriously a frivolous subject — as near to worth- less as a people could well be that still wore the human form — and cultivating only such base ideas of the Divine righteousness as stood in a mere " out- side cleansing of the cup and platter, while inwardly A SPIRITUAL DIVINE ADMINISTRATION. 85 they were full of extortion and excess." But it ought, I repeat, to be particularly and frankly noted that this apostolic reasoning has no special relevancy to us at this day, who have always lived not under a literal but an exclusively spiritual Divine dispensation. Our forefathers, in the revolution they accomplished, sim- ply designed to free themselves and their descendants from political vassalage to England. But in the form they subsequently impressed upon their work they builded greatly better than they designed, or even than they themselves suspected, For in disowning, as they resolutely did, an authoritative Church and a consecrated State, they managed quite unconsciously to swing clear, not only of political and ecclesiastical England, but of literal Christendom as well : which derives its form or quality from those two disowned in- stitutions exclusively. The result is that we, their descendants, are denizens henceforth of spiritual Christendom only. For so far as we confess ourselves their legitimate children, logically approving of and identified with their acts, we frankly acknowledge ourselves with respect to the rest of the world a new or spiritual people, sifted from the nations as wheat is sifted from chaff; amenable only to a living or inward and imprescriptible Divine Law in our own bosoms — that of our growing humanitary affections and thoughts ; perfectly atheistic therefore, if need be, in 86 GROWING INDIFFERENCE OF MEN SO far as our faith is due to any merely instituted Deity, that is, any Deity outside of our own nature; per- fectly irresponsible and immoral, if need be, so far as our obedience is due to any merely putative, or arbi- trary and established. Divine order : that is to say, any order not strictly conformed to the recognized principles of human nature. If you will pardon me a slight digression here, I would like to observe that what I have just said ex- plains the reason why the spiritual world — the world of heaven and hell — has undergone such dire eclipse, or fallen so completely under the shadow of the natural world, that men no longer scruple to claim a direct commerce with God, even in the flesh, and therefore not only reject all so-called " spiritual " au- thority as obsolete or impertinent, but are fast grow- ing indifferent even to their once highly prized civic righteousness.* It is impossible to watch the fatal demoralization which of late years has been creeping * Tills of course outside the technical churcli. The state of things within the church is strictly and strikingly parallel to that -vrituessed at its founder's first or carnal coming. That is to say, the Jew vindi- cated his legal or formal orthodoxy at whatever cost of shame and suf- fering to the person of him who alone constituted its prophetic scope or substance. And the professing Christian church avouches its fidelity to the person of Christ, by reviling, evil-entreating, and persecuting every interest. Divine and human, which makes his person spiritually vener- able or memorable. TO THEIR CIVIC REPUTE. 87 over men in positions of public and private trust, and still believe that citizenship is estimated as it once was, or that men in general still retain their respect for any merely instituted sanctity or decency under heaven. Freedom, and no longer force, has become the acknowledged ethics of the Divine administration, to the consequent enfeebling of the obligations of outward law ; and this enlarged consciousness on our part brings with it a new and wholly spiritual con- ception of creative power. It enforces in us such a growing sense of harmony between the Divine and human natures, as must erelong thoroughly foreclose the old controversy of flesh and spirit — the church and the world — and reduce ritual religion itself to a mere code of good manners. I have no desire and no right to confirm what I say by reference to my own personal history; but I cannot help confessing, by way of illustration, that I myself have found few things for the last thirty or forty years more fatiguing to my regenerate inward sense — less accommodated to my growing conviction of God's NATURAL humanity — than our current eccle- siastical culture. Nothing could be pleasanter than " going to church " upon certain holidays — every holiday in fact — and losing oneself in the great con- gregation, if the worship were only sincere and inno- cent. But no worship can be sincere or innocent 88 OUR CURRENT ECCLESIASTICAL CULTURE which is not first of all disinterested or spontaneous. If any gain however small is hoped to be realized from observing it, if any loss however small is feared to be incurred from neglecting it, the worship confesses itself mercenary ; and surely nothing can be more remote from spiritual innocence than a mercenary habit of mind in Divine things. All living or accep- table worship is free, unforced, spontaneous, as ex- pressing a heart and mind unaffectedly reconciled to God ; and who shall pretend to be at peace with God that has yet anything to ask or expect at the Divine hands? Nothing, it appears to me, can be more utterly worthless and even degrading, in a spiritual estima- tion, both to oneself and to society, than a life passed in ritual devotion, or the exercises of formal piety. It is an insult to God and man to dignify so sodden a routine with the sacred name of life ; call it rather death and damnation to every soul of man that finds it life. I wonder above all how any one who rever- ences even the letter alone of the New Testament, and remembers the terrible warnings and objurga- tions it denounces upon a mere conventional or legal hope towards God, can dare to associate his spiritual fortunes with our modern ecclesiastical Judaism. The visible Church seems to me in a spiritual or philosophic point of view to be " the abomination FRIVOLOUS AND UNMANLY. 89 of desolation " ; a refuge and embodiment of the frankest spiritual egotism and the rankest spiritual cupidity. Its pharisaic airs and temper provoke one to alternate smiles and tears : smiles, to see such transparent spiritual pride simulating the aspect and language of humility; tears, to see so many well- to-do worldly-wise people inwardly hardening them- selves against the access and solicitation of God's tenderest and most timely pity in our nature. How blasphemous, then, to talk of God's life at this time of day in any such self-righteous precinct ! How inevitable, one might say, its encounter almost everywhere else, especially where there is no pretension to anything but a secular temper. I can hardly flatter myself that the frankly chaotic or «-cosmical aspect of our ordinary street-car has altogether escaped your enlightened notice in your visits to the city ; and it will perhaps surprise you, therefore, to learn that I nevertheless continually witness so much mutual for- bearance on the part of its habifMes ; so much spotless acquiescence under the rudest personal jostling and inconvenience ; such a cheerful renunciation of one's strict right ; such an amused deference, oftentimes, to one's invasive neighbor : in short, and as a general thing, such a heavenly self-shrinkage in order that " the neighbor," handsome or unhandsome, whole- some or unwholesome, may sit or stand at ease : that 90 THE HORSE-CAR OUR TRUE I not seldom find myself inwardly exclaiming with the patriarch : Hoto dreadful is tJiis place ! It is none other than the house of God, and the gate of heaven. Undeniably on its material or sensuous side the vehicle has no claim to designation as a Bethel ; but at such times on its spiritual or supersensuous side it seems to my devout sense far more alert with the holy Ghost, far more radiant and palpitating with the infinite comity and loveliness, than any the most gorgeous and brutal ecclesiastical fane that ever gloomed and stained the light of heaven. But I only allege this familiar experience as a sample of the way in which, to our quickened or regenerate perception, persons and places and things that have been hitherto conventionally most sacred, are ready and eager to confess themselves profane, to confess themselves in fact sheer spiritual rubbish ; while things and persons and places hitherto reputed especially forlorn and commonplace are becoming spiritually hallowed, becoming inwardly vivid and picturesque with God's revealed modesty, truth, and mercy. And now that this digression is ended, let me return to my subject, and say that my purpose in referring to Paul's famous contention about the spiritual import of the law is quite different from his, though doubtless it lies in the same philosophic SHECHINAH AT THIS DAY. 91 direction. Paul was content to show that the law being spiritual, could not but be fatal to the claim of a moral or actual righteousness among men : that it condemned those only of its subjects who stood literally justified by it, and justified those only who confessed themselves literally condemned by it : be- cause the former, in arrogating merit to themselves and ascribing blame to others, violated the spirit of the law, which was charity, or neighborly love ; and because the latter gave evidence of that humility of spirit which is the only and inseparable basis of charity, or neighborly love. But this does not content me. I admire the apos- tle's profound critical insight, it is true, and applaud the lesson conveyed by it with all my heart ; but I cannot help going on to say that if such be the one unflinching spirit of all Divine law upon earth, namely, to reveal the evil which is latent in all men by nature, and so lay an eternal basis for a spirit of charity or good neighborhood in the human breast, why then it becomes at once grandly evident that the estijnate formed by God of every man of woman born — the morally good no less than the morally evil man — dif- fers infinitely, or in kind, from the estimate formed by man himself. It is evident, for example, that whereas the latter, for lack of spiritual apprehension of the Divine law. 92 CHRIST'S PRECISE WORK ON EARTH. regards the moral differences of men as final or abso- lute, the former regards all men — the morally good and the morally evil man both alike — as blent in one and the same community of evil so long as they are disaffected to the spirit of the law, which is one of charity, or mutual love. But much more than this is evident. For it is evi- dent that while man attributes to himself alone the source and the consequent responsibility of his evil moral acts, the Divine mind stigmatizes this senti- ment as false, or sets the individual evil doer free by charging his shortcomings to the common stock of human nature. But even this is a very small part of what is evident. For if the Divine wisdom imputes no guilt to the individual man, but charges all the evil done by men to the account of their common nature, why then it is evident that inasmuch as no man can feel himself responsible for his natural but only for his personal limitations, so he is bound to look to God alone for the final reconstitution of human nature in harmony with His own infinite goodness. Now this Divine resuscitation of our nature, or COMPLETE UNITION OF IT WITH THE INEFFABLE DIVINE PERFECTION, is precisely the work which Swe- denborg ascribes to Jesus Christ. LETTER X. ^Y DEAR FRIEND: — When I began writing these letters I imagined myself able to say all I wanted to say within the compass of ten short letters, at most : and this after making a generous allowance to the weakness of my nerves. But the allowance apparently was not generous enough, and the consequence is that I find myself, at the opening of my tenth letter, only fairly abreast of the great truth of the Incarnation, to which nevertheless everything else I have said was meant to be strictly subordinate. My nerves, in fact, are like a spirited horse, out of whom you may coax a good deal of service if you use patient and persuasive methods, but who violently resents and resists the coercion of whip and spur. What then remains to be done? Shall I, like a vicious horse, leave my work unfinished ? Or shall I go on to bring it still to such orderly close as my infirmities will permit ? I choose the latter course, although the bulk of my 94 SWEDENBORG'S INTERPRETATION scribble be unduly augmented thereby, simply because I bate to leave entirely unreported certain exjplicanda in relation to the great truth of the Incarnation, which may be of use in softening if not altogether obviating your prejudices against it. I know that these preju- dices are due mainly to the very dense ignorance we all of us cherish with respect to spiritual life and order. And if I may only say some word which shall induce you to have recourse to Swedenborg's books, where the amplest information of the sort needed is supplied, and where all one's intellectual unrest and perturbation of every kind find themselves tenderly soothed and placated, I shall be happy. I had best, perhaps, state first of all what the apotheosis of our nature in the person of Jesus Christ, as reported in Swedenborg's pages, practi- cally amounts to ; and then make such comments upon it in detail as may be needful to commend the truth to your awakened attention. The truth, then, as I find it in Swedenborg, prac- tically amounts to this, namely : an alleged redemption of human nature — from what ? — from the spiritual limitations and disabilities imposed upon it hy heaven and hell ; and the consequent unlimited pm^ification of that nature into harmony with the Divine perfec- tion. Mind well what I say here. I say that the redemp- OF THE GOSPEL. 95 tion of human nature means its redemption from certain evils which, are by no means incident to it in virtue of its own quahty, but are imposed upon it through the influence of the spiritual world — mean- ing thereby the realm of heaven and hell — upon the individual subjects of the nature. But here you will ask me : " What is the necessity for what you call the spiritual world, or the divided realm of heaven and hell, in the scheme of creation ? " To which I might as briefly answer : " The spiritual world, or its division into heaven and hell, is a neces- sary incident of the cleansing of human nature from evil, and its consequent complete impletion or unition with the Divine perfection." But here again a new question confronts me : Whence then this liability to evil in human nature ? What, in other words, is the origin of spiritual evil in men, or the evil which attaches to them by nature ? For one rightly reasons that if the spiritual world by unduly influencing individual minds on earth ends by vitiating or corrupting human nature itself, it is important to know how so malign an influence ever becomes exerted by the spiritual world. We can perfectly understand how physical evil, or the evil which man suffers, originates : namely, in a want of harmony between himself and his own body. One knows too very well how vioral evil, or the evil which 96 THE ORIGIN OF man does, comes about : namely, from a want of free harmonic adjustment in the relations of man to man. But here is an evil incomparably deeper than both of these, because it is, in fact, their very and exclusive root : not the paltry and passing evil under which man is passive, as jjain ; nor yet the still more super- ficial and remediable evil in which he is active, as vice and crime : but spiritual evil, or the evil which he is, an evil which characterizes him in relation to his own vital consciousness, and if not removed there- fore must utterly palsy his consciousness considered as a means of development to his nature. This gigantic and hopeless evil in man, then, springs from no defect of his physical nor of his moral make, but wholly from the limitation and infirmity of his finite or personal consciousness, which is a most rigid SELF-consciousness, excluding any other than a subjective basis ; whereas it has manifestly no warrant in the creative infinitude, which is the infinitude of Love, to have any but an objective basis, that is, to be anything but a social consciousness, embracing the neighbor along with the self, or involving a public and private element quite equally. But you will ask why the creature of God is thus shut up in his beginnings to a conscious or phenomenal existence in himself, instead of being endowed outright with his creator's vital substance or being? It is that God, by the SPIRITUAL EVIL. 97 necessity of his perfection, cannot permit any other than a phenomenal or conscious existence to his crea- ture, so long as the latter remains wholly inexpert, or untried and undisciplined, in the utter spiritual death or nothingness which he bears about in him- self as finitely constituted, and which whilst the inex- perience lasts makes it impossible to commit the Divine substance or being to him. The creator himself is of course the only real or natural life of the creature — as is implied in the very terms of the proposition : but how is the creature ever livingly to learn this great truth? His creator is not the least a denizen of space and time; is not the least a visible or outward existence, so that his senses will afford him at best but a reflected or lifeless knowl- edge of Him. Evidently then the creature demands some other avenue to Divine knowledge than sense — some inward avenue, since the creator is not to be found outside of him — and this inward avenue is supplied by consciousness, or ^e^-knowledge. In proportion as I come truly to know myself in all the compass of my physical, moral, and spiritual dis- ability, do I come to a living or hearty apprehension of God's infinitude. A7id in no other way. All the bibles, all the churches, all the sacraments, all the rites and ceremonies, all the priesthoods in the land, are totally impotent to confer upon me one fibre of 98 CREATION INEVITABLY CONTRACTS this living knowledge of God whicli is given by my life or consciousness alone; however much I doubt not they may instruct my intellect in things pertaining and subsidiary to such knowledge. Thus until the creature's own life or consciousness be so tried, dis- ciplined, or pm'ified as readily to yield him this living lore : until he be inwardly or SELF-taught, in other words, to discern the ineffable holiness which under- lies and transfigures his own boundless cupidity and cruelty : he w^ill necessarily refuse to receive or repro- duce that only real or unconscious life which is God, and must accordingly be content for a time to put up with the unreal or seeming and fallacious life of self- hood. This beggarly life will doubtless seem to the creature, while he is still unconscious of any inner or higher and better life, most real and stupendous; and it will indeed in the miraculous providence of God, and through all his blindness however fatuous, serve as an admirable basis of experience to him, slowly but surely promoting the final evolution of his real or natural life ; but in itself, or absolutely, the personal or conscious life — this life of selfhood — is not merely worthless, but ruinous, and Schopenhauer and the rest of our purblind modern Buddhists, from their unchristian point of view, do every way well to exe- crate it. And now, having answered your doubt, I return to SOIL ON ITS SUBJECTIVE SIDE. 99 my subject. The ineradicable imperfection of created existence, as such, or the origin of spiritual evil in the creature, consists, as we have seen, in his attributing to himself a rigidly personal or finite consciousness, and so perverting the creative energy and influx in him to purely selfish or unsocial issues. The creature is of course perfectly unaware of this evil, and is as innocent of any intention to bring it about as the child unborn. He is himself as yet the spiritually unborn child of God — a mere embryo of still unde- veloped Divine possibilities in his nature — and one does n't expect to find any divinely normal or natural results in himself or his surroundings. It seems indeed inevitable to any Divine creation — and this simply because it is Divine or infinite — that it should always exhibit soil or taint upon its subjective side, or present spiritually the strongest possible antago- nism to its creator. At least I myself do not see how, otherwise, the creative perfection or infinitude as the hringer of good out of evil, is ever going to be vindi- cated by it. The creature as we have seen can never come to the conception of the creative infinitude through the senses, because the senses themselves are a grossly limitary power, or witness exclusively to the finite. He must come to it then only from within, or livingly, that is to say : as that infinitude makes itself manifest to him through consciousness or the 100 CREATION AS A SPIRITUAL WORK development of his own nature. If the divine infini- tude be, as it undeniably is, a purely inward one — if it attach to the creative name or character, and not to His works, thus to what He is in himself, or essen- tially, and not to what He is in his creature, or exis- tentially — then the sole worthy judgment we can form of it must necessarily reflect in the first place our experience of our fnife selves, or express above all things our essential diff'erence in kind from the Creator. It must be a judgment in fact confessing all creatureship to be a state of otherness or aliena- tion to the Creator, and as such otherness or alienation finite or imperfect. In other words — for I confess the living sentiment is not easily put into adequate form — our only spiritual or living acknowledgment of the creative infinitude, is an internal or worshipful acknowledgment, implying our own inward self-efiace- ment, our own free or spontaneous death to ourselves. Thus it is a homage of the heart which the Creator covets in the first instance from the creature, and only by remote derivation thence of the intellect : and this not with any absurd view of course to aggrandize Himself by the puny homage of the creature, but only with a view to its softening the latter's sense of otherness or alienation to Himself, so rendering him accessible to all those Divine traits of tenderness, gentleness, and pity infinite, whereby he is destined OF GOD IS PLAINLY MIRACULOUS, 101 one day to live : for heart-homage, as we know from our own secular experience even, is full of profound humility on the subject's part, being convertible in- deed in every case into a confession of sin ; and you know with what reluctance the intellect reverberates any such confession. Almost obviously then we may say — may we not, my dear friend? — that all spiritual or subjective creation, as expressing the infinite love, or inmost heart, of the Creator, is ex vi terminoriim or by virtue of such infinitude, miraculous. Tor it is no out- ward or material result that is aimed at by such a process, but a purely inward or conscious one, and it involves therefore spiritually the humiliation of crea- tive substance to created form, and suspends its own actual achievement upon the Creator showing him- self able by means of such spiritual humiliation to lead captivity captive, or rise triumphant over death and hell, by exalting the created nature into com- plete unison with his perfection. At all events, we may say with entire certainty, that the creative en- ergy in the actual creation — and simply because it is creative, having therefore no other vent for itself, or field of manifestation, than its creature's conscious- ness — is not only fairly shut up to that finite abode such as it is, or whatever be its intrinsic limitations, but freely engages itself precisely there to avouch 102 AND THEREFORE ADMITS NO WITNESS and make intelligible its own majestic infinitude, by permanently rescuing the created nature from tlie keeping of the created subject, and enlarging or glo- rifying it into Divine proportions. — I have a vague sense of having said very nearly what I wanted to say in this letter, and yet on re- flection I am not sure about it. I feel such a mental impotence in regard to the ineffable theme, such a sense of silent and amazed and abashed truth in rela- tion to it, that, say what I may, I can hardly feel sure of having said anything to the purpose. This comes, I suppose, from the creative truth appealing for recep- tion so exclusively to the heart in the first place, and disposing one rather to mute adoring wonder than to voluble appreciation. I confess for my part that this truth of the spiritual creation, or of God's natural humanity, is in itself so grand and unexpected as utterly to beggar my imagination at the start, and make me more abjectly thankful for positive knowl- edge about it, such as I find in Swedenborg's books, than I have ever been for my daily bread. And pre- cisely the most fundamental point of that knowledge is what I have been trying to make plain to you, namely : that creation is a subjective or living and spiritual achievment of Divine love and wisdom with- in the strictest precincts of human nature, and that it accordingly neither appeals to nor admits any other BUT THAT OF LIFE OR CONSCIOUSNESS. 103 attestation in us than that of consciousness, which is the strict or true organ of our nature. You, unless I greatly err, have not been in the habit of viewing creation in this light nor of assign- ing to consciousness so distinctive and important a role in the evolution of our nature. You have been wont, that is, to regard creation in its mere legendary aspect, as primarily a material and objective work of God, wrought within the proper precincts of space and time, and only secondarily or reflectively spiritual and subjective, as effected within the sphere of men's affection and thought. And you have been wont con- sequently to regard consciousness not as the organ of men's proper nature, attesting only what is unitary and universal in their experience, but rather as a mere authentication and badge of their private personality, attesting what is but individual or trivial and differ- ential in their annals. But these distinctions are obviously too large a theme to be approached at the close of a letter ; and we shall do them more justice after getting a little more insight into the philosophy of creation gen- erally, and particularly into the doctrine of nature as rigidly incidental thereto, as in fact its inevitable point d^appui. LETTER XI. IFY DEAR FRIEND: — It is sometimes hotly contended among professing Chris- tians whether there be few or many saved. The gospel itself sheds no light upon the dreary problem either way, and what it does say renders this and every similar idle question from a human point of view altogether superfluous and tiresome. For it testifies that a certain man called Jesus the Christ, who was conceived and born of a virgin mother (and was therefore presumably free from limitation on the psychical or paternal side) was eventually able by the things which he suffered and did, to unite his hmnan nature to the Godhead, and invest tliat hitherto undefined and unknown force with the perfectly clear lineaments of a glorified flesh-and-blood man. In face of this testi- mony all our breathless theologic and scientific dis- putes sink into the insignificant prattle of childhood, and one wholly forgets to consider whether in fact OBJECTION TO MIRACLE. 105 the number of saved be absolutely few or many. For if a man be sure that his nature is enlarged to the compass of infinitude, it can signify very little to him what afterwards becomes of his veiy uninter- esting person. To be sure one cannot very wxll doubt that in that case his person will fare much beyond its proper deserts : for if the nature of man become divinized it is hard to see how his person, w^hich is a strict phenomenon of his nature, can escape reflecting a proportionate enlargement : but all I want to say is that provided the gospel be true, a man can perfectly well aff'ord to dismiss all anxiety upon the score of his private or personal fortunes at God's hands. " Aye," you reply, ^^ provided the gospel is true ! But I have serious doubts of this. That is to say, I have lately taken counsel of certain distinguished scientific teachers, and they have so discredited mira- cle to me as a factor in human afi'airs, that I even hesitate to admit any truth however little ' scientific,' which like that of the gospel seems necessarily to involve it." Miracle no doubt is very properly disowned by science as a true cause of phenomena, because if men attempt to account for physical facts by the allegation of metaphysical causes, or causes extrinsic to the physi- cal realm, they must end by denying physics an order 106 MIRACLE IS BAD SCIENCE, of their own, and so disqualify science. But because miracle is disowned by science as an answer to her physical interrogations, we are not justified, nor ever shall be, in excluding it from philosophic recognition, as in truth the most efficient factor in the history of human nature. For philosophy unlike science has no interest in physics as a literal fact, but only as a spirit- ual symbol, and is no w^ay disconcerted therefore when you deny miracle a place and function in physical order. She has never been disposed to assign it such place and function, but on the contrary has expressly relegated it to spiritual or metaphysical uses. No man of philosophic genius, that is, no lover of truth for truth's own sake, has ever dreamt of finding a place or function for miracle in reference to physics, or the fixed statics of the mind, and has allowed it at most in reference to history, or its living dynamics and outcome. Every such man unfeignedly reverences miracle under this reserve, because in the long spir- itual night of the mind when all knowledge of Divine things was obscured under the pall of men's mental and material penury, it alone shone as a feeble but prophetic day-star from on high to lift men's faith and hope out of an every way lifeless and ignominious present, and fix them on a living and radiant future big with God's unimaginable mercy. Thus miracle has always spoken to the free or spontaneous mind of BUT VERY GOOD PHILOSOPHY. 107 man, which recognizes in itself a higher life than that of organic nature, and has always nurtured it to im- mortal issues. It has alone in fact kept this mind alive in men, when science, or their servile inteUi- gence, being as absolutely tethered to physics as an imprisoned bird to its cage, would otherwise have willingly immersed it in the mere mud of sense. It ought to be confessed moreover that science has never taken cognizance but of strictly objective facts, facts of man's physical or outside experience, facts, every one of them, susceptible in a more or less subtle fashion of a sensible verification. So that it is only by breaking her own tether, the tether that binds her to existence, and leaping the petty fences that shut her out from the free domain of the human mind, that science comes to know any- thing more about facts of life or consciousness, facts of man's interior or subjective experience, than a blind mole knows of astronomy. Yet these are the express data of philosophy, or things given in her very existence, without which accordingly she has no foothold upon earth. For philosophy has but one end, the research of being, and confines herself con- sequently to the only field where she finds any echo or revelation of such being, namely : the field of man's phenomenal life or consciousness. Life or 108 MIRACLE IS BAD SCIENCE, consciousness unites what sense or science divides, and it is this unitary point of knowledge in man that philosophy takes for granted in all her appeals, while she bestows a very fitful and subordinate glance at the lifeless or divided testimony of sense or science. Now science is self-excluded — excluded, that is, by the necessity of self-preservation — from the re- search of being, i. e., what gives spiritual or invisible unity to things, and devotes herself instead to ascer- taining the constitution of existence, that is, to the discovery of the strictly material bond or tenure of existence which this magnificent framework of na- ture exhibits. In spite however of these purist or pedantic airs of science the craving of man after higher knowledge has been so inveterate as to force science herself upon the effort to supply it, by for- mulating a strictly ontological theory of existence, making sense final and absolute, so at all events barring out the conception of a spiritual creation, vyith all the ghostly interests and imaginations inci- dent thereto. This is a clever dodge, for although it is no more warranted by science than by philos- ophy, it still enables the scientific man by winking hard to exclude from his mental horizon a vast array of intrusive questions of exceeding interest to the average mind, which yet bring nothing but per- plexity and dismay to a wilfully narrower intelli- BUT VERY GOOD PHILOSOPHY. 109 gence. No one of a philosophic turn of mind, I am persuaded, grudges science any temporary relief it secures to itself in this crafty way; but when scientific men, not content with this good-humored concession, attempt disingenuously to foist in upon other minds those purely negative and authoritative conclusions of theirs, they should be made clearly to understand that they are guilty of a very impudent interference with human freedom. An ontologic or absolute scheme of universal existence may be freely- tolerated to them personally, as summarily saving them much precious time which they would devote to minor pursuits. But it is nothing short of lu- dicrous to suppose that the great unsophisticated spiritual instincts of mankind are ever going to acquiesce in any such piddling scheme of things, did it even claim to its support all and sundry the cumbrous personnel of science fifty times multiplied. For my own part I laugh to utter scorn this sottish and grovelling notion of an ontologic basis to exist- ence, and hold the dicta of any of our more flagrant scientific popes thereupon to be quite as contempt- ible rationally, and not near so honest morally, as those of their deposed and degraded ecclesiastical rivals. The first duty of a scientific teacher is to bring definite conceptions before the mind ; and what has a spurious theology to offer more stupid 110 MIRACLE IS BAD SCIENCE, and depraved intellectuably than this ontologic expli- cation of creation, wherein existence frankly confesses to constituting her own absolute being, and the cart meekly acknowledges its long misunderstood duty of drawing the horse. "Now iu the uame of all the gods at ouce. Upon what meat doth this our 'science' feed. That she is grown so great" as to convert the abject limitations of her own ser- vile intelligence into a law of the human mind, or sink heaven-born wisdom itself into a mere synonym of learning ? It seems in fact to be a modern instance of ^sop's fabulous old fox, who was so annoyed by an accident to his hinder dimensions which compelled him always to maintain a sitting posture, that he found thenceforth no solace in life but in persuading his brethren to undergo a like physical mutilation. It strikes me then that the cavil you urge against the Christian truth, as involving a miraculous basis, is simply captious, or disowns even a scientific war- rant, let alone a philosophic one. For the only ob- jection which science (short of self-stultification) can offer to miracle is, when it is postulated as a physical cause. And the miracle in question, which is the birth of Christ from a virgin, so far from being adduced to characterize any fact whatever of physical BUT VERY GOOD PHILOSOPHY. HI genesis or order, expressly confines itself to signaliz- ing a new beginning of human history, that is, a fact exclusively of metaphysical genesis or spiritual order. Science to be sure may deny if she pleases that there is any metaphysical genesis to human his- tory, or that physical fact is a mere witness to the activity of spiritual order : but we are no way bound to listen to her. She may in short deny any dis- crete difference between physics and history, or run the mind of man into his own entrails ; but she does so only at the risk of degrading her utterances to the level of a goose's cackle, and disqualifying herself for men's respect. — But now after all let me say that I really stand in a much more free and uncommitted relation to miracle than you do, or any mere scientific dogmatist. For while you are vehemently impelled to reject both its actual and its possible truth, I value it as an unquestionable race-tradition simply, or deliverance of the common mind, and am as little concerned there- fore about its literal truth or falsity in a scientific point of view, as I am about the truth or falsity of the multiplication table, which I learned by heart in my uncritical infancy, and the truth of which I have never challenged nor suspected since. Were I indeed as wise as Sir Isaac Newton I should not know how to set about increasing my faith in it; or as acute 112 MY OWN INTELLECTUAL as Professor Huxley, I should be at an utter loss to imagine the means of weakening it. For it lies en- tirely back of my intellect, being in fact and in part its indispensable mother 's-milk, or constituting that basis of fixed or positive knowledge which is requi- site to give my intellect hodij ; so that to argue with me about its truth or falsity is to destroy my mental personality, or at the least put its foundations in doubt, and leave me consequently at most a mere reasoning or gabbling idiot. It is one of those rich gratuitous gifts of my race-intelligence to me which are neces- sary to constitute my own intellect, or endow me consciously for my subsequent intellectual unity and fellowship with mankind. And to attribute to me therefore a shadow of ability to turn round upon it and scrutinize it with a view either to my private acceptance or rejection of it, is in my opinion flatly to deny my sheer intellectual dependence upon my race. Just so with this beneficent race-tradition of mira- cle : it quite antedates men's turbid scientific judg- ments of Divine things, and constitutes a revelation to their devout believing hearts of the truth of God's sole spiritual existence and activity in the realm of man's nature and history, long before their intellect is educated to discern it. In the infancy of the race, as in that of the individual, the heart in its worship- ATTITUDE TOWARDS MIRACLE. 113 ping innocency is far more impressible to the Divine presence in nature than the understanding ; and often as in the case before us accepts a truth which the slower and more timorous intellect takes centuries to interpret. Especially at that early day there was no such thing possible as a scientific judgment of the mind upon the pretension of Jesus Christ to constitute a final revelation of the creative name in humanity. Nor, if there had been, do I suppose that the great bulk of mankind would have been less obdurately indifferent to it, than they are to similar judgments in our own day. For, remember, that the pretension of Jesus Christ imported no such transparent quack- ery as a reform in men's moral relations : for a mere moral reform of mankind could not be effected of course save with the privity and concurrence of every one interested in the result : but was tantamount to the spiritual recreation or renewing of their common nature, and appealed therefore for its truth to the competency of no individual judgment, but to tlie verdict of the great race or nature itself, when its personality should be definitely constituted. Espe- cially was the gospel clear of tolerating, much more of inviting, any ratification at the hands of the philoso- pher, or the scientific man, or the religious man, «.s such, but at most it summoned to its ranks every bruised and tattered outcast of humanity, through 114 MY OWN INTELLECTUAL whose dilapidated private personality the great race- consciousness of mankind might vindicate its sole and sovereign truth. Thus these precious facts of revelation, whether they fall within the sphere of my understanding or my affections, quite transcend the grasp of my critical faculty, and impose themselves upon my heart as an unmixed good, which I am just as incapable of measuring in terms of the analytic intellect, or reducing to the contrast of the true and the false, as I am of demonstrating to a blind man the pleasure of a gorgeous sunset, or reasoning a man without a palate into the savor of sugar. Doubtless it is not important, dear friend, that every specific atom of the human race should in his own history vividly reflect this superiority of the sacred and tender heart to the comparatively com- monplace and misleading intellect; because the for- tunes of no individual mind are of much account in the development of our natural history. But it is vitally important to the race's integral evolution that this hierarchical supremacy of heart to head should be clearly acknowledged and maintained. For our race-evolution constitutes the distinctive and exclusive line of Divine revelation, and we, blind and selfish egotists that we are, should be little enlightened by a revelation that gave truth the supremacy of good in human life. Hence the value to the human mind ATTITUDE TOWARDS MIRACLE. 115 of the race's unreasoned traditions, for they alone through the utter darkness, and in a crude but effectual way, have kept alive the faith of men in God's unbroken spiritual providence and government. We at this late day, who have lost the interior or spiritual perception of Divine truth, cannot help to be sure cavilling at the credulity of earlier ages, and insisting for our own part that we shall believe only what is level to our senses. AYe have an unques- tionable Divine right thus to cheapen truth if we like ; but we must bear the inevitable penalty : which takes place in a like unquestionable cheapening or lowering of our faculty of spiritual insight. I for one am not aware of being able to exert the least voluntary or personal control over the things of my religious life. For religion above all things is what identifies me consciously with the life of my kind ; and I should accordingly feel it nothing short of sacrilege to attempt legislating for myself in a matter where the race alone was competent. Least of all should my scientific conscience empower me so to do ; for inasmuch as my scientific conscience is my sole legitimate citadel and armory of self-defence against unauthorized aggression, I can never have occasion to appeal to it against my race, whence alone comes all my intellectual nutriment and succor, but only against chance individual dogmatism and false pretension. 116 MY OWN mTELLECTUAL Understand me then : I do not care a fig whether any of the incidental facts or even the total scope of Divine revelation, be regarded as a literal verity or not. For if so they contravene no scientific fact, or fact of physical order, because they profess on their face to be facts of a spiritual or metaphysical order, and therefore leave every ordinary fact as well as the total course of nature uncontradicted and unimpaired. And if they are without literal truth they yet claim an infinitely higher — which is a living or spiritual — truth, affirmed by consciousness alone. They are a truth in other words of man's vital or associated consciousness, and science is entirely unqualified either to affirm or deny it. Science has no power to pene- trate the living consciousness of man ; because her observation invariably restricts itself to phenomena capable in the last resort of being sensibly appre- hended, or reporting themselves to other persons than the proper subject of them. Her activity is limited to the deceased or reflective consciousness, to con- sciousness considered as a spent force, in short, but leaving some footprints of its former life on the lower sands of sense. Unless therefore we are fully pre- pared to accept Comte's judgment of science, and look upon it not as an essentially servile sphere of the mind, which it is, but as the end or final cause of all its precedent stages of progress, we may dis- ATTITUDE TOWARDS MIRACLE. 117 miss it from oar further regard as having any legiti- mate title either to revise or reorganize our past historic evolution, or predict that which is still future. I doubt not there are as many foolish scientific men, in proportion to the whole number of the adherents of science, as there are foolish religious men. And we must expect all such accordingly, under the prompting of a silly ambition or covetousness, now and then to transgress their own territorial limits, and sit in presumptuous judgment on the concerns of their neighbors. Their religious neighbor at least has no call to complain of this, for he himself has long set the vicious example. But the one pretension is just as disorderly as the other, and I think that the better class of scientific men, who have no mercenary aims, are perfectly persuaded of this. But a truce to this polemic. Science has to do only with specific facts, or experiences of sense, ignor- ing universals or experiences of the mind ; and she has a perfect right therefore, indeed it is her proper business, to ontologize on a physical basis, or account for species upon rigid time and space principles. But existence is spiritual before it is material ; belongs to the mind before it comes down to the senses ; is uni- versal or dynamical before it is specific or fixed ; and Philosophy accordingly, which is the science of Man, and deals directly therefore only with mental expe- 118 INFIKMITY OF THE CKITICAL riences, has an equal and indeed prior right to take up these logical universals, these dynamics of the mind, and account for them on strictly metaphysical — that is to say, spiritual — principles. And now let us get back to our starting-point, which is the conception Swedenborg entertains of creation. But before proceeding directly to canvass his ideas upon that subject, and as apropos to the attitude of the purely scientific mind, I desire to quote you a few pages of criticism from his books, bearing on the great disadvantages which result to the intellect from wantonly rejecting the race-continuity, or violently disallowing the absoluteness of knowledge in its own sphere. " I will show you briefly," he says, " what the difference practically amounts to, between an inclina- tion to truth and an inclination to good. Those who are inclined to truth primarily stick in the letter of things, or inquire among themselves whether the thing affirmed really exist or not, and whether or not it exist thus and so; and only when they have aired their doubts sufficiently as to these preliminary mat- ters, are they prepared to take up and discuss the character of the actual thing itself. Thus they plant themselves obstinately upon the threshold of the tem- ple of wisdom, and refuse to enter in until all their habitual doubts have been dealt with and overcome. OR SCEPTICAL UNDERSTANDING. 119 " On the other hand those who are primarily well- afFected towards good, and have no regard for truth but as its minister or servant, have no perplexity in re- gard to the existence of things, but know and perceive them to exist not by virtue of their racionative intel- lect, but by virtue of the affirmative power of good in their heart; and thus they dwell not upon the threshold but in the inner chambers of the temple. Suppose some one to say for example that it is true wisdom to love your neighhor not for his own sake, but for the sake of the good manifest in him. Those who are in the first instance in the affection of truth, that is, in a critical or sceptical state of mind, begin at once to speculate whether or not the proposition be true, and then stop ; while those who are in an affirmative state of mind, as loving good first and truth subordinately, admit the proposition at once, and discern, by virtue of the good they are in, who is most truly the neighbor, and in what degree he is such, and that all men are neighbors in different de- grees. In fact these latter perceive ineffable things in truth, while the former admitting no higher inspi- ration than truth itself, discern comparatively nothing. So also in regard to this allied truth : that he who loves his neighbor for the good attaching to him, loves the Lord: they who value truth more than good speculate whether such be the actual fact of the case or not. 120 INFIRMITY OF THE CRITICAL And if they are told that it must be so, because he who loves good in the neighbor more than the neigh- bor himself, loves good itself (which good itself the Lord alone is) and therefore loves the Lord : they again begin to speculate whether it is really so, and what good is, and whether good he really more divine than truth, and all the rest of it ; and so long as they stick to such speculations, they do not catch even the most remote glimpse of wisdom.* " It is notorious that much of our disputative skill at this day goes no further than to put the existence of things in doubt. But as long as this habit con- tinues, and men are content to debate whether things be or not, and whether they he as alleged or not, it is impossible to make any progress in wisdom. For wisdom grows and thrives only upon the numberless particulars which are embraced in the thing whose existence is put in doubt ; and as long as this scep- ticism on the main point, or as to the certainty of knowledge, endures, all these particulars must remain unknown and inoperative. Our current erudition is almost wholly taken up in inquiring whether things exist or not, or whether they exist in such or such a manner, and the consequence is that it has no intelli- gence of truth. It is surprising how wise people of this sort conceive themselves to be in comparison with * Arcana Celestia, 2718. OR SCEPTICAL UNDERSTANDING. 121 others ; and how they measure their wisdom by their skill in argument, and especially by their ability to determine it to negative conclusions. But men of simple good hearts, whom these high-flyers despise, perceive at a glance, without debate or learned controversy, both the existence of the thing put in doubt, and also its quality. These unsophisticated people possess that common-sense perception of truth, which the former have extinguished in themselves by their inveterate habit of growing disputatious about the foundations of knowledge, or the existence of truth.* " I have sometimes spoken with angels about heav- enly dwelling-houses, and said to them that hardly any one upon earth believes that angels have need of such accommodation ; some because they have no sensible proof of the fact ; others because they do not know that angels are men ; others still because they believe that the angelic heaven is the visible vault overhead ; and inasmuch as this vault appears empty, and they suppose angels to be ethereal creatures, they conclude that angels live in the ether. Besides, as they are ignorant of everything spiritual, they have no conception how such things can exist in the spirit- ual world as exist in the natural. The angels replied that this Avas no news to them, but that it was never- * Arcana Celestia, 3428. 122 INFIRMITY OF THE CRITICAL theless matter of surprise to thein that such ignorance existed chiefly in the church, and rather among the intelligent than among those whom these latter call the simple. They replied moreover that if these ignorant churchmen would only take the testimony of the Scriptures they profess to follow on the sub- ject, they would see that angels were only human beings, and as such requiring houses ; and that al- though they are spiritual men they are not therefore mere ethereal forms as some people ignorantly and insanely suppose. They thought moreover that men would think of angels truly if they would, obey the dictate of common sense, which flows in from heaven and tells us that angels are human beings ; but the moment they put this inward impression in doubt, and take to speculating first tohether the fact reallf/ be so, they annihilate the influx which has no longer anything to fall into. This occurs among the learned mainly who by leaning unduly to their own under- standing, shut out heaven from themselves, and the approach of light thence. So also every one instinct- ively believes in immortal life, and when he does not think of the subject from what learned men have had to say about it, has no difficulty in believing ; but when he reverts to learned hypotheses concerning the soul and the doctrine of the body's reunion with it, and asks of himself whether immortal life he OR SCEPTICAL UNDERSTANDING. 123 really true or not, of course his instinctive belief is dissipated." * — I have cited these pregnant passages not so much for their own sake, as exemplifying the ex- quisite inwardness so to speak of Swedenborg's thought — the infinite delicacy and devoutness of mind which were habitual to him — as with a view to illustrate how profoundly dissident his intellectual method is with the whole scope of our modern scien- tific research. Happily for us the ontological ques- tions which occupy our current scientific speculation — questions as to whether " things are or are not," which result for the most part in a negative convic- tion, as that everything runs into everything else with such good-will that at bottom all things are identical, with only an evanescent individuality or difierence attaching to anything — did not occupy him, and we have consequently one positive intellect surviving — and long destined to survive, as I think — the craziest revolutions of our modern thought. The reason why these ontological temptations did not assail him, nor in any wise bewitch or bedevil his clear understand- ing, is that he viewed creation as exclusively a func- tion of the Divine life, and hence looked upon nature as a covert spiritual dynamics, or sheer involution of the spiritual world, not only requiring no being in * Be C(clo et Inferno, 183. 124 SWEDENBOEG AN OUT-AND-OUT REALIST. itself, but actually abjuring it as the right exclusively of a higher power. Thus he had no shred of a tendency to Idealism, but was a realist of the first water, a realist of absolutely no nuance whatever, hav- ing just as unfeigned a reverence for the senses in their sphere as for the soul in its sphere, and prac- tically therefore just as incapable of confounding the two spheres as any carman you may meet upon the street. LETTER XII. DEAR FRIEND : — Creation with Swedenborg is the alpha and the omega yHHH °^ Philosophy. But then be very sure to understand that the creation he thus re- gards as the fundamental postulate of philosophy is not the least a mechanical exhibition of Divine power, consisting in giving the creature finite or phenomenal existence, but, on the contrary, an altogether living or spiritual achievement, wherebi/ God communicates Him- self to the creature, in tJie j^lenitiide of His infinite and eternal being. He views creation as a spontaneous work of God, that is, a work of delight; because God, being infinite love — which means love without any drawback or limitation of 5c^-love — lives only by communicating Himself to whatsoever is not Himself. And men commonly, you know, conceive of creation as a voluntary work of God, effected in time and space, whereby He makes all things out of stark 126 CREATION A SPONTANEOUS WORK. nought, and which therefore He might, had it so pleased Him, have altogether forborne to accomplish. Svvedenborg then stamps this conception of creative power as utterly sensuous and puerile, inasmuch as space and time with all their contents possess no reality save to an infirm or imperfect intelligence. There never was a space, according to him, where creation w^as not, nor a time when it was not. In other words, space and time fall exclusively ivith'm the created intelligence, and constitute the broadest or most common form of the natural mind. There is no such thin^, that is, no such objective existence, as space or time, save to our sensuous judgment. AVe, by nature, are densely ignorant of the spiritual links that bind the universe of existence together, and our flickering reason, following the dictate of sense, sub- stitutes for these the obvious liaisons of space and time. Thus they are both of them mere terms of relation supplied by our infirm intelligence between the various objects of our senses, and the various events of history. They constitute a mental background, as I have said, the one to our perception of existence, the other to our perception of life ; the one being fundamental to our conception of things, the other to our conception of events. They neither of them have any positive force, space signifying nothing but the absence to our perception of limitation (or the finite). NATURE UNREAL AND IMPERSONAL. 127 and time the absence of eventuality (or the rela- tive).* But if space and time bear no semblance of reality to creative thought, and possess at best but a bare semblance of it even to man's spiritual intelligence, then of course we must expect Swedenborg to deny all reality to Nature, for nature is conditioned in space and time, being the sum total of the hmitations of the one and the vicissitudes of the other. And this is * In fact, they are negative -witnesses to the mind of the infinity and eternity which are alone competent to the explanation of existence. Space, whenever I affirm it, and in so far forth as it is affirmed, means, neither more nor less, the absence to my perception of sensible limita- tion, and time the absence of eventuality. Thus the space of a mile upon the earth's surface is an explicit denial within that interval of any limitation, and to that extent of course an implicit affirmation of the in- finitude which subtends all existence. And the time of an hour or a day or a year of the earth's history means the denial within that interval of any eventuality to my perception, and hence an affirmation by impli- cation of the eternity which subtends all our experience. In short, space, being the logical background of existence to our perception — being the necessary fidcrum or purchase which our intelligence exacts in order to its discernment of finite existence — must needs constitute a negative or inverse attestation to the essential infinitude which underlies all the phenomena of nature, simply because there is no logical negation of infinitude but sensible limitation. And time, being in like manner only the logical background of eventuality to our perception — being the necessary shadow exacted by our imperfect intelligence in order to its discernment of relative existence — is an inverse or negative remem- brancer of the essential eternity which underlies and animates all the phenomena of history. 128 NATURE UNREAL AND IMPERSONAL. what in truth he actually does. He systematically denies a natural creation, and limits the creative ac- tivity in nature to a purely redemptive significance and efficacy. Thus nature has no existence to Sweden- borg but what is conferred upon it by our most obscure and unveracious inteUigence in spiritual or Divine things. It is but the dense mask which the spiritual creation puts on to the sensuous intelligence, the under- standing limited and dominated by sense. There is no such entity or thing as natiu-e to the spiritual appre- hension ; for to that apprehension the mental generali- zation to which we give the name of nature and thence postulate as real, is merely a sign of our crude inade- quate thought, and implies nought beyond that. The various forms of our sensible experience, mineral, vegetable, and animal, exist to the spiritual intelli- gence much more vividly than to ours, but the mental attribution which we make of all these forms to some unitary or universal substance called Nature, it utterly refuses to make, because the only unitary or universal substance it recognizes as underlying nature's forms, is not nature but Man. In fact, our term Nature ex- presses only the indolent mental judgment which we in our ignorance of spiritual laws instinctively frame to account for the origin of existence. We have an intuitive apprehension of the generic or universal iden- tity which underlies and binds together the objects NATURE UNREAL AND IMPERSONAL. 129 of our senses, notwithstanding their specific diversity ; but we are intellectually incompetent to refer this identity to its true source, which is the human mind, and postulate for it meanwhile the supposititious sub- stance which we term Nature, and which means noth- ing more after all than the mental sum or aggregate of our impressions of space and time. Everything embraced in sense exists in a particular place and at a particular time, and by abstracting these particulars, or universalizing their contents, we fancy ourselves arrived at a most real or objective existence, instead of a purely apparitional or subjective one, and un- hesitatingly name it Nature, venerable mother of all living. We cannot, then, dear friend, too clearly make up our minds that Nature does not exist in herself, or absolutely, but only as an hallucination of our rudi- mentary intelligence. Divinely permitted, and indeed engineered, in the interest of our eventual spiritual sanity. What we call by the familiar name of Na- ture, and find our chief imaginative activity in personi- fying, is not so much as a thing even, but all simply a most strict process or functioning of the Divine love and wisdom towards our spiritual manhood. It is nothing more nor less than the living method which the creative energy adopts in order to spiritual pro- lification. Spiritual existence, you know, cannot be 130 IT IS A FUNCTIONING OF DIVINE LOVE directly propagated. The bare conception of such a thing is nugatory, since the existence so propagated would be without natural or conscious projection from its creative source; while the fundamental postulate of spiritual existence is that it be both conscious and spontaneous. But it can be propagated indirectly : i. e. by the ministry of what we call Nature ; for na- ture has a quasi existence or selfhood to oiu* intelli- gence, upon which the Divine may subsequently and to any extent mould His own more real and perfect communication. Omne vivum ex ovo. That is to say, there is no form possible to our apprehension without its appropriate substance; nothing exists to our understanding except from some previous ground of existence. No farmer expects next year's crop unless he sow this year's wheat. No man can become a father without the mediation of a wife. Could the father beget offspring, and the farmer produce a crop directly from themselves, the product in both cases would manifestly be visionary, since there could be no basis of discrimination in either case between prod- uct and producer. In like manner precisely the archi- tect of the spiritual creation accomplishes His work, not by the exhibition of magical or irrational power, not by any idle and pompous incantation addressed to empty air, but solely by the inward fecundation of natural germs existing in our sensuous intelligence, and TOWARDS OUR SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 131 the consequent development of a spiritual progeny every way commensurate with His own perfection. • — Anyhow, right or wrong, the fact is precisely what I have stated: Swedenborg makes nature the realm of uncreation : and by that unexpected word sends a breath of health to the deepest heart of hell. It is what neither is nor exists in itself, but only seems to be and exist to a subject intelligence. But its use as such seeming is incomparably great. For it edu- cates the mind, by giving a logical background to existence, or enabling the creature to distinguish what is real or generic in things from what is merely phe- nomenal and specific, so furnishing a basis for the sub- sequent development of his spiritual intelligence, or his living perception of the Divine name. Thus in Swedenborg's doctrine of creation natm*e plays the precise part which " nothing " is made to play in the ordinary theory. For, as I have said, creation is vul- garly conceived to be a strictly magical * or irrational * Magic is the power of instantaneous creation : the art of produ- cing things irrationally, or without the use of means, thus by sheer force of will, and without any aid of the understanding. It is the pretension to produce offspring without maternity, form without sub- stance, soul without body, spirit without flesh, life without existence. So that if God should create spiritual existence, as we commonly sup- pose Him to have done — i. e. directly or without nature's interven- tion — not only would He confess Himself a mere flashy showman or conjurer, but the existence so created would turn out a monstrous im- 132 THE EDUCATIVE USE procedure of God, whereby He evokes all things out of nothing. The common people hold so unscrupu- lously to this idea, that persons among them of very good intelligence have no doubt that the magic which creates might again, if it pleased, reduce what is cre- ated to its primeval " nothing "-ness. Now it is easy to see the part which " nothing " is made to play in this popular hypothesis of creation. It serves precisely to emphasize or underscore existence, to give it that posture utterly devoid of rational depth or character: for manifestly the stream cannot transcend its source, and if the creator be a charla- tan, the creature must a fortiori be a deception. Our theologies, of course, intend no dishonor to the creative name but the contrary when they represent the spiritual creation as devoid of natural substance, or as being the instantaneous product of God's unlimited wiQ. But nev- ertheless magical or irrational power is the only power they implicitly ascribe to God's perfection. I know of no pvdpit wliicli does not habitu- ally interpret the Divine omnipotence into a faculty of unlimited hocus focus, or irrational and immediate creation from Himself: thus into a power of purely arbitrary or capricious — which is essentially mad — action; a power of doing as he wiUs, without regard either to the be- neficent ends His infinite love conceives in endowing his creatures with life, or to the exquisite means His infinite wisdom provides in order to carry those ends out. They thus in effect make God's glory to lie in His really being what every low juggler in the land only makes believe to be, namely : a maker of something out of nothing ; and hence they fix their votaries in an attitude of such insincere worship towards the most High, as to vindicate even to a cursory intelligence the foresight of Christ, when he predicted that the professional rehgion of his own nominal followers would prove the chief obstacle to liis second or spiritual advent. OF OUR NATURAL EXPERIENCE. 133 logical relief, background, or mother-substance which it needs in order to be recognized by oiu* intelligence, and which in Swedenborg's more philosophic view is supplied by nature. Thus the popular mind cuts itself off from any just insight into the philosophy of creation, because it holds to nature as created, and consequently is obliged to resort to " nothing," or non-existence, as the only conceivable mother-substance out of which it could be fashioned. To show the fallacy of the church cosmogony, accordingly, nothing more is needed than to deny its fundamental principle, which is, the existence of " nothing," or the reality of non- existence. Nothing does not exist in rerum naturd. Things and persons, or objective and subjective ex- istences, divide the entire realm of nature between them ; and to claim that " nothing " exists, neverthe- less, in some preposterous Umbo bei/ond the realm of nature, and constitutes that unthinkable substance out of which nature was educed, is a denial of the spiritual world, and convicts the claimant of gross philosophic fatuity. For if " nothing " exists beyond nature, spirit or life has no existence. In fact " nothing," in this depraved cosmologic sense of it, is a term invented to cover or eke o^^t men's infirm conception of being. Men conceive of being not as inwardly or logically — but as outwardly or ontologically — generated ; that is 134 GENESIS OF THIS ABSURD to say, as constituted or made up of mere existence in space and time. The tree before my window appar- ently exists in space and time, and this appearance is enough to give the tree being to the popular imagina- nation. Cut the tree down accordingly, and you have a corresponding dearth of being, which men express by saying that " nothing " really exists in the tree's place. In short, they regard specific existence as the presence of being, and specific non-existence as the absence of it ; and hence, as I have already said, they regard being as ontologically constituted, that is, as made up of existence in time and space. Whereas the very most you are entitled to say in the premises is, that being is apparently manifested by existence, and manifested, moreover, to a style of intelligence which is entirely unacquainted with what being is in truth. Your image in a looking-glass is an apparent mani- festation of your existence, or even of your being as thus ontologically conceived : but surely you would never allow that your being or your existence was in any way constituted by such appearance. To the ordinary apprehension the creator is d^ per- son, and exists, as a person necessarily must exist, in space and time ; and creation to the same apprehen- sion is a thing, also existing or projected from Him in space and time, but involving infinitely less than He does of these ontological elements. The creature of COSMOLOGICAL "NOTHING." 135 Divine power is doubtless popularly held to be in- finitely inferior to the creator in other respects also, as in love, in wisdom, and in power ; but the difference between them which dominates every other is this brutal personal difference, arising from the assumed infinitude of the one in time and space, and the obvious finiteness of the other in those regards. It is this low carnal estimate of the creative truth which turns all our sectarian theology into rank intellectual poison, and renders it exquisitely nauseous to every heart and mind at all emancipated from sense. It takes for granted that the creature is his own spiritual or real being as well as his own natural or phenome- nal form, and hence exhibits the creator, who is thus excluded from any internal relation to the creature, as restricted to a purely external activity towards him, or an interference with his freedom so very w^anton and malignant as ends by filling the world with every sinister apprehension of the Divine name. It is the same superstitious conception of creation which is em- bodied in the letter of revelation. Swedenborg no doubt justifies it in its own place, that is, in accommo- dation to the early or uninstructed scientific intelli- gence of the race, while as yet the sciences of obser- vation had not come to fill that intelligence out, or give it body, by interpreting Nature into Man. He regards it both as in itself a very gross and misleading 136 CREATION AS A LETTER effigy of the creative idea, and at the same time prac- tically as an altogether invaluable one, because it was so eminently fitted to be lodged in the servile memory or devout imagination of the race, until such time as men's intelligence should have become quickened to discern the living and spiritual truth of the case. Thus it all the while bears to his imagination, in this crude literal form, just as inverse a resemblance to the eternal truth of things, as an egg bears to the chicken which is eventually to be hatched from it, or as the squalid sand of the sea bears to the gorgeous temples and palaces of living art which are yet to be wrought from its dismal wastes. We see, then, dear friend, that in Swedenborg's view, no intellectual interest attaches to the creative problem in so far as it is scientijic merely, or contem- plates creation itself not as a spiritual, living, or re- generate result exclusively, but only as a quasi-\\ymg, natural, or generate one. A universe of animals might furnish an agreeable spectacle to the human intelli- gence, and even awaken in it admiration of the crea- tive power ; only there w^ould be then no human in- telligence present, no intelligence capable of enjoying the spectacle, or recognizing the power displayed in it to be Divine. The human intellect is not bred of any observation of the order of nature, or capacity of adaptation between it and the mind ; it is originally AN IMMENSE FALLACY. 137 quickened and born of man's adoring heart, or of his perception that nature manifests a power superior to itself to which all his moral and rational allegiance is due. And this power he recognizes as Divine only because it is miraculous, that is, able to originate a free or spontaneous style of life capable of immortal fellowship with Himself. The highest and best in- tellect of man grows out of his worshipful heart ; and his heart's worship, whenever real, is energized by the conviction that God's perfection is most distinc- tively human, or without personal ends; in other words, that God is great enough in absolutely reject- ing every man's personal or interested homage, to care solely and above all things for every man's spir- itual or living sympathy and fellowship. With these hints you will not be likely to do in- justice to Swedenborg's comprehensive treatment of creation in shutting it up to the sphere of conscious- ness. I have tried to bring out the motherly char- acter of his teaching, the incomparably tender and succulent aspect which it bears to the guileless, unmercenary heart of man. The difference, in fact, between his teaching and that of all our laborious philosophic journeymen from Descartes down to the modern scientific school of thought, is the differ- ence between mother's milk and a Strasburg pate : the former teaching being addressed exclusively to 138 CREATION HAS NO LOCUS IN QUO the needs of a nascent and most tender spiritual intel- ligence in man, the latter to the wants of a debauched and worn-out intellectual digestion, living only upon stimulants. Swedenborg's primary demand upon his reader is a heart attuned to goodness ; and he leaves what subsequent truth he reports to his intellect fearlessly and without argument to the heart's sole arbitrament. And every man who sincerely loves the neighbor, or whose zeal for the human race is at least equal to the zeal he is in the habit of expending on his own account, is bound eventually to stumble on "his unostentatious books, and reap the abundant stores of nutriment there and nowhere else pro- vided for the intellect. Swedenborg never betrays by any chance the least of an intellectual self-conscious- ness, and yet, if intellectual power is to be measured by the measure of truth possessed, it would seem un- affectedly ludicrous, to any one acquainted with his writings, that any other person in the intellectual history of the race should " be named," as they say, "in the same day with him." For even the Divine creation itself, being a spiritual or living truth, is not the least with him an outward or objective event, but falls with all its miraculous machinery of space and time, or all the vaunted life of nature, so-called, clea7i within the compass of the human understoMding ; and is a truth therefore of our growing human consciousness BUT THE HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS. 139 exclusively, coming home to the business and bosoms of the race as no other truth begins to do. For what in brief is creation spiritually pronounced? // is ihe evolution of mans nature in exact harmony itith the Divine perfection, or its plenary redemjMon out of selfish into social form and order. It does not contem- plate, save by implication, either our unconscious physical genesis, or om* conscious moral exodus, but addresses itself directly and exclusively to the spiritual- ization of our nature. // is life eternal to knoiv God ; and hence creation in any wise estimation can only mean the purification of our natural knowledge, the exaltation of our flesh-and-blood consciousness, until it compasses infinitude. It can only mean, in other words, giving the creature universal spiritual or social form, never particular moral or physical substance. The creator, of course, takes these lower things for granted : physical substance being implied in moral form, and moral substance in social or spiritual form, just as the foundation of the house is implied in the house, or earth in heaven, effect in cause, stream in fountain. So Swedenborg shows all lower things to be involved in higher, physical in moral, and moral in spiritual, existence, but never confounds the two. By thus planting the creative problem on higher ground than it has ever before occupied, or carrying it back to the infinite heart of God, he has anticipated every 140 ITS SOLE AND TOTAL METHOD : REDEMPTION. really intellectual obstacle to the acknowledgment of creation : since these obstacles all pivot upon the diffi- culty of accounting for finite existence, or reconcil- ing the creature's identity with the infinitude of the creator. ^^Bnopsp p^Pflnnna ifnn H^SMt^^ ^^SJaft^^.. ^^^v^^^i^MW^^ r ~MB!HBBm\ ^2r^ ■^^'^^'^^^^ ^^4 ^tSp^.A ^SiSIa^Ss ^3'^^s wS HBi^J3 gfe-^^gS £^9 H LETTER XIII. T DEAR FRIEND: — It is popularly conceived that the world is administered on positive and not on negative princi- ples ; in an active and not in a passive manner; in a way for example to promote tlie ease, honor, and emolument of the administrator, and not to cause him shame, confusion, and anguish. The Creator is universally supposed to occupy a position of the grossest sensible objectivity to the creature, a position fruitful on occasion of the greatest conceiv- able tyranny and oppression ; and the creature a posi- tion of the subtlest spiritual subjectivity to tlie Cre- ator, a position susceptible on occasion of the greatest conceivable dread, horror, and aversion. Now this reputed relation between God and man in the first instance, and man and God in the second, is in the point of view of Philosophy an immense illusion ; because Philosophy identifies the subjcctiv^e element in the creative equation exclusively with the 142 GOD THE SOLE SUBJECT IN CREATION, Creator, and the objective element exclusively with the creature. That is to say: Philosophy regards creation not as a material or mechanical, but as a purely spiritual or living operation of God in the created nature ; and hence cannot help looking upon the Creator alone as the proper subject of the opera- tion, and upon the creature alone as its proper object. For creation, being spiritual or living, consists, first, in a communication on the Creator's part of His own life or being to the creature \ and evidently this com- munication stamps the Creator as essentially subjec- tive to His creature, that is, essentially passive or suffering in his behalf; and, seco7idli/, in a reaction or receptivity on the creature's part to such commu- nication : and this reaction or receptivity evidently stamps the creatm-e as essentially objective to the Creator; that is, essentially active or joyous. In other words creation spiritually regarded makes the Creator the sole and total subjective life of the crea- ture, and the creature in his turn the sole and total objective hfe of the Creator. The vulgar misconcep- tion of it, accordingly, by which man is made God's submissive subject, and God is made man's control- ling object, is grossly illusory to Philosophy; but it is an illusion, nevertheless, which is strictly incidental to the creature's unripe intelligence, and hence claims above all things to be understood, not denounced. MAN THE SOLE OBJECT. 143 It is logically in fact the very essence of the cre- ative idea, that creation is practically a marriage of Creator and creature, v^^hereby the creature alone spir- itually is, or becomes infinited in the Creator, while the Creator alone naturally exists, or becomes finite, in the creature : so that the creature has at most only a seeming or phenomenal existence in Mmself, even while he has at the same time a most real or abso- lute and unqualified being in his Creator. It is true enough no doubt that the creature — through his bottomless ignorance on one hand of the truth that creation is a purely spiritual work of God in the created nature, and through his bottomless conceit on the other that it is an altogether shabby natural work of God effected in the creature's petty self — egregiously misinterprets this fundamental logic, or attributes to himself and not to the Creator his natu- ral or finite personality, while he remains persistently blind and deaf to the spiritual and infinite being he and all his kind have in God. But the spiritual truth of the case is not a whit inwardly altered or even prejudiced by this mistake ; it is only outwardly obscured or deadened. What alone happens is that the spiritual or creative truth is obliged to lower itself to the creature's sensuous and grovelling imagi- nation, by masking itself in moral lineaments, or taking the creature at his own stupid estimate of j^44 ciieatio:n only a philosophic name himself, and addi'essing liim as if lie were in truth his own natural substance, and God himself conse- quently his mere outward and moral or regulative law. And this is literally all that happens. Crea- tion becomes converted in men's infirm understand- ing from a spiritual, or infinite and eternal, Divine life in the unconsciom nature of the creature, which has therefore strictly public or universal issues in humanity, into a mere legal or moral administration of Divine power in the conscious jjerson of the crea- ture, having at best therefore strictly private or par- ticular issues. Let creation, then, in the sole and exclusive spir- itual truth of the word, remain perfectly intact, dear friend, to our particular faith, whether all the world say us nay or yea. Let it be to us both forever nothing else than an inmost and inseparable life of God within the strictest limits of our nature, where- by that nature — gladly responsive to such an un- precedented subject ! — becomes freely redeemed out of its otherwise inveterate personal or selfish linea- ments, into the imperishable image and likeness of God most High, that is, into grandly social form and order. Neither you nor I have ever had, have now, or ever shall have, any particle of just or ra- tional hope towards God which is based either upon any possible personal difference in us to other FOR OUR NATURAL REDESIPTION. '145 men, or any possible personal difference in us to ourselves in past time, but solely and wholly upon His own reconciling spirit or temper in universal man, whereby we and all men become gradually softened and refined out of our natural egotism and savagery, by being lifted out of our petty egotistic moral consciousness, and becoming gradually in- vested with social or race-consciousness. This is what creation, spiritually regarded, means, and all it means, not any stupid and brutal event in space and time, transcending human nature and antedat- ing human history, but a most real and authentic life of God identical with human nature and con- substantiate with human history : beginning with that history, animating all its movements, keeping steadfast pace with it through all its marvellous vicis- situdes and revolutions, and bringing it at length to its grand triumphant climax in the coming splen- dors of the mystical city of God. Thus our spirit- ual creation is only the truer or philosophic name for our distinctively natural redemption : since nothing short of this redemptive work can establish the Divine claim to be a universal creator. I know, for my own part at least, very well, that it must prove a " scandal " to our imitative modern Juda- ism, and " foolishness " to our simulated modern Hellenism, but I cannot help saying all the same, 146 WHAT DO WE MEAN )ior rejoicing as I say it, that I look upon the fast- approaching close of our corrupt civilization in the New Jerusalem — which is the Gospel symbol for the evolution of a free society, fellowship, or equal- ity of all men with each and each with all on earth and in heaven — as the veritable apotheosis of our nature, since it will reveal and vindicate to eternal years, not the truth of God's spiritual or essential manhood, for that has been long acknowledged, but to us the infinitely more momentous because infi- nitely more prolific, truth of His natural or ad- ventitious manhood : a manhood forced upon Him, so to speak, in the interest of the strictly universal — which are the lowest corporeal and sensual — needs of His creature. But what precisely do we mean by the created nature ? " Nature," then, when used abstractly means the realm of the undefined or relative in knowledge ; means that vast potentiality of existence which per- petually allures and at the same time baffles the grasp of science, inasmuch as it is always becom- ing, yet never is definitively known. It signifies what is generic, impersonal, or universal in exist- ence, in contradistinction to what is specific, personal, or particular. It is not of course what creates, that is, gives invisible being or substance to things ; but BY THE TERM NATURE? 147 only what constitutes them, that is, gives them vis- ible form or existence. It is tlie maternal principle in existence, thus what produces all things or gives them body, in opposition to the paternal principle which begets them, or gives them soul. In short, Nature is what all men instinctively believe in, yet what no man has ever had sensible contact with. We cannot help believing in it, because we see it revealed as we think in its endlessly varied phe- nomena or productions ; but we have and can have no direct acquaintance with it, because it is not the least a fact of sense, but at most a probable truth of science. From the necessity of the case, or in the interest of science itself, it must always remain a merely probable — that is, a strictly imdemonstrated — truth : for if Nature, or the universe of om' sci- entific faith, could once be grasped by observation, and so be forced to confess itself Thing instead of Thought, science would ipso facto lose her whole intellectual capital, would forfeit in fact her sole raison d'etre, and be obliged to tumble inconti- nently back into the arms of sense. To be sure we talk very glibly of " the laws of Nature " ; and where " laws " are of recognized obligation, it should be presumable at least that the lawgiver is very distinctly known. But these so-called " laws of na- ture " are laws of human thought exclusively, and 148 NATURE A STRICTLY SUBJECTIVE, laws of nature only in so far as nature itself is taken for a symbol of the mind. That is to say, they are only so many scientific generalizations on our part based upon sensible observation, whereby the mind moved by a profound instinct of its spir- itual origin and destiny, seeJcs unconsciously to uni- versalize itself, and so wrest from "Nature" the provisional or educative and superstitious homage it has so long enjoyed. Nature in short, thus abstractly viewed, is the only purely subjective existence we are acquainted with, inasmuch as it never falls under the cognizance of our senses, but invariably posits itself as the attri- bute of a subject, and utterly refuses to be cogi- tated apart from such subjectivity. It is true that some one may object to regarding nature as this strictly subjective or metaphysical quantity, on the ground that we are in the habit of applying the term to the external world, which is made up of sensibly objective existences. But it is a sufficient answer to this objection to say that we always apply the term to the world as a whole, or by way of discriminating what is generic or universal in the sphere of sense, even, from what is specific or particular ; and universals claim no physical but a purely logical or metaphysic subsistence. The world or universe is not a thing of sense, but a pure OR METAPHYSICAL EXISTEXCE. 149 thought of the mmd ; and when we designate it accordingly by the name of nature, the effect is not to degrade nature into a physical substance, but to elevate the world itself, regarded as a universe or whole, into a metaphysic substance. Whatsoever exists to sense is practically or at bottom nothing else than a concrete or specific form of the logical or metaphysic not-me ; and outward nature, conse- quently, regarded as the universal term in which alone all our sense perceptions are supposed to co- here, is in its turn but the abstract or generic form of this negative judgment on our part. Then too it ought to be noted, in reply to the objection just made, that when the word Nature is applied to the external world, or the phenomena of sense, it is used just as much to signify the field of the subjective and relative which we find there : only the relations existing between minerals, plants, and animals are onhcard or objective relations exclu- sively, which are wholly unknown to and unperceived by the minerals, plants, and animals themselves, and which consequently presuppose and address our com- manding subjectivity alone. The animal for exam- ple has no science of the relations of agreement or difference which bind him to his own and other species, although he instinctively obeys them doubt- less ; for they exist only to another eye than his 150 CONCRETE USES OF THE WORD. own. And all that the observant eye of our science cares to signalize in these relations is that they characterize the animal nature apart from any vis- ible or objective subject of it. All the concrete uses of the word betray the same universalizing or undefining scope and ten- dency. What we call the nature of a horse, of a dog, of a bull, is not what belongs primarily to any particular animal so-named, but to the entire horse, dog, or bull species or kind ; although the particular animals in question may be at the same time exceptionably favorable specimens of their race. And so throughout the whole compass of the word's concrete application : the nature of a particular min- eral, vegetable, or animal, is in every case strictly what universalizes, or equalizes, or identifies it with its species or kind, and so far forth of course in- dividualizes it from all other kinds. But it confers no private individuality upon it, that is, no spirit- ual or subjective discrimination with its own kind. We say to be sure that one man has a good nature, and another an evil nature : meaning by that phrase, that the one is sensitive and the other indifferent to his legal obligations. But all we are really en- titled to say in the premises is, not that the men are of a different nature, but that human nature itself is of so universal a range or quality as to CONCRETE USES OF THE WORD. 151 embrace a relatively high and a relatively low ele- ment, or exhibit in itself the sheer neutrality, in- difference, or equilibrium of good and evil : so that any particular subject of it may be morally good, and any other particular subject morally evil, with- out the slightest strain or compromise, on either side, of their common nature For human nature is distinctively social in form, being the unity of self- love and neighborly love — thus of what is widest or most universal in affection and thought, and what is narrowest or most particular — and the morally good man accordingly is one in whom the higher element practically rules, while the morally evil man is one in whom that element is made practically to serve. In short they are men of a strictly identical nature, and their moral divergence is due to the fact that until human nature shall have attained to its destined sabbath in the permanent social evolu- tion of the race, the greatest possible antagonism, consistent with providential order, must necessarily prevail between its, component factors — to the ex- tent even of organizing the entire spiritual world into the divided spheres of heaven and hell. Understand then, dear friend, that there is no such thing, or congeries of things, as what we call nature, or universal existence. All real existence is specific or particular, so that natural, generic, or universal 152 NATURE REALIZABLE TO TPIOUGHT, existence is never physical but metaphysical, discern- ible therefore not by sense, but exclusively by life or consciousness. It is realizable to thought, but not to sight, and herein differs from specific existence which is realizable to sight, but not to thought. The earth really exists in space, and plant and animal really exist upon it clothing it vv^ith life and beauty. But strive as we may, we cannot tliinlc these existences ; cannot for the life of us think either earth or plant or animal ; and for the very good reason that they all of them anticipate and supersede thought, being already given to us in sense. We can recall them to mem- ory whenever we list ; but we cannot possibly think them as we think God and man, or goodness and truth, grace and beauty, holiness and peace, justice and mercy, simply because they rigidly forestall our intelligence, or what is the same thing, because un- like spiritual existence they have no inward or living but a purely outward and sensible objectivity to us. It is no way true of course to say that the objects of sense into which we are born, spiritually create our intelligence or give it soul ; but it is perfectly true to say that they materially comtitute it, or give it body, cradhng and nursing it indeed upon the chaste breasts of their maternity, until such time as it is fit to be weaned from sense, and fed upon truth alone. But we do unquestionably think nature or universal BUT NOT TO SENSE. 153 existence, and can do no more than tldnk it ; because it is not the least given us in sense, but is on the contrary a most strict projection of the spiritual world, or the associated human mind, upon our pri- vate and personal thought. We do not see nature or the universe ; neither do we hear it, nor smell it, nor taste it, nor touch it. And being thus wholly inac- cessible to our senses, it can never fall within the conditions of our memory even ; for we can remem- ber nothing and imagine nothing which is wliolly divorced from sense. But we think nature or uni- versal existence day and night; and we think noth- ing else. Our living intellect — which is heart and mind in actual unison — broods upon it, feeds upon it, waxes fat upon it, vehemently denies itself at last either anchorage or sustenance apart from it. We love and cherish it, we confide in it, we adore it, we aspire to it, we associate our eternal fortunes with it — do everything in short but pretend outwardly or sensibly to know it. But what we want just now is to discover the exact intellectual significance of human nature, that we may be able to assign its due philosophic weight and function in the evolution of the spiritual creation. Let us accordingly address ourselves forthwith to this latter interest. As by the nature of a thing we always mean to 154 HUMAN NATURE IS THE SPHERE express what to the eye of science gives the thing objective relation with other things, so too. by human nature we mean to express the sphere exclusively of the relative in human life, only the relations which connect man with man are not such as can be scien- tifically discerned. They are not, like the other, ex- ternal relations which address the sense; they are internal relations, which appeal for their truth only to consciousness. This establishes a great discrep- ancy between human and brute life. The relations which exist between man and man, and which reflect their characteristically human nature, are not, like those of the animal, outward and organic. Man to be sure has these outward and organic relations also to his fellow-man, but it is only in so far as he is yet undivorced from animal, or uneducated into man. The relations which bind the partakers of human nature together, as such, are intensely living and con- scious, or inward and aesthetic, instead of outward and organic. They are relations, not of appetite and passion, controlled by necessity and duty, but of taste or attraction, governed exclusively by the freedom or spontaneity of the parties ; and consequently, as the saying is, they never leave any bad taste in the mouth behind them. The contrary is well known to be the case when men identify themselves with the animal nature, and cherish its lower delights : for in OF MAN'S SUBJECTIVE EELATIONS. 155 SO doing they only reap disgust, degradation, and frequent despair. This sharp discrepancy of the hu- man nature with the brute nature is owing of course to the truth of the spiritual creation, and is one of its most constant attestations. Man's nature, M^hatever the splendors of Divine power incident to it, is after all nothing but a vehicle of transcendent spiritual blessing to the man himself; whereas the brute na- ture knows no such spiritual subserviency. And when accordingly the subject of the higher nature persistently identifies himself with the lower, he is sure to find in his way every sharp regret and bitter humiliation which may tend to frighten him back into his place. Otherwise he would be like a noble house ruined by bad drainage. And now, dear friend, I think you and I have attained to a pretty definite notion of what consti- tutes human nature. Human nature is the field exclusively of man's subjective relations to his kind, and constitutes therefore the realm of identify among men, the realm in which all men, whatever may be their individual or spiritual diff'erences to their own eye, are one and undistinguishable to God. And being such it is the appanage or attribute of course of a conscious or living subject, whose existence it therefore presupposes, just as the work of a statuary presupposes the existence of the marble. I say of 156 IT HAS NO EXISTENCE BUT course, for this field of relatioiisliip between man and man, being intensely subjective, that is, free, sponta- neous, inorganic, living, never falls by any chance within sense, like the relations of the animal, but ex- clusively within consciousness. It is the whole virtue and efficacy of sense to antagonize one thing with another, to concentrate and inflame points of dis- cord and difference between things. And if men accordingly w^ere not endowed with, a deeper Hfe than that of sense, namely, consciousness : or the faculty of discerning the free or subjective unity which exists among them, in spite of their super- ficial or obvious and outward personal disjunction : they would always have remained the inveterate animals they were aboriginally born, nor ever have dreamt consequently of the infinite possibilities w^hich had been squandered in their own ineffectual hu- man form. Understand then, dear friend, that human nature has no existence in se, but is invariably the attri- bute of a conscious subject, whose existence is pre- supposed by it. It is almost superfluous to say that this natural subject must be an exclusively conscious subject, because human nature has two constitutive and extremely different elements, a finite and an infinite one, or a creator and creature, and these two can coexist only in the integral unity of AS THE ATTRIBUTE OF A SUBJECT. 157 consciousness. But this much cannot be too em- phatically said, namely : the natural subject cannot be a mere personal subject, cannot be what we are apt to call a mere individual subject, because in that case he would practically exclude the race-element. You yourself know quite as well as I do, that your own and my style of personal* subjectivity is much too finite to do any sort of justice to the generic quality of our manhood, or wjiat especially stamps it natural: our personalities are so far from doing our nature justice in fact, that they leave it, in our own spiritual estimation at least, an every way futile, petty, egotistic, ignominious thing. And what is spiritually true of our natural subjectivities is true no doubt of all the world's. Accordingly, the only adequate exponent of human nature must be able to interiorate his object to himself, and not, like us, merely exteriorate it. He must be a man broad enough in other words to embrace his nature, and spiritually reproduce it in his own subjectivity. In short, he must be both universal and individual, both generic and specific, both natural and spiritual, or comprehend within his own undefined and equa- torial personality, both poles of the nature he claims to make his own — infinite and finite, Divine and human : or else incontinently avouch himself an un- worthy exponent and illustration of the nature. 158 HUMANITY NOT A MATERIAL FACT, But I must bring this long letter to a close. It is evident then from what has gone before, that — pace Messrs. Darwin and Spencer — man's natural genesis is not at all physical, but on the contrary strictly metaphysical, involving as it does his trans- formation or development out of a selfish being into a social one. For humanity is not a material fact discernible to the outward eye ; it is a spiritual truth, discernible solely to the inward eye, an eye rendered clear by love. It is a society, not a herd of men, and claims a distinctly qualitative not a quantitative unity. On his animal side man is doubt- less physical enough, his origin connecting him not only with the animal tribes, but with the vegetable- and mineral kingdoms as well. But when w^e speak of human nature, we speak of, what logically be- longs to man alone, and therefore disconnects him with all lower existence. This metaphysical nature of ours involves physics as its necessary basis of manifestation, just as the house involves its founda- tion, the tree its bark, the gem its matrix. For the house which towers to heaven to lay permanent hold upon sun and air, descends first into the bowels of the earth to compel the damp and darkness of the latter sphere into its own higher vassalage. So pre- cisely our natural evolution, which serves as a matrix for our subsequent spiritual or individual conjunction BUT A SPIRITUAL TEUTH. 159 with infinite goodness and truth, famiharizes us first with the death and hell latent in ourselves, latent in our finite or personal consciousness, in order to reduce them ever after to its eternal subserviency. Man's spiritual destiny is so sublime, it is so vivi- fied and empowered by the intimate Divine fellow- ship, as to call for this preliminary wealth of mineral, vegetable, and animal existence, in order to furnish him the alphabet of s^^-knowledge, and in that knowledge the sure pledge and guarantee of his ultimate free or spiritual acknowledgment of God. A finite consciousness can only recognize good by the previous contrast of evil, truth by the previous contrast of error ; so man by the experience of the wretched death-in-life wrapped up in his proper person, learns truly to know and heartily to aspire to the only real and true life. It is the only rational and satisfactory explanation of our moral experience to look upon physics as this necessary involution of our natural evolution : our moral ex- perience being given us only to signalize the tran- sition — only to bridge the interval, and make the passage practicable — between our finite organic or physical persons, and our undefined, inorganic, im- personal, metaphysic nature : which it does by re- leasing us from the bondage of animal instinct, and opening our interiors to spiritual Divine influx. ICO HUMAN NATURE THE LIVING XINK Such I do not hesitate to say is the literally awful grandeur of human nature, as being the sole link or liaison between creator and creature, between the infinitude of God and the finiteness of man ! And such the so long inscrutable secret of its incompres- sibility into any merely organic or finite physical dimensions ! It involves — lodged or masked in our vicious, obdurate personalities — a fossil infinitude or chronic Divine element, and insists upon this ele- ment being fairly reckoned with or put into fluid diffusible form, before it will permit the least right- eous judgment of itself to be formulated. And there is no nature properly speaking but human nature. There is any amount of specific mineral, vegetable, and animal form, but there is no nature correspond- ing to it, because there is no universal mineral, vege- table, and animal substance except man, and his na- ture infinitely transcends their wants. His nature is not theirs, any more than their form is his. The former contingency is gainsaid by the circumstance that his nature is a universal one while theirs is partial ; and the latter by the circumstance that their form is spe- cific or gregarious, while his is strictly individual. Every man claims to be estifnated by himself alone, every animal by its species. Thus there is a univer- sal human substance called selfhood, not a material substance, not an organic substance, but a strictly BETWEEN GOD AND MAN. 161 immaterial or inorganic one confined to consciousness, and hence incapable of scientific scrutiny. And hu- man nature consequently is alone entitled to the des- ignation of Nature, and to absorb in itself, as so many subject provinces merely, mineral, vegetable, and animal existence. I do not in the least mean to deny of course that besides this generic diff'erence which I exhibit to all lower existence, and which puts an eternal gulf between us, I also exhibit many specific resemblances to it : being innocent with the dove, subtle with the serpent, gentle with the lamb, fierce with the tiger; and so forth. These are not generic traits of humanity, but only and at most spe- cific traits, characterizing us not as homines, but as viri : not as we stand substantially knit together, all and each, each and all, in one immortal bond of unity called society, but only as we stand superficially differenced each from every other in our petty selves, and so become distributed by an adorable providential wisdom into two great classes of men — respectively celestial and infernal — in which the finiting or spe- cific principle, the principle of endless variation and conflict, and the infiniting or generic principle, the principle of permanent unity and peace, are severally represented or embodied, and held in enforced mu- tual equilibrium. The adorable use of this arrangement in the Divine 1G2 OUR SELFHOOD INEXPLICABLE WITHOUT economy above adverted to, is our natural or race- development. For the race of man, or human nature, is not the least numerically or materially constituted, is not, as we are apt to conceive it, the mere un- couth lumping or hideous agglomeration of our acrid, frivolous, and uncompromising selves. It is on the contrary altogether qualitatively or spiritually consti- tuted, being an exquisite Divine distillation of our foul and perishable natural selfhood, and a subse- quent sublimation or rectification of it into an ineffa- ble unitary form and order called society. For obvi- ously if selfhood be the mere adventitious base out of which human nature or the race-consciousness of man becomes divinely fashioned, it can have no show of pretension to enter into the finished superstructure itself, save at most as coloring matter, or perpetually vanishing reminiscence. Thus there is no way open to us philosophically of accounting for selfhood in the human bosom, save upon the postulate of its being the mask of an infinite sjnritual substance now imprisoned, but eventually to be set free, in our nature : a substance whose proper energy consists in its incessantly going out of itself, or communicating itself to what is not itself, to what indeed is infinitely alien and repugnant to itself, and dwelling there infinitely and eternally as in its very self. That is to say, the Divine being or substance THE CREATOR'S NATURAL INCARNATION. 163 is Love, love without any the least set-off or limita- tion of self-love, infinite or creative love in short ; and it communicates itself to the creature accordingly in no voluntary or finite but in purely spontaneous or infinite measure, in a way so to speak of overwhelm- ing passion : so that we practically encounter no limit to our faculty of appropriating it, but on the contrary sensibly and exquisitely feel it to be our own indisputable being, feel it to be in fact our in- most, most vital and inseparable self, and unhesitat- ingly call it me and 7uine, you, and yours, cleaving to it as inmost bone of our bone, and veritable flesh of our flesh, and incontinently renouncing all things for it. LETTER XIV. ii^/WY DEAR FRIEND : — We have seen that the sphere of human nature is the rela- tive or associated sphere of human hfe, the sphere of men's free, spontaneous fellowship, each with all and all with each, in con- tradistinction to that of their felt or personal abso- luteness, which is the sphere of their voluntary, interested, selfish disjunction of each with every other : so that society is of necessity the Divinely unitary form of human nature. But now what is the bearing of the definition of human nature I gave in my last letter, upon the doctrine of creation regarded as the regeneration of that nature? Why, as I conceive, it most clearly brings out the purely spiritual character of creation ; brings it out indeed with an emphasis sufficient to arrest and exalt even the simplest intelligence. If human nature, as we have seen, possess neither moral nor physical quality, save by implication, that is, be PERSONALITY THE TRUE GROUND OF UNBELIEF. 165 neither peTson nor thing : if on the contrary it be nothing else than a most powerful but invisible Di- vine bond of relationship between man individual and man universal; a bond moreover so free and elastic as safely to permit the appropriation of a private selfhood to man, and the subsequent expansion of that selfliood even to diabolic proportions : then the only philosophic obstacle to the recognition of crea- tion as a living or spiritual work of God disappears. That is to say : the only philosophic hindrance to men's believing in God as a creator, is their ina- bility to believe in themselves as created. Self-con- sciousness, the sentiment of personality, the feeling I have of life in myself, absolute and underived from any other save in a natural way, is so subtly and powerfully atheistic, that no matter how loyally I may be taught to insist upon creation as a mere traditional or legendary fact, I never feel inclined personally to believe in it, save as the fruit of some profound intellectual humiliation, or hopeless inward vexation of spirit. My inward ajjlatas from this cause is so great, I am conscious of such super- abounding personal life, that I am satisfied, for my own part at least, that my sense of selfhood must in some subtle exquisite way find itself wounded to death — find itself become death in fact, the only death I am capable of believing in — before any 166 NATURAL INCARNATION THE ONLY genuine spiritual resuscitation is at all practicable for me. I don't say, mind, that clmrcli authority is not sufficient to make us ritually acknowledge, or ac- knowledge with the lips, creation in space and time. But creation in space and time is intellectually absurd or preposterous, and this is all that our ritual acknowledgments are good for in the long run, to make some absurd or incredible thing toler- able to us. We are talking here of a very differ- ent creation, that is, of the living or spiritual crea- tion ; and what I say is that the sole effectual hindrance to our acknowledgment of this is the unhappy conviction to which we are ecclesiastically born and bred, of our natural realism, of our being by nature veritable existences. Remember what spiritual creation involves. It involves the giving things phenomenal existence as well as, or in order to, real being; natural substance as well as, or in order to, spiritual form. In other words, the creator of men is their maker also. He not only gives his creatures soul, or spiritual life, which forever indi- vidualizes them from all other things, but He alone it is who out of His own spiritual substance gives them hodif as well, that is, natural existence, which forever identifies them with all other things. He does this, because He, himself, constitutes the true METHOD OF SPIRITUAL CREATION. 167 and quasi-\ita\ mother-substance of things, or fur- nishes, Himself, the natural material out of which they are fashioned. This is the adorable difference of creative to created art. No artist or inventor amongst us ever finds the mother-substance or ma- terial of his work exclusively within himself, or supplied by his own spiritual resources. He finds it already provided to his hand by nature, and all he has to do consequently is to apply ordinary skill and judgment to the manipulation of this material, in order that his work may duly appear. So that unless the artist or inventor had first some natural community with these lower or artificial things he makes — his statue, his poem, his picture, his clock, his house, his steam-engine, his what-not, and were himself, to begin with, the fruit of a most spiritual Divine art, even as these lower things are a fruit of his own natural art, he would never be able to conceive them even, let alone execute them. Now the creator of man has, to begin with, no such com- munity of nature with his creature as this. He is not a subject of being, but its unalterable source, nor is He capable of naturally or subjectively exist- ing save in his creature. All natural or subjec- tive existence derives from Him accordingly, being nothing else but that instinctive and unconscious appropriation and imprisonment of His most holy 168 NATURAL INCARNATION THE ONLY substance, which is involved in our spiritual con- sciousness, and is necessary to constitute it. And what we call " the universe of nature," which to our unspiritual imaginations is the outward sum or ob- jective truth of such existence, is merely an artifice of our innocent puerile intelligence to hide from our own eyes our dense ignorance of the fact, and so maintain a good conceit of ourselves. Besides, all physical existence that we know of is plainly specific : how therefore should we ever feel ourselves authorized to infer that there was some unknown universal substance that constituted the invisible generic unity, or source, of all these in- numerable visible species ? And by what magic above all were we ever taught to divine that the only proper name to bestow upon this universal substance was the indefinite term : Nature ? There is no universal mineral, nor vegetable, nor animal substance, genus, or nature answering to any of these specific mineral, vegetable, or animal forms our eyes are familiar with ; and there is even express provision made in the moral law, as we shall see bye and bye, that no moral subject especially shall ever suggest the possibility of such universality. And yet men have always had this profoundly philosophic instinct of the underlying unity which binds together all the endlessly diff'erent and hostile forms of exist- METHOD OF SPIRITUAL CREATION. 169 ence that fall within the compass of sense ; and have moreover always characterized it by this profoundly philosophic because purely undefined and prophetic designation — Nature. Whence then this marvellous intellectual instinct ? And whence this equally mar- vellous and just expression of it ? Simply from the infinite craving which the creator of man has for the spiritual sympathy and fellowship of His creatures; they themselves being both alike a providential impulsion within the unconscious soul of the creature to bring about that Divine end. For this end requires for its own fulfilment a preliminary process of purgation in the created nature : requires that all the forms of evil and falsity to which the created nature is subject, by reason of its inherent alienation from, or otherness to, the infinite creator, should first have been thoroughly eliminated or sloughed ofi". And it is evident that these abstract evils and falses cannot be sloughed off until they have been concentrated, or become concrete and actual in the personality, so to speak, of the created nature : that is, in the experience of the various persons who derive from the nature. The original sin of the creature — his irpcoTov •x^euSo? from which all his evils and falses flow — is that he feels himself to exist absoldehj ; and this is a sin he may w^ell be uncon- scious of, since the boundless love of his creator is at 170 NATURAL INCARNATION THE ONLY the bottom of it. At least if God gave himself to his creature in a finite manner, there could be no danger of the sin being committed. But He gives himself to the creature without stint, in injinite measure ; and the creature cannot help feeling therefore that he is life in himself. So profoundly unconscious is he of falsifying the spiritual truth of things by this vicious estimate of himself, that here after six thousand years of experience scarcely any one has yet attained to right ideas upon the subject. Above all, the people vi^ho preserve the outward or formal revelation of the church's long fatuity in regard to it, and bestow upon that revelation the most abundant honor, are the most densely and devoutly blind to its spiritual signifi- cance : and one would sooner expect a true acknowl- edgment of God from the stones in the street than from them. But though man starts with this feeling of his own absoluteness, or of his being life in himself, he is by no means left without a divine witness in his own bosom to the profound untruth of the feeling. For he feels, at the same time that he feels his existence, that there is notldng in himself to loarrant or justify such existence. Let him start then never so gayly in the career of existence, he nevertheless starts with a threatening bombshell in his very vitals, which is ready to explode and lay him waste every moment METHOD OF SPIRITUAL CREATION. 171 that he remains unreconciled to the essential truth of things ; or, what is the same thing, unenlightened as to the essential emptiness, imbecility, and charlatanry he carries about with him under the name of selfliood. Now the only possible way of his becoming recon- ciled to the absolute truth of things is, to give over this fallacious feeling of his constituting his own life or substance, of his constituting even his own exist- ence or selfhood, inasmuch as this fallacious feeling itself is a sheer effect of spiritual causes, all of which have their being in God most High, and are contin- gent upon His vast designs of mercy towards the race. And in order that his reconciliation may be complete or perfect, the nature or quality of the being which all spiritual existence has in God most High, becomes reflected to his experience by a law he finds within his bosom called conscience, the whole drift, spirit, or purport of which is that he love his neigh- bor as himself. For only in this way, namely : by his coming to learn, and his agreeing to act upon, the maxim, that the being which alone vitalizes his exist- ence is spiritual, not material, and that its nature is Love : is the portentous bombshell which he bears about in himself rendered gradually, and at last per- fectly, inexplosive and harmless. Now manifestly the inward or spiritual disciplin- ing of the creature to this divine height, demands in 172 NATURAL INCARNATION THE ONLY order to base it, in order to illustrate and enforce it, some answering outward or natural experience on his part; demands in fact the literal verification of his own nature. The essential freedom and rationality which he has in God utterly disquahfy him in the long run for receiving truth on authority, and so ren- der it imperative that all nutriment intended for his spiritual growth be capable of scientific authentication — that is, of ultimating itself outwardly or to his senses — before he can assimilate it. In short his in- ward or spiritual creation and culture exact a strictly empirical, conscious, or phenomenal realm of existence on the creature's part, to endow him with true self- knowledge, that is, to correct the conceit and igno- rance and vanity that are incident to his private or finite generation, and so inoculate him in time with the chastening and otherwise unattainable knowl- edge and love of God. We may say then that God's creative purposes towards the human race necessarily involve a long preliminary wrestle or tussle on the part of the individual or self-conscious man loitli him' self: a long, toilsome, most bitter, and vexatious con- flict on his part Avith his own puny, crooked, insincere and ineffectual ways : before he can attain to that steadfast peace in God, which shall eventually leave him profoundly disinterested, indifferent, and actively inert in his own behalf. METHOD OF SPIRITUAL CREATION. 173 And now, my friend, I wish you to take most par- ticular notice : that this provisional, or ancillary and pedagogic sphere of human hfe — in which man is thus left to make his own acquaintance, and to be- come for a while apparently his own exclusive guardian and providence, with a view to his ultimate and inti- mate spiritual disenchantment with himself — is the world of our actual historic consciousness, the loorld of our daily experience which subjects us to a fixed exist- ence in space and time. It may astonish you to find any definite philosophic rationale assigned to this crazy world of ours, as much as it did M. Jourdain in the play to learn that he had been talking prose all his life without knowing it; but that this and nothing else is its proper function, there can be no doubt. This most outward and lowest of all worlds, in which space and time have a fixed and not a fluid character as they have in the spiritual world, is neces- sary to the development and training of om* finite con- sciousness ; and it is the gradual enlargement of this consciousness of ours out of the contemptible personal limitations in which it begins, into the largest social dimensions in which it ends, that constitutes the sole veritable stuff" of human history. AVhen that history has attained its apogee, accordingly, and not before, we may expect to begin the realization of our spiritual creation. But the reason of my asking you to take 174 HISTORY NOTHING ELSE THAN A particular notice of the fact here stated,, was that I might by means of your so doing the better impress upon you another truth, which is : that what we call human history is at bottom nothing else than a theatre of Divine revelation; the precise historic form which the revelation takes being a display of the Divine dealino's in relation to human nature. The initial acts of the drama reveal God in a state of appar- ently complete prostration to the created nature, so passively subject to it, as to be blasphemed, humili- ated, and done to death in the daily chaos of its self- ish and malignant passions : so that the Divine name sinks at last into a mere formula of execration among men, while its inherent merciful quality is almost wholly forgotten. But the later scenes of the as- tounding drama, and its final denoiiment, show Him spontaneously rising again from the death and hell to which He has thus been consigned in the persons of the created nature, and exalting the nature itself — henceforth discharged of personal limitations, or made forever social and unitary — into the intimate fellowship of His own eternal being. The truth to which I here call your attention is of the gravest rational import. The professing Chris- tian church is too baldly avaricious in a material sense, and is moreover too instinct spiritually with rival personal ambitions, and rival sectarian emula- THEATRE OF DIVINE EEVELATION. 175 tions, to give any heed to it, or to any other broadly human question. And the thin scum of so-called liberal or radical religionists which it is continually throwing off, seem even more superficial than the church itself in their intellectual tendencies, for they apparently crave no deeper satisfaction to their pecul- iar religious perplexities than science deigns to min- ister. Above all, men of science — such of them especially as make their science into a vehicle and instrument of philosophizing — are apt quietly to ignore the truth of a spiritual creation. So I fore- warn you that you will not find yourself in a crowded company, if you consent to cultivate the truth. Per- haps, however, for the first time in your life, you will feel yourself able en revanche to breathe to the full compass of your freed intellectual lungs. But I beg of you, if you have any dealing with this truth of the rigidly apocalyptic character of the world in which we live, to deal with it in the most literal unsentimental manner. I mean exactly what I say. The whole use of the actual world is to mirror or reflect Divine reali- ties to us, as much so as the whole use of your look- ing-glass is to mirror or reflect your physical person to your own eye. And it mirrors or reflects these reali- ties to us in coimection strictly with our own nature in contradistinction from our proper persons, which are only and at best a factitious and perishable seni- 176 HISTORY NOTHING ELSE THAN A blance or phenomenon of the nature. So that the total spiritual or philosophic meaning of this revela- tion is to declare God a man in the completest sense of the word : not merely a spiritual or internal man, infinite in love and vv^isdom, but much more a natural man, experienced in all oiu* appetites and passions, and able therefore to subjugate every densest hell of personality in our nature to the broadest human use. The machinery, spiritual and material, by which this great revelation becomes possible and effectual, is ex- plained with great industry and iteration by Sweden- borg, in all his books more or less. But I confess I have been content to abide in the full spiritual light of the revelation itself, without taking an undue or pedantic interest in the comparatively dull and tedious recital he gives of the methods of its evolution. Cease then to conceive of our physical and moral existence as directly implicated either in our spiritual Divine creation or our natural Divine redemption. They are only indirectly implicated therein as furnish- ing us that secular and outside knowledge of the Di- vine ways which is necessary to base or induct our inward or spiritual recognition and appreciation of both one and the other. Our spiritual creation and our natural redemption are, both alike, a purely Di- vine and miraculous work, transacted within the un- conscious depths of our nature; so that neither our THEATRE OF DIVINE REVELATION. 177 physical existence nor our moral history reflects the least original light upon them, their only active func- tion being servilely to symbolize them to our intelli- gence. How absurd then to expect any new light from the physical sciences, now so much cultivated, upon the questions of human origin and human des- tiny ! Neither the physical nor the moral world con- stitutes the true sphere of our life or being, but only of our factitious seeming or appearance ; and the more satisfied we are with the knowledge they impart to us, the more hopelessly remote are we from spiritual insight or perception. This phenomenal world in which we live is the world not of Divine reality, but of Divine revelation ; and he whose knowledge of it is greatest vindicates his superiority to his brethren only in boasting a larger familiarity with shadows. I am surprised that a person of your intellectual pith should be so easily duped by the airs of our scientific scepticism. Do you think it fair to deny the Divine being and existence, because science can discover no trace of them throughout the wide realm of physics ? If so, it can only be because you are speculatively blind to any higher realm of being than that of physics. At all events your need to believe in God is vastly less sensitive than mine. For my part I should unfeignedly thank science for its negative dis- covery, simply because it brought the Divine exist- 178 SPIRITUAL VALUE OF MIRACLE ence nearer to my own nature, or approximately humanized Him. I confess I should have an invol- untary or inveterate shrinking from science, if it found any direct attestation of God in mineral, vegetable, or animal existence, much more any unmistakable traces of Plis habitat in the mechanism of the celestial spaces. For I should find it hard to persuade myself that a being who had any direct sympathy with either of those low and servile fields of existence could be pos- sessed of any intimate human quality. All this will remind you of the intellectual value I attribute to miracle in the evolution of our race- history. For in the absence of it, there would have been nothing to suggest or authenticate to the univer- sal heart and mind of the race the infinite and ador- able name of God, nor consequently any power to resist the incessant scientific debasement of our indi- vidual intelligence to mere nature-worship at most. For miracle is only a brute affii-mation or attestation of the creative infinitude to men's brute or undevel- oped spiritual intelligence, and has been full there- fore of the tenderest and most timely Divine pity. That we happen to have outgrown its need at this day, and can intellectually dispense with it, has been owing to no diminution of the creative benignity, but rather to a practical enlargement of its scope, in wid- ening the sphere of man's freedom and rationality to AS A SCIENTIFIC IRRITANT. 179 such an extent, as effectually to deliver him hence- forth from the dominion of great names, or of routine and authority, in scientific as well as in spiritual or sacred things, and thus make him over at long last to the inspiration of the unimpeded Divine Good in the form of our own glorified flesh and bones. We may say in fact that without miracles as a perpetual re- minder of a supersensuous life in us, the intellect must have lost its highest Divine charm which is that of freedom, or inward inspiration, and have in- continently succumbed to the limitations of science which forever enchain it to sense. Every intellect the least spiritualized is now free to assert its just insub- ordination to the senses, or claim to be wholly un- inspired by science. And I maintain that it owes this freedom solely to the long respect entertained among men for miracle as a distinctively Divine mode of action. For without miracle to serve as a symbol of the otherwise unrecognized creative infinitude to us until such time as the intellect itself should re- volt from the worthless symbol in the interest of its own living Divine substance, men would never have dreamt of ascribing a present reality to creation, but have been content to regard it as a past, or outward historic fact merely, intrinsically incapable therefore of arousing any deeper intellectual homage in us than that of our servile and dead memory. LiETTER XV. W^^MfY DEAR FRIEND: — We have dwelt long enough on general principles : it is time we begin to make some particular application of them. We have seen in recent letters that human nature is not the least physical, but on the contrary strictly metaphysical, involving physics simply as its organic or material base, in order to fix it, or give it anchor- age. And you, yourself, doubtless, will be as prompt as I am to infer hereupon, that we men — in whom this organic or finite base of existence almost com- pletely controls its distinctly natural and infinite possibilities — have small claim to be considered in our own right apt specimens of human nature. Thus far, in fact, I think we may be said to furnish only good negative specimens of it; that is, to furnish much better evidence of what the nature is not, than of what it is. We constitute hardly anything more as yet than the underground phenomenal basement HUMAN NATURE vs. THE HUMAN PERSON. 181 floor of the majestic human house God is uprearing in our nature — a basement floor dug deep in min- eral, vegetable, and animal substance — and he would sadly err, accordingly, who should look upon us as the celestial superstructure itself. And being but this material base of om' nature, we have no more pretension of course to constitute its living or spirit- ual personality, than the metals which enter into the material structure of a watch have to constitute the functional power so named. I have already shown you, indeed, that human nature — being bipolar, having two factors, one creative or infinite, the other created or finite — involves a hopeless contradiction, an inextricable puzzle, for every one born subject to it, and can only be integrally constituted therefore in a perfectly unitary personality, or one which shall do exact and equal justice to both of its extreme factors. In short, human nature is normally con- stituted only in the person of God-Man. Thus if Jesus Christ had never actually lived, the necessities of our thought would have driven us to invent him. At the same time I don't wonder that so many people at this day, who seem to me more or less tinctured with his spirit, are grievously per- plexed to connect that spirit with the aims lent by professing Christians to the Christian name. The Christian spirit, as represented by those who make 182 THE CHURCH, THE MAIN CITADEL a formal or visible profession of it, is at most and altogether a personal spirit. It may have incident- ally, to be sure, more or less benignant issues to human life associated with it, but these issues are purely incidental : the main or direct tendency of this pseudo-Christian spirit is to deepen the sense of per- sonality in men, and modify it in the way of rendering it more and more consonant with the Divine will. The theory of the church seems to be that God's pur- pose in creation is : not, all simply, to form a heaven out of the human race, and make history infallibly conduce to that supreme end in becoming ever more and more a grand school of discipline for humanity, in which men, taught by a profound experience of the evils of self-love and love of the world, may at last become naiurally or spontaneously roused to react against these evils, and freely incline instead to the promotion and culture of a race-sentiment in hu- manity, which has no practical admixture of evil and falsity in it to betray and defeat their devotion : but to form hoik a heaven and a hell out of the human race, leaving it strictly optional with every indi- vidual to determine himself to either of these oppo- site poles, but allowing him no chance, when once his choice is made, of ever after correcting it. The revolting hideousness of ascribing such a purpose to the merciful Creator of helpless, dependent men, OF EXISTING EVIL AND FALSITY. 183 you are as quick to discern as I am, and I need not dwell upon it. But I want you clearly to under- stand that these diabolic audacities and blasphemies which men theoretically allow themselves with refer- ence to the Divine name, essentially inhere in our in- sane habit of regarding human life as personally and not as socially constituted, and attest the neces- sarily perverse interpretation which that insane habit leads us to impose upon every form of Divine truth. Dear friend, if men could but once livingly swing free of these personal implications in their thoughts and aspirations towards God : that is to say, if they could, even for a moment, spiritually feel themselves as no longer visible or cognizable to God in their atomic individualities, but only as so many social units, each embracing and enveloping all in affec- tion and thought : the work would be forever done, as it seems to me. Heaven would be begun on earth, and the very nature of man reflect or repro- duce at last the lineaments of Divine good. But what hope of this is there within the precincts of the Church at all events, where men are expressly taught that the only imaginable theory of Christ's office is to save men in their individual persons, or their piddling private capacities, and not at all as a nature or race ; and consequently that their only chance of salvation at his hands lies in their 184 CLAIM OF A PERSONAL INTEREST diligently and impudently * " appropriating " him, every one to his worthless and insignificant little self. As if Christ could be in any sense a jjcrsonal pos- session of men, to be made theirs by some cheap and odious methodistic mouthing of his name, and afterwards to be paraded as an ornament on their sleeve to dazzle the eyes of harmless worldlings who still have modesty and grace enough left thoroughly to disoww him ! If these thoughtless Christian sectaries of ours could once be led to sus- pect that " our Lord," as they vulgarly call him, is the veritable and only great God almighty himself in men's natural lineaments — the spiritual father therefore of all mankind, especially of those who in their own conceit are hopelessly remote from Him, I wonder whether the discovery would arouse them at last to a sense of spiritual awe and reverence, or whether all spiritual possibilities are not effectively drowned out for them under this rubbish of ritual righteousness with which they affect to be clad. The inmost life and sanity of my oAvn faith in God de- pend upon my feeling myself incapable of any per- sonal or outside relation to Him, because the bare thought of such a relation as possible between us is the menace of death to my soul. And this is the reason why I cling with even a passionate intellect- ual gratitude to the revelation of the Divine name IN CHRIST PREPOSTEROUS, 185 in Jesus Christ, because he alone in history shows me the Divine infinitude or perfection actually blent or identified, in his dying and risen person, with human nature — my own natiu-e as man — and so forever disenthralls me to my own consciousness from the pungent damnation wrapped up in my own odious and imbecile selfhood. Swedenborg's books throw a flood of light upon the method of this ineffable Divine achievement in our history, and you are so blessedly free of ecclesi- astical biases that I see no reason why you should not read them with a profit and pleasure equal to my own. There may be some reason, unknown to me, blinding you to the honest intellectual charm of the books; perhaps, like many others, you have been prejudiced against them by the obvious fact that they have been hitherto engineered, not in the interest of mankind, but exclusively in that of a low sectarian ambition, or lust of ecclesiastical self-righteousness. But surely after the many lessons the Christian eccle- siasticisms have taught us, of the inevitable deprava- tion Christ's spirit is bound to undergo whenever the attempt is made to reproduce it in corporate form, you would not hold the upright old Swedenborg him- self answerable for this helpless betrayal of his truth on the part of his professed followers, would you? If any obvious prejudice of this sort really threaten 186 SWEDENBORG'S DOCTRINE OF THE to cut you off from the immense benefit Swedenborg's books bring to the intellect, let me briefly assure you that they themselves are infinitely remote from sug- gesting to an unperverted mind any of these shallow — and, as we may say at this day, profligate — ec- clesiastical conceptions. Swedenborg indeed of good set purpose finds very much to say of the church both " old " and " new," and he says it all without a shadow of reticence or apology, as if he never doubted that every one who came to his books would be thoroughly vastated of sectarian aspirations, and incapable therefore of supposing him such an ass as to represent God almighty solicitous only to establish under the name of " new " church a more baldly vicious and contemptible ecclesiasticism than any that had ever yet cursed the burdened and patient earth. What then is his general doctrine of the constitution of the church, as shadowed forth in sacred or symbolic history? This doctrine cannot be at all understood, unless we previously take into consideration the state of things in which it is grounded, namely : that the world in lohich the church exists, and for whose bene- fit it is a spiritual provision, is essentially a sphere of Divine revelation : while at the same time it is profoundly ignored by the world, or those who in- habit it, that it is charged with any such universal CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 187 function. The world has indeed no faintest suspicion of the truth, that it exists for nothing else but to constitute an orderly revelation of God's spiritual infinitude or perfection ; but stupidly settles down to the far more flattering conviction, that it consti- tutes on the contrary a most real and permanent Divine work, a work of true and finished creation, and this in spite of its being destitute of every spirit- ual Divine mark. Now the church was intended to be a standing witness or memorial of God amidst this prevalent ignorance of men concerning Him. It is a candle irradiating by its feeble but honest glim- mer the otherwise unmixed and hopeless darkness. Swedenborg accordingly views the chm-ch throughout its entire history in the lif/ht of a Divine drama, pre- figuring to the refiective understanding of men — who are inwardly callous to the most tender and spiritual Divine substance latent in their own coarse souls and bodies, and outwardly therefore unobservant of it — in certain symbolic or representative persons and peo- ples, the entire and signally miraculous truth upon the subject of mans Divine nature and destiny. About the prehistoric beginnings of the church indeed he is naturally able to give us very little information, since the greatest amount of such information could only conduce to the satisfaction of a purely idle curiosity. But he shows that it grew out of a very 188 STATEMENTS IN REGARD tender and infantile spiritual intelligence in man, scarce weaned as yet from Nature's maternal bosom ; and that this intelligence accordingly was wholly made up of a perception of the interior correspond- ence that obtains between spirit and nature, that is, between celestial goods and their derivative terrestrial truths. That the peculiar quality of this intelligence, however, was very exalted, being inspired by the heart, appears from all he specifically says of it, and especially from a brief but pregnant incidental glimpse he gives of its broadly human genius and sympathies, in a remark he makes about the church called Adam, with which our sacred or symbolic scripture opens, and of which he saw the spiritual or heavenly state. He says : " Those who belonged to the most ancient church, designated by the name of Man or Adam, are above the head in the Maxi- mus Homo, and dwell together in the utmost happi- ness. They told me that it is seldom others come to them, except such occasionally as come, not from this earth but, as they phrased it, from the universe."* The men of this church in fact " were internal men, delighted only with internal things," which are the things of Love and Wisdom, " and viewing external things only with their eyes, while they reflected upon the spiritual goods and truths they represented. Thus * Arcana delestia, 1115. TO THE PREHISTORIC CHURCH. 189 external things were held of no intellectual account by them, save as leading them to reflect on internal things, and these in their turn to reflect on celestial things, and these again on the Lord, who to them was all in all." * It is very difficult, I admit, to do any justice with our inspissated spiritual faculty to Swedenborg's de- scriptions of this early or internal development of the church in man. They suggest to om' coarser intel- lectual fibre a very much feebler grasp upon life than our own, and it even disconcerts us to imagine the truth otherwise. To the cultivated or regenerate heart, however, this intellectual judgment of ours, no doubt, seems very profane or sensuous ; very much as, to the conmion heart, a judgment which should affirm the superior sweetness of the adult man to the infant child would appear little short of sacrilegious. Anyhow the state of things here described was very incongruous with the Divine designs in humanity, for man then, as Swedenborg says, was more like a spii'it than a man, and the Divine design could be fulfilled only by making him flesh. " For in this way only could celestial and spiritual life be adjoined to mans proper nature y that they might be as onc."t Swedenborg accordingly proceeds to represent the * Arcana Ccelestia, 54. t Ibid. 160. 190 INNOCENCE OF A NATURAL descendants of the church, thus styled Adam or Man, as incHning to selfhood: that is, desiring to become instead of an internal man an external one. But he does not fail to characterize this change of genius in it, though relatively unfortunate of course, since everything deteriorates in proportion as it becomes remote from its source, yet as by no means absolutely so; inasmuch as selfhood, though regarded in itself or absolutely it is unmixed evil, is yet the indis- pensable condition of man's natural development, or race-evolution, and consequently of that redemptive achievement in our nature which constitutes God's true or eternal spiritual glory in creation. This rising inclination to selfhood is the inevitable dawn of the natural or race-mind in us, and as such of course is noway evil, though vieived apart from that subordination it is the fountain of all the evil known to the universe. We don't get angry with the infant, although we feel bound in the interests of his own maturity to correct him, when we see him instinc- tively exhibiting the traits of his future natural man- hood; on the contrary we are secretly diverted by his arch and graceful Avays of self-assertion, because as yet they are full of innocence or innocuous. Ex- actly so we may say there is no ground for moral disapprobation in these nascent or unconscious ego- tistic inclinations on the part of the early church. INCLINATION TO SELFHOOD. 191 because to the wiser mind they simply foretell the advent in the fulness of time of the Divine natural humanity, and are themselves meanwhile full of in- fantile ignorance and innocence. Indeed Swedenborg always draws a wide dis- tinction between the natural love of self and the world, and an absolute or unnatural love of them, that is, a love of them for their own sakes ; calling the former a wise love, and the latter a stupid or insane one. He says for example in his profoundly clear and beautiful Essay upon the Divine Love and Wisdom, of which Lippincott published an extremely good translation by Mr. Foster eight or ten years ago, and which, if you are interested in what I say, I recom- mend you to get : "The loves of self and of the world are hy creation heavenly loves, because they are loves of the natural man subservient to spiritual loves, in the same way that foundations are subservient to houses. These natural loves guarantee a man's wish- ing well to his own body, desiring food, raiment, and shelter, consulting the welfare of his family, seeking after useful occupation, and even after honors pro- portionate to the worth of the public trusts he fulfils, and the extent of the fulfilment he renders them; and guarantee moreover his enjoying worldly pleas- ures, and finding delight and refreshment in them : but now mind ! our natural loves guarantee all these 192 UNHANDSOME PRE-NATAL things, not at all for any absolute or unconditional worth to be found in them, for there is no such worth, but for a certain end of use which they pro- mote in rendering a man fit to serve the Lord and serve the neighbor. But where this use is not pro- moted, as in the case of a man who has no relish for serving the Lord or his neighbor, but only for serving himself by means of the world, then his natural self- love ceases to be heavenly and becomes infernal, be- cause it cuts the man off from delighting in his nature or kind, and shuts him up, spiritually, to his own selfhood, which is wholly evil." * Swedenborg goes on to give his readers a detailed mention of the specific churches that succeeded to this Adamic one, with the several characteristics that made each of them noticeably distinct from its predecessors. These details are excessively te- dious and uninteresting at this day, though to future inquirers into our distinctively race - genesis they may prove perhaps exhilarating ; and I have not the least intention of dwelling upon them. They were churches still in the gristle, unclad as yet with natural flesh and bone, and devoid therefore of proper historic interest, so far at least as indicating any con- structive providential purpose in human nature ; be- ing based every one of them upon some mere diver- * Divine Love and Wisdom. See also Ath. Creed, 43. DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CHURCH. 193 gent relation in the personal genius of its founders with respect to every other that preceded it, and des- tined like them to be engulfed in some more general form which should round them all off into visible unity. I suppose it is all very exact church-physi- ology, but I confess I feel little or no interest in the very unhandsome pre-natal physiological development of the church, while it was still an immature and un- born providential embryo in the earth, peopling it too with every uncouth, unclean, and monstrous form of life below the human. And even after it has attained to fully formed consciousness of itself as man, and separates itself from whatsoever is not-man, it awak- ens no philosophic interest save as it tends, by uncon- scious copulation with the world, to generate what men subsequently recognize as himan nature. Ac- cordingly I shall only attempt to give you a con- densed philosophic apercit of the ever-growing corrup- tion of the early churches, until that corruption finally culminated, or became a momentous historic phenom- enon, in the gross fanatical lineaments of the Jewish theocracy : certainly from a spiritual point of view the most complete and comprehensive embodiment of un- godliness ever Divinely consecrated in human annals. But the only result of this philosophic glimpse will be, I hope, to suggest afresh to your mind what an adorable wonder-worker Ave have in Him who thus 194 CREATION ESSENTIALLY MIRACULOUS. utilizes, or turns to the advantage of human nature, the inmost and most implacable evil of its individ- ual bosoms, making it indeed the fertile womb of infinite and otherwise inconceivable Divine and hu- man good. LETTER XVI. T DEAR FRIEND -. — To say as Sweden- borg says : that this early church called Adam or man inclined to selfhood, or from internal tended to become external : is mani- festly equivalent to saying that it lost sight of the only reason it had for existing, namely : the service it might do the iDorld in keeping it mindful of God : and began to value itself on its own account, as if it had existed ab origine for its own sake, and were itself an absolute Divine good in the earth. The original bias to evil in the human heart, or what separates it from God, is constituted by self- love and love of the world. But these loves are not in themselves evil, but innocent and heavenly, because they are purely instinctive or organic loves in man serviceable to spiritual loves, just as foun- dations are serviceable to houses. "Eor from these loves," say Swedenborg, " man wishes well to his body, desires to be fed, clad, lodged, to consult 196 OUR SELFISH AND WORLDLY LOVES MADE EVIL the comfort of his family, to seek after useful em- ployment, yes, to be honored for the worth of the services he thus renders to society, and also to be dehghted and recreated by the pleasures of the world : but all these for a certain spiritual end, which ought to be use, for by these loves thus ex- ercised and refreshed he is fitted to serve the Lord and the neighbor. But when these loves refuse to become subservient to more universal loves, as Di- vine and neighborly love, they then become infer- nal, because they then immerse a man's mind and soul in selfhood, which in itself is all evil."* In course of time then these wholesome imper- sonal loves are sure to lose their innocence or be- come personal by being made to minister to self- hood in man, or promote the interests of his falla- cious individuality as against those of his common nature. In other words all men in time become selfish and worldly, that is, unduly addicted to the love of themselves and the love of the world. This natural degeneracy of mankind is not fatal by any means, but it calls aloud for God's redemptive power in human nature to save the race from pre- mature blight. Neither selfishness nor Avorldliness will ever be considered obsolete forms of human nature, but they will always be considered more * Arcana Ccelestia, 396. See also Ath. Creed, 43. BY THE INFLUENCE OF PROPRIUM. 197 and more disreputable or unworthy forms of it. They will always drive men of spiritual culture to desire to realize their nature in social or Divinely- r^eemed form, but they will never have power actually to deprive any one of hope towards God. As long indeed as animals and vegetables continue to exist man will scarcely be robbed of his God- ward faith and hope by any amount of selfishness or worldliness, for the animal is a very innocent and unconscious type of the former love, and the vegetable of the latter. Until God sends an utter blight upon the life of the animal and vegetable kingdoms therefore we shall feel no misgivings about His intimate dealings with our own nature. What is worldliness at bottom? We all know well enough what it is in a literal or moral aspect — as separating between man and man; for we all love the world too much, and sometimes sacrifice our neighbor's esteem, and our own peace of mind, to its tempting pleasures, honors, or emoluments. But Avhat does worldliness mean in a spiritual rather than a moral aspect, that is, as separating no longer between man and man, but between man and God ? It means to esteem and love the world as a final- ity, to be satisfied with it as a fulfilment of our hopes and aspirations towards God: thus it means at bottom to ignore God, to ignore His spiritual 198 THE EXCESS OF THEM EVEN NOT HATEFUL TO GOD, perfection, or His essential infinity and eternity, and acknowledge Him at the most as a physical and moral power, the creator and maker of this realm of finite personal existence. When the worldliag acknowledges God at all, this is the extreme limit of the homage he renders Him: he considers Him as the author of the very pleasant life that now is, the giver of every good and perfect gift to his senses. To be sure there is nothing very exhilar- ating to the Divine mind in this degree of homage, provided it is anyway sincere, which is extremely problematical at least : but just as surely there can be nothing revolting in it, nor even displeasing, to that mind: so that if the creator had but destined His creature to remain an innocent animal merely, without any capacity of spiritual life or enjoyment, He would, I dare say, have been highly satisfied with it. Selfishness to be sure is a much more potent, stubborn, and profound evil than worldliness, and far more hostile practically to human society or fellowship ; and Swedenborg in order to show the superior malignity of the former love to the latter as an element of human life, characterizes the hells which grow out of it as diabolic, whereas he always gives the hells of worldliness the milder designation of Satanic. But selfishness, although a less super- BECAUSE HE UTILIZES IT IN THE HELLS. 199 ficial evil than worldliness, accommodates itself in some sort equally well to the Divine administration in human affairs : as is shoAvn by vrhat Sweden- borg says of the hells to which it is ministerial. The devil and Satan v/ould be very discreditable products of the creative love, provided they owed their original existence to it. But they do not in the slightest degree. Satan and the devil (by which terms respectively of com\se one would be understood to mean not any individual existences but the whole mass of human kind in whom either the love of the world or the love of self character- istically predominates) owe their origin to a vital misconception they are both alike under in regard to human freedom, deeming it absolute instead of moral, contingent, relative. This misconception on their part is very unfortunate no doubt, because, as it leads to all manner of practical injustice and un- truth, it requires them to be separated from the orderly mass of their brethren, and shut up for a long while in work-houses where they are com- pelled under pain of forfeiting their daily bread, and of even worse punishments, to work, and re- frain from bad manners. But they are never in the sliglitest degree objects of God's contempt, let alone abhorrence, but equally with heavenly existences at- tract His unswerving mercy or compassion. 200 THE ONLY INTOLERABLE EVIL TO GOD IS And thus you are prepared for what I have next got to say. It is a very intelHgible proposition in itself, but it may perhaps encounter some prejudice in your understanding. The proposition is this : that while we owe our milder or moral evils, those, namely, which separate us outwardly from our fel- low-man, to the inspiration of the world-spirit, the spirit which reigns in every man by virtue of his natural birth, the inspiring cause of our deeper spiritual evils, those which separate us inwardly from God, our life-source, and call for our natural redemption at His hands, is exclusively the church- spirit in humanity, the spirit that leads every man that has it to think himself nearer to God than other men. This proposition, I repeat, may meet with a slow reception at your hands. Let me then above all things make sure that you perfectly understand what I mean by it. What I call the deeper spiritual evils which attach to men, separating them from their crea- tive source, are those of confirmed selfhood or self- righteousness. Do I mean you to understand me, then, as saying that the church-spirit in humanity is the source of all our spiritual unrighteousness ? This is literally what I mean to say, and what I would be understood as saying : that the church-spirit is par PROPRIUM, SELFHOOD, OR SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS. 201 excellence the evil-spirit in humanity, source of all its profounder and irremediable woes. Don't, I beg of you, interpret me to your own thought as saying that the church stimulates any of man's actual or moral evils. I say no such stupid thing. For it is notorious that the church studiously fosters the sen- timent of moral worth or dignity in its disciples, the sentiment of distinction or difference between them and other men. It is only by so doing in- deed that she fixes or hardens them in that ten- dency to propriiim or selfhood to which they are naturally inclined, and thus delivers them over bound hand and foot to spiritual pride, pride of character, in short a 5^^-righteous spirit, which is the only form of evil, the only form of sin or blasphemy, fundamentally at variance with man's spiritual ex- istence. But this latter evil is undeniably a church development in our nature. The church is the ac- tual parent or protagonist of all the spiritual evil latent or possible in human nature — evil of self- hood or self-righteousness ; and by focusing it in her own haughty personality gives God at length his opportunity — in allowing the church to become the mere mendicant and impotent existence it now is in the earth — to crush out in every spiritual high- place, or most recondite corner of human nature itself, the otherwise inaccessible and flagitious evil 202 FOR THIS IS SPIRITUAL OR LIVING EVIL; which it represents. God has no power to combat spiritual evil, save as it ultimates itself in natural or outward form. And the church pretension in humanity is the ultimate natural or outward form of all man's spiritual profligacy. For human nature has no existence in se, and comes to light only through men's consciousness : not their individual or private consciousness, but their associated or public one : and the church and the world are as yet the only recognized forms of this latter consciousness. I mean then that the church-spirit in humanity is the expression of all man's patent or latent spir- itual evil, and reduces his mere moral evil to com- parative insignificance, for the latter is curable, and the former not. However selfish or worldly a man may be, these are good honest natural evils, and you have only to apply a motive sufficiently stimu- lating in either case and you will induce the sub- ject to forbear them. But spiritual evil is inward evil exclusively, pertaining to the selfhood of the man, or livingly appropriated by him as his own, and cannot therefore become known to him save in the form of an outward natural representation ; for it is not like moral evil mere oppugnancy to good, but it is the actual and deadly profanation of good, or the lavish acknowledgment of it with a view of subordinating it to personal, or selfish and worldly. AND FATAL, IF ALLOWED, TO THE HUMAN RACE. 203 ends. It is the only truly formidable evil known to God's providence, being that of se^-righteousness, and hence the only evil which essentially threatens to undermine the foundations of God's throne. It is that evil of unconscious hypocrisy or making believe which alone Christ is represented in the New Testament as having spiritually stigmatized to men's eternal abhorrence, and which Swedenborg says he w^as able to overcome only by subjugating the influence of all the heavens and all the hells to his own spotless love of mankind, so utterly elim- inating from our nature or history in its Godward relations the vicious and thoroughly damnable ele- ment of privacy or proprium — that is, of private or personal pretension among men, of individual char- acter, or finite independent selfhood. This all seems plain enough, but now you will ask me : How the church comes to be representa- tively identified with this capital evil of selfhood or self-righteousness in man. I will answer your question in as few words as possible, though I am not without a fear that they will not be so few as I could wish. But I will at all events do my best, in the limited space that the plan of these letters allows me, to make the point clear. God knows that I have not the least idea of making my answer acceptable to you, except 204 THE CHURCH ALONE PRODUCES through your own goodness of heart, or love of mankind. What I want to do then is to convince you that the church is alone chargeable with the production of actual projprium, character, differential selfhood, among men ; and that in so doing it has representatively brought to a head the fundamental evil of the created nature, that which spiritually vivifies all its other evils moral and physical : so that absolutely nothing remains between us and the full fruition of God's spiritual kingdom on earth, but the hearty recognition of the visible church as once a living but now an entirely fossil representa- tive element of human nature. To begin then : Suppose for a moment that self- ishness and worldliness were our only vices. Sup- pose that man and the world alone existed to men's senses and intelligence, just as they do to the senses and intelligence of the animals ; and that the influ- ence of these things was entirely uncomplicated by any influence derived from the church as an insti- tution. It is easy enough to see that selfishness and worldliness in this hypothetical state of things would be no vices at all, but simple instincts of men's natural life leading them to the fullest pos- sible enjoyment of the goods about them, and be- getting in them meanAvhile of course the utmost possible indifference to God and their neighbor : THIS DESPERATE EVIL IN MEN. 205 hut there stopping. For these things are vices only as they tend to selfhood, or lead us into practical conflict with our spiritual destiny ; only as they tend to interest us supremely in a lower order of life than that which our nature fits us to enjoy : and palpably in the case supposed these spiritual limita- tions would be wholly lacking. It is to the church primarily that the world is indebted for its every gleam of spiritual knowledge ; and without the church therefore the world would never have learned to condemn either selfishness or worldliness. A man here and there by obeying a greedy or covetous spirit might paralyze the life of his senses, or bring practical ruin upon his organization ; but however unfortunate his particular excesses might prove him, he never by any possibility could deem them either sinfd, as reflecting a certain inward or spiritual tur- pitude on himself, or even evil, as reflecting a cer- tain outward or moral opprobrium upon his conduct. So far indeed from anything of this sort being pos- sible to the man, we have only got to invest him with a capacity of reflection in order to see that he would necessarily under the circumstances deem his selfishness and worldliness, or his lust and cov- etousness, his highest law or duty. But in point of fact a man of that simple spirit- less make could have no capacity of reflection, and 206 CONSCIENCE THE EVIDENCE OF AN INFINITE consequently no conscience of law or duty. Con- science presupposes in all its subjects a personal development, or sense of selfhood, as its necessary ground ; and personality in every case is a result- ant of two forces, a conventionally good and evil one, belonging to the unconscious nature of the subject, and yet so exquisitely adjusted to each other, or so evenly balanced, as to make him feel without the least misgiving that he is absolutely a free and rational individuality, the essential arbiter of his own actions. In short the existence of con- science in men presupposes the existence of the church and the world as extreme representative fac- tors of human nature, while the perfect equilibrium or mutual adjustment of these factors in their prac- tical operation upon the subject argues a really Di- vine or infinite purpose and providence in humanity. You see then that it would be the height of ab- surdity to attribute to a man whose very nature is representatively expressed by the church and the world anything short of a highly composite genesis. It is thus exclusively the alliance of the church and the world in our nature that stamps it human, and so gives men their original consciousness of evil being, in being either selfish or worldly. And it is specifically the influence of the church in our nature that brings about this result. It is AND A FINITE STRUGGLE IN OUR NATURE. 207 a grand providential work for the church to do, for it would never have got into the mind of man that to Hve for self and the world was not the highest ideal of human life, the supreme law of human destiny, unless the church had put it there. And since human history is only a conflict between the claims of our private selfhood and the claims of our Divine-natural manhood upon our allegiance, we may say that the church in stigmatizing selfish- ness and worldliness to men's opinion, laid the foundation stone of human history. But now do you not see at a glance that the practical efi'ect of the church's initiative in this matter could only be to originate a broad division of men into two classes : one good, as painfully ab- staining from selfish and worldly lusts, the other evily as freely indulging them? The church, so far forth as it is a visible institution in the earth, and claims a Divine warrant corporately to exist and function, looks upon all men without exception as naturally bound to the pursuit of happiness. For bare existence is a happiness to man, stimulating as it does every variety of passional desire and ac- tivity in his bosom, and by a necessary instinct he seeks to promote, enlarge, and intensify this happi- ness. Now the church authoritatively bids the man pause in this enticing career, saying to him that 208 THE CHURCH A MERE RUDIMENTARY happiness is not the supreme law of his activity, at all events is not its first law ; that he is first of all a creature of God, gifted with freedom and in- teUigence, and bound therefore to acquaint himself with his creator's will, in order to see that his pri- vate pursuit of happiness involve him in no prac- tical contrariety with that will. The man either listens, or does not listen. If he listens, he forth- with enrolls himself in the church ranks, and sepa- rates himself from a world conventionally supposed to be lying in wickedness. If he does not listen to the church's testimony, but rejects it as against him- self, he identifies himself with the profane world, and cuts himself (M from the church's blessing. Hence, as I say, the inevitable division of man- kind into two classes, a good and an evil class, or a sacred and a profane class, the one professing to observe the Divine will, or what is reputed to be such in all things, the other following its own will supremely, without making any profession one way or the other. Now however necessary and provi- dential a work this may have been on the part of the church to effect, let me remark first of all that it was an exceedingly rude work at the very least; a very unskilful carrying out of the Divine design. Undoubtedly the Divine design in giving the church a visible institution was to establish a witness of EXPONENT OF CONSCIENCE. 209 Himself in the earth of men's carnal memory, which might always serve to base and authenticate their interior or spiritual apprehensions of Him as a power actively latent in human nature and human affairs. But it was, to say the very least, an exceedingly rude and crude memorial of the Divine name, to identify it not with the spiritual revelation exclu- sively of that name or quality, but with the literal and objective discrimination of certain perfectly petty and squalid persons into a celestial and infernal class, the one full of righteous or just hope in God's favor, the other consigned to righteous despair. I say " at the very least." But the work which this early church thus did in the earth was very much worse than coarse and unskilful. It spiritually falsified the sacred name it was intended to keep the world in remembrance of; and it has assidu- ously perpetuated the falsification — through its long and dreary seqv,ela of lineally descended churches — even down to the present day. For the distinction of men into good and evil, however fundamental a datum it be to our natural intelligence, does not really or spiritually exist to the Divine mind save in accommodation to the needs of that most nascent and infirm intelligence. That is to say : it is no absolute distinction, as the church holds, character- izing men spiritually or as they exist in themselves, 21(> CHANGE OF PLAN. but only as they stand differentially related by their phenomenal action to a great objective work of right- eousness to be accomplished by God in the fulness of time in human natui-e itself: by which all men, notwithstanding their relative or subjective differ- ences in regard to it, will be brought into complete formal or objective harmony with the Divine will. — But as I dimly foresaw, my friend, I shall be obliged to interrupt my writing here that I may try to impress you anew with the extreme intel- lectual importance of rightly conceiving the work I am endeavoring to elucidate in this place : a icork of spiritual creation, purportintj to be wrought hy God within the precincts, by no means of men's phenom- enal personality, but of their common substance or nature. This is our one theme, and we must per- petually bear it in mind under all our discussion of incidental topics. I have undoubtedly been re- miss in not sufficiently enforcing this necessity upon you. And I am persuaded that I cannot do better now, awkward and tardy proceeding though it be, than to interpose an intercalary letter or two just here, defining what I mean by spiritual creation much more fully than I have hitherto done : leaving the interrupted thread of my discourse in regard to church historv to be resumed afterwards. w. ■ » ■" I" «■■» " "» «" '■ 'f "" '» " "y^ LETTER XVII. "#Y DEAR FRIEND: — A spiritual or liv- ing creation, which consists in giving its creature life or being, must of necessity on the part of the creator confess itself a purely subjective or miraculous one, attesting at most His indwelling infinitude in the created nature. " Erom the uncreate, infinite Being itself and Life itself," says Swedenborg, "no being can be imme- diately created, because the Divine is one and indi- visible. But from created and finite substances, so formed that the Divine may he in them, beings may be created. Since men and angels are such beings, they are only recipients of life ; wherefore if any suffers himself to be so far misled as to think that he is not a recipient of life but life itself, nothing can hinder him thinking himself a God." * Again : " Di- vine Love cannot create any one immediately from itself, for in that case the creature would be love in * Dioine Love and IFisdom, 4. 212 LAWS OF THE its essence, or the Lord himself; but it can create beings from substances so formed as to be capable of receiving its love and wisdom. Comparatively as the mundane sun is unable by all its heat and light to make the earth germinate, when nevertheless it can produce germination from earthy substances," such as seeds, " in which it may be present by its heat and light, causing vegetation." * So he says elsewhere, to the same effect : " Life viewed in itself, which is God, cannot create another being that shall be life itself: for the life which is God is uncreate, continuous, and indivisible; hence it is that God is one. But the life which is God can create, out of substances which are not life, forms in lohich it can exist, giving these forms to seem as if they themselves lived. Now men are such forms, which as being only receptacles of life, could not in the first creation, or originally, be anything but images and likenesses of God : for life and its recipients adapt themselves each to the other like active and passive, but in no wise mix together. Hence human forms, being but recipient forms of life, do not live from themselves but from God who alone is life." f " It seems to man as if he lived from himself, but this is a fallacy. The reason why it seems as if life were in man is, that it enters by influx from the Lord into his inmost forms, * Divine Love and Wisdom, 5. f Alh. Creed, 25. SPIRITUAL CREATION. 213 wMch are remote from the sight of his thought, and so are unperceived. Further, the principal cause wliich is life, and the instrumental cause which is recipient of it, act together as one cause and this action is felt in the latter, or in Man, as if it were in himself. Still another reason why life appears to be in man himself, is that the Divine love is of such an infinite quality that it desires to communicate to man " (or have in common with him) " what belongs to itself." * As is said in another place : " It is the essence of love not to love itself but others, and to be joined in unity with them by love. It is also essential to it to be beloved by those others, since thereby conjunc- tion is effected. The essence of all love consists in conjunction : yea the life of it, what we call its en- joyment, pleasantness, delight, sweetness, beatitude, happiness, felicity. Love consists in willing what is our own to be another's, and feeling that others pri- vate delight as our own. This it is to love. But for a man to feel his own delight in another, and not the other's delight in himself, — this is not to love ; for in this case he loves himself, but in the other his neighbor. These two loves, self-love and neighborly love, are diametrical opposites ; for in proportion as any one loves another from self-love, he afterwards hates him. Hence it is evident that the Divine love * Ath. Creed, 20. 214 SPIRITUAL CREATION INERT WITHOUT cannot help being and existing in other beings and existences whom it loves and by whom it is beloved. For when such a quality exists in all love, it is bound to exist in the amplest measure, that is, infinitely or without drawback, in Love itself." * And Sweden- borg goes on to say, that if infinite love existed in others, by creation, they would be Love itself, and God consequently would be self-love, whereof not the least conceivable fibre is possible to Him, being totally opposed to His being. " This reciprocation of love must take place between God and other beings in whose selfhood there is nothing of the Divine." This objective middle-ground however, which all spiritual creation implies between creature and crea- tor, and makes common to them both, is objective only to the creature's imperfect intelligence, while it is in truth a necessary element of his subjectivity, being requisite to define the spiritual creation to his limited perception, or give it anchorage and embodi- ment to his experience. It no way enters as such objective middle-ground into the creative idea, but confesses itself a mere latent, still unrecognized, con- stitutional factor or law of the created subjectivity. Thus in the actual creation nature is the objective middle-ground between creature and creator ; the * Divine Love and Wisdom^ 47, 48, 49. THE CREATURE'S NATURAL CONSTITUTION. 215 mother-substance which to the created intelHgence gives creation sensible background, or is necessary to constitute it, and make it visible. But this natm^al mother-substance has no independent existence to the creative intelligence ; but exists only as an implication or involution of the created or finite selfhood, to which fallacious quantity it affords all the while the only real or universal and quam-sT^iniiitd pretext and justifica- tion, and hence in every way invites and secures to it self the tenderest Divine concession or accommodation. Nature indeed offers to the universal heart of man the nearest possible symbol — that is, pledge or reali- zation — of the Divine infinitude it is any way capa- ble of acknowledging ; and it is freely worn therefore by God as a temporary mask or visor, under cover of which He pursues, and finally legitimates to the created intelligence. His stupendous spiritual ends. It is plain to see, then, that creation, in the only sense in which it is capable of being rationally apprehended, that is, as a purely spiritual or living work, is bound by virtue of the creator's infinitude to determine itself to objective natural form ; or, to use a compact and convenient expression of Swedenborg, is bound to ultimate itself naturally or objectively to the creature's experience, in order to reflect or reproduce to his finite consciousness the infinite life or being he has in God. " By creation is meant," says Sweden- 216 SPIRITUAL CREATION INERT WITHOUT borg, " what is Divine from inmost to outermost, or first to last. Everything which proceeds from the Divine begins from Himself, and progresses accord- ing to order even to the ultimate end : thus through the heavens into the world, and there rests as in its ultimate " or home; " for the ultimate of Divine order is in the nature of the world. What is of such a quality is properly said to be created." * So, in another place, he says : " Scientific things " — by which he means, well-established facts as disengaged from the personal or superstitious fancies of men — " which belong to the sphere of man's natural intel- ligence, are the ultimates of order there ; and things prior, that is, spiritual things, must be in ultimates that they may exist and appear in the natural sphere. All prior or spiritual things, moreover, tend to ulti- mates as to their own boundaries or limits, and exist in those boundaries or limits as causes in their effects, or as superior things exist in inferior, as in their proper vehicles or vessels. Hence it is that the spiritual world terminates in man's natural mind, in which mind accordingly the things of the spiritual world are exhibited representatively" as in a glass, or picture. " Unless spiritual things " — which, re- member, are always living affections of goodness and * Arcana Calestia, 10634. See also Ath. Creed, 29. THE CREATURE'S NATURAL CONSTITUTION. 217 truth — " were representatively reproduced by such things as are in the world, they would not be at all rationally apprehended." * " Divine order never stops in a middle-point (as the angel or heaven) and there forms a thing without its ultimate, for then it would not be in a full and perfect state ; but goes straight on to its ultimate, and when it is in its ultimate, it then forms, and also by mediums there brought together, it redintegrates itself and produces ulterior things by procreations : whence the ultimate is called the seminary or seed- place of heaven." f " The ultimate of Divine order is in man, and because he is the ultimate of Divine order, he is also its basis and foundation. Heaven without the human race would be like a house want- ing its foundation." I "The end of creation, which is that all things may return to the creator, and that conjunction may be effected, exists in its ultimates." ^ " That all ultimate ends become anew first ends, is evident from the fact that there is nothing so inert and dead but has some efficiency in it; even sand exhales somewhat which contributes assistance in producing and therefore in effecting something." || " The ultimate, lohen order is perfect, is holy above * Arc. Ceel. 5373. § I)ivi?ie Love and Wisdom, 171. t Heaven and Hell, 315. || Ibid, 172. + Ibid., 304. 218 IMPLICATION OF NATURE IN CREATION interior things, for the hohness of interior things is there complete." * It is this implication of the created nature, accord- ingly, in the spiritual creation, which alone gives that creation its truly miraculous quality, and saves it from being what otherwise it must always have appeared to be, a mere magical product, or work of enchantment. Magic is the power of gratuitous or ostentatious productivity ; the power to produce some- thing out of nothing, consequently without labor- pains : thus a something which has no inward ground of being, and therefore exists surreptitiously or by virtue of a deception practised upon the senses of those who acknowledge it. It is a power which used to flourish, in very high places too, upon the earth ; but is happily now confined to the hells, save in so far as the hells themselves are vainly trying to com- pass an unsuspected lodgment in the human mind in the guise of an absurd doctrine called Spiritualism. But the power of all the hells put together would be impotent at this day to persuade any man of average spiritual intelligence that magic, however specious its performances, is anything but a gross mockery of .creative power, or ever succeeds in demonstrating anything but its own unlikeness to it. It is the characteristic of power truly creative to be able to * Arcana Calestia, 9S24. See also 5077, 9360, 9212, 9216. GIVES IT ALL ITS INTEREST TO THE HEART. 219 endow its creature with a miraculous mother-sub- stance, or natural basis, and by that means reproduce as in a glass all its own spiritual effects, so verifying or authenticating them to the creature's understanding. And it is the unfailing attribute of natural existence to be a form of use to something higher than itself, thus the mineral to the vegetable, the vegetable to the animal, and the animal to man ; so that whatso- ever has not either potentially or actually this soul of use within it, does not honestly belong to nature, but confesses itself a mere sensational effect produced upon the individual intelligence.* * " Hence," says Swedenborg, " you may discern how sensually — that is, from the inspiration of the bodily senses, and the darkness ■which they cast over spiritual things — they think who deem that na- ture is self-originated. These men think from the eye and not from the understanding. People of this sort are able to think nothing of what being and existing is in itself, namely : that it is eternal, uncreate, and infinite. Nor are they able to think of Life in itself, but as of some volatile thing, passing off into nothing; nor yet of Love and Wisdom, being totally incapable of discerning that all things of nature derive thence their existence. And indeed it cannot be seen by any one that all things of nature exist thence, unless nature herself be thought of as an orderly series of uses, and not estimated from some of her outward forms merely, which are only visual objects. For the uses of nature proceed only from life, and their series and order from wisdom and love. But her visible forms are mere continents of these uses, so that if they alone or primarily be regarded, nothing of life can be seen in nature, much less anything of love and wisdom, and consequently nothing of God." — Bioine Love and Wisdom, 46. 220 SPIRITUAL CREATION INTERPRETED Creative power in truth has at this day no fitter expression than that which is furnished it by the modern doctrine of Evohition : understood, to be sure, somewhat more largely than that doctrine is by its current scientific adherents. For to men of science generally the doctrine of evolution imports merely the development of one natural species or kind out of other pre-existing species or kinds ; whereas a true or philosophic doctrine of evolution implies the con- version of natural (or lower) substance into spiritual (or higher) form. There is no doubt that man, in so far as his very inferior animality is concerned, is a strict product of the animal kingdom: but there is therefore no reason to hold him to be an evolution of it, unless indeed evolution means devolution, or a process from more to less, from strength to weakness. He is, doubtless, so far forth as his animal natm'e is concerned, identical with all other animals, only less highly gifted than they with aggressive and persistent force ; and so far accordingly there is more ground to pronounce him an involution of the animal king- dom than an evolution of it. But man is not essen- tially animal. He is animal at most on his organic side, and it is only by remorselessly slumping his distinctively inorganic or human attributes in his animal or organic ones, that any pretext is found for making his existence a product of evolution from BY THE DOCTEINE OF EVOLUTION. 221 lower forms. In so far as he is animal, he does not require any doctrine of evolution to explain his ad- vent unless it be one which explains at the same time the advent of the whole animal kingdom of Avhich he forms a part. And so far as he is distinc- tively human and inorganic — that is, unembraced in the animal kingdom — his own particular animality stands between him and the rest of that kingdom, stamping itself the only ground or earth of involution he can possibly need, for the subsequent uses of his spiritual or characteristic evolution. My subjective existence, physical and moral, is in- volved in my spiritual being, just as the shell is involved in the oyster, the egg in the chicken, the husk in the wheat, the matrix in the gem, the parent in the child : that is, as giving it not substance but surface, not being but background, not centre but circumference, not inward reality but outward appari- tion, not soul but body. My subjective existence in short is the worthless, perishable ground of my im- mortal spiritual being. Thus involution is anything else than evolution. It is the direct logical opposite of Evolution. It is indeed a literal and strict inver- sion of it, just as the root of a plant is an inversion of its stem, or its seed an inversion of its fruit. In- volution is logically proportionate and precedent to Evolution, as earth is logically proportionate and pre- 222 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PHILOSOPHIC cedent to heaven ; and no hypothesis of evolution will ever be competent to furnish a pedigree of existence, unless it start from a previous philosophy of involu- tion. Thus if, as many self-constituted partisans of science are prone to believe, monkey evolves man, it can only be by virtue of man first involvinf/ monkey. And to account for man therefore on monkey prin- ciples, near or remote, without first accounting for monkey on distinctively human principles, would be to leave our poor ancestral monkey himself unac- counted for : that is, it would practically be to deify him. It would be to explain being by existence, the absolute by the contingent, substance by accident, church by steeple, ship by sails, house by cellar. Whatever is really involved in any existence is merely and at most constitutional to it, as conditioning its apparition, and is not the least essential to it, as con- ferring its being. My various viscera are no doubt a condition of my physical statics ; but that they in the least degree explain my moral dynamics, can only be affirmed as it seems to me by wilful fatuity. They are involved in my physical existence, which is itself involved in my moral consciousness ; so that you will never be able to account for them, until you first account for me, independently of them. For, per contra, whatsoever is evolved by any exist- ing form, is itself rigidly creative of such form ; that AND THE SCIENTIFIC IDEA OF IT. 223 is, causes it to exist in natiira rerum. So that to attempt explaining evolution by involution, man by monkey, is a palpable logical dodge or quibble, whose whole force consists in confounding two essentially dis- crepant and reciprocally inverse things, namely : crea- tion and constitution, being and existence, substance and surface, cause and condition, spirit and flesh. Involution is to evolution precisely what shell is to oyster, what husk is to wheat, what matrix is to gem, what parent is to child ; and to explain evolution by involution, therefore, is to make the oyster cradle its shell, the wheat nourish its husk, the gem protect its matrix, the child support its parent ; all which to the eye of philosophy constitutes a downright witches' sabbath of science ; but a sabbath nevertheless which Mr. Herbert Spencer and the so-called positivists gen- erally are content and proud to sanctify. To think of our most eminent religiosi being frightened by these vagaries of our modern scientific thought ! What does their alarm prove ? Certainly little or nothing with respect to the object of it, but very much with respect to its subjects. For it proves not that Pos- itivism, or any subtler form of meditative Atheism, is any way dangerous to any properly human interest, but only that our existing religious faith is every way insecure, being founded not upon the rock of Truth, but upon the shifting sands of authorized opinion. 224 EVOLUTION RELATIVELY A SPIRITUAL FLOWER; Thus, as I have said, evolution is an every way fit- ting doctrine wherewith to express the truth of spirit- ual creation, provided we give the phenomenal basis of involution which it claims a strictly subject posi- tion ; or make Evolution a regenerate spiritual flower, and Involution its natural earthly stem. This is pre- cisely what the scientific men fail to do. They invari- ably put the cart before the horse, in making the stem account for the flower, and not the flower for the stem, which is the true philosophic order. They make the earth explain heaven, and not heaven the earth, the body explain the soul, and not the soul the body, physics explain morals, and not morals physics, and thus practically outrage all the deeper and finer instincts of humanity, dogmatically sundering that exquisite thread of tradition which in the absence of positive knowledge has hitherto bound men in intel- lectual and qiiasi-sipmtual unity. The obvious phil- osophic objection to recent scientific speculations is not that they practically tend to invalidate the current religious dogmas in regard to creation, which they cannot do half forcibly enough ; but that they substi- tute in their place a scientific dogmatism which is not half so respectable in itself, to begin with, and which if it should ever become established in popular regard would be fatal to the very conception of creation, and hence to the spiritual dignity of human nature. INVOLUTION ITS NATURAL STEM. 225 Science has a notable function in the world, but as I have already said it is an intensely humble not a commanding one ; an abjectly servile not a leading function. Its name is Esau, not Jacob, being born of the bond woman not of the free. That is to say, science reflects the heart still in bondage to the intel- lect, while philosophy alone expresses the intellect inspired by the heart. The function of science is to observe and connote the actual facts of existence, in order to determine the mental relation of unity which binds them all together ; not in the least to dogma- tize, or build up a philosophic credo, either upon the physical facts themselves, or the logical unity with which the mind invests them. In ^\\ovi, fact and the relations affirmed by the mind amongst facts, is the field of science. Thus it is scientifically competent to Newton to prove that the elliptical movement of the earth around the sun as demonstrated by Kepler, is due to the attraction exerted by the sun upon the earth. Eor what Newton thus does is simply to establish by Kepler's aid a hitherto unrecognized law of planetary life or intercourse. And it is perfectly competent moreover to Mr. Darwin, in the point of view of science, to collect and colligate, under any generic law of unity he pleases — say Natural Selec- tion, Sexual Selection, or both together — whatsoever actual facts of transmutation he may have observed in 226 SCIENCE ESSENTIALLY MINISTERIAL, existing animal and vegetable species. Tor what he thus does is simply to establish and announce a cer- tain spiritual or living unity, with which the mind by an instinct of its own underlying infinitude, insists upon filling up all the crevices of nature, and account- ing for all its changes. Mr. Darwin may, to be sure, have been faithless to fact, or faithless to the mind : that is to say, his observation may be imperfect, or his generalization premature : but at all events his method is thus far irreproachable. But when any one, under cover of Mr. Darwin's name, quietly " slips over," as Aristotle says, " into another kind," and making a fulcrum of his induction in regard to the existing or fossil variations in the same species, applies his lever to the disclosure of the origination of species, he at once casts off" the honest livery of science, and converts himself all unconsciously into an ambitious dogma- tist. Mr. Darwin makes it scientifically very proba- ble that natural and sexual selection account for all the varieties observable within our existing species. But to reason hereupon that these two principles are sufficient to account for the origin of existing species themselves, is not to reason scientifically, because the reasoning admits of absolutely no verification in fact. My tailor yields a sufficient scientific explanation of the differences between my clothes and those of other peo- ple ; but when you seek a philosophic justification of NOT MAGISTERIAL TO THE MIND. 227 clothing itself, you must go beyond the tailor. It is good science to say : the sartorial art originated more or less all the varieties we observe in the costume of men ; certainly all those variations which simply im- ply advance : for here we have any amount of well- attested fact to sustain us. But it is complete recre- ancy to science to say hereupon " the sartorial art also originates clothing itself among men " : for here we have absolutely no historic fact to keep us in counte- nance. Just so with the scientific evolutionist. The basis of his speculation here is not fact at all, but pure fancy. He says in efiect : " I conclude that natural and sexual selection have operated all the changes we observe within our extant species of existence, and be- tween some of these species again and certain allied species of which we have only a few fossil remainders ; because a great store of well-attested facts in natural history warrant this conclusion " ; and this is good science. But now he proceeds : " I take another step, and conclude, from the adequacy of these laws to ac- count for specific changes in existence, that they are adequate also to account for the origination, which is the creation of existence." And this is spurious sci- ence. Why ? Simply because it is obviously incapa- ble of verification by any fact of nature or of history, and depends for its justification upon a certain bias 228 NATURE NEITHER BEGINS NOR ENDS ANYTHING, or prejudice of the man's own intellect, and upon this exclusively. Nature gives us absolutely no hint, much less any distinct affirmation, in respect either to the origin or destiny of any of her forms or species. All that we see in nature is a foreground of change upon a back- ground of stability, thus fixity in universals, mutation in particulars. But nothing originates and nothing ends in nature. Why ? Because nature is not being nor even existence, but only, and at most, appearance. Hence all of nature's forms or species are purely rela- tive or phenomenal ; that is to say, they presuppose an intelligence which is capable of comprehending them, and to which alone they exist. And the scien- tific evolutionist consequently, in so far forth as he invents a natural origin even for the larvae of our exist- ing marine ascidians, let alone for the mind of man itself, proceeds upon a total misunderstanding of what nature means, and so turns the actual truth of things upside down. In fact he discharges the mind of all freedom or life ; for he makes nature no longer the obedient mirror of truth, but its absolute source and arbiter. LETTER XVIII. tY DEAR FRIEND : — Let me say again, in simple justice to myself, that I have no shadow of objection to the new scientific dogma, in so far as it is purely negative; that is, bears upon the stagnant religious faiths of the world. Doubt or denial is the legitimate weapon of scientific advance. And our present science is, I appre- hend, only an indispensable John the Baptist blindly preparing the way, and proclaiming the advent, of a new, or a spiritual and living faith : which it does by vastating the active intellect of men of its dead faiths. Accordingly in so far as our recent bellicose science goes to discredit an historic or literal creation, I have no quarrel with it. For I see in it only the augury of a new faith, based upon a profounder ac- knowledgment of creation, as being no preposterous physical exploit of God accomplished in the realms of space and time, but a wholly spiritual operation of Ilis power in the realms of human affection and thought. 230 THE FORTE AND FOIBLE OF SCIENCE. Thus it is altogether in their positive aspect that I pretend to any quarrel with our recent scientific dog- matics. When science, disdaining the humble but honorable office of ministering to a new intellectual faith and a new spiritual life in man, assumes itself to constitute or even forecast such faith and life, she is no longer amiable nor respectable, and invites as it seems to me a just disclaimer on the part of the outraged common sense of mankind. The forte of science, be it always remembered, is reflection, or reasoned observation ; and these things are plainly possible to man only in so far as his feet are planted in a fixed physical or organic world exist- ing objectively or outwardly to his senses. Now reflection being the proper forte of science, or the mode of industry whereby she thrives, I hope it will be allowed me to ask what is her consequent foible, or the mode of activity by which she dwindles ? The foible of science, then, reflection being her forte, is perception, or spiritual insight; which is possible to man only in so far as his head dwells in a free, inorganic, ethereal, or metaphysical world existing inwardly or subjectively to his affections. Now, such being the forte, and such the foible, of science, it follows naturally enough to the eye of philosophy, that i\\Q punctam saliens both of her reflective strength and her perceptive weakness should be, as I have be- NATURE'S FIRST LESSON TO THE INTELLECT. 231 fore alleged, a certain ontological illusion which she shares with the mass of uninstructed men, in regard to the natural constitution of things : or all simply the constitution of nature. Accordingly let us look into this. We give the designation of Nature to the outlying universe, or world of things existing to sense. Now what is the earliest and deepest intellectual lesson we derive from this world of sense ? It is that every- thing embraced in it exists really in a composite man- ner, however much it may seem to exist in a simple or absolute one. The reason of this discrepancy be- tween the rational truth and the sensible fact of the case is, doubtless, the infirmity of the created intelli- gence : ive the dependenis of nature, who get our high- est knowledge exclusively from the gradual revelation she gives of the Divine goodness and truth, hring to her observation and study first of all a simple, and then a cow2)osite faculty of attention ; and she miraculously adjusts herself to our need. Thus we first apprehend nature by sense, and only afterwards learn to appre- hend it by the understanding. The exigency of our senses imposes upon everything that exists an appar- ently absolute, that is, a fixed or finite, quality, which the thing is thought to possess in itself, or quite irre- spectively of all other things. But our reason or understanding subsequently enables us to convert this 232 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PHYSICAL absolute or fixed quality of existence, which it appar- ently possesses in itself, into a relative, unfixed, or contingent quality which it possesses only in relation to other things. That is to say, we first apprehend the thing as a purely physical existence, and after- wards rise to the conception of it as a natural exist- ence. The first or sensuous aspect of the world pre- sents us everything in a purely selfish, personal, or phenomenal point of view ; the second or rational aspect of it alone exhibits everything as existing in a purely relative, or associated, and harmonious light. A horse, for example, happens at this moment to be tied before my door. This horse, I repeat, is an ab- solute or fixed fact of sense, entirely distinct from all other facts ; so fixed or absolute, that to dispute or deny it would be equivalent to disputing or denying the competence of my senses in their own sphere. But notwithstanding that the horse is this absolute or fixed fact to my senses, you yourself will agree with me that he has no existence to my reason out of re- lation to all other horses. That is to say : while he apparently exists in himself alone, or as an individual horse, he in very truth exists only in solidarity with his kind. And so with all other things in the realm of sense. Now what I want hereupon to point out to your attention in the first place, is a truth which perhaps AND NATURAL EXISTENCE. 233 you never have thought of before, namely ; that this relative existence of things — the existence they have in relation to all other things — alone stamps them natural ; while their absolute or individual existence — the apparent existence they have in themselves — is a grossly fallacious or unreal thing, in total contra- diction to the constitution of nature. To be sure it is only a judgment of our infirm or imperfect sense that things have this absolute or fixed individuality. Nothing claims it but man ; but because he, inspired by sense and uncontrolled by reason, affects selfhood, he does not hesitate to bestow it also in modified form upon all other existence. All other things utterly dis- claim it in fact ; and it is only the profound halluci- nation which he cherishes in regard to himself as in- volving his own being and existence, that ever leads him to invest them also in their degree with selfhood, reckoning their innocent persons in fact good and evil, and subjecting them to reward and punishment, as they stand affected to his dubious and very wilful supremacy. I said just now that this absolute or individual aspect of things, the aspect they have of existing in themselves, and irrespectively of other things, was grossly unnatural : " in total contradiction to the constitution of nature." Nature, to our conception, is a composite existence made up of an objective and 234 THE PHILOSOPHER HAS NO CALL subjective unity. That is to say, it is the strict unity in all its subjects of a pubhc and a private, or a com- mon and a proper, force. It embraces two elements, one universal the other particular, one statical the other dynamical, one material, in short, the other spiritual ; and these two elements moreover are most distinctly one or united, so that however easily we may divorce them in thought or reflectively, they are never separable in fact, A really absolute, finite, or independent existence, save as a fallacy of the human mind, is disavowed by the nature of things, and we may safely dismiss it from rational regard therefore. There is no such existence out of our infirm under- standing, and no subjective pretension to it outside of hell, which fairly lives and grows fat upon the hallu- cinations bred of it. But I admit that natiu-e out^ wardly vieived does wear the appearance of being almost wholly made up of these absolute or finite and independent existences. Bitt what business have we, as philosophers, to be cavght loohdng at nature out- loardly ? This in fact is just my complaint in the premises, that we should be so long philosophically content to view nature as an outward thing, or as she stands revealed to sense, when she herself prays to be regarded inwardly alone, or as she reveals herself to our understanding: that is, to be regarded no more as mineral, vegetable, and animal, but as exclusively TO LOOK AT NATURE OUTWARDLY. 235 human. It is only an inveterate sensuous fatuity on our part which leads us to mistake the mere sensible or physical appearances of things for their funda- mental natural or rational realities. And there is no way of correcting the mistake but by outgrowing this fatal intellectual fatuity ; that is, by at once manfully deposing sense from the governing or inspiring rela- tion it now bears to the intellect, and remanding it forthwith to a wholly ministerial or subordinate place. Believe me, my friend, it is nothing but this subtle and insinuating serpent of sense (rightly so named in sacred or symbolic writ) which — appealing to the woman in us, that is, the still latent or unrecognized spiritual Divine force in our nature — has ever had power so to falsify and otherwise bedevil our intelli- gence as to make us look upon creation as a material or sensibly objective work of God, detached from Him by the laws of space and time, instead of a piu-ely spiritual or inwardly subjective one, intimately blent with His eternal Love and Wisdom through the laws of our own nature or the life of our affection and thought. It is simply this stultifying pressure of sense upon the intellect that has always until now rendered it intellectually impossible for us to identify our own honest natural manhood, let alone our Divine natural one. Have you not under the guidance of sense always looked upon your natural manhood as 236 SCIENCE HAS NO PERCEPTION at bottom physically engendered? That is to say, as engendered out of the various limitations you de- rive from your mineral, vegetable, and animal organi- zation ? You have never thought — have you ? — that your natural manhood was what forever lifted you out of mineral, vegetable, and animal relation- ship, and rendered you eternally solidaire with man- kind. Much more, if you have ever considered the truth of a Divine natural manhood at all, you have thought — have you not ? — that it was altogether perso7ially constituted : that is, constituted by a person of another nature to ours, acting in fact in total aloof- ness from, and independence of, your and mine and all men's common nature, instead of identifying him- self exclusively with that nature, and glorifying it to Divine dimensions. Personality has never been any- thing else than a mark which we stupid men have required to assure us of our natural difference from mineral, vegetable, and animal, although we ourselves have none the less always contrived stupidly to in- terpret it into a providential signal of the natural relation of disunion or inequality we were under to our fellow-men. Accordingly when the Divine natu- ral humanity condescends to reveal itself in personal form, we may be sure that it is for no purpose of living to that form but only of dying to it, in order that men may cease any longer to find their life in OF THE SPIRITUAL ENDS OF NATURE, 237 what merely differences them from lower natm'es, and seek it henceforth in all that identifies them with their own nature, now become Divine. But I am forgetting my purpose, which was to show a certain ontologic craze on the part of science, which rendering her view of nature hopelessly infirm or inadequate except for isoteric or shop purposes, utterly defeats her educational competence. This craze consists all simply in looking upon nature as a fixed or finite existence, thus as materially constituted, as being in short a strict phenomenon of space and time. It is all very well, mind, nay, it is a matter of stern necessity, to regard nature as materially or outwardly constituted to our senses. For inasmuch as nature is a purely metaphysic quantity, it is evident that she can only be reflected to our un- derstanding through the obedient mirror of physics. Her existence then to our recognition must be con- ditioned upon fixed or sensibly objective relations between mineral, vegetable, and animal substance ; otherwise it will be impossible for us ever to appre- hend her, ever to catch even a glimpse of her living and glorified presence. But this is not what science, at least in the person of her more renowned modern adepts, means. She does not hold that nature is de- pendent for her intellectual recognition by us on a certain objective or material imagery addressed pri- 238 AND THEREFORE CONFOUNDS marily to our senses, and through them to our under- standing. By no means. She holds that nature is actually identical with this physical imagery, and has neither conceivable being nor existence apart from the unconscious forms which to a more instructed eye simply reveal her perfections. This is why I called this illusion a craze on the part of science. Surely you would think a man out of his wits who should identify himself with his image in a glass. And I in like manner deem science out of her wits when she identifies the mistress she professes to worship with the perishable mirror that reflects her. These objective or material facts, which so gravel and im- pede the onward march of science, are nothing, as we have seen, but idtimates of Divine order, in the sphere of sense ; just as bricks and mortar are ulti- mates in the same sphere of architectural order. You would not rate very high a man's genius who should pretend to deduce the architectural order of the Par- thenon from the stone and lime and water which nevertheless gave it its sole material basis ? So too you would not feel constrained to put a high estimate upon the conceited science, which — because it is able to lay a profane or familiar hand upon these mere bases, or material ultimates, of Divine order in human nature — irreverently supposes that it has got within its grasp the ineffable spiritual results of that order ? NATURE WITH PHYSICS. 239 If SO, I should feel painfully constrained in my turn not to put a very high estimate upon your philosophic sagacity. Spiritual creation cannot possibly be understood save in so far as the spiritual or created subject is seen to be invested incidentally with natural consti- tution. His person must be seen to be naturally constituted, in order to give him conscious projection from God, and make anything, even existence, truly predicable of him. For spiritual creation, you re- member, is purely subjective creation ; that is, the creator gives being to the creature only by giving Himself to him, or endowing him with his own infi- nite substance. But no mere person, much less all persons, would be equal to this Divine communi- cation, unless it incidentally provided, or involved in itself, a natural or objective development on the part of the creature to give him background or a basis of identity ; otherwise it must instantly collapse or turn out a false pretension. There would be no created object at all commensurate with the creative subject ; and creation consequently, which, to begin with, is a strict equation between creator and creature, would fall through, or confess itself impossible from the start. This is all that Swedenborg means by his doc- trine of natural ultimates as incidental to spiritual creation. It is a doctrine which, for the first time in 240 IT CLAIMS THAT NATURAL EXISTENCE the philosophic annals of the mind, not only accounts for Nature, and perfectly accounts for it too, but brings the dread and formidable spiritual world itself into our own keeping, as it were, by harnessing it and taming it down to the phenomena of men's familiar natural history. Any other doctrine would turn the creator into a mere magician, or supreme charlatan, making everything out of nothing, and so avouching himself infinitely below not merely any renoAvned art- ist, but any honest stone-mason. Tor the mason's art does n't pretend to make bricks without straw, or sub- jective existence without any objective implication, but finds its ultimation also in things most real and tangible to our senses, whereby alone it is that we are never liable to mistake it for a mere creation of the fata morgana. Now it would be by no means remarkable if science should be content to fix her regard exclusively upon this constitutive sphere of things, thus objectively in- volved in the spiritual or subjective creation. For this outwardly objective sphere of things constitutes the true and legitimate field of her activity, furnishes her with her sole raison d'etre in fact ; and within that sphere accordingly none can gainsay her voice. But she is not thus content in point of fact. Some busy imp from some dusky hell of ambition has bitten her Avith an unfortunate desire to dogmatize, or take IS IDENTICAL WITH SPIRITUAL BEING. 241 captive the realm of faith in man ; that is to say, the field of his interior knowledge as well as his external. This is the only reason why I have allowed myself to call her craze an ontologic one. It does not confine itself to speculating upon existence, but assuming apparently that natural existence is the same thing with spiritual being, it undertakes authoritatively to check or limit what is by what sensibly appears fo be ; or array natural constitution ar/ainst spiritual creation. Thus where Swedenborg says that all natural existence is created by a soul of use behind it — use to other and higher things — our modern science afiirms that all natural existence is constituted by some primary natural substance, say protoplasm, and that there is an end of the matter. There can be no objection of course to the scientific man's attempt to reduce if he can all organized existence to a common basis ; but the objection comes in when he attempts to make any formula of his on this grossly gratuitous and imper- tinent subject, of vital concern to philosophy. For in doing this he at once betrays his crass ignorance of what philosophy means, confounding, for example, every concept that is proper and dear to it with its exact opposite, mdividualift/ with identity, life with existence, form with substance, cause with condition, creation with constitution. Philosophy is perfectly in- different to what naturally constitutes existence or 242 PROFESSOR HUXLEY gives it outward body, but reserves all her interest for what spiritually creates it, or gives it inward soul. To misconceive and misrepresent this, however, is the inveterate temptation of clever scientific men, and the infirmity has never been more aptly illustrated than in the developments of our recent scientific material- ism. " Pursue," says Professor Huxley, " the nettle and the oak, the midge and the mammoth, the infant and the adult, Shakespeare and Cahban, to their com- mon root, and you have protoplasm for your pains. Beyond this analysis science cannot go ; and any metaphysic of existence consequently which is not fast tethered to this physical substance, which is not firmly anchored in protoplasm, is an affront to the scientific understanding." Such in substance is Professor Huxley's attitude to- wards philosophy. Professor Huxley is consciously no doubt a very independent man, and an uncommonly able writer ; but it seems to me very odd, to say the least, that any one interested not in the pursuit of scientific knowledge primarily, but of philosophic truth, should be at all moved, and especially at all disconcerted, by his facts : for whether they be scien- tifically valid or not, they are properly irrelevant to philosophy. Like Mr. Spencer, M. Taine, and all the other men who desire not only to make science the king, but also to invest it with the priesthood AS A PHILOSOPHER. 243" of the mind, Professor Huxley restricts his researches to the principle of identity in existence — that point in which all existence becomes essentially chaotic or substantially indistinguishable. The philosopher, on the other hand, who sees science to be not the end but the means of the mind's ultimate enfranchisement, enlarges his researches to the principle of individual- ity in existence, or that comprehensive spiritual unity in which all existence becomes essentially cosmical, or formally differentiated inter se. Far be it from me to question Mr. Huxley's statistics, for I know noth- ing about them ; I only question, nay I am heartily amused by, the extravagant intellectual conclusions he deduces from them. I have no doubt, on his own showing, that the initial fact in all organization is protoplasm. But at the same time I avow myself unable to conceive a fact of less vital significance to philosophy. Fhilosopliij cheerfully takes that and every similar fact of science for yr anted. The initial fact in the edifice of St. Peter's at Rome was a quan- tity of stone and lime. This fact was assumed by the architect as necessarily included in the form of his edifice, about which form alone he was concerned. The identity of his edifice, or what it possessed of common substance with all other buildings, interested him very little ; only its individuality, or what it should possess of differential form from all other 244 WHAT PROTOPLASM SYMBOLIZES buildings, was what exercised his imagination. To conceive of Michael Angelo concerning himself mainly with the rude protoplasm, or mere flesh and bones, of his building, is at once to reduce him from an architect to a mason. And, in like manner, to con- ceive the philosopher intent upon running man's im- mortal destiny, or spiritual form, into the abject slime out of which his body germinates, is to reduce him from a philosopher to a noodle. Protoplasm means intellectual chaos ; means the resolution of the existing cosmos into absolute form- lessness or disorder. That is to say : you cannot arrive at protoplasm experimentally or livingly, ex- cept by disowning our present cosmical form and order, except by eliminating all that you organically are, with all that is contingent upon your organiza- tion, namely : all your experience of life and con- sciousness, every fact of appetite and emotion, of reason and imagination, of passion and action, every- thing, in short, that constitutes you a living person and so stamps you of the slightest moment to phi- losophy. Protoplasm, in truth, as an intellectual symbol, means the extinguishing of the soul or life or being of things, and the permission of mere bodily existence to them, without any source either for them to exist, or go forth, from, but what is essentially in- ferior to themselves. For no one will pretend that TO THE INTELLECT. 245 protoplasm, or the forniless unqualified material of things, is any way comparable in intellectual interest with the least of its formed or qualified products. Nevertheless, to such absolute drivel does the man of science reduce himself when he aspires, on scien- tific (/rounds, to play the philosopher ! And such is the invariable penalty of violating spiritual bounds. The realm of Philosophy is invariably soul, or inward consciousness ; the realm of science is, as invariably, body, or outward sense. And although it is past all dispute that these two realms stand to each other in the relation of superstructure and base, it is none the less but all the more true that while the former is in- deed oidwardly conditioned upon the latter, the latter is inwardly created by the former ; and hence that the higher realm of soul is no more continuous with the lower realm of body, than a house is continuous with its foundation, or a tree Avhich fdls the air with bloom and fragrance is continuous with its underground roots. The roots of the tree are a mere involution of the tree in order to its subsequent evolution, and any expansion they may attain to is not in the direction of the tree, but in a contrary or inverse direction, that of the earth. The foundation of the house in like manner is so wholly subservient to the house, that every subsequent enlargement it may chance to un- dergo in itself, will only enhance such subserviency 246 PHYSICISM A PROVIDENTIAL GOSPEL. by carrying the foundation deeper, that is away from the house rather than towards it. Notwithstanding all I have said, however, I have not the least doubt that the gospel of physicism is a strictly providential movement in our mental history. I have no doubt that in thus making as it does tabula rasa, or a clean sweep, of our sensuous or inherited ontology, it does unwitting good service to the mind in clearing the ground for a new and purely spir- itual conception of being or life. Idealism seems in fact a gross but inevitable husk of the mind's spirit- ual advent. But its role is essentially critical : that is, it is not the least rightfully dogmatic. And noth- ing can be more insane, therefore, than to regard the new dogmatism as constituting the positive boon to the intellect which it ignorantly assumes to do. Our intelligence is built not upon negation but affirma- tion, and the current scientific idealism is at best but a transition point between the once active but always baseless and now defunct metaphysics of theology, and that philosophic naturalism or realism which is even now looming in our intellectual horizon, and ready to avouch itself the fixed immovable earth of the mind, the adamantine rock of man's spiritual faith and hope. LETTER XIX. rND now, my dear friend, we are almost ready to take up the thread of discourse we dropped, in reference to the function of the church in history : almost ready, but not quite. For I think a little further effort should first be made perfectly to familiarize your thought with Swedenborg's philosophy of nature as being a strictly necessary involution of the spiritual creation. Noth- ing short of clear conceptions on this subject will per- manently avail to free the mind from the rubbish of inane and idle ontologic speculation which now threat- ens to drown it out. The intellectual formula to which the truth of the spiritual creation with its marvellous implication of nature reduces itself, may be thus expressed : The created subject, in order to his subjective life or con- sciousness being perfectly authenticated, requires that it be altogether outwardly or objectively realized, or claim a supremely natural root. The justification of this 248 SWEDENBORG'S PHILOSOPHY intellectual formula, or law of thought, is to be found in the very nature of creation ; which, as being the operation of an infinite power, cut off therefore from all outside resources, is restricted to purely subjective issues ; and hence, in order spiritually to qualify its creatiu"e, or redeem him from the sheer and abject phenomenal subjectivity to which as a creature he is doomed, is obliged to endow him thereupon with a career of distinctively natural evolution, which may serve as a true and objective basis of his eventual spiritual enfranchisement. Creation of course is the prerogative of an infinite being ; but we are in the habit of borrowing the word to characterize the prod- ucts of our own aesthetic genius or free activity. Thus we say Hamlet is a creation of Shakespeare, Dante created the Inferno, the Parthenon divides its creation between Callicrates and Phidias, the artist creates the statue. Now, of course, regarded strictly, it is not a just use of the word to employ it simply in the way of characterizing our unforced or sponta- neous activity ; because it is essential to the creative idea that the creator give spiritual or living form to His creature only by Himself first furnishing him with natural or mother-substance. And Shakespeare, Dante, and the rest, may worry themselves out of their meagre wits, before they will ever be able any of them to endow the products of their distinctive OF NATURE. 249 genius with anything more than a purely lifeless or imaginative existence ; for with all their genius they can never bestow upon its offspring natural subjectiv- ity 01* mother-substance. Still we may get a very good hypothetical illustra- tion out of the word even in this familiar misuse of it. Let us suppose then that the artist were a veritable creator, and had power accordingly to give his statue subjective or conscious life by himself spiritually vivifying the marble from which it comes. In that case one thing would be at once clear, and that is, that the statue would be no longer as now a dead material form, but a conscious or quasi-liwmg one, instinct, no doubt, through its vivified mother-sub- stance with all its creator's genius. But another thing would be almost equally clear, and that is, that he would never be able to reproduce that genius in himself. Why not ? Because this ability would pre- suppose in the statue a certain interior or sympathetic discernment and appreciation of its creator's genius, whereas he is as yet, by the hypothesis of his finite maternal genesis, debarred all interior or sympathetic experience, and made conscious alone of his own material or outward existence. By the necessity of his finite generation he is ignorant not only of his creator's genius or individuality, but also of his crea- tor's name or identity ; ignorant in fact of everything 250 GOOD AND EVIL THE MERE but his mother-substance, and the outward Hfe and sustenance wherewith it fills his veins. It is indeed evident to the least reflection that this self-conscious life of the statue — the self-conscious or qudsi-Yih he derives from the mother — instead of spiritually approximating him to the father, will have the effect in the first instance to render him spiritually remote from the father, or spiritually alienate him from his creative source by filling him with the sentiment and animus of independent or unrelated existence. And consequently before he can come into any genuine spiritual or aesthetic sympathy and fellowship with the father, it is necessary that his natural force be abated — that he inwardly die to it in fact as the supreme law of his activity, and so rise again to the experience of an inward and better life. But how shall we even conceive of any such issue coming about in the case supposed? In the first place when a thing is naturally biased to infirmity, and its nature is yet the only force it obeys or even recognizes, it seems impossible ever to expect it vol- untarily to contract a contrary bias. The trite lines of the Roman poet : " Facilis descensus Averni, Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras. Hie labor, hoc opus, est " : easily suggest the smooth and flowery path of dal- EARTH OF THE FINITE CONSCIOUSNESS. 251 liance that leads downward, and the sharp and arduous return path. But I very much doubt whether Virgil himself, or any other poet, Pagan or Christian, has ever faced the real difficulty. The real difficulty in the way of a man becoming good out of evil, or celestial out of infernal, is that good and evil, heaven and hell, are not outgrowths or accidents of the human personality by any means, but necessary con- stituents of human nature itself, by which the nature becomes freely developed to the recognition of its sub- jects, and by whose active oppugnancy and contrast it becomes enabled at last in the person of some adequate subject gradually to slough off its infirm mortal lineaments, and ally itself with infinitude. Good and evil, heaven and hell, are not facts of creative, but of purely constitutive order. They bear primarily upon man's natural destiny, and have no relation to his spiritual freedom save through that. They are the mere geology of our natural consciousness, and this is all they are. They have no distinctively supernatural quality nor efficacy whatever. They have a simply constitutional relevancy to the earth of man's asso- ciated consciousness, and disavow therefore any prop- erly creative or controlling relation to his spiritual or individual freedom. We have been traditionally taught that good and evil, heaven and hell, were objective realities, having an absolute ground of 252 HEAVEN AND HELL HAVE ONLY being in the creative perfection. But this is the baldest, most bewildering nonsense. They have not a grain of objective reality in them, and are noway vitalized by the absolute Divine perfection. They are purely subjective appearances, vitalized exclusively by the created imperfection, or the uses they subserve to our provisional moral and rational consciousness. When accordingly this consciousness — having more than fulfilled its legitimate office, and become as it now is a mere stumbling-block or rock of offence to the regenerate mind of the race — finally expires in its own stench, or else frankly allows itself to be taken up and disappear in our advancing social and aesthetic consciousness, good and evil, heaven and hell, will cease to be appearances even, Tor angel and devil, saint and sinner, will then find themselves per- fectly fused or made over in a new or comprehensive race-manhood which will laugh to scorn our best empirical or tentative manhood, that is, our existing civic and ecclesiastic manhood so-called. Thus, as I have said somewhere else, I am fully persuaded for my part, that no objective heaven will ever be found expanding to our foolish personal hope, nor any ob- jective hell ever be found responsive to our foolish personal fear. We may be very sure that our true immortality, that which is energized by the Divine NATURAL humanity, is far too human and miraculous A SUBJECTIVE TRUTH. 253 to be mechanized on any such preposterously simple basis. No man, not a simpleton in all spiritual regards, will ever acknowledge a heaven of which he himself is not his own sole St. Peter, nor any hell of which he is not his own jealous and exclusive turn- key. Assuredly no heaven could exert the attractive force of a toyshop to a good man's imagination, if it aimed to conciliate his self-love and his love of the world ; and no hell could exert the binding force of a cobweb to an evil man's imagination, if its primary aim were not to conciliate those exacting loves. But we are digressing. If the evil of men then did not refer itself primarily to their nature, as that nature is determined by its spiritual Divine source, but were an outward or physical experience of the subject, asserting itself primarily through his sensations, there could be no manner of difficulty in the evil subject winning himself back to the upper air. Por man's veriest life is a sensitive one at the best, and if any serious conflict accordingly should announce itself be- tween the life of his senses and that of his habitual subjective aspirations, it is safe to say that he would very speedily end by renouncing the latter. But the idea is simply stupid. Evil is not an out- ward thing save to the inexperienced mind. Hell is not objectively constituted save to a juvenile and flimsy imagination. It is on .the contrary a purely 254 SUBJECTIVE GENESIS subjective life in man, being the bloom of that exces- sive delight he takes in his new-found natural self, and its proper belongings : a delight so naive and sincere at first, and at length so infatuated or magical, as to be capable of making evil seem unadulterate good, and falsity undissembled truth. So that what you vir- tually ask of an evil man in expecting him to become heavenly, is literally to turn himself outside in, or dilapidate himself as to his existing carnal structure, and build himself up anew in quite an opposite style of life or consciousness to that which alone seems to him either practicable or savory. In short, you ask a rigid impossibility of him. Swedenborg is emi- nently explicit and satisfactory as to this rigidly natu- ral genesis of evil in man. He says somewhere — I forget at this moment exactly where, but I am very sure generally that it is in his most interesting little book on the laws of the Divine Providence : but I beseech you not to argue from this amiable scrupu- losity of mine in trying to supply you with chapter and verse for all my citations from Swedenborg, that I hold his sayings to be of the slightest conceivable intellectual authority, for I do no such stupid thing ; and indeed if I were a priori inclined to any such fatuity, his books would supply the best possible cor- rective of the inclination, being the only books I know which inwardly y or of their own proper substance ^ abjure OF HELL IN MAN. 255 such an ungodly pretension : — that he had been, for demonstrative purposes no doubt, let into the life of hell in man ; and he found it to be a life of such abun- dant and exquisite delight, arising from the immense love of dominion consequent upon the unrestrained love of self in the subject, that all the delights of the world seemed dull in comparison with it. He de- scribes it, I remember, as " a delight of the ivJtole mind from its centre to its circumference," though it only reported itself in the body as a certain triumphant swelling of the breast. And this delight moreover would never invite compression, as he says, if it were not for the tendency it has to express itself in unjust and injm'ious action. Whenever accordingly this in- herent tendency ultimates itself outwardly, the evil- doer finds his inward freedom, which is the freedom of willing and tliinhing evil, suddenly converted into outward bondage, which is an inability to do evil. For hell is a condition of life in which men's outward necessities constrain them to live together in harmony, while they have no inward bent to that style of life. The possibility of their co-existence in this condition depends upon an inflexible law : that no person shall ever he alloiued to harm another with impunity. This salutary law, which is full of infinite Divine benignity towards them, each and all, and which heavenly- minded people inwardly impose upon themselves 256 HELL IS ALWAYS HEAVEN TO THE EVIL MAN every moment, is yet to hellish-minded people an absolute bondage, and constitutes the sole drawback or qualification to their bad blessedness. For what can be more absolutely disgusting to one who delights in willing and thinhing evil towards another, than to be constrained by the righteous fear of punishment from ever doing him any evil ? There can be no intenser hell known to a selfish man than to have a prudent regard for others thus enforced upon him. But Swedenborg always takes pains to apprize his gentle reader that the practical administration of this law, which the evil man finds it so hard, and the good man so easy, to submit to, undergoes all needful mitigation — short, to be sure, of rendering its chas- tisements ineffectual — through its always taking place under the most watchful and tender angelic supervision or control.* * The broad flood of light which Swedenborg throws upon the inti- mate Divine dealings with human nature throughout history, ending with its final apotheosis, or actual Divine glorification, is apt to leave liis reader disenchanted of any speculative interest he may have felt in regard to the continued existence of hell. I think that a man must have read Swedenborg to little intellectual profit, if his mind is not hopefully made up to two things : First, that the antagonism of heaven and hell on moral grounds, or as a tradition of human nature, is some day sure to be done away with by the advance of human society or fel- lowship : Second, that its persistence as a spiritual tradition, or condition of individual experience and culture, may always be counted upon. Still BUT WHEN HE IS FORCED NOT TO DO EVIL. 257 But we are losing sight of our hypothetical illustra- tive statue. The statue, then, in accordance with its constitutional limitations, and in spite of its apparent subjective vivification, must remain utterly hopeless of regeneration, or sesthetic life ; that is, must forever despair of reproducing in itself the genius which begat it. I say this is in accordance with its consti- tutional limitations ; for its constitutive or mother- substance which gives it body, can do no more for it than give it body ; that is, cannot give it soul, or make it inwardly responsive to its creator's genius. And this simply because the constitutive or mother- substance of the statue was originally or in itself independent of the artist's genius, and beyond a cer- tain point therefore refractory to his will. This in truth is the inherent defect of all artistic creation, that the artist is without infinitude, even his genius not being original with him, but inherited or derived I have thought it best to tlirow together a few brief passages from his books, which may be suggestive of thought to you. His books contain no dogmatic statement of opinion on the subject of the eternity of the hells now so much mooted between the sentimentalist and traditionalist wings of the church ; and questions of this magnitude besides can never be settled for us by any the wisest and most erudite head, but only by our own wise and loving hearts. At all events all Swedenborg's utterances on the subject may be looked at without suspicion, as they liave no pretension to be anything else than obiter dicta, or observations by-the-way. See Appendix A. 258 HUMAN NATURE THE SOLE from his past ancestry ; and hence he is obliged to find the material or mother-substance of his work exclu- sively within outward nature, and not, like the Divine genius, within Himself, or the resources of His own infinite spirit. Were the artist infinite like God to begin with — that is, did he also supply from his own aesthetic resources natural or mother-substance to his creations — then Ids creatures, like God's, would be capable of assthetic regeneration or spontaneous life, by virtue of his prior capacity to overcome for them any latent death-tendency inherent in their merely constitutional substance. And thus our supposititious statue perfectly illus- trates, in a negative way, the positive truth I wish to impress upon you, namely : that the spiritual creation derives all its power to function from the implication or involution of the created nature. The actual — or ultimate and phenomenal — sjphere of creative order is the sole sphere of creative ^joiver, in other words ; and if the power fail here, accordingly, the entire spiritual creation must instantly come to an end, like a tale that is told. If the creative power is unable to reduce the creative nature to order, and that more- over to an order perfectly consonant with His own infinitude or perfection, the day must soon come when the creative name itself will be blotted out from men's recognition. But if it is competent — SPHERE OF CREATIVE POWER. 259 even infinitely competent to this sublime neces- sity, then we have only to look forward to the fast approaching advent of the Divine kingdom on earth — the earth, namely, of mans redeemed natural subjectivity , mind you, and not at all, save by im- plication in that superior earth, the mere outside objective earth of his mineral, vegetable, and animal existence — and the consequent advent of a heaven of spiritual peace, felicity, and power in man, every way unimaginable save upon the basis of that re- deemed or Divine-natural earth. But you ask me not merely to assert this com- petency of God to our natural redemption, but to state the method of it. And that statement will require a complete letter to itself, or perhaps two. LETTER XX. 'Y DEAR FRIEND: — Our almost soli- tary topic hitherto has been creation. And creation is first of all a rigid practi- cal equation Between creator and creature, or the creative and created natures. No doubt creator evolves creature, as subject evolves object. But then as involution is always equal to evolution, being its strict logical counterpart or correlative, so if creator evolve creature, or subject object, just as truly on the other hand does creature involve creator or object sub- ject. But if this were all the truth upon the subject, creation would be defeated by its own genesis. Eor where involution and evolution are thus logically equal, creature and creator, object and subject, prac- tically neutralize each other, and no logical exodus from the difficulty is either possible or conceivable. That is, creator and creature must confess themselves convertible terms, in order to creation becoming liv- ing: or conscious. Created life or consciousness is CREATION A FUSION OF GOD AND MAN. 261 possible only on one condition, which is : that crea- tion exhibit so complete a fusion between its uncon- scious and conscious factors, as practically to annul their logical inequality, and so make the resultant life or consciousness one. It is impossible that God should create absolute life or being — that is to say, what has life or being in itself — for such life or being is ex vi termini uncreated, would in truth be God himself. He can only create therefore what has not life or being in itself, what consequently is merely relative or associated life or being, and consists in loving others : and He creates this only by the free or infinite communication to the creature of His own life or being, that is, of Himself. It is this infinite communication which alone makes created life or consciousness conceivable. For how shall that which by the hypothesis of its creatureship is void of life or consciousness in its own right, ever attain to actual fife or consciousness, but by the free unstinted com- munication of its creator's life to it as henceforth its own life ? We, nevertheless, misled by sense, have had the fatuity to conceive that creator and creature are essentially inconvertible terms, sternly repudiating each the other's practical identification with itself. We are in the habit of postulating such an essential oppugnancy between them, as necessarily converts 262 IT INCLUDES CREATOR human life into a sign or witness of their inveterate duahty, and so fills the universe of consciousness with pride, blasphemy, and despair. How necessarily we make creation appear the limping, one-horse-concern it does appear, in thus making it include the creature but exclude the creator, or include matter and ex- clude mind or spirit ! As if the creature could ever be given without the logical implication of creator to constitute him ! Or the creator ever be given with- out the logical explication of creature to reveal Him ! What wonder is it, under these circumstances, that our men of science should tend so generally to iden- tify God's glory primarily with sun, moon and stars, and only secondarily or derivatively with man ? Our traditional creeds to be sure still echo the ancient faith of mankind, that matter and mind, nature and spirit, are inextricably married or interfused ; but this faith has so little vitality left, or has become so com- pletely fossilized by the worldliness of the Church, that very many of our leading scientific men spring eagerly to the conviction, which some of them do not hesitate to avow, that the material universe exists ab- solutely, or for its own sake exclusively, and betrays no record whatever of a creator. Such is the intellectual disability which our igno- rance and imbecility in regard to the spiritual truth of creation inevitably impose upon us ; and so long as AND CREATURE QUITE EQUALLY. 263 we remain contentedly disabled we must forego our intellectual manhood, and lie supine and inert in spiritual infancy. Tor manifestly so long as I am content to look upon creation, not as the living fusion, but as the living divorce of the two natures, creator and creature, I must necessarily think the divine nature to be essentially alien or antagonistic to my own. That is to say, I can never think of God as a being of an essentially human quality. And if I can- not think of God in this light, if I do not think of him as essential man, I had better not think of him at all, since I cannot think of him to any good but only to an evil purpose. For if God is my creator, and yet claims a nature essentially alien and antagonistic to my own, I never can really love him, because I can never really know him, inasmuch as I cannot know what my nature does not qualify me to know. In fact I can only hate him, however much my prudence may lead me to dissimulate my hate ; for no rational being can feel himself at the mercy of a power infi- nitely superior to himself, and at the same time utterly alien and antagonistic to himself, without a righteous hatred to such power. So that if every man is — spiritually or intellectually — only what his idea of God makes him, I may freely say that my idea of God as being of a nature essentially foreign and repugnant to my own, makes all my worship of him supersti- 264 DEISM AS A PHILOSOPHY tious or depraved, and hence fixes me in intellectual night. So long as I admit an essential contrariety be- tween the two natures, which I needs must do when I in thought identify the creative activity primarily with the geometry of the physical universe, and refuse to identify it, save in a very secondary and derivative or indirect way, with the laws of the human mind, I never can rationally acknowledge the Divine exist- ence, nor consequently ever honestly worship it. For human nature claims so divine a quality to my im- agination — seems to be so infinitely worthy of my devout love and worship — that I cannot spontane- ously recognize any divinity outside of it. And if I yet pretend to recognize such a divinity, and offer Him my servile or interested homage, what am I but a degraded being, sunk in spiritual penury, or intellectual savagery? I may indeed be all uncon- scious of my degradation, because such multitudes partake it in common with me ; but there it unmis- takably is, all the while, nevertheless. In short, deism as a philosophic doctrine, that is, as importing an essential difference between the divine and human natures, or God and man, is a philosophic absurdity. There is no God but the Lord, or our glorified natural humanity, and whatsoever other deity w^e worship, is but a baleful idol of our own spiritual fantasy, whom we superstitiously project into IS A GROSS ABSURDITY. 265 nature to scourge us into quasi or provisional man- hood, while as yet Ave are blind to the spiritual truth. We ourselves reflect upon the universe the divinity which dwells latent, and unrecognized — if not cruci- fied, in our souls ; and we see only what we ourselves give. The untaught rustic may look forever at the shapeless block of marble, without receiving a hint from it of its essential subserviency to the uses of Art. So we might forever contemplate the material world, without its ever giving us so much as a suggestion of deity, unless our imvard instinct of his omnipresence compelled the suggestion. The animal sees the same things we see. AVhy does not he also suspect a latent divinity ? Simply because he, unlike us, is destitute of an inward divine genius or nature, and hence has no power to shed an outward shadow of divinity upon things below him. No. God is a denizen first of the microcosm, and only by reflection thence of the macrocosm. That is to say, he spiritually inhabits the human mind alone, and what we discern of him in the mechanism of nature, or the laws of the uni- verse, is but a faint image or reverberation of the living death, or spiritual infamy, to which we con- sign Him in our own souls, while as yet we are obdu- rate to the solicitations of His essential humanity. Now it strikes me that what I have just been say- ing is very true in its place, but that this is not its 266 CREATION CONSISTS SPIRITUALLY place ; at all events it is not exactly what I set out to say. What I intended at starting to show you was that creation, being this undeniable spiritual or infinite equation of the Divine and human natures which I have described it to be, would be a very shallow form of blessing to bestow upon the creature. If the entire creative bounty consisted in giving the creature existence, if it involved no deeper, subtler Divine mercy than this, creation would turn out a signal curse to man, for it would leave the Divine being a mere prey to man's devouring and destroying appetites and passions. By creation alone — that is to say, creation left undivinized by the creature's subsequent natural redemption — man is made sim- ply self-conscious, and endoAved moreover with self- hood of a marvellously infirm and even infra-bestial character. For in that case God's creature, unlike the beasts, would have no instinct to moderate and mitigate his natural ferocity, but would be an un- qualified form of raven and slaughter. Accordingly I repeat, that if creation resulted only in giving man conscious existence, or phenomenal selfhood, it would be a boon altogether unworthy of the creator to bestow. Creation, however, is not of this futile pattern. It does not consist, either wholly or in part, in giving the creature self-consciousness, or investing him with IN DIVINIZING THE CREATED NATURE; 267 phenomenal personality. It merely assumes these things in the creature, or takes them for granted, as the outcome and expression of his essential spiritual imbecility and nothingness. And then it forthwith proceeds to make this negative base or spiritual unconsciousness of the creature the surest possible guarantee of his subsequent spiritual conjunction and fellowship with God. We may say then that crea- tion, viewed as a spiritual or infinite Divine process, necessarily involves to the created intelligence two stages, first : a descending or centrifugal one, in which the creator becomes thoroughly identified with the nature of the creature, in becoming thoroughly alienated from his finite personality ; and, secondly : an ascending or centripetal stage, in which the crea- ture becomes exalted in his turn to immortal spirit- ual conjunction with God, in renouncing the interests of his proper person whenever they conflict with those of his common nature. How is this natural redemption of the creature practically brought about ? We shall be best able to answer this question by keeping clearly in mind what we have seen to be the precise form of evil in the creature to which his finite genesis, or his very nature as a creature, exposes him, and from which it is the true glory of God to deliver him. The evil then to which, as we have seen, man is 268 AND so REDEEMING IT FROM naturally prone, and indeed doomed by his finite gen- eration, is personal consciousness, or the feeling of life in himself as his own life absolutely, or without re- spect to other men. There is no evil at all comparable with this either for comprehensiveness or intensity, if it be allowed to go uncorrected ; for it is altogether fatal to man's spiritual life, which consists in his loving his neighbor as himself. Now the only possi- ble way for a man to do this is to feel that he is not self-centred, that his life is 7iot his own personally, but belongs to him in strict community with his neighbor; thus that he and his neighbor are both alike dependent at every moment for every breath of life they draw upon one and the same merciful and impartial source. In other words a man loves his neighbor as himself only by virtue of his first loving God above himself, or supremely. And the only way this supreme love becomes developed or educated in him, is through his moral experience, or his obedience to law. Whenever, and so long as, man is tempted to commit false or mahcious speaking, theft, adultery, murder, or covetousness, and yet abstains from doing it out of a sincere inward regard for the Divine name, his self-love, so far as it is harmful, is spiritually slain, and the Divine love infallibly replaces it. These formal vices express the whole substantial evil known to the human heart, and when man, therefore, in the THE POWER AND TAINT OF EVIL. 269 exercise of a felt freedom and rationality deposes them or any of them from their habitual control over his action, not because they conflict with his outward welfare, or expose him to the contempt of men, but simply because they wound his inward reverence for the Divine name, he becomes spiritually regenerate or new-born. Falsehood, theft, adultery, murder, and covetousness are, in other words, only signs or sym- bols of a deeper and altogether latent spiritual evil fatally separating man from God : the evil of a su- preme self-love. Grave as these evils unquestionably are in themselves, or absolutely, they have yet only a superficial moral quality, that is, grow out of men's still unreconciled or inharmonic relations inter se, or their frank insubjection to the social sentiment, and do not by any means necessarily imply any perma- nent spiritual or individual estrangement between them and God. But the evil consciousness which they typify in men is man's only true and spiritual evil. The con- sciousness of a finite existence or selfhood, given out- right to every man in strict independence of every other man: this is essential death and hell to the human bosom, and spiritually litters all its abounding moral corruption. Why ? Because it practically gives the lie to men's spiritual creatureship, or affirms that they have no natural form and order corresponding to 270 THE EVIL OF HUMAN NATURE their inward or spiritual unity in God. Accordingly if man's mind had never been fatally drugged by this stupid conceit of his rightful independence of his neighbor in the Divine sight, he would never have been so suicidal as to dream of coveting the goods, or wounding the honor, or compassing the life of his neighbor. On the contrary he would have been exqui- sitely sure to defend his neighbor's interests as if they were his own. Thus it is man's very nature as a crea- ture to absorb or appropriate the Divine life or being to his own paltry and fantastic little self; and the Di- vine name consequently would soon have lapsed from human regard even as a tradition, were the creature not all the while providentially prompted to conceal his flagrant misappropriation of the Divine substance from his own eyes, by assiduously exj)rc2)riatin(/ the mere name of God to any worthless or imaginary supernatural candidate who may apply for the distinc- tion : so relegating his creator to an entirely objective or outward relation to himself. Subjective or personal consciousness, then : the feel- ing we all of us have that our natural selfhood is our own absolutely, and without reference to any grander natural objectivity, such for example as society : is the brimming spiritual death wrapped up in every man by virtue of his finite generation. And now we shall be able to see with all possible clearness with IS SUBJECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS. 271 what a miglity hand the Divine providence delivers us from this infernal blight incident to our nature. The inevitable vice of man's natural subjectivity, or finite selfhood, is, that it exteriorates object to subject, or places a man's proper life outside and below the man himself. This is hopelessly contrary to the spiritual order of human life, which interior ates object to sub- ject, and places a man's proper life within or above the man himself. In other words, the fundamental infirm- ity of human nature is that it subjects man primarily to the control of sense, and allows him only so much soul, or spirituality, as consists with that primary requisite. In confirmation of this, we may point to the notorious fact, that the method of man's spiritual or private regeneration has always been defined by the professing church as standing in no frivolous moral change or improvement wrought in the subject, but only in a change of heart : that is, such a com- plete reversal of the law of his nature as makes him act henceforth from the impulsion of an inward mo- tive or object, instead of an outward one. It is well known, moreover, that the church has always looked upon this reversal of tlie law of his nature as prac- tically energized by the subject in ward! 1/ constraining himself, through a most living reverence for the Divine name, to deny his senses whenever they prompt him to selfish or unmanly action. 272 MAN'S MORAL EVILS ARE NOT Do not mistake ray present purpose, however, in this reference. We are not now talking of a man's spiritual or private regeneration, which is his individ- ual deliverance from the law of his nature, but of a much grander problem. We are talking in this place of our poor and abject human nature itself, and of the peculiar freeing or infiniting it gets at the Divine hands from the bondage imposed upon it by our wretched personalities, both good and evil. For human nature itself is condemned in its turn to inev- itable and hopeless limitation or finiteness by all its personal subjects, whether these be relatively to each other celestial or infernal ; and is bound therefore by the Divine righteousness to undergo in its turn also a plenary redemption. And the question of immediate interest to us is, to ascertain the method of this tran- scendent Divine deliverance. This is the problem I am about trying to solve to your understanding. If I only approximately solve it, I shall nevertheless deem myself entitled to claim your patient attention while doing thus much. But if I succeed in perfectly solving it, as I hope to be able to do — and that too without claiming to myself any exceptional ability — I trust that you then, like me, will honestly give the sole praise of my performance to the boundless intellectual inspiration and illumination of the Chris- tian truth. THE TRUE EVIL OF HIS NATURE. 273 The characteristic natural evil of man is subjective consciousness. Naturally ignorant that his life or be- ing inheres exclusively in God his creator (though he is no way backward to admit that it originally came from Him), he unhesitatingly appropriates it to him- self, feeling himself to be good when its issues are orderly, and evil when its issues are disorderly. This I say is the natural and therefore the deepest evil known to the human race. Man no doubt attributes to himself personally many much lesser evils than this, such as murder, adultery, false witness, theft, and covetousness, and thinks if he were once well rid of these outward evils, he would be inwardly or spirit- ually quit of evil altogether; neither knowing nor dreaming that his moral maladies are only so many visible symptoms of a far deeper invisible disease in his nature to the cure of which God alone is ade- quate. These moral evils, however grievous they may justly seem in a scientific or police estimate of human life, are of absolutely no consequence in a philosophic estimate, save as revealing that profound and otherwise undiscoverable spiritual evil in man to which alone they owe every fibre of their unhand- some existence. This latter evil is the only deadly evil known to the heart, because it is the only one which directly impugns the Divine sovereignty over His creatures ; and in giving man deliverance from its 274 THAT CONSISTS IN EXTERIORATING dominion accordingly, the Divine love restores him ipso facto to moral purity. Now the immediate effect, as I have before said, of this fallacious subjective consciousness in man, or of his inwardly appropriating the Divine substance to himself, is to put the creator bodily outside of His creation to the imagination of His creature : to compel Him to occupy at best a merely magisterial or legal and critical relation to His creature ; in short : to relegate the father of our spirits to a purely external and objective intercourse with us. By this misappro- priation of the creative life or being to himself, the creature becomes the only subjective consciousness, the only conscious form of selfhood, known to the universe, and by an unerring instinct of that limitary form after thus appropriating to himself the Divine substance, he instantly hastens — as if to hide that ugly transaction from his own eyes — to expropriate, as I have before said, the robbed and rifled Divine Tiame away from himself, in relegating it to the use of any imaginary supernatural pretender who seems worthy of it, and evinces such worth by con- senting to stand in a purely sensible or outward and objective relation to him : that is, consenting to treat him as an absolutely free and rational subject, right- fully praiseworthy and blameworthy on the ground of his own independent merits alone: that is, as a dis- THE CREATOR TO THE CREATURE. 275 tinctly private and sacred person utterly ignoring and disallowing a social, public, or race-consciousness. Of course this little provisional drama that I have just been describing, enacts itself within, and confines itself to, the limits of the creature's consciousness, and those limits exclmively , and does not even project a passing shadow of itself upon the field of his true and intimate yet most unconscious relations to God. But within these limits the most High does tenderly condescend to the part assigned Him by his auda- cious creature, and unfalteringly play it out more- over to its last gasp of humiliation. For only by the creator consenting to incarnate himself in flesh and blood, and play the part of real object to the crea- ture's fallacious subjectivity, does the drama of human nature and history convert itself out of a stupid and meaningless farce, into a grand, sublime, and tragic revelation of the infinite and eternal perfection. Do you ask me. How? I will gladly proceed to tell you, for this at length is the whole point of my pro- tracted epistolary mission to you. — But in order to do so fairly and squarely, I shall be obliged to make an addition to the sum of these specifically intercalary letters. LETTER XXI. 'Y DEAR FRIEND : — We have seen that the creator, because He gives being to the creature, must always remain the latter's sole and total vital substance. How, in this state of things, shall the creature ever attain to selfhood, or come to feel himself an alien being to God? Only in a way we may be sure of the strictest illu- sion, or in consequence of a gross deception imposed on him by his senses. In the first place the creature is necessarily igno- rant of the truth of a spiritual creation, and utterly blind therefore to the intellectual significance of Na- ture as aflfording it a necessary basis of evolution. If he has ever at all entertained the idea of creation as an attribute of the Divine perfection, he regards it at most as an explanation of existing things, or as accounting for the production of Nature, which he hence conceives as a work of God taking place in ILLUSOKY GENESIS OF SELFHOOD. 277 some pre-existing space and time, and finished at one or more successive coups-de-main of the Divine archi- tect as his sacred traditions report. Thus nature, instead of being to his intellect the fertile evidence and argument of God's eternal spiritual activity, is the practical denial and stoppage of it when it once existed, interposing so far as the creature's faculties are concerned a dense "w^all of partition between him and God, instead of a transparent medium of com- munication. In the second place : being thus ignorant of the truth of a spiritual creation, and of nature's purely educative uses in subordination thereto, he is an every way apt pupil of his senses which stand ready to impose npon his nascent intelligence two immeas- urable and wellnigh inveterate fallacies. The first of which is : That Nature, or the great realm of uncon- scious life to which our senses give us our earliest introduction or initiation, exists only to sense, being finitely or materially constituted. And the second follows from this : In that Nature being thus finitely or materially constituted, every natural thing must be created in sheer independence of every other natural thing, and exist therefore on its own substantial basis, being its own absolute self, without obligation to, or necessary connection with, any other coexisting thing. In this way then, or by the mere and sheer docility 278 EFFECT OF THE ILLUSION IN NECESSITATING of his intellect to his senses, the creature not only attains to the illusion of selfhood, or the feeling of life in himself absolutelj^ and irrespectively of all other men, but he also manages to maintain himself in that illusion, through every casualty and calamity to which an earthly lot engineered upon so shallow and treach- erous a basis, necessarily exposes him. And having these sensuous ideas of creation to begin v>'ith, the creature instinctively and unwittingly honors the Di- vine name in making it henceforth sensibly external and objective to the sphere of his own fallacious and fraudulent subjectivity. What is the effect on the creator of this stupidity on the part of the creature? Does He consent to abandon — as the creature would gladly have Him do — His essential spiritual primacy in all the realm of the created consciousness ? Does He consent to forego, at His creature's bidding, His indefeasible spiritual supremacy over the creature? Bv no means. On the contrary. He enhances His spiritual hold upon the creature indefinitely, by frankly acquiescing in the banishment which the latter assid- uously imposes on Him, and obediently masking or concealing Himself henceforth in the lineaments of the created 7iafure. For the creature as finite or con- scious subject can have no proper object but his unconscious nature. And if the creator consents to A DIVINE-NATURAL ORDER OF LIFE. 279 identify Himself with this object, sinking all His spiritual activity in the endeavor to develop it, His spiritual hold upon the creature will only be indefi- nitely promoted in place of being abated. Let me make this point very clear to your under- standing, and thus do you the greatest philosophic service which one man may do another. In fact we are now arrived at the actual turning-point of dark to bright in the entire field of philosophic truth, and no cloud, if it be not a very passing one, will be able henceforward to obscure our good understanding. What I have said, then, I now repeat : 1. That the creator in submitting to the misappropriation of His creative being or substance by the creature to his own shallow self, is necessarily — in condescension to His creature's infirm understanding — forced out of an exclusively spiritual or subjective relation to the crea- ture, and obliged to occupy a purely natural or objec- tive and personal relation to him : and 2. That this purely adventitious or limitary manhood into which the creator finds Himself constrained by zeal for the creature's welfare, constitutes His own eternal spirit- ual glory, inasmuch as it affords Him his only oppor- tunity to come in contact with the sphere of evil in the creature (that is, the sphere of selfhood), and hence endows Him with all His ability to deliver the latter from its mortal coil and defilement. 280 THIS ORDER ALONE RELEASES MAN FROM And now before proceeding to give you the rationale of this transcendent deliverance, allow me first to state precisely what is meant by the created nature, in con- tradistinction to the persons of that nature. By the abstract nature of a thing, then, we mean the relation of community existing between that thing and all other things embraced in its nature, in spite of their specific differences. So by the created nature I mean the relations of community — that is, of com- mon unity — necessarily existing between each and all creatures. Every creature claims to be in himself absolutely other than, or alien to, every other creature. Consequently, the nature of the creature imports, that in spite of these alleged personal, subjective, or abso- lute differences on the part of the creature, they have all a common unity : and is in fact itself the expres- sion and affirmation of such unity. Now, obviously, as all creatures claim to be in themselves, or subjec- tively, alien to every other, hence without personal unity with each other, this reciprocal natural unity which they exhibit cannot possibly inhere in them- selves, and so avouch itself a subjective or substantial unity, but must refer itself altogether to some foreign source, and so confess itself at best a purely formal or objective unity. Let us always remember therefore that the nature of the creature is obligatory upon him, and supremely obligatory. It does not express him. THE EVILS INCIDENT TO HIS SELFHOOD. 281 but he expresses it. It does not derive from him, but he derives from it. He says for himself : "individual- ity or difference a oufrance" It says : " individuality or difference, to your heart's content indeed, as a final- ity ; but only in virtue of a previous natural commun- ity or identity keeping it eternally fresh and sweet." In short he is subject to his nature, and his nature is object or law to him. One cannot be subject to any- thing, without the thing being his master, without its turning out his sole object or supreme law ; nor conse- quently without his turning out its involuntary ser- vant ; that is, its slave. Por in all natural or related existence it is the object which determines and con- trols the subject, and not, as the idealists foolishly hold, the subject which gives law to the object. It is indeed the object which altogether constitutes the subject, which makes it self-conscious, or seem to itself to be ; and never the latter which does this for the former : for the natural object is always uncon- scious, or undefined and without selfliood, towards the natural subject. To say in one word all that need be said : it is the object which alone is mother- suhstance to the subject, or endows it with appreciable body : so guaranteeing to it a fixed or constant natu- ral identity, whatever surprising enlargements may subsequently befall its spiritual individuality. It is plain now, I think, both what we mean when 282 SUPERIOEITY OF LIVING KNOWLEDGE we speak of the created nature, and what wc mean when we speak of the created personahty. By the former we express that thing which alone gives spir- itual reality or objectivity to the creature, in giving him constitutional or unconscious substance ; and we express by the latter that thing which alone stamps the creature with spiritual unreality or phenomenality, in giving him, not constitutional or unconscious sub- stance, but only conscious personal form. I say, to be sure, that thus much is plain, and I would will- ingly believe it to be so. But I confess I should like to make it much plainer by some fitting illus- tration derived from our natural experience ; which, in showing how invariably and absolutely primary the real or objective element in consciousness is to the phenomenal or subjective element, may also throw some illustrative light upon the great truth of the spiritual creation : the Divine Incarnation. Take, for example, any familiar fact of knowledge, say a horse. My living knowledge of the horse is direct and absolute, being given in sense. You may, if you like, divide this knowledge, for scientific pur- poses, into the two constitutional factors which it involves to your logical or reflective understanding, namely: 1. the horse, or object known; 2. the me, or subject knowing. But this scientific practice no- way modifies the living experience in question. It TO MERE SCIENCE FOR CREATIVE ENDS. 283 is obviously a mere logical analysis on your part of that living experience, by which you attempt reflec- tively or scientifically to resuscitate the body of knowledge after its soul has fled. Knowledge — and by knowledge, mind you, I mean knowledge in its true sense, as altogether actual or living ; as it is in- volved, indeed, in your mental constitution, and so becomes the basis of your subsequent spiritual or intellectual manhood ; and not any mere beggarly sci- ence, or learning, which is not living knowledge at all, but merely remembered or reflected knowledge, such as the people by a fine instinct stigmatize under the name of <5oo/?:-knowledge — knowledge, I say, is within its own precinct the living marriage of object and subject; and therefore, like all true marriage, annuls the possibility of their subsequent divorce. In livingly knowing the horse, for instance, I am wholly unconscious of, and indifferent to, any logical relation of object and subject subsisting between us. The only thing that survives of this merely logical and pedantic relation to my feeling, is the horse, or ohject known ; while I, the knowing subject, am in- continently licked up and disappear in his overpower- ing sensible reality. Life or consciousness, in other words, knows nothing of the relation, which is so vital to mere science or learning, of subject and object in existence as given in sense ; but indissolu- 284 SCIENCE OR LEARNING FLATTERS bly blends, fuses, or marries them in its own mirac- ulous individuality. Thus life or consciousness — living knowledge or perception — defies analysis, or laughs it to scorn out of its own glorified personality. And its dissection consequently into object and subject is possible only when it has become a caput mortimm in your memory, or mental stomach, and been there reduced to pulp by the gastric juice of your ruminant or logical un- derstanding. When you resolve any living experi- ence into these purely logical constitutional factors, the result is very good logic no doubt, but is no longer life or experience. Just as when you chemi- cally resolve water into oxygen and hydrogen, the issue of your analysis is very good chemistry, but it is no longer water. Oxygen and hydrogen combined in definite proportions constitute the chemistry of water, or give it visible body. But they are a very long way indeed from constituting its characteristic activity, or giving it soul. Water claims both a physi- cal co-existence or identity with all other things ; and a spiritual power or individuality of its own, which differentiates it from all other things, and which all the untamed gases of the universe are unable either to supply or to explain. Oxygen and hydrogen per- fectly account for the physical constitution, or statical repose, of water. But they have no shadow of a THE ILLUSION OF SELFHOOD. 285 pretension to account for its dynamic functioning, or the spiritual and life-giving power it specifically ex- erts over other existence. So object and subject no doubt constitute a very good logical analysis of any deceased fact of knowl- edge ; but they are heaven-wide of any pretension to constitute the least vital experience itself so-called. Knowledge is direct or miraculous, being given in sense or gratuitously ; while logic, or science, or learn- ing is indirect or reflective, being elaborately gener- ated by our reasonings upon the data of sense. You may talk logic and chemistry, consequently, " till all is blue," as the old people say : you are never in so doing talking towards life, but always steadfastly away from it. Philosophy laughs at your logic and your chemistry both alike, as inevitably predestined to come limping along a day after the fair, and spectrally revel upon the stale victuals and drink which have survived the joyous banquet of life. Science is never life. It is at most the moon-lit shadow of life projected upon our logical or reflective understanding ; and the method of the one is no less disproportionate to that of the other than earth is disproportionate to heaven. That is to say : in all living or conscious experience the logical or scientific distinction of object and sub- ject is utterly unknown, hoth the alleged factors being actually and indistinguishablg one, and having no dis- 286 THE OBJECT IN KNOWLEDGE GLORIFIES tinction but to your ruminant or reflective thought. Their unity, moreover, is not a simphstic but a strictly composite one, being fashioned in no foolish legal or voluntary way, but in a rigidly free or spontaneous manner. In short, the unity they realize is the hier- archical unity of marriage, in which the masculine or objective element is primary, commanding, active ; the feminine or subjective element secondary, sub- ordinate, passive. Tor example : in the living experi- ence just supposed — called knowledge — the subject is vivified exclusively by the object of knowledge : I myself having absolutely no power to know the horse but what is furnished me by the living animal him- self. Of course I might learn a good deal about the horse from books, from pictures, from hearsay ; but no amount of such learning could ever pretend to be convertible with an actual knowledge of the animal. Nothing is more common than for a very learned man to be a very unknowing one ; except, perhaps, than for a very knowing man to be a very unlearned one. If, indeed, learning should ever supersede knowledge or claim identity with it, the world would be in its dotage, and would wag infinitely worse I am persuaded than it has ever done hitherto. Learning or science is a capital handmaid of knowledge so long as she reveres her mistress, or does n't grow con- ceited of her own glittering livery. In that event it THE SUBJECT OUT OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 287 is sure to be soon superseded by a more modest article. But to return to my subject. Horses might exist in any number and in great comfort all unknown to me. But in that case, of course, my existence as knowing subject would be so far curtailed. My ex- istence as a loioicing subject does not the least date from any so-called faculty of knowledge I am sup- posed to possess — for, in point of fact, I know abso- lutely nothing by virtue of such alleged faculty — but exclusively from the objects my senses embrace : so that / can legitimately he held to knoio only in so far as objects exist to make me hioio. Take away, con- sequently, the object of knowledge (or thing known) as our logicians do when they resolve it into the sensations of the subject (or person knowing), and you a fortiori take away the subject : for the subject in existence is logically constituted only by the object for which and to which and by which he lives. This illustration drawn from our natural knowledge will show you what Nature thinks of the attempt to give the primacy of the object to the subject in any of her processes. For Nature manifestly stamps the objective element in all natural functioning the only real element, and the subjective element altogether unreal or fallacious and misleading independently of that. 288 THE RULE OF OUR NATURAL KNOWLEDGE But the specific use I wish to make of this illustra- tion is to shed light upon the fundamental method of creation, or the Divine Incarnation in human nature. Accordingly let us now attempt to show that what we have found to be the rule of our natural knowl- edge is really the rule also of our natural life. In the first place, then, remember, most distinctly, the topic we are discussing — human nature : that is to say, the nature, not of minerals, nor of vegetables, nor of animals, but of men. No doubt the nature of these lower existences, if they have any nature, is included in that of man,* but their nature is anything but human nature. Human nature is a strict subli- mation or evolution from all lower physical forms, by virtue of man containing an essential Divine or infi- nite element, which they do not contain. But then it would be very illogical to argue that because a certain thing was evolved from another thing, it was therefore at all identical with that thing. Its evolu- * By the " nature " of these existences one can only mean their spe- cific possibilities ; inasmuch as the nature of things, strictly speaking, expresses their universal and unitaiy form, and mineral, vegetable, and animal existences expressly deny and reject the imputation of such a form. They cannot be classed as natural existences, accordingly, save iu so far as they are comprehended in human nature, of which they are so many discordant and conflicting types revealed to sense, and furnish- ing therefore an inestimably precious basis to man's natural knowledge, and through that to his spiritual experience. THE EFLE OF OUR NATURAL LIFE. 289 tion from it only proves it to have been — not identi- cal with it, but distinctly and totally different from it ; as different in fact as heaven is from earth. And then having thus in the first place remembered that our sole subject is human nature, do me the favor in the second place to bear in mind what I have said about human nature being altogether objectively constituted, or obeying a certain spiritual end. Men commonly hold to .their nature being altogether sub- jectively constituted : that is, constituted by its proper subjects. In other words, they deny that their nature is vitalized by any spiritual Divine end, and hold that it is a term designed merely to express the total con- tents of men's actual subjectivities. So that if I were to put the question to a thousand men chosen at ran- dom : What does human nature mean ? I doubt not that nine hundred and ninety-nine of them would reply: It means the outcome and aggregate of all men's pri- vate personalities, of every man's subjective or limi- tary experience. But this answer would be wholly unintelligent, for it would allow no discrimination between our undefined nature and our finite person- alities. Men's personalities on the one hand are all that they have within them of most finite and par- ticular ; while their nature on the other hand is all that there is within them of most indefinite and uni- versal. There is to be sure any amount of particulars 290 OUR NATURE — WHAT? iiickided in a universal ; but no amount of such par- ticulars, were the amount great enough to comprise all the particulars beneath the sky, would ever avail by themselves to constitute a universal. For universals and particulars make two distinctly different genera or kinds, and hence in" themselves, or essentially, are as reciprocally conflicting and inconvertible as truth and fact, wisdom and knowledge, love and self- love, heaven and earth, are in -themselves. That is to say : the logical difference between a universal and its particulars is not a quantitative difference, but exclusively a qualitative one, being the exact differ- ence of substance and form,* We men undoubtedly furnish the finite perishable stuff of human nature, or the material substance which the indwelling Divine life in us moulds into immortal spiritual form, just as the marble furnishes the perishable material substance of the statue. But we have quite as little share in giving our nature form, as the marble has in giving ideal form to the statue. No, the form of our nature, or its distinctive qual- * " Spiritual tliouglit," says Swedenborg {de Bivind Sapientia,l^<). 5, in the 6tli volume of Apocahjpsis Explicata), "is altogether unlike natural thought, so much uulike that spiritual ideas transcend natural ideas, and cannot be made to coalesce with them save in the way of an interior rational perception : this rational perception taking place no othencise than by abstracting or removing quantities from qualities." AND HOW CONSTITUTED? 291 ity — apart from which it has no cognizable existence, being sunk in the abject shme of oiir disunited or war- ring personahties — is wholly derived from its objec- tive element, or the uses it subserves to the evolution in us of a Divine-natural manhood. The technical " church," ending in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, has been throughout history a witness of this coming glorification of our nature. But the church has always misconceived its own mission. It has always conceived its mission to lie — not simply in bearing witness to the miraculous facts of Christ's career — but much more, in converting these miracu- lous facts into so many spiritual truths which men are bound to receive solely upon its own dogmatic author- ity. There could not be in the nature of things a more unfounded and undivine pretension than this. Men gratefully receive and confide in the church's testimony in regard to all the literal Christian facts, whether ordinary or miraculous, but especially the miraculous ones — because, as I have said before, miracle is the only evidence and sanction of a Divine revelation which a carnal or sensuous mind is capable of receiving. But when the chiu'ch assumes now as of old to be the authorized interpreter of these facts to the intellect of men, and to impose her authority upon them as final, she cannot fail to provoke a revolt whose only issue must be the acknowledgment of her 292 THE CHURCH'S TESTIMONY utter spiritual triviality and imbecility. The Chris- tian facts are of inestimable value to the intellect in furnishing a fixed immovable basis to thought in reference to Divine things, and hence a guide to speculation in reference to the developments of human destiny; and all modest and reasonable minds, as I conceive, will be prompt to bless the church accord- ingly for the signally pointed and consistent testi- mony she has always borne to these facts amidst the darkness, indifference, and conflict of men's opinions. But I must say that no independent mind cares a jot for the church's traditional judgment of the Divine and human meaning (that is, the strictly intellectual meaning) which has always been latent in the facts, and so marvellously adapts them to our nascent spir- itual intelligence. In fact one would be inclined to rate the judgment of any honest living mind in all that line of inquiry, as of vastly superior worth. Every one will admit that the church, in thus at- testing the integrity of the Christian facts, has played a vitally important part in the education of the human mind ; but I maintain, moreover, that this attesting function of the church has furnished her only true claim to men's respect, a claim infinitely transcending that based upon her usurped dogmatic authority. There is no function in life half so honorable or venerable to the heart of man as that of a nursing TO THE CHRISTIAN FACTS. 293 mother ; and this is the exact relation which the church was meant to stand in towards the mind. She had nothing to do hut administer the pm'e milk of the Gospel to her offspring, leaving its spiritual assimilation by them, and its subsequent conversion into good solid intellectual flesh and bone, to the ex- quisite providence which watched with like assiduity over it and them. When I was a tender babe on my mother's knee, feeling as yet no personal con- sciousness beyond the cravings of my insatiate little stomach, it would have been an egregious outrage to my intellectual innocence to have put upon me also the providence and preparation of my needful food. Now the intellect, in its infancy, is nothing else than a mental stomach, or ravenous memory, which craves nothing but a fixed motherly lap of knowledge to cradle and nourish its nascent powers, until such time as it is fit to enter for itself upon the administration of its spiritual heritage. How sheerly preposterous, therefore, would it be to expect it — as our twittering " free-religionists " do — to sit in judgment upon the food of succulent knowledge thus presented to it, and critically determine whether it be true or false, fit or unfit, before its small high mightiness deigns to re- ceive it ! With precisely equal propriety you might expect the child to sit in judgment on its mother's milk, and decide before receiving it whether it be the 294 THE REALM OF FACT INFERIOR distillation of a chaste or an unchaste bosom. What a prodigy of nastiness would you make of the inno- cent child at his maturity, in the one case ! And what an essentially petty and pedantic role must you suppose the intellect destined to fulfil at its maturity, in the other ! I confess for my part that I should as soon think of spitting upon my mother's grave, or offering any other offence to her stainless memory, as of question- ing any of the Gospel facts. And this, not because I regard them as literally or absolutely true — for the whole realm of fact is as far beneath that of truth, as earth is beneath heaven — but simply because they furnish the indispensable word, or master-key, to our interpretation of God's majestic revelation of Himself in human nature. When accordingly I am asked whether I believe in the literal facts of Christ's birth from a virgin, his resurrection from death, his ascen- sion into heaven, and so forth, I feel constrained to reply : That I neither believe in them nor disbelieve, because the sphere of fact is the sphere of men's knowledge, exclusively, and therefore invites neither belief nor disbelief ; but that I have a most profound, even a heartfelt, conviction of the truth which they, and they alone, reveal, namely, the truth of God's essentially/ human perfection, and, as implied in that, the amazing truth of His statural or adventitious man- TO THE REALM OF TEUTH. 295 hood : which conviction keeps me blessedly indifferent to, and utterly unvexed by, the cheap and frivolous scepticism with which so many of our learned modern pundits assail them. I have not the least reverence nor even respect for the facts in question, save as basing or ultimating this grand creative or spiritual truth ; and while the truth stands to my apprehension, I shall be serenely obdurate to the learned reason- ings of any of my contemporaries in regard to the facts, whether pro or con. I know, to be sure, all that the sceptics know about them, that is, that they have come down to us from apparently honest and intelligent men, who themselves knew, or thought they knew, them to have occurred as they are reported to us. But, unlike the sceptics,' I am content and more than content to receive the facts upon the testi- mony of these simple men, because they appeal so strongly to my heart, or seem to be the homely and harmless anchorage or ultimate of most vital and otherwise unattainable Divine knowledge. If Christ and his apostles had professed the desire and inten- tion to convey mere stupid scientific knowledge to men : that is, the knowledge that precedes regeneration, and is loholly independent of it: the great mass of mankind would have remained forever deaf to their teaching, for there is happily no Divine thirst in men after scientific information ; and I for one would cheer- 296 UNHAPPY RESULTS TO THE INTELLECT fully leave them in that case to the tender mercies of any ambitious scavenger who jnight enhance his own reputation with unintelligent people by throwing scientific mud at them. But as they did n't at all profess this commonplace ambition, — as their sole desire was to commend to men a new and living reve- lation of God, based upon a spiritual creation of man, i. e, upon affections and thoughts in men deeper than those which they inherit from their past ancestry, or derive from the little world of consciousness and convention about them, I see no reason why we should not regard the malignant criticism they receive at the hands of our popular scientific scribes, as a virtual confession on the part of these latter that they know nothing of, and are signally incompetent to, the merits of the question they have undertaken to discuss. But, in addition to all this, I have no hesitation in avowing that I for my part am thoroughly sick and tired of regulating my intellectual life on any principle of scientific certitude, because this in the long run is to make sense the arbiter of the mind. No doubt man is by creation both internal and ex- ternal, and his voluntary or rational mind, which intervenes between the two discordant spheres and enables him eventually to harmonize their interests, may doubtless determine itself towards either interest in preference to the other. But I am persuaded IN TETHERING IT TO SENSE. 297 that if it determine itself towards science or the senses, the result to one's spiritual understanding cannot help being disastrous in the extreme. I am sure at all events that it would be to the last degree disastrous in my own case. For science takes no cognizance but of finite existence. To what exists infinitely or in itself, and is therefore undiscerned and unauthenticated by the senses, she is as blind and deaf as the stone. And consequently if I should allow my intellectual life to be ruled by science, I should cease to have any intellectual life left. For one's intellect is the child of a double parentage, the offspring of a marriage-union between goodness and truth. But goodness is essentially invisible and incognizable to sense, being infinite, and therefore altogether livingly or spiritually dis- cerned. The only good that the senses recognize is a finite good, a good limited by evil. And even truth is never discerned by the senses in direct or positive, but always in indirect or inverse form. My intellect accordingly, if it should succumb to the limitations of science, or deliberately submit itself to the arbitrament of sense, would virtually renounce the whole of its characteristic life, which lies in a heartfelt surrender to infinite goodness and truth, and is compatible with no other or lesser instinct. In fact, I should be incapable in that case 298 ATTITUDE OF MEN OF SCIENCE. of believing in truth at all save under the guise of a probability. For scientific certainty is never a certainty of what is infinitely true, i. e. true in it- self, but only of what is true to oui- intelligence, i. e. of what is merely phenomenally true, or prob- able, and may therefore be denied even all prob- ability to-morrow. What an intolerable bondage this would be to the intellect, to have the heart's capacity of belief limited by the grovelling senses ! It would be the blighting of human nature at its very root, or its reduction to less even than bestial freedom and innocence ! Such, moreover, I am per- suaded is the practical attitude at this day of all genuine men of science. They are none of them livingly ruled by science, or submit the life of their intellect to its unwise and impertinent stewardship. They all — unless they are men of unworthy lives to begin with, which is a supposition not to be thought of in reference to any sincere devotee of science — firmly believe in a good whose existence science is totally impotent on her own principles either to afhrm or deny, and they none of them believe even in a truth which the senses by them- selves are competent to confirm, or which they do not become qualified to confirm solely by having undergone the previous discipline and correction of the intellect. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND FAITH. 299 The long and the short of the whole matter is that what men call true in science, is not the truth they intellectually or spiritually apprehend. The two orders of truth differ fundamentally, one being based in sensible experience, the experience com- mon to the race, and not worth a jot but as in- volving it; the other originating in inward percep- tion, and claiming therefore a rigidly individual ground or basis. Thus the law of universal gravi- tation — the law which imports that all the bodiea of the universe attract each other with a force directly proportioned to the mass of matter they contain, and inversely proportioned to the squares of their distances — is a scientific truth, that is, one whose existence depends upon its strict universality, or its involving all things in its grasp whether they know it or not. And the truth of the Divine be- ing and existence — the truth which imports that all men are derivative or created existences, and enjoy therefore a strictly fallacious life in theimelves — is an intellectual or spiritual truth, but it is a truth which falls wholly within consciousness. That is to say, this truth unlike the other is never the interpretation of men's common or outward experi- ence, but is a result exclusively of their inward cul- ture or refining. No man believes it in virtue of any force of intellect he possesses, still less in virtue of 300 THE GOSPEL UNTRUE TIDINGS TO EVERY any degree of natural goodness or gentleness he is born to. Every man, who believes it at all, — that is, who believes it not as a mere hereditary tradition, but with his spirit or life, — believes it as the effect of a decided inward discipline, or genuine individual culture, awakening a heart-craving for it, i. e. telling him that it is supremely (jood to believe it, that for him indeed eternal death and damnation lie in his not believing it ; and in comparison therefore with this most excellent knowledge, the science or learning of all worlds is as the small dust of the balance in his sight. In other words : every one who believes it does so with the heart first, and the intellect after- wards : that is, believes it primarily as good, and not as truth. This, and this alone, is why I beheve any Divine truth : because my heart fiercely hungers after it, and stamps every thing false and foul that con- flicts — or even comes into passing rivalry — with it. What does it matter to me that some cold-blooded prig or pedant is able to demonstrate the scientific untruth of my belief? Have I ever pretended that it had any scientific basis or justification ? Do I not know in all my bones that the tendency of science, and the whole current of men's servile opinion, run directly counter to it ? Do you think that I love it any the less on that account? Do you think that my fierce relish for it is not all the while ONE WHO DOES NOT FIRST FIND IT GOOD. 301 quickened and fomented by this popular and scien- tific indifference to it ? Or that the gainsaying of it by all the world, vulgar and polite, would have any other effect upon me than driving me joyfully to die for it? And I should like to know what man ever went to death for a scientific truth. Gali- leo, I believe, declined to do so, and for the very good reason no doubt that he did not feel his highest life involved in any truth of science. Other- wise he could have hardly rejected the auspicious opportunity offered him by the church of his day, to assert and signally illustrate that life. " Scien- tific untruth of^ my belief," indeed ! Words are not able to express my joy that men's belief has no scientific basis, that is, no basis in their sensible experience, because then my heart and mind would depend for their beggarly life upon the heart and mind of other men, and I should have no direct inspiration from Him who now fills me with these fragrant tides of love and joy and worship. We may say in fact, that nowhere in Christen- dom, outside the professing Christian church, do we find the human mind backward to admit that its allegiance is due primarily to good, and only deriv- atively to truth. The revelation in Jesus Christ of God's incarnate perfection may be called the definite inauguration of the heart's sole authority thenceforth 302 MAN'S ALLEGIANCE HENCEFORTH DUE in the sphere of belief. His manifestation in Christ as a natural man, even in ultimates or personal form, that is, clown to the assumption of flesh and bones, and Ilis consequent exaltation of human nature itself out of limitary into universal dimensions, so making it thenceforth the only true measure of infinitude, appeals for sanction to the heart's deepest instincts of Divine good, and disclaims the superficial hom- age of the intellect, save in so far as the intellect itself is shaped and enlarged by the experience of the heart. For the heart is vi^iat alone universalizes man to the dimensions of his kind, and unites him with it, while the intellect, fed by sense, restricts him to the most meagre personal form, or divides him from it. The heart alone consequently is capable of acknowledging a Divine or universal truth, and the intellect derives all its capacity of similar acknowl- edgment from it. Now unquestionably human na- ture embraces all that man is capable of recognizing as Divine good ; and Jesus Christ accordingly in revealing to the faith of his disciples the Divine and human unity, that is, the truth of God's inti- mate and perfect natural humanity, has forever exalted good to the sovereignty of human affection, and relegated truth to a comparatively inferior or subordinate place. Every man of intellect and con- science feels, accordingly, by an indomitable Divine TO DIVINE-NATURAL GOOD ALONE. 303 instinct of the truth, that his own particular nature is not human nature, but rather a caricature of it; feels that it is shockingly inhuman in fact, because its universal element, or what relates him to the neighbor, is so inactive or poorly developed com- pared with its personal or individual element, which relates him to self. Every man, in other words, of spiritual or living culture throughout history has felt his particular nature to be unmixed evil, has felt in very truth that he himself was no man, and has always appealed to God consequently with tears of penitence and humiliation, as his only hope and succor against himself. Thus Jesus Christ in iden- tifying man's religious aspiration with the redemption and salvation of human nature from the evils inci- dent to every man's particular nature, and its eon- sequent eternal union with the Divine infinitude, has exalted religion itself out of a wretched ritual or ceremonial worship, into the diligent handmaiden and minister of every man's unadulterate natural good. LETTER XXII. |S^^^ Y DEAR FRIEND : — I have been digress- • K il "r^i^ ■ ^"o sadly, and must forthwith return to ■fepS^^m my thesis. I was saying, when my pen took another direction, that the form of human nature, or its distinctive quahty, apart from which it has no real existence, is derived wholly from its objective element, or the uses it subserves to the evolution in the earth of a Divine-natural manhood. And I have certainly no desire to divert your atten- tion from this statement, since all our intellectual accord depends upon your doing full and frank justice to it. Eor the uses referred to constitute the sole actual presence of God in our nature, being all spiritually fulfilled in the nature coming to form, or, what is the same thing, in the advent of a perfect society, fellowship, or equality of all men with each and of each man with all men, on earth or in heaven. The technical Christian church in simply bearing wit- ness to the gospel facts^ has unconsciously but un- ~ THE STATE CULMINATES IN THE REPUBLIC. 305 falteringly ministered to these providential uses in nurturing and giving birth to the Christian state, which is the initial objective or actual form under which God's spiritual incarnation in our nature be- comes realized. The rudiment of the State under all its forms, even the most expanded, is the marriage institution, engendering the family unity. For out of this small unit of the family grows successively the larger unities of the tribe, or unity of many fami- lies ; of the city, or unity of many tribes ; of the nation, or unity of many cities ; and finally of the republic, or unity of many nations. These successive political structures have been only the material scaf- folding by means of which God's spiritual edifice in human nature has gradually worked itself out to men's recognition ; and accordingly, now that the full dayhght of Divine truth is upon us, they only spirit- ually obscure what they once obediently promoted. For their pretension is (and in this pretension they are dihgently backed by a mercenary and menda- cious church) that they do not constitute the mere provisional scaffolding of God's great edifice in hu- man nature, but the very edifice itself; and they consequently influence men's minds to every down- ward base issue, instead of inflaming them to noble upright endeavors and aspirations. But, as I have said, all these political structures attain to their 306 THE REPUBLIC ENDS OUR POLITICAL LIFE. climax and culmination in the republic, whence their decline becomes swift and eternal. The rea- son why the republic is necessarily the final form of God's institutional or educative providence in human aifairs, is because the republic makes it im- possible to realize any larger literal order among men, any more expansive form of merely instituted or enforced fellowship among them, and so inevita- bly gives way itself at last to a free spontaneous society, or a spiritual unforced fellowship of each and all men, as the supreme development of human destiny, because such a destiny alone befits man's human or God-given nature. And the reason why the republic makes it impossible to conceive of any larger literal form of Divine administration on earth, is that the republic is the government of the people by chosen representatives of the people, without ref- erence to smaller political or customary divisions. And surely nothing larger in the way of literal ad- ministrative rule can be imagined than a government whose only sanction is the will of the whole people. Thus the republic inaugurates a change from a literal or seeming order to a spiritual or real one in the Divine administration of human life. Now what is the exact distinction here announced? What is the exact difference between spirit and letter, between reality and appearance, between a universal and a - THE ANGELS AN IMPERFECT WORK OF GOD. 307 partial order? And what is the necessary ground of such distinction in the Divine economy? Why does the Divine housekeeping in our nature admit, nay prescribe and exact this immense difference in things? If we come to a good understanding on this point, we shall be likely to disagree on no other. The difference in question, then, is the exact dif- ference between a regimen of good enforced by the heart, and one of truth enforced by the intellect. That is to say : it is the difference between inward, free, spontaneous action on the one hand, and out- ward, voluntary, prudential, or deliberate action on the other. If indeed your ear were broken in to a logical distinction which Swedenborg's necessities constantly compel him to make, I could more briefly define the difference by saying that literal order is motived by a sentiment of ditty in its subject, and spiritual order by a sentiment of delight. Thus the exact difference involved is that between our moral and our aesthetic culture : between the life of obedi- ence to truth in his intellect which a man lives in preparation for his regeneration, and which is always a life of more or less painful death to himself, and that which he lives from the inspiration of good in his heart, after his regeneration is complete. Swe- denborg found the regeneration of the angels very incomplete, apparently because the doctrine of the 308 SWEDENBORG'S INDICTMENT OF Lord, that is, of the Divine assumption and glorifica- tion of human nature, had so Httle spiritual recogni- tion among them. Their regeneration was the fruit of moral culture, or obedience to law, involving of course more or less self-denial ; whereas the fundamental idea of Christianity is the redemption of man's nature to God, or the making him sjjontaneoushj regenerate, regenerate tUroiigh natural taste or attraction. Swe- denborg represents the angels, accordingly, as in- debted exclusively to the restraining influences of the Divine power, that they do not rush headlong into infernal evil. For in regeneration the evil is never separated from man, but is only rendered innocuous or quiescent, so as actually to appear annihilated, when really it is not at all so. Such is the state of the angels. So far as their own knowledge goes, they do not know but that they are separated from evil, but in truth they are only providentially re- strained from it, which makes their evil quiescent and apparently annihilates it. Bat this separation is only an appearance, which the angels themselves dis- cover upon reflection.* In short it is Swedenborg's uniform testimony that the selfhood in angels no less than in men is altogether false and evil.f Doubt on this point, he says, disqualifies a man for heavenly so- ciety. Indeed I might cite any number of passages * Arcana Calestia, 1581. f Uid., 033. See also 6S1. THE ANGELIC PERSONALITY. 309 from his books in which he profoundly affronts our most inveterate ecclesiastical superstitions, by reporting that the angels of themselves or of their own nature bear a very sinister relation to goodness and truth, just as sinister a one as any of the infernals, I think this a very serious indictment of the an- gelic personality, as that personality is ordinarily conceived by us, and well worthy of men's philo- sophic scrutiny. " There is with man no understand- ing of truth, nor any will of goodness : but when he becomes a denizen of heaven, it appears as if he possesses these things, when nevertheless he knows, acknowledges, and perceives that they are of the Lord alone." These possessions are in fact the posi- tive presence of God in him, constituting all he shall ever really know of God. Never was a doctrine propounded by living man, more revolting to flesh and blood than this. And yet the wise old man was so devoted to it, heart and mind, and brings such an amazing amount of striking experience, ob- servation, and angelic testimony to corroborate it, that it cannot fail some day to attract the attention of philosophic minds. The so-called " Swedcnbor- gians " may be left out of our account altogether : for these preposterous people are so bent upon adding another to the Christian sects by devoutly plaf/ing " New Church " and " New Jerusalem " every Sun- 310 HE SHOWS IT SEVERELY MINISTERIAL day to complacent handfuls of men and women, and so trying to impose upon the world the fiction that Swedenborg himself is an accomplice of the stu- pidity, that they actually do nothing but disgust all right-minded men with his books. But how many fairly honest and competent minds nowadays, think you, minds freed from sectarian sottishness, and hating the influence of the sects upon the world as they hate the jaws of hell, have recourse to these modest volumes to find a clew out of our gathering political and social perplexities ? Their number might almost be counted on the fingers. Yet I am fully persuaded that such men will find intellectual relief nowhere else; and nowhere in Swedenborg half so readily as in thoroughly mastering the truth that we are now canvassing, namely : the truth of man's (and hence the angel's) limited freedom or selfhood. I said however just now that no truth could be more revolting to our " flesh and blood " personality, or the pride of individuality in us, than this. Clearly this effect is owing to the immense natural illusion we are under in respect to our flesh-and-blood per- sonality. For a very long while this personality constitutes literally all we know of life. The whole realm of sense is its appanage either as ministering to our material support, or as serving our varied fac- - TO A WORK OF GOD IN HUMAN NATURE. 311 iilties of intelligence. In our ignorance and inex- perience of any higher or truer life, what wonder is it then that we should deem ourselves the best re- sult of God's creative power, and look upon life as absolutely our own ? And yet the whole persuasion is a downright fallacy. There is absolutely no such thing in nature as a finite selfhood or an indepen- dent personality. The conception of such an exist- ence belongs wholly to our own crazy way of en- visaging creation, that is, regarding it primarily as a material or quantitative result, rather than a spiritual or qualitative one. We are taught to call God in- finite to be siu-e, but only because we have been first taught to call ourselves finite. In reality, however, we deem God the most finite of beings, the most essentially absolute or independent of beings. This is our own ideal of human perfection, or the mode of existence we most aspire to for ourselves ; and it is not marvellous therefore that we attribute the full enjoyment of it to God our creator. Endowing the creature as we do in imagination with his own inward life or being, we necessarily relegate God to an exclusively outward position towards him, and thus are compelled to finite the creator by all the breadth of creation. In short, notwithstanding our vague and crude ascriptions of a nominal infinitude to Him, we really or in thought make II im, as I 312 MAN'S PRIVATE SELFHOOD THE ONLY have said, the most finite or restricted of beings, and rob Him of His rightful infinitude the better to adorn our factitious selves with it. But I do not hesitate for my own part utterly to scout this mate- rialistic hypothesis of the relation between creator and creatiu-e as having no ground in the essential truth of the case. I do not hesitate, for example, to express my con- viction that the distinction between creature and creator is not the least a sensible or objective fact, but a purely rational or subjective truth. It is not at all true that man presents any antagonism with the infinite in his outward or public and universal aspect, that is, as an organic subject, or subject of sense ; but only in his inward, private, or particular aspect as an inorganic subject, or subject of conscious- ness. My physical organization which passively unites me with the universal realm of existence, ob- viously does not disunite me with the creator, since in that case I should cease to live, because I am essentially a created existence; but only my meta- physical or inorganic consciousness by which I am actively isolated or differentiated from all other men. If my divorce from God were real or objective as well as conscious or subjective — if it were a fact of physics as well as a truth of metaphysics — then it would be impossible for me to enjoy a vital sen- INVETERATE ENEMY OF GOD. 313 sation; for I have not the presumption to suppose that I myself constitute my sensitive Ufe : that is, that I myself contribute ^a particle of force to my seeing or hearing or smelling or tasting or touching faculty. I am in truth as passive in all the range of my sensuous experience as the child is in partu- rition. That is to say, I see, hear, smell, taste, touch, not by virtue of the slightest conceivable exertion of personal power on my part, but by virtue of a marvellous inherited organization which fuses in itself the two conflicting realms of a wide universality and a narrow particularity, and thereby renders me a conscious person. It would not be a whit less silly accordingly in me to take credit to myself for my physical endowments, than it would be in a child to take credit to itself for its own generation. In short my finite or imperfect personality is itself a sheer outbirth and dependency of an organization which combines and expresses in itself the grossest univer- sality and the subtlest individuality; and I conse- quently realize my personality as finite or imperfect, only because I am persistently blind to the grandeur of that organization as a universal symbol, or look upon it solely as a private or specific and not as a generic or race possession. Understand, then, that our alienation from or other- ness to our creator is not the least a demonstrable 314 IS OUR NATURAL ALIENATION FROM fact of science, implying a sensible or real estrange- ment between us. On the contrary it is a strict truth of consciousness — a fruit of our purely met- aphysical or subjective illusion — implying on our part doubtless a certain phenomenal projection from the creator whereby we become 5^^-constituted, be- come personally conscious, but arguing no particle of essential antagonism, or absolute remoteness be- tween us. In other words our felt finiteness is no way a law of our spiritual creation, or of the infinite and eternal being we possess in God, but only and at most an incident of our natural constitution, or of the limited and transient existence we possess in rigid community with all other men. Thus, all I mean to say is that the finiting principle in human life, the evil principle, is invariably that of selfhood or private personality; while the infiniting principle, the good principle consequently, is invariably that of society, or the broadest possible fellowship, equality, brotherhood, of man and man. And creation will never be spiritually or philosophically appreciable to us until we take to heart this discrimination. ~ As well as I can remember, in fact, the spring of all my intellectual activity in the past was to know for certain whether our felt finiteness was a necessity of our spiritual creation, or simply an incident of our natural constitution : whether, for example, it was to GOD, A FACT OF SCIENCE? 315 be interpreted as having been arbitrarily imposed upon us by the Divine will, or as inherent merely in the sentiment we so inordinately cherish of personal independence. For in the former case my hope in God necessarily dies out by the practical decease of His infinitude, while in the latter case it is not only left unimpaired but is revived and invigorated. If my felt finiteness be a necessity of my creatureship, that is to say, if the creative perfection necessitate the creature's imperfection in any real and not a simply logical sense; then clearly the creative per- fection is only nominal, not real, is only a compara- tive, not a positive, perfection : and a creator whose perfection is of this finite sort only, may be worthy indeed of a certain respect as addressing my fear, but is so far from attracting my adoring hope and love as to be much more likely to provoke my en- ergetic distrust and aversion. But if on the other hand my felt finiteness be a mere suggestion or affirmation of the natural mind in me, evidencing only the dense ignorance every man is specifically under with respect to the true spirituality of his na- ture, or its latent divinity, then of course the senti- ment I cherish of the creative greatness will become so much the more aggrandized and expansive as I perceive His immortal bounty toward us to suspend itself not upon any foolish and violent castration, 31'6 OR IS IT A TRUTH OF OUR SO to speak, of our vain and flippant and conceited intelligence, but rather upon such an unlimited im- pregnation of its ignorance and falsity by His own wholesome and healing truth as cannot fail in the end to make us naturally wise with His infinite and eternal wisdom. Here, in fact, was the veritable secret source of all my intellectual unrest. During all my early in- tellectual existence I was haunted by so keen a sense of God's natural incongruity with me — of his natural and therefore invincible alienation, otherness, externality, distance, remoteness to me — as to breed in my bosom oftentimes a wholly unspeakable heartsickness or homesickness. The sentiment to be sure masked its ineffable malignity from my per- ception under the guise of an alleged 5^/^ernatural limitation on God's part ; but it none the less filled my soul with the tremor and pallor of death. I have no doubt indeed that if it had not been for my excessive " animal spirits " as we say, or the extreme good-will I felt towards sensuous pleasure of every sort, which alternated my morbid conscien- tiousness and foiled its corrosive force, I should have turned out a flagrant case of arrested intellectual development. I could have borne very well, mind you, a conviction of God's personal antipathy to me carried to any pitch you please \ for my person does PERSONAL CONSCIOUSNESS MERELY? 317 not go with my nature as man, and a personal con- demnation therefore which should not cut me off from a natural resurrection, would not deprive me of hope toward God. But my conviction of God's personal alienation had been hopelessly saddled, through the incompetency of my theologic sponsors, with the senseless tradition of His inveterate es- trangement also from human nature. Thus unhap- pily although my person did not go with human nature they made human nature to go with my person, or managed so perfectly to confound the two things to my unpractised sense, that whenever I felt a superficial or intrinsically evanescent pang of mere personal remorse, it was sure to pass by a quick dia- bolical chemistry into a sense of the deadliest natural hostility between me and the soiu'ce of my life. It is in fact this venomous tradition of a natural as well as a personal disproportion between man and his maker — speciously cloaked as it is under the ascription of a 5?^ernatural being and existence to God — that alone gives its intolerable odium and poignancy to men's otherwise healthful and restora- tive conscience of sin. That man's personality should utterly alienate him from God — that is to say, make him infinitely other and opposite to God — this I grant you with all my heart, since if God were the least like me personally all my hope in Ilim would 318 OUR INHERITED THEOLOGY perish. Nothing indeed can be more welcome to me than that impartial truth, for all my chances either of present happiness or future blessedness appear to me rigidly conditioned upon it. But that God should be also an infinitely alien substance to me — an infi- nitely other or foreign nature — this wounds my spontaneous faith in Him to its core, or leaves it a mere mercenary and servile homage. I perfectly understand how He should disown all private or personal relation to me, because personally I am anything but innocent, being to all the extent of my personal pretension — to all the extent of my dis- tinctively personal interests and ambitions — the im- passioned foe and rival of universal man. This is one thing. But it is quite a diffbrent and most odious thing that He should feel an envenomed animosity also to my innocent nature, or what binds me in indissoluble unity with every man of woman born. It is blasphemy indeed to conceive or enter- tain such a thought, for it makes God a wantonly inhuman being, unworthy the homage of every man who reverences his own nature, or is not spiritually a sot. I can only repeat accordingly that our in- herited theology must infallibly have ended by suf- focating me in my intellectual swaddling-clothes, had not my heart been providentially inspired by the many sensible tokens I enjoyed of God's vital presence SOTTISH AND SUFFOCATING, 319 in GUI' nature, even while undergoing the utmost per- sonal mortification and abasement at His hands, to reject the falsities which a perverse education had temporarily imposed upon it. Can you wonder then that with this intellectual experience on my part, and holding these convictions, I cleave for very life to the truth of God's Tiatural humanity ? I do not say, mind you, the truth of His spiritual or essential manhood : for, as I have already said, that is a truth which no unsophisticated mind that acknowledges the Divine existence at all can help acknowledging : but of His natural, adventitious, or acquired manhood, a manhood which is forced upon Him, so to speak, by that constitutional limita- tion of the created consciousness to which men give the name of proprium in Latin, of selfhood, freedom, and so forth, in the vernacular. The Divine celestial and spiritual manhood, according to Swedenborg, is that which exists in the heavens, and constitutes the heavens ; being the reality of that goodness and truth in which good spirits and angels are principled, and of which they are appearances, consequently, and nothing but appearances. But the natural sphere of the mind is a universal sphere, embracing the hells as well as the heavens, and the Divine natural human- ity, accordingly, is a far more comprehensive truth than the Divine spiritual humanity, meeting the needs 320 THE DIVINE NATURAL HUMANITY of diabolical existences no less than those of angelic, and guaranteeing therefore a permanent order of hu- man life on the earth which all the wit of man has been unable to forecast. The miracle of this order is that being natural it is spontaneous, and will accordingly dispense erelong with that indolent and imbecile array of merely professional or reflected life which constitutes the existing civilized order of the world, and hides the great body of humanity from the enjoyment of the common sun and air.* But you don't want prophecy, you want light. This how- ever is a demand that you can expect me to supply only in very limited form and measure ; but the bare attempt on my part to supply it will, I hope, evince my abundant good-will towards you in the premises. The creative love, because it is infinite or knows no * It is curious, in fact, how blindly content the most respectable life of the world is to identify itself with " professing " or seeming to do, instead of practice or really doing. The physician does not teach men how to live in harmony with physical laws, but only " professes " to do so. The lawyer does not teach men how to live in harmony with moral laws, but only "professes" to do so. The clergyman does not teach men how to live in harmony with Divine laws, but only " pro- fesses " to do so. And yet it is in deference to the interests of this sham professional life of the world, that men are expected to forego their most veridical instincts of a really Divine life latent in men, and indeed practically acknowledge the great God himself a sham rather than ques- tion its vulgar but conventional manners and customs. ' ALONE WORTHY OF MEN'S ACKNOWLEDGMENT. 321 alloy of self-love, abandons itself without reserve to whatsoever is not itself, to whatsoever is most dis- tinctly other and opposite to itself. We may indeed call this the law of the creative perfection, the neces- sity of perfect love : to delight in communicating it- self, or making itself unstintedly over, to whatsoever is intrinsically worthless or void of substance. Our delight, at all events, is not of this disinterested chaiv- acter. Our activity craves remuneration. We delight to find dLplenu7}i of existence made ready to our hand. We go forth with joy only when we encounter a ful- ness of life and energy ; because feeling ourselves inwardly poor and needy we covet the most abound- ing outward satisfactions. But the creative love being infinite or free of all subjective bias, is so es- sentially exuberant that it cannot help constituting itself a force of boundless subjective life, a force of unitary and universal selfhood, in others created from itself. Its essential life or delight is to find void and desolate ground whereinto it may forever inflow and abide; to find or rather invent in its creature so genuine an otherness to itself, so vivid an opposition or oppugnancy to its own perfection, that it may eternally inflow and indwell in the creature as in its very ^elf. In truth and of necessity the creature con- stitutes the only selfhood known to the creative love ; for the latter being pm-ely infinite or objective, that is, 322 SELFHOOD THE NATUKAL BIRTHMARK destitute of all subjective aims or quality, it is of course incapable of realizing itself save in what is not itself, that is, in its creature. Selfhood then, or felt freedom in the creature, is his natural birthmark, or congenital stigma, without which he would be, not creature, but creator. Manifestly then creation imposes a certain natural limitation or stigma upon the creature which we call selfhood, and which requires to be Divinely rectified or overcome before the creature can be worthy of his creator. Creation, I say, imposes this obligation upon the creatm'e : for what does creation mean ? It means, briefly but fully stated, the communication of the crea- tor s being or substance to the creature. But now mark : the creator's being or substance is not mate- rial, physical, outward, it is exclusively spiritual, metaphysical, inward. That is to say, it is altogether qualitative not quantitative, being identical with the creator Himself, therefore infinite as devoid of space, and eternal as devoid of time. But how in this state of things shall we conceive the creator creating — that is, communicating Himself to — others, unless these others be made to feeNhemselves first of all void both of spiritual being (or being in themselves), and natural existence (that is, existence in their race) ; unless in other words both their being and their existence confess themselves purely personal or con- OR CONGENITAL STIGMA OF THE CREATURE : 323 scions, purely apparitional or phenomenal, as made up of space and time ? The creature in literal truth can only be in Imnself, both spiritually and naturally, a purely formal or supposititious existence ; and the whole gist accordingly of the creative travail with him is to eviscerate him of his pretension to be any- thing else : that is, his pretension to constitute in himself his own being or substance. The creatiu:'e of course resists the Divine teaching with all his spiritual vis inertice. New even to exist- ence, and utterly ignorant therefore of life, he fancies that he embraces it all in himself, nor ever doubts that he weaves from out that gossamer consciousness the stupendous realities of goodness and truth. But this consciousness of ours — this feeling we have of our life or being as inherent in ourselves, and as ab- solutely our owm therefore — is in truth and all the while a bottomless cheat or illusion, unworthy of our slightest care or affection. And to suppose accord- ingly that selfhood, however relatively cultivated, refined, and exalted it may appear to our own eyes, is the true end of our creation, is the stupidest of absurdities. It exists in us in fact only as a most ignorant misappropriation of the creative substance ; only as the fruit of an idiot tale told us by our senses (known in sacred or symbolic speech as — the serjjenf) to the effect, that inasmuch as we are the 324 AN IMPLICATION, NOT AN EXPLICATION subjects of organized or finite knowledge : namely, the knowledge oi good limited by evil, and of evil lim- ited by good : we must be therefore like God, and partakers of His infinitude. It is in other words a pure misconception and offshoot of our native spiritual stupidity and immodesty ; and the best word we can say of it accordingly is, that it is a mere constitutional implication, and therefore by no means a living ex- plication, of the great mystery of the spiritual creation. For God, the creator, being spiritual or infinite, must be inscrutable to outward, material, or finite appre- hension, and can only become known to the creature therefore in so far as He Himself manages spiritually to exist or go forth in created form. Now the created form — in order that it may fitly symbolize or respond to the creative being or substance — must be above all things a unitary form, as expressing the unity of each and all creatures. But this unity of the created form is not an arbitrary or base outside result me- chanically imposed upon the creature by the creator. On the contrary it is the outgrowth exclusively of the creature's nature, which to the creature's own eyes seems to belong only to himself, or possess only one element, that namely of individuality, but apart from his own eyes is seen to belong to all men primarily, or to claim the much more important element of universality, and to allow the individual or private or THE SPIRITUAL CREATION: 325 element indeed only as included in that. The cre- ated form, consequently, as being a development of the creature's nature, is a strictly regenerate or social form : that is to say, presupposes a most bitter expe- rience on the creature's part of himself, and a most toilsome conflict with that self: an experience and conflict through which he is finally led to renounce his cherished personal independence, his diabolic pride of individuality, with all the ungodly lusts bred of it, and to esteem himself henceforth in God's sight and with all his heart as a race only, or Di- vinely natural and united man. Now remember always, that this regeneration of human nature, this bitter experience and conflict of man with himself, is confined of com-se to the human bosom, has no existence out of consciousness, or reflects itself in space and time only as space and time are themselves embraced in man's finite consciousness ; and that so long as our natural regeneration is in abeyance or immature, the Divine providence is obliged to deal with men's flimsy and fraudulent consciousness, their pretentious private selfhood or personality, as if it were a most vital spiritual reality, and not alone the intense and immeasurable counterfeit of the truth it will one day appear to itself to be. Thus the creative power, if it would be regarded as real, is bound above all things else to avouch or ulti- 326 A DENSE MASK BEHIND WHICH mate itself in the natural form of the creature, a form which shall be past all dispute the creature's own form, and not the creator's merely in him, because it is a form of finite or imperfect knowledge, namely : a knowledge of good in evil and of evil in good. For until the creature thus veritably appears to himself, he can have no inward certainty that his creator is. As long as the creature attributes to himself the least reality inward or outward, spiritual or natural, he must honestly deny the creative power. That power vindicates its existence to the creature past all dispute, only by avouching itself the all of the created life both inward and outward, both spiritual and natural : for so long as the creature is left a particle of life or being in lihnself, he is honestly bound to atheism. And what most ideal nonsense it is to think and talk of the omnipotent God leaving us free to acknowl- edge or reject Him ! Or imputing to us forlorn luna- tics of time and space a sufficient degree of reason wherewith to measure our rightful dependence or independence upon His unknown perfection ! I can conceive of some intolerable goose of a man, inflated past all bounds of sanity by a conceit of his own per- sonal consequence, posing to attract or compel my homage. But the great and sincere creator of men, never ! He is infinitely free from such posturing and trickery. He has no finite selfhood or personality of GOD EFFECTS OUR NATURAL REDEMPTION: 327 His own to render Him frivolous and vain, nor any finite memory consequently of His own to render Him susceptible to our praises and affronts. He does not ask us therefore to take His creative name for granted, and stifle any reasonable doubts we may feel on the subject in an unintelligent, hypocritical faith, for He makes our despised and degraded nature the miraculous mother-substance of all His creative effects, and the eternal witness accordingly of His creative name. Thus He is at once our spiritual being and our natural existence, our individual sub- stance and our universal form : the sentiment of self- hood in us, or our personal consciousness, being only the dense and unsuspected mask under which He con- ciliates our instincts of freedom, and gradually accom- modates the great truth to our rational recognition. Do I not well, then, to call selfhood or personality a stigma or limitation of the created nature instead of an endowment of it? It infers in the creature a pm-ely subjective or conscious existence, and this style of existence is simply lawless, as being without any sacred tie of nature or race unconsciously to con- trol it. A conscious subject, indeed, without any real or unconscious object to control him, furnishes our conception of the devil. And if therefore we per- sist in referring our selfliood or personality to the direct hand of God, we affiliate the devil to Him. 328 A MERE GENERALIZED FORM OF That selfhood utterly lacks this real or objective and unconscious worth, seems to me wholly undeniable. For by the hypothesis of creation, which stamps the creator the all of life, there is and can be no absolute other than He. He is being or life itself, and what- soever exists consequently exists only by Him. Evi- dently then the only otherness we can conceive in the creature to the creator as bottoming his selfhood or felt freedom, must be purely phenomenal, conscious, or subjective, without a grain of absolute truth, with- out a fibre of outward or objective reality. We can- not help characterizing our felt finiteness accordingly — that is, that conscious otherness or oppugnancy in us to the infinite which we call our selves — as essentially unreal : which means purely personal, phenomenal, fallacious. And an existence of this shadowy sort in the creature, except as incidentally involved in some higher creative end, is of course fatal to our acknowledgment of the creative perfection. But we have not the least right to regard the exist- ence in question as created. Our only obligation to do so would arise from our considering creation to be an absolute work on God's part, to constitute His proper glory in short, and subserve no ulterior spir- itual ends. But this would be supremely silly, for although God creates He does so only in order to redeem or make. He is infinitely more than a loving MAN'S NATURAL CONTEARIETY TO GOD. 329 or passionate creator ; He is a wise and faithful maker or redeemer as well. It is in fact, as we have already seen, a mere scientific or rationalistic concep- tion of creation, to regard it as a simplistic process or one of natural evolution by simple generation. It is no such thing. Human nature, humanity, is the fruit not of an orderly evolution of the world's force, but rather of a stupendous historic revolution where- by the world's force is converted from a wholly out- ward relation to man to a wholly inward power in his own bosom, a power of enlightened affection and obedient thought. Human nature is the fruit of no simple or generative but of a profoundly composite or regenerative process, implying the creature's final or natural and objective evolution only by means of a previous complete spiritual immersion, or subjective involution, of the creative substance in created person or form, and its subsequent resurrection or emergence thence in a new or Divine-Human nature fit to confer any amount of objective substance or formal reality upon the creature. The scientific or rationalistic view of creation which no doubt served a good pur- pose in the infancy of the mind strikes one now as so childish and inane, that one no longer wonders at the horde of thoughtless and flippant young persons who give up creation altogether as an impossible con- ception, and are not slow even to avow themselves 330 IMPOSSIBLE TO BELIEVE ANY LONGER atheists or nihilists : exactly as if the Divine existence and power were truths which men had always arrived at by reasoning instead of revelation, or were prob- lems which addressed themselves primarily not to the heart but to the understanding. But it is perfectly safe to say that the religious instinct in men, as it never has sought or accepted scientific guidance upon religious questions, so it never will seek or accept it in the future. It is the inappeasable craving of that instinct in the soul, whenever it comes to the discernment of its own spiritual nature, that the creative perfection prove above all things of an active quality ; that is, that the creator not only he in Himself of an infinite and eter- nal worth or majesty, but that He livingly avouch such transcendent worth and majesty by some im- mortal work of justice or righteousness accomplished in the nature of His creature, which shall forever transfigure that nature or make it serve as an all- sufficient revelation and perpetual memento of His otherwise inscrutable name. We none of us, you know, are apt to have anything but a prudential re- gard for a great capitalist merely, or a man buried up to his head and ears in money ; while we feel a disinterested respect for every man of inventive or productive genius whose work enhances the wealth of the race or enlarges the bonds of human inter- IN GOD'S SUPEKNATTJ'RA-L ATTRIBUTES. 331 course. Just so we should feel no respect for an idle or luxurious deity, a deity for example who though himself armed with all might, and garlanded with the obsequious homage of heaven, could yet be content to see his earthly creatures wallowing in natural ignorance, indigence, and infamy, without even for a moment sacrificing or postponing the al- lurements of his voluptuous indolence to their effectual relief. It is not enough to say that we should feel no sincere respect for such a deity : our hearts Avould prompt us indeed to abhor his unworthy name, and reverence many an undistinguished man as of far diviner credentials. But it is high time to close this unduly long letter, though I have by no means begun to exhaust its superb theme, nor can ever grow tired of denouncing the heathenish superstitions of our infidel chm'ch and state, which utterly dehumanize the Divine perfection, and permanently defecate its claims to our homage, by stupidly representing it as of a rigidly si/j)erna,t\ira\ quality. Even the literal Christian verity, in fact, binds us to say that God's spiritual perfection whether of love or wisdom finds its sole permanent purchase upon our regard i?t a redemptive work lorought hy Him in our nature, which justifies us in ascribing to Him henceforth a distinctly natural or impersonal infinitude, and so forever rids us both of the baleful 332 GOD A PRACTICAL POWER ADEQUATE TO intellectual falsities inherent in the conception of His supernatural personality, and of the enforced per- sonal homage, precatory and deprecatory, engendered by that conception in the sphere of our sentimental piety. The principle involved in this dogmatic trans- action is that of the hierarchical subjection of passion to action, of root to stem, stem to flower, and flower to fruit. And the practical lesson to be derived from it is that God is not willing to be had in reverence of men for His absoluteness and infinity, but only for His relative perfection -. in that being rich and of in- comparable renown He yet makes Himself poor and of no repute that we through His destitution may become rich and powerful. And when He who is the acknowledged top of all perfection — the crown of every excellency which the foolish heart of man covets, the excellency of will, of knowledge, of power — thus renounces His absoluteness, renounces every patent- right He has to our regard, every conceded or uncon- ditional advantage borrowed from our servile tradi- tions, and consents like any unprivileged person, like any honest workingman, diligently to sue out His title to our allegiance in the court of every man's equitable judgment, it is high time for us to learn that a man is in the long run only so much as he does, that there is no such thing as a chronic excellency — as an ab- solute or fossil perfection — ever practicable either to ALL MAN'S NATURAL (OR IMPERSONAL) NEEDS. 333 man or God, and that our only chance therefore for immortahty hes in no stored-up capital of goodness and truth we possess, but in the acute life or charac- ter we daily witness in putting all our accumulations of goodness and truth out to active use. We laugh, as I said awhile ago, at an inventor who should ask us to take his genius on trust, or with- out any evidence of its reality. And there can be no more offensive tribute to the Divine name than to show Him a deference we deny to the rankest char- latan. How infinitely unworthy of God it would be to exact or expect of the absolute and unintelligent creatures of His power a belief out of all proportion to their sensible knowledge, or unbacked by anything but tradition ! In the absence of sensible knowledge tradition is no doubt the next best thing ; but that the deputy should be allowed permanently to sup- plant its principal is a monstrous absurdity. I am free to confess for my own part that I have no belief in God's absolute or irrelative and unconditional per- fection. I have not the least sentiment of worship for His name, the least sentiment of awe or reverence towards Him, considered as a perfect person sufficient unto Himself. That style of deity exerts no attrac- tion either upon my heart or understanding. Any mother who suckles her babe upon her own breast, any bitch in fact who litters her periodical brood of 334 HE NEVER POSES FOR MEN'S ADMIRATION. pups, presents to my imagination a vastly nearer and sweeter Divine charm. What do I care for a good- ness which boasts of a hopeless aloofness from my own nature — except to hate it with a manly inward hatred? And what do I care for a truth which professes to be eternally incommunicable to its own starving progeny — but to avert myself from it with a manly outward contempt ? Let men go on to cher- ish under whatever name of virtue, or wisdom, or power they will, the idol of Self-Sufficiency : I for my part will cherish the name of Him alone whose insufficiency to Himself is so abject that He is inca- pable of realizing Himself except iii others. In short I neither can nor will spiritually confess any deity who is not essentially human, and existentially thence exclusively natural, that is to say, devoid of all distinc- tively personal or limitary pretensions. LETTER XXIII. ^^^2^^^-f Y DEAR FRIEND : — Doubtless you are able to discern by this time why neither my faith nor my reason is at all disconcerted by the current rationalistic criticism of the gospels. It is because I have never valued the gos- pels for their own sake, but exclusively for the revela- tion they offer of the Divine name in connection with man's nature and history. To say : that a certain man was born of a virgin, and that after enduring a life of great ignominy and suffering at the hands of his countrymen, he was put to a violent and opprobrious death, from which however after three dayd sepulture he rose again, and presented himself i?i bona fide recognizable form to his amazed disciples : is clearly anything but a scientific statement, and arrests men's attention only because it appeals to a grander and more universal instinct in them than that of science, namely: the instinct of conscience, or the interests of their immortal life. It is strictly fair A HIGHER AND LOWER ORDER to say, moreover, that the statement never purported itself to have any scientific vahdity except in the hands of unintelhgent and incompetent partisans. It was originally intended to furnish a purely doc- trinal footing to men's intellectual and spiritual life, by connecting their nature with God in the highly exceptional and representative personality of Christ. A certain obvious antagonism has always announced itself between religion and science, growing out of the circumstance that they both make their appeal to the human intelligence, but one to a higher intel- ligence, the other to a lower : the only dispute being which intelligence is the higher, that represented by science, or that represented by faith. Science com- prises the field of our distinctively finite knowledge, while religion has always had the pretension to con- nect us with the infinite. There ought to be no contrariety between the two pursuits in themselves, any more than there is contrariety between soul and body; for the interests of religion are emphatically and exclusively those of soul, and the interests of sci- ence as emphatically and exclusively those of body. Their only apparent quarrel is owing to the existence of foolish adherents and advocates on either side: many men of science being narrow enough to have no broadly human sympathies, and therefore very apt to grow indignant at having their chosen pursuit charac- OF KNOWLEDGE IN MAN. 337 terized as a low order of knowledge compared with any other order; and religious men being, as a gen- eral thing, not so devoted to the interests of spiritual truth, primarily, as to feel reluctant in season and out of season to press this humiliating conviction home upon them. Distribute the blame of the quarrel where you will, however, this difference of a higher and lower order of knowledge in man does unquestionably at- tach to the relations of religion or philosophy (for the two things are sufficiently near to be regarded for our present purpose as almost identical) and sci- ence : religion being concerned with man's direct relations to God, and science with his indirect ones. Science admits no conclusion within her own sphere which is not verifiable by sense. And religion in her sphere disowns and distrusts every conclusion not distinctly and persistently /x/^z/?^*^ by sense. Surely a difference more vital or practical than this, can scarcely be imagined; and there can be no more fatal folly with reference to man's intellectual in- terests, than to make hght of it. On one side we have the human soul, and the spiritual world, which is the soul's " real habitation and native country," as Swedenborg finely phrases it. On the other, we have the human body, and the material world, which at most is that body's temporary dwelling-place. The 338 SCIENCE SELF-DISQUALIFIED difference between these realms is vast to be sure, unimaginably vast : but there is no fibre of conflict between them, save what is borrowed on one side or the other from men's ignorance and perversity. If men of science are content to consider man's phenom- enal existence his true life or being, because it is the only life or being in him which reports itself to sense, I do not see what right religious men have to complain : they surely are 7iot compelled to think as men of science think. And if religious men in their turn are content to consider man's highest life or being made up of his relations to any person or per- sons outside the pale of human nature, I don't see what right men of science have to complain : they surely are not compelled to believe as the men of faith do. For neither side has any just claim to the mo- nopoly of error ; and each therefore should diligently refrain from pressing his own characteristic nonsense upon the respect of the other. The weakness of scientific men, as I have shown in former letters, consists in their attempting to phi- losophize upon strictly scientific data. The funda- mental postulate of science is that all known existence is conditioned in space and time, and all her distinc- tive achievements imply the truth of that postulate. But when one seeks to get no longer a scientific, but a purely philosophic, result from that barren AS A RESEARCH OF BEING. 339 premiss, his labor necessarily turns out negative and fruitless, because it proceeds upon a mere unrighteous confounding of being with existence. Of course phi- losophy has no objection to admit with science that all known existence is conditioned in space and time. It only denies that the unknown being from which this known existence is derived, and of which it is a manifestation, is itself so conditioned; and conse- quently it affirms that any philosophic research, or research of being infinite and eternal, conducted upon the mere data of existence, or space and time princi- ples, can have no other than a negative and sceptical result. In other words : philosophy maintains that our time and space knowledge, or the estimate we put upon finite existence, is the exact measure of our ignorance of true being : and so disqualifies science as a philosophic discipline from the start. And man- ifestly the only effectual thing that science can do in rebuttal of this criticism is in its turn to invali- date the peculiar notion of religion or philosophy in regard to man's true life or being. And this it has never yet attempted to do, for Swedenborg is the only man in the intellectual history of the race that has ever intelligently formulated the axioms of religion or philosophy in regard to man's true life or being : and scientific men not only, but even our soi-disant philosophers as well, who are, the bulk of them, mere 340 THE SPIRITUAL BEING OF THINGS unaffiliated bantlings of science, are in the habit of practically ignoring Swedenborg's labors, for the cheap and easy reason that any man who claims an insight of the spiritual or living world, is ijjso facto a self-pronounced lunatic. The being of things, according to philosophy, is never constituted by their existence, for in order that things should be able to exist, or go forth in sensible or phenomenal form, that is, their own form, they must first have being in their creator ; and it is worse than idle, accordingly, it is misleading, in science to attempt accounting for the being of things by alleging the laws or conditions of their visible existence. This is both unscientific and unphilosophic. In the first place the laws of existence are never used by scientific men to express what originates or creates existence, by giving it life or soul; but only to express what constitutes existence, by giving it body. And in the second place the being of things to philosophy never falls outside the things themselves, or in nature, but is ahvays intensely inward and spiritual. Thus the Christian religion would grossly violate philosophy and science both, if it attempted to make the being of men convertible with their base natural existence ; but it actually offends neither of them, and on the contrary accords with them both, by making it iden- tical with Divine or creative Love. For God, the DISTINCT FROM THEIR NATURAL EXISTENCE. 341 creator of man, it says, is Love : and we men, His creatures, must be in ourselves — not love of course, because this would be to make creatm'e creator — but only forms, phenomena, appearances, images, of love. That is, our fundamental natural quality, or distinc- tive human identity, must be constituted of affection, and of thought thence derived ; and only to a super- ficial or fatuous regard will it seem to affiliate itself to the elements of space and time. Now it is essential to our conception of Divine and creative Love, that it be perfect or infinite. And perfect or infinite love is altogether objectively, not subjectively, constituted. That is to say, it is only what it does ; or reveals itself to us only by repro- ducing its potencies and felicities in others, createa from itself. It is not subjectively cognizable, or self- cognizable: for if it were thus cognizable — cognizable in itself — it would be differentially related to other being than itself, and hence confess itself uncreative and finite. In short it must essentially be, and phe- nomenally exist, only in communicating its being and existence to others, so endowing them with its own infinitude or perfection. Such is our inevitable con- ception of Divine or creative Love, as being infinite or perfect. But now observe. It follows from this conception of creative Love, that its creatures, in order to avouch 342 WE ACHIEVE THE LOVE OF OUR KIND their dependence upon it, or prove themselves proper and adequate phenomenal types, forms, or images of it, should as such typical forms or images be objec- tively rather than subjectively pronounced: that is, should be primarily forms of use to others, and only subordinately to such use forms of life or delight in themselves. In other words : it is a law of all cre- ated existence — such is the dazzling perfection or infinitude of its creator ! — that it realize its pecul- iar potencies and felicities only in loving what is not itself, or more briefly still, in unloving itself. For it is obvious that the creature of an infinite power cannot realize life in an absolute or infinite manner : that is, by loving others without unloving himself; simply because a potency of this sort in the creature would argue him to be uncreated, or identify him with the creator, making him also to be infinite Love. And if he cannot love in an infinite or absolute manner, he can only do so in a finite, contingent, or relative manner, that is, by ceasing to love himself. For you must in the interest of philosophy perfectly under- stand that the only principle of evil in God's universe, — or what is equivalent, the only thing that separates between creature and creator — is the selfliood or identity of the creature : * so that there would have been no other way possible to the creative Love of * See Appendix B. ONLY BY PRACTICALLY UNLOVING SELF. 343 avoiding the existing evil of the universe but by void- ing the creature's personal identity, or leaving him without natural selfhood : thus without the remot- est possibility of spiritual conjunction with God : in short, both literally and spiritually uncreated. Thus in loving myself supremely, or in prizing above all things else the interests of my personal identity, I spiritually separate myself from God, and all the true and living and lovely things the Divine name stands for in the creature ; for in so doing I make my bosom the very fons et origo malorum, and consequently fill my daily life with a spirit of hatred and intolerance towards all other men. Accordingly it is only by contriving to utAq^q myself that I can effectually do my part in the extinction of the hells bound up in my nature, or ever practically succeed like Jesus Christ in loving my fellow-men. We are now in a position to understand what Swedenborg says of the tendency of creative order to ultimate itself, or descend to extremes, in the nature of the creature. "By creation is signified what is Divine inwardly and outwardly, or in first things and last: for everything created by God has its beginning in Him, and from that beginning pro- ceeds according to order even to the ultimate end, thus through the heavens into the world, and there rests as in its ultimate, for the ultimate of Divine order 344 SPIRITUAL CREATION UNREAL is realized in mundane nature" * " The ultimate of Divine order is in Man ; and because man is the ultimate of Divine order he is also its basis or foun- dation. Since the Lord's influx does not stop in the middle, but proceeds to its ultimates, as was just said; since this middle through which the influx passes is the angelic heaven, and the ultimate to which it tends is man or the human race ; and since nothing independent or disconnected with other things can exist : it follows that heaven and the human race are so intimately conjoined that each subsists by the other. So that the human race without heaven would be like a chain which had- lost a link, and heaven without the human race would be like a house with- out a foundation." f " Divine order never stops in an intermediate point " (as the angel or heaven) " and there forms a thing without its ultimate, for then it would not have perfectly expressed itself: but goes straight on to its ultimate and when there it begins formation, and also by mediums there brought to- gether it redintegrates itself, and produces ulterior things by procreations : whence the ultimate is called the seminary or seed-place of heaven." | And so on. What now is the plain meaning of these and a thousand similar passages ? * Swedenborg's Arcana, 10634. % Ibid. 315. f Heaven and Hell, 304. UNLESS BASED IN THE CREATED NATURE. 345 They express to my judgment the purpose of the creative wisdom to make its work thoroughly real to the understanding of the creature, by giving it a fixed or stable anchorage in his natm'e, or absolutely weld- ing it to his self-consciousness. It is idle to suppose that a creature can ever come to consciousness, or what is the same thing, can ever realize life, or even existence, save upon a natural basis. For his nature as a creature cuts him off from life or being in himself, and stamps him utterly dependent for all his subjective experience upon a life or being in- finitely remote from himself — viz. his creator. And unless therefore his very nature as thus subjectively imbecile and impotent be creatively organized, he can never come to self-consciousness, much less to any of the providential spiritual issues of such consciousness.* His nature as a creature is his sole reality in time or eternity, and unless he be en- dowed with natural reality therefore, he must forfeit his chances both of spiritual and personal, or of real * There is and can be no such thing in the universe as an unrelated or disconnected existence, and Swedcnborg is perfectly philosophical in denouncing such a pretension. Indeed, if it were otherwise, the natural or universal element would be wholly lacking to our sentient experience. That is to say, there would be no nature and no universe, but the entire realm of existence would dwindle into a logical poliverse, every forlorn and disastrous fragment of it fatally bumping the head of every other, or nullifying instead of adding to the sum of the other's well-being. 346 IMPLICATION OF THE CREATURE'S NATURE and seeming, life forever. His nature is abundantly real by virtue of its implicit logical contrariety to that of the creator ; and all his own reality, which he ignorantly and foolishly supposes to inhere in his conscious self, derives exclusively from it. So that provided only the creator's resources be actually great enough to vivify the creature's nature, and there- by avouch His own spiritual infinitude in mak- ing the creature's intrinsic evil the eterna,l witness of His power, creation will always have a fixed or stable basis of reality to the creature's imagination, and in that seciu-e anchorage the creative wisdom may ever after freely work out whatever proper and perfect spiritual issues its own infinite love may in- wardly inspire. To say, then, that creative order never halts in an intermediate spiritual plane, as heaven or the angel, but goes straight on to its natural ultimate, or resting- place, in the world or man, and there redintegrates itself, or gathers itself up anew, for spiritual procrea- tion : is simply to say in other words that creative order is not the wilful, arbitrary, unreal thing it is generally thought among men to be, as based upon the sovereign license of the creator, but is a most tender, reasonable, and real thing, as based in the creature's own nature, which alone accordingly makes it obligatory upon him to observe it. IN CREATION, ALONE MAKES IT REAL. 347 Let US now repeat the substance of what we have just said, in order the better to impress it on our inteUigence. The intellectual secret of creation, then, very briefly stated, is that the creator is bound by His own per- fection — in order to give His creature spiritual or immortal conjunction with Himself — first of all to endow him with natural reality, or conscious projec- tion to himself; and then spiritually to vivify this natural consciousness of his by giving it social form or quality : so enabling the creature to slough off, of himself as it were, the selfish and monstrous growths which have signalized his natural immatiu-ity. And now if these things be true we see at once how crudely literal — that is to say, how thoroughly destitute of living or spiritual truth — the current ecclesiastical conceptions of creative order are. In- deed the word " order " is totally inapplicable to the ordinary church dogma of creation, as this dogma makes it a mere brute work of omnipotence, result- ing in the production of outward Nature, or the end- less chaos of mineral, vegetable, and animal existence. It is a creation in other words with neither beginning, nor middle, nor end, and so is exquisitely unadapted to rational recognition. As Swedenborg describes creation on the other hand, it is a house of three stories or degrees ; the highest or inmost degree cor- 348 SWEDENBORG DESCRIBES CREATION responding to the private or bedroom floor of om- houses, in which the inmate dwells secure from all intrusion ; the second or midmost degree correspond- ing to the public or drawing room floor of modern houses, in which the inmate receives and entertains his friends ; and the first or lowest story correspond- ing to the basement or kitchen floor of our houses, in which the merely animal or material needs of the in- mates are provided for : and he names these succes- sive stories, accordingly, the first : Natural ; the sec- ond : Spiritual ; the third : Celestial. But the church dogma makes creation a house of one story only, and that story the lowest, or basement ; so that he who follows ecclesiastical guidance, is left without intel- lectual growth, and is kept consequently in the dark as to the future fortunes of his race, and of himself, both alike. Indeed the religionist by profession has no right to know whether the daemonic object of his worship — being totally unidentified as he puta- tively is by the assumption of his creature's nature — may not leave the latter at any moment in the lurch, with every tender yearning of his heart after good forever unsatisfied, as now, and every restless desire of his intellect after truth turned to rayless night. But I concede too much to the church in saying that it makes creation a work of " omnipotence." AS A HOUSE OF THREE STORIES. 349 For omnipotence being Divine is not recognizable by sense, and creation as the church understands it per- tains wholly to the sphere of sense. Omnipotence is recognizable only by man's rational mind, and in order to be so recognized, must avouch itself in a work of infinite love carried out by infinite wisdom to a result of infinite practical benignity. Accordingly wherever man's rational mind recognizes a work of this com- plex infinitude or perfection, there and there alone it sees revealed to its adoring recognition the omnipo- tent creator, and on bended knees gives Him the name of Jehovah God forever. It is sheer folly to make the senses a standard of judgment in relation to omnipo- tence or anything else Divine ; because the senses are finite or organic and discern appearances only, while Divine things are infinite and inorganic, that is, the exact inversion of whatsoever finitely exists, or sensi- bly appears to be. But the professional church, heeding the bare let- ter of revelation only, that is, restricting its intellect- ual interests to the domain of fact exclusively, puts itself out of all sympathetic relation to man's nascent and kindling spiritual intelligence, and proves itself in every point of view a mere cumbcrcr of the ground which it was appointed to cultivate. For example : all the active intellect of the church at present is ex- pended in the defence of miracles, as if God's honor 350 MIRACLE A SENSUOUS SYMBOL were specially imperilled by the current scientific scepticism on that subject. But scientific men sim- ply declare that miracle is contrary to the observed course of nature, and that however men may have been content to believe in it in times past, they are no longer able to do so ; churchmen themselves, if the question were put to the test, being no more able to do so than any other people. And it is evident that the chm-ch can say nothing to the purpose in reply to this criticism. And this simply because it is so habitually indifi'erent to the distinction between fact and truth, as practically to believe them identical or of like sacredness ; so that when science condemns mira- cle as an irrational or intellectually immoral preten- sion, the church feels its very existence threatened, and its sole raison d'etre denied. Whereas it should say, if it were any longer Divinely empowered to say anything : " True, miracle is irrational, and I equally with you condemn it as unworthy of men's present belief. But it was once the only form under which human stupidity allowed the truth of God's infinitude to become realized by human thought, and I prize that truth of truths so highly that I can scarcely feel, as you do, like taking vengeance upon the expressive symbol which alone preserved it to my apprehension. A sentimental mother sometimes tenderly preserves the cradle in which her first-born was rocked asleep. OF THE CREATIVE INFINITUDE. 351 I don't know that one can justify this proceeding absolutely ; but it is at least a pleasanter sight than to see her attacking it with an axe and chopping it up for firewood." mill II MiiiiiiiiiiiiiH— ■■HPi nHBBH «m IMJIIJIIIIBJ W^MWA ^m ^m m m 1 M m LETTER XXIV. ?Y DEAR FRIEND : — If the considerations advanced in the last letter have half the force to your mind that they have to mine, you will be in no danger of depending upon science for the supply of your intellectual nutri- ment. The tether of science is the field of sense ; and an intellect which is inwardly quickened there- fore : i. e. freed henceforth from sensual limitation, since it now views the whole world of sense only in the light of an outward imagery or correspondence of man's inward being : is scientifically inappreci- able. Properly speaking, the senses are completely subterranean to the sphere of our characteristic hu- man life, the sphere of our characteristic human — as distinguished from our animal — ajffections and thoughts. And one would as soon think therefore of consulting a grubbing mole about the approach- ing occultation of Jupiter, as of consulting our best scientific men (purely as such) in regard to the SCIENCE TEEEENE, SENSE SUBTEEEENE. 353 existence of spiritual or celestial realities. Men be- come acquainted with these realities, as it seems to me, not through any docile hearing of the ear merely, still less through any wearisome ratiocinative balan- cing of probabihties, but pm^ely in the way of an exquisitely inward or aesthetic craving, that is, in the way of a gradual expansion or education of the heart to them. And in my opinion consequently any man must be still unacquainted with them who needs the testimony of his senses to assure him of their exist- ence. For this would imply that they were not spir- itual but material realities, existing in space and time. Tell me, my friend, you who admit the existence of a legitimate object of adoration to the human heart, that is, of an infinite goodness and truth, what part do your senses play in promoting your belief of that wholesome truth ? Do they steadfastly lead you to love your neighbor, or the human race, by practically postponing the demands of your self-love? Have they ever, in fact, prompted you to make the acquaint- ance of good by renouncing your own habitual and familiar evil ? Yet respond as you may to these inter- rogations, I am persuaded there is literally no other way for us to do, and attain to the life of God in nature. Anything short of this leaves us in the mere mud of animality, out of which we originally sprung. And though we may all our lives reason with the 354 ESSENTIAL OR SPIRITUAL, AND EXISTENTIAL unction of self-styled seraphs, or devils, we shall only the more effectually succeed in duping ourselves : we shall never either of us add one to the ranks of true — or effulgent Divine-natural — manhood. The essential or spiritual Divine manhood consists in this : that it is wholly creative, or communicative of itself to others created from itself, in which others it may forever indwell consequently as a perpetual fountain of life or being. In other words, it consists in a power of loving infinitely : that is, without regard to self. Such doubtless is the tide of creative life or being taken at its flood, or viewed in itself: what now is it taken at its ebb, or viewed in its results ? The answer to this question is very simple. The existential or natural Divine manhood consequent upon this essential or spiritual infinitude in God — for we can no more conceive of an Esse or being without a cor- responding Existere or going forth, than we can con- ceive of spirit without the implication of nature — con- sists in a most real and adoring response on the part of the creature thus miraculously endowed with being. What is this response ? It consists exclusively in the power which the creature has to love finitely : for finite love, so it be genuine and unaffected, is spiritu- ally one or harmonic with infinite love. Now, the only way in which finite love can guarantee its own genuineness, or its spiritual and intimate unity with OR NATURAL, DIVINE MANHOOD. 355 infinite love, is by subordinating self-love to it : that is, by loving others at the expense of itself. For as to " love infinitely," that is, creatively, means to exert a wholly objective love, or one which encounters no obstacle or impediment in the subjectivity of the crea- tor, but leaves the creature alone conscious, so the creature, or finite lover, on his part, is bound to signal- ize Jiis love, or avouch its truth, by overcoming what- ever impediment his subjectivity or selfhood offers to its exercise. And in no way short of this will he ever succeed in manifesting his own true quality. For if he should love by the direct force of selfhood, that is, without pungent self-denial, or the constraint of his own subjective tendencies, he would love not finitely, but infinitely : that is, he would be no longer creature, but creator. This seems plain enough, and we need not attempt to make it more so. But it is logically incumbent upon me to point out the philosophic inference with which this most benign truth is fraught : an inference which leaves the philosophy of incredulity, or the science of mere rationalistic negation which we are combating, no honest leg to go upon. Bear in mind all the while, however, that I say no word in dispar- agement of the legitimate activity of science. I only arraign the wisdom of those of her particular votaries who are not content with this legitimate activity of 356 THE SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT IN EXPERIENCE their mistress, but incessantly attempt to pervert it into a power eminently if not absolutely hostile to the race's spiiitual welfare. If then it be the law of the finite intelligence to realize a life or being in harmony with that of its creator only by postponing itself to others, or inwardly dying to its own subjective tendencies, it follows that the subjective element in existence is an evil ele- ment, and is obliged to be definitely overcome or set at nought in the creature's experience, before he can have any taste of true being. He may indeed have conscious existence to any extent you please, that is, may compass the fullest possible acquaintance both with physical pleasure and pain, and moral good and evil : but his physical and moral existence do not con- stitute his being, they merely give him self-conscious- ness, which is the opposite of being. These physical and moral experiences of his are providentially in his way to being, I admit, but they are in the way as an obstacle and not as a help if he be inclined to rest in them, just as New York to an inhabitant of Boston is in his way to Washington, if he be disin- clined to stay in New York : but they are not his being any more than New York is Washington. They doubtless seem to himself, while he is spiritually ignorant or unconscious of what true being is, to be the veritable thing itself; and doubtless also this INTEINSICALLY EVIL AND PERISHABLE. 357 seeming life or being of his negatively promotes his eventual experience of the reality, inasmuch as by mis- leading him into the gravest practical mistakes of judg- ment and errors of conduct, it gradually stimulates re- flection upon himself, and ends by convincing him that the reliance he has hitherto had on selfhood as a basis of true being, has been grossly misplaced. All this is true, but only confirms what I have been saying, namely : that the life a man is subjectively conscious of, whatever providential uses may incidentally sanc- tify it to his true life, is yet all unworthy to be his true life ; nor does it ever of itself exert any other than a strictly negative bearing upon such true life. The subjective element in experience, then, is an evil element, especially in human life, where it attains to really devilish dimensions, or becomes every par- ticular man's private and most sacred selfliood, organizing him into the fiercest and most jealous antagonism with every other man, his natural fellow. What makes it evil? Because being a purely supposititious or fantastic life, it puts a man, so far as he comes under its influence, out of true re- lation to God who is his only source of being, and so turns him into a more and more finite or organic existence merely, with no chances of mental expan- sion or enlargement accordingly but in the way of imagination or insane illusion. The happiness 358 SCIENCE A PERPETUAL STRAINER of a conscious or created being must consist in the peaceful or harmonious relations that bind it to its creator. And if these relations are falsified at their very core, by the creature coming to refer his being to himself, or to put himseK practically in the place of God with respect to every important interest and responsibility of life, disease, disaster, and death are bound, of course, in the interest of his own eventual spiritual sanity, to ensue : and meanwhile the human family goes on to realize life as best it can in the discordant, disgusting, and wellnigh intolerable, form under which we at present know it. Now science cannot go behind the senses. She is the first dry land bred of their watery and wide-welter- ing chaos, and her obvious raison d'etre is to furnish a kindly fixed earth to men's feet, while they are try- ing to realize a worthier life for themselves than sense and science both are capable of ministering. She is not, and never will be, the beckoning heaven of men's eternal hope and aspiration ; she is but the necessary illustrative earth of their peaceful and orderly enjoy- ment, until that heaven yields itself to their solicita- tions. And she cannot go beyond her foundations. Beginning in sense and its necessities, she must always report herself to the guardianship of sense to have her labors identified and acknowledged. And as the senses are too dull and blunt to recognize truth FOR THE IMBECILE JUDGMENTS OF SENSE. 359 save in the lifeless form of fact, so science consequently, the child of sense on the maternal side, is nothing: more than a living memory of the race, organizing the facts of universal experience and observation which are requisite to base its future intellectual and spiritual unity. And being thus tethered as she is to sense or the realm of mere appearance in man, it is grotesquely impudent in her to pretend to have a speculation to offer, or a word to say, in reference to any deeper ques- tion of man's being. His being is essentially immor- tal, and the bare shadow of it therefore at most falls within the realm of time and space, or reports itself to sense; and what should we think of a blockhead who offered to give us a knowledge of the physiology of the human body, upon no other basis than that supplied by a man's occasional shadow in a looking- glass ? Let us expect no help from science then, and a fortiori none from sense, in respect to our partici- pation in God's living or spiritual creation. It is very true that the spiritual creation is eternally an- chored in sense, because man's rudimental conception of Divine existence or order is exclusively organic or outward ; but sense has no perception of the honor done it in this creative anchorage, persuading itself indeed that creation is altogether physical, and that its own function is simply to look on and reason 360 NOT SENSE, BUT SELFHOOD, THE CHIEF about the spectacle, and in the long run end pos- sibly — who knows ? — by enjoying it. In the ear- liest literature of the race, which is always symbolic or sacred, sense is denominated the serpent, because cradling as it does man's infant intelligence it takes him captive unawares, and makes him think that its own good and evil, its own true and false, its own pleasure and pain, are the measure of all Divine or spiritual reality. There is not much danger of this effect now, for owing to the race's long expe- rience sense is pretty well unmasked, and has had its poor rampant and innocent head quite sufficiently bruised indeed under the heel of men. That is to say : the humbuggery of sense and its promises is now perfectly understood in theory, and the human race once having learned is not likely soon to un- learn the lesson, however indifiPerent to it any num- ber of individuals may continue to show themselves in practice. Man is vastly more liable to harm nowadays from the feeblest whispers of his own inmost and unsuspected Eve or selfliood, than from the loudest outward vociferation of his senses. And this is a liability which all his science based on sense is noway competent to shield him from, but only to deepen his experience of: which remark brings me, by a somewhat loitering lUioiir I admit, to what I left so incompletely said about the church OBSTACLE TO MAN'S SPIRITUAL WELFARE. 361 and its liistory in my sixteenth Letter, But before resuming the thread of our discourse there inter- rupted let us bring the present letter to a close. All the science or knowledge of life to which I am begotten, born, and bred by our existing civilization, tells me with an undeviating persistency, that there is nothing so Divinely true, because so Divinely sweet and sufficing, as selfliood : and the consequence is that I actually succeed in giving the real Divinity in my great race or nature only a scant and drowsy recognition. Indeed if I should freely yield to the scientific instinct within me, or abandon myself to the current inspiration of culture about me, I doubt not I should end by altogether sacrificing that patient Divinity to the unscrupulous idol and counterfeit enshrined in myself. For then my senses authenti- cated by science, and unchecked by conscience, would be free to tell me that my life or being is strictly identical with my finite personality, and that the only death and hell I shall ever have to dread is one which menaces that personality with desolation : namely, the death and hell wrapped up in my most intimate or Divine-natural innocence, truth, and chas- tity. I confess though that having had one's eyes once opened to a glimmer of eternal truth on the subject, one has no hesitation in hoping that before he is caught hearkening to this gospel of an atheistic 362 NIRVANA, OR SELF-EXTINCTION, IMPOSSIBLE and drunken self-conceit, he may actually perish out of life, and the great lord of life know him no more forever. I for one should distinctly prefer forfeit- ing my self-consciousness altogether, to being found capable, in ever so feeble a degree, of identifying my being with it. My being lies utterly outside of myself, lies in utterly forgetting myself, lies in ut- terly unlearning and disusing all its elaborately petty schemes and dodges now grown so transparent that a child is not deceived by them : lies in fact in hon- estly identifymg myself with others. I know it will never be possible for me to do this perfectly, that is, attain to self-extinction, because being created, I can never hope actually to become Divine; but at all events I shall become through eternal years more and more intimately one in nature, and I hope in spirit, with a being who is thoroughly destitute of this finiting principle, that is, a being who is without selfhood save in His creatures. And certainly the next best thing to being God, is to know Him, for this knowledge makes one content with any burden of personal limitation. I all along admit of course that I, like every other man, have a natural capacity in myself for that harmless ruminant or reflective life, which to the sceptical or scientific mind is the very ideal human life. But I would have you most distinctly to understand that this respectable bovine TO CREATED OR SELF-CONSCIOUS EXISTENCE. 363 style of existence, with the whole Divine-human aro- ma, or miraculous quality, of life left out of it, is not in the least my ideal. The idea of the life I my- self covet or aspire to, is that of free, unforced, irre- fective, spontaneous goodness, realizable only through a Divine reconstruction of my nature. And I would infinitely rather die outright, accordingly, with no chance of any lesser resurrection, than yield one iota of this most lovely human hope and aspiration to the flimsy reasoners who lead our present intellectual decadence, and pitch the tune for the base unwhole- some crew to dance to, which with lower aims than theirs yet vaticinates in the same strain. I rejoice, then, with unspeakable joy in the gospel legend, or the fact of Christ's birth from a virgin, and of his resurrection from death : certainly not because of any literal or absolute worth the facts bear to my imagination, for in themselves they leave my imagi- nation wholly unimpressed, as they leave my reason baffled ; but because they alone suggest to my heart and mind the spiritual truth of God's infinitude. Ah ! the marvellous truth which is avouched for us in the Christian legend ! The simply adorable and ineffable truth of God's natural manhood, of the Divine nature made human down to the veriest flesh and bones dk'' humanity, and of our nature conse- quently exalted into the sole vehicle thenceforth of 364 THE GOSPEL FACTS WORTHLESS SAVE AS God's spiritual perfection ! To think hereupon what a stupid dreary thing the human soul is reduced to after it has undergone scientific manipulation, and been run into a mere pruritus of the senses ! Ham- let the play with Hamlet the person left out is noth- ing in comparison. The melancholy thing in this case is — not that one's bread of life becomes mere unleavened dough, for one can exist well enough, if bare existence contents him, on unleavened bread ; but that any considerable number of men should be so lacking in the sentiment of infinitude within their proper nature, as willingly to make sense, in which all animals are superior to them, the sovereign arbiter of truth in intellectual things ! I beg however that you will not think that it seems to me vitally important in what sense the existing battle between religious faith and science is settled. Neither party is contending for the interests of the living God, so spiritually active at present within the precincts of human nature, but only and at best for those of some traditional deity now deceased; the deity, for example, of orthodox ecclesiastical culture. The worship of this time-and-space deity at this day, and especially in this land, where human natiu-e is vindicating with startling emphasis and iteration its immaculate Divine dignity against all manner of finite private or personal pretension in men, seems to me a A REVELATION OF GOD'S INFINITUDE. 365 grievous anachronism, and is clearly not worth con- tending for. Take any chance dozen reputable men of the world (so-called) who practically deny the existence of any deity outside of our own nature ; and then take any similar dozen of reputable religious men (so-called) who practically affirm the existence of a deity with distinctively supernatural and super- human attributes : and I defy you to discover any other and deeper practical difference between them. No, their sole visible difference is constituted by the presence or absence of the religious profession, to- gether with a certain stifling pious decorum which that profession imposes : not in the least by any characteristic spiritual superiority of either class to the other. So far as the interests and intercourse of this humdrum moral or superficial life are in ques- tion, I venture to say you would confide in one class quite as readily as in the other. But, unless I am greatly mistaken, you would intelligently confide in neither class, so far as their relations to man's un- seen and veracious spiritual being are concerned. I said a moment since that the gospel facts, the miraculous facts alleged in connection with Christ Jesus, did not in themselves pique either my aesthetic or rational interest. The reason doubtless is that the Christian facts are creative facts, ultimate facts of man's universal being, and make no appeal to my in- 366 THE SCIENTIFIC OR ONTOLOGIC HYPOTHESIS dividual self-love, save in a reflex way. I am not spiritually a creature of God in ray own right, or in my individual capacity, but only in so far as I become identified in affection and thought with miiversal man, or the interests of the Divine righteousness upon earth. The Christian facts must always be regarded, when regarded intelhgently, as a rigid accommoda- tion of spiritual or supersensuous truth to man's natural or sensuous understanding : the truth accom- modated being that of God's infinitude, which makes Him a spiritual or living creator of men and by no means a natural or dead creator ; which, in fact, stamps the whole realm of nature as void of abso- lute significance, or turns it, solid foundation as it is for our senses, into a boundless inirage whenever we seek to get any direct spiritual instruction from it. In short the facts pointedly refuse to be inter- preted by any scientific or ontologic hypothesis of creation, which identifies the being of things with their existence in space and time, and thus quietly eliminates from the problem a spiritual or living and infinite creator. There is no more vicious habit of mind accordingly in the point of view of philosophy than that which drives us to speculate an ontologic basis to the spiritual creation, in think- ing it to be really or objectively identical with out- ward nature. Man is not naturally immortal, and OF BEING FUNDAMENTALLY STUPID AND VOID. 367 only harm is done by leading him to think himself so. By natural birth, or in himself, he is to the last degree corrupt and perishable, and though his science demonstrates any amount of order, peace, and pro- ductive power in his animal and vegetable and min- eral connections, it is utterly powerless to promise himself any resurrection from the death which is la- tent in his own flesh and bones. To be sure science is just as impotent to menace him with a contrary fate, because as science is functionally confined to the realm of mortal existence, it must needs confess itself a mere idiotic guesser in relation to every interest of his unseen and immortal being. I do not say, then, that Jesus Christ is of any pri- vate consequence to me more than any other man is, or that I derive the least hope or comfort from his recorded life and conversation to my personal or self- ish desire of immortality. I have no doubt indeed that I shall live after death, with perhaps unhap- pily a greatly enhanced force of selfhood moreover, and quite independently of my inherited or culti- vated religious faith. But any amount of mere post- mortem consciousness would prove a sorry equivalent for immortality. Man realizes immortal life, I infer from the Christian facts, and somewhat from my own observation of human life as well, only under his own spiritual midwifery ; that is, only by voluntarily 368 HOW MAN REALIZES IMMORTALITY. compelling himself against the inspiration of his self- hood, and frankly obeying the inflowing instincts of fellowship or society which alone unite him with his kind, or out of a very disgusting animal make him for the first time a man. In short, a man realizes life Divine and immortal only by coming to view himself as so much mere rubbish in comparison with his fellows, and clinging with renewed affections to his Divinely redeemed race or nature. It is astonish- ing what force and expansion this new and Divine love of one's kind imports into our ordinarily grace- less consciousness, or the unrelieved tenor of our daily life. How it enlarges the objective element in consciousness, and annihilates the subjective element comparatively, till at last every commonest natural form of use seems aromatic with Divinity, and all men who are not vowed to idleness or pleasure grow Divinely chaste, as all women are Divinely fau' and modest. But I only want to say that incarnation avouches itself to the heart the sole philosophic secret of creation, and the Christian facts in embodying this secret in a cypher as it were until such time as the human mind had grown wise enough by experience to unriddle it, impose a definite end to men's crude speculations in seeking a scientific or ontological clew to the mysteries of creative and created being. Perhaps it will not be amiss to close this letter A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE. 369 by a personal reminiscence having some relation to its theme. A good many years ago in Paris I lived in the same house with Mrs. , a most charming and amiable old lady, who was the mother by a former marriage of a very distinguished son, with whom I had been for several years on terms of friendly ac- quaintance, and who was polite enough to insist on my making his mother's acquaintance also. The mother was a remarkably handsome woman, of the gentlest address and manners, but she very soon revealed to me that her peace of mind had been very much disturbed by doubts of the religious dogmas in which she was bred, and to which she tried to continue faithful. I usually endeavored to relieve her depressed spirits by talk about her son, whom she almost idolized, and about the very remarkable lec- tures he had given in New York, and other cheerful topics, but somehow our conference always reverted to a discussion of her religious perplexities, which were indeed sufficiently sombre and menacing. Her husband, who seemed a very amiable man, was a half-pay officer in the English army, altogether vowed to reading, and not much disposed to interest him- self in drawing-room gossip. One evening I had mounted to their apartment, and found there an Irish lady, of extremely prepossessing appearance, who was 370 ANECDOTE OF A MURDERER'S MUNDANE the wife of the Paris correspondent of one of the London daily papers, and who apparently was enter- taining our hostess with some account of Sweden- borg's books. She seemed to know something of what she talked about, and had evidently read Swe- denborg's writings with a certain interest and in- struction. But I thought upon the whole that she presented her subject in too sentimental a light to attract her friend's serious attention, and it occurred to me to tell a story which might give a somewhat grimmer and more realistic impression of his lore. It was a narrative I had lately found in one of Swedenborg's private diaries, if I am not mistaken, of a murderer's entrance into the spiritual world, whose execution took place in Stockholm, and whose courage had evidently been buoyed by a very strong confidence that the rope would break, and the hour appointed for his execution elapse before it could be repaired or readjusted. Accordingly when the drop fell, and set the criminal free for his spiritual career, Swedenborg, who watched all the details of the in- cident through the eyes of his attendant spirits, saw him pick himself up in the other world with great alacrity, and betake himself to running towards the open country as if to put the greatest possible space between himself and the Stockholm rabble. His zeal in running became so furious as to attract attention, POST-MORTEM PERTURBATIONS. 371 and some good spirits at length put after him to chase him down, and ascertain what fly had bitten him that he ran with such reckless speed. He was not long in yielding to their friendly overtures, but in- sisted that he should not be taken back to Stockholm, saying that the rope had broken, and the time was now past that had been appointed for his execution. The good people who had interested themselves in him perceived at once that he had taken a longer leap than he himself was at all aware of, and very soon left him in the hands of certain spirits of his own kidney to whose company he betrayed a much stronger liking. The story was not perhaps exhilarating as a story, but I had no sooner begun it than I observed the husband of our hostess lift his eyes from the open book before him, and sit in an attitude of great ex- pectancy till I had ended. Then he rose and shut his book, at the same time saying to me, that if he could believe the incident I had related, it would be all over with his doubts about immortality, for the incident in question bore very strongly upon the only two points on which his doubts pivoted : first, that of the persistence of man's personal identity beyond the grave ; and, second, the persistence of his conscious freedom. If, therefore, he could only believe that Svvedenborg had actually witnessed the 372 NO DEGREE OF POST-MORTEM EXPERIENCE occurrence I related, he would be extremely happy; but ah ! the way to believe Swedenborg ! I told him that I had not reckoned upon interest- ing him in my poor little anecdote, but that it was intended to placate the anxieties of his wife which were always the effect of an influx of evil spirits, by suggesting to her mind the fact of the death-process being in every case so very humane and natural as to leave even a criminal like this vile murderer ut- terly undisturbed as to his habitual thought and con- sciousness, and intent still only upon cheating the hangman. I furthermore remarked that I had my- self no doubt of the absolute reality of this incident to Swedenborg's experience, because I could not con- ceive of the creator of men once endowing them with conscious life or freedom, and then conceive of Him as again under any possible circumstances revoking His gift. But I also told him that I had been not a little interested to discover that so intelligent a person as he should be prepared to say that all his desires after immortality would be met in his experience of the indefinite persistence of the natural life. Doubt- less Swedenborg's Arcana Calestia were apt to breed a pretty firm conviction in the mind of the reader that an orderly conscious existence, however variously motived on the part of the subject, is the assured providential destiny of all men after death. But I EQUIVALENT TO IMMORTAL LIFE. 373 should never think of recommending a course of Swe- denborg in order to produce that conviction simply, under the impression that it was at all equivalent to a belief in eternal life, Swedenborg never by any chance represents one's post-mortem existence, how- ever circumstantially defined it may be, as guarantee- ing him against the chances of the second death, or as being by any means the same thing with his immortal life. Indeed our immortal interests, ac- cording to Swedenborg's sho\^^ng, are much more nearly dependent upon our cis -mortem ideas and practices, than they are upon any imaginable amount of trans-mortem experience, were it the very happiest. For immortal life, to every one who experiences it, is the realization of his true or spiritual and God- given individuality, that which has been at most merely symbolized by his natural selfhood, but never in the faintest degree constituted by it. So that whatever a man's natural selfhood may be in a moral or outward aspect, determining him possibly in one case straight to heaven, in the other straight to hell, it will be utterly without any power to determine his relation to God, or his chances of immortality. Immortal life to Swedenborg always means one definite thing, and that is — soul-power, or the prev- alence of a man's inward life over his outward one. It means : the soid's exclusive poioer to regulate a 374 IMMORTALITY DEPENDS UPON NO mans outward, that is, his jjhysical and moral, rela- tions, and so produce an ever-growing imoard and ineffable harmony hetioeen him and his creative source : so that any man in whom this result in any sincere degree however shght is freely achieved, or his soul has learned to rule and his body to obey, has ipso facto entered upon immortal life ; and this man only. How then shall one attain to this soul-power ? Certainly not through the exhibition of any vicious personal favour on God's part towards him: for in the first place God has no such personal favour to bestow on any man, were he in all moral regards the pattern man of his race ; and in the second place if He had any such personal favour to bestow, the exhibition of it toward His favourite would only re- sult in more effectually damning the unhappy wretch to hell, by infallibly engendering within him a meri- torious spirit or 6fe^-righteous estimate of himself in comparison with other less favoured men. I hope we may be careful each of us never to flatter him- self accordingly that he is the beloved of God, and the favourite of heaven : it were better for our spiritual sanity in that case that a millstone were hung about our necks, and we ourselves sunk in the bottom of the sea. The only man who was ever born to such an ominous unhallowed prestige was Jesus Christ; and he worked himself clear of PERSONAL FAVOUR OF GOD TO US. 375 the deep spiritual damnation that inhered in it, only by making his life from the cradle to the grave one of exquisite self-demsil, or of earnest and assiduous contention — contention even to death — against the rank personal homage and consecrated self-esteem which the fanatical Jews endeavoured to thrust upon him. He was born apparently for nothing else than to flatter the God-ward hopes of the most devout and diabolical people that ever lived: that is, to give them their long-promised, at all events their long- expected, dominion over all other people. His birth had been so marvellous, and had been welcomed by such a famished expectation on the part of his self- righteous nation, that if his fidelity to truth had only left him free to forego his denunciations of their national pretension to be God's saints, and defer to the obvious voice of prophecy in their behalf, taking the literal text of their sacred books for his guidance, he might doubtless have been lifted to an unparalleled height of empire. And no doubt the devil of his secret thoughts, the devil born with his Jewish blood, often tempted him to listen to these fleshly ambitions, often took him up into an exceedingly high mountain, the mountain of his inherited personal pride and lust of dominion, and showing him thence all the king- doms of the world and the glory of them, said unto him : Ail these will I give thee, if thou icilt he guided 376 CHRIST'S UNIQUE LUSTRE, THAT HE hy me. But although these things must have tried him as never man before or since was tried (for only think what a nation of devout and selfish zealots — the worst possible combination of the elements of human character conceivable, breeding by their con- junction the most genuine diabolism ■ — he had to back him, if he would only consent to follow their sacred oracles, and fulfil the literal Divine promises which had been made to them), he never flinched, but knowing his tormentors, who they were, and that they were pre-eminently of his own filthy race, inva- riably replied to them : Get thee behind me, Satan, for it is written thus atid so ; and I came to do the loill of Him that sent me, and not at all my oivn will. This was the merit of Christ, that he found the most assured religious hope and aspiration of his people, based upon their sacred scriptures, found all his instincts of patriotism, all his family instincts, all his instincts of neighborhood and friendship, to be on the side of his unlimited self-love and love of the world, on the devil's side in short, and yet his truth of soul was so single and spotless, his perspicacity so unerring, that he never for a moment faltered, but threw religion, country, family, friends, incontinently overboard, or rather gave them each a new and spirit- ual Divine reproduction, that so in solitude, in suffer- ing, in ceaseless anguish of soul, he might obey his DESPISED MAN'S MORAL RIGHTEOUSXESS. 377 inward instinct of the Divine name, and bequeath his immortal sorrows alone to mankind as the only fit interpretation and remembrancer of that name. If he had, but once barely, clasped joy instead of sorrow to his bosom, if he had only once preferred Jew to Gentile, self to neighbour, truth to goodness, where should we ever again have looked for a rev- elation of God's true or spiritual infinitude? and without such a revelation where would be the intel- lect and heart of man at this day ? I do not hesitate to reply, for myself: In the grave of his bicrnt-out natural appetites and passions. But you may be in the habit of intellectually ap- preciating the Christian truth differently from me, and I will at once, therefore, answer your question, namely : How does a man attain to that soul-power, which, and nothing else, is immortal life? It is by the inward perception of himself as a person whose nature has been hopelessly depraved or corrupted before it came to his hands, by its individual subjects in the first place having the presumption to conceive themselves to be in their own right crea- tures of the most high God ; and then in the second place by these individual subjects having the pre- sumption to live a life of serene and total spiritual indifference to the obligations of such creatureship. For this is the only real atheism, or vital profligacy. 378 NO MAN A CREATURE OF GOD IN HIS of the human heart: to be ready to acknowledge oneself in-oneself 2i creature of God, and yet not to be infinitely chagrined and distressed by the acknowl- edgment. I can imagine no more revolting idea to my own mind than that of my individual creature- ship; of my having a creative right to be or exist in myself, that is, independently of other men, and independently besides of mineral and vegetable and animal : because the prime and instant logical impli- cation of such an idea would plainly be to eviscerate myself of selfhood, that is, both of physical and moral life, for a created being has no right either to one or the other. A created being, if any such could exist, would be a being so dead in himself that the very stones of the street would hiss their contempt at him; a being of such essential dependence from stem to stern, or through and through, that the bare conception of his real existence either to sense or consciousness would be intellectual delirium or fatu- ity. The only thing that makes the acknowledg- ment of my own creatureship tolerable or excusable to myself in thought, is that I am myself a wholly unreal or insubstantial phenomenon, whose unreality moreover is shared and intensified not only by every partaker of human nature, but by every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and every fish of the sea. Por the conception of anything as Divinely OWN EIGHT, OR INDEPENDENTLY OF OTHERS. 379 created involves for its interpretation tliat posterior and more spiritual conception of Divine power which we call redemption, and which perfects the former conception by showing the creator intent upon ex- tricating His creatures from the base animal investi- ture or deciduous mother-substance in which their mere creation leaves them. Both terms are derived from the limitations of man's subjective consciousness, and are both accommodations of spiritual truth to that consciousness, without the slightest literal or objective reality in them; being both intended to induct the mind into the conception of the Divine- human infinitude which underlies our nature, and of the irresistible power which is spiritually mould- ing it into social and orderly form. I cling to my selfhood then, not in the least as aflbrding any sign of my own reality to myself, but simply as the sole evidence and guarantee of Divin- ity or infinitude within my nature ; and in this point of view I cling to it as tenaciously as ever my fa- bled progenitor in the garden of Eden clung to his Divinely-given Eve. Eor in this point of view a man's selfhood is always a common possession of his nature in him, and no way his own spiritual or private and particular possession ; a mere outgrowth and necessity of his mortal consciousness or appari- tion, and by no means an appanage of his Divine or 380 GOD'S NEW CHURCH A THOROUGHLY immortal being. And this is why I say that it is only by the honest and sincere handhng of himself as a naturally depraved subject, that a man ever practically attains to immortal life. For only in this way can he ever be led to disesteem and disregard that shabby self-righteous or mingled moralistic and pietistic culture which the church commends to his regard as the aim and end of his being, and which the church's necessities alone keep alive in the earth ; and fix his thought upon the spiritual evils -which inhere in his fallacious natural selfhood, especially after this selfhood has undergone regeneration by the church : which are in truth the only things that stand between him and the full fruition of immortal life. Mr. listened to what I said with grave polite- ness outwardly, but with the inward air, I must say, of listening to one talking downright nonsense ; but the lovely person who sat beside his wife on the sofa took occasion to say that she had not entered so deeply as I seemed to have done into the philo- sophic purport of the Swedenborgian literature, but that she would ponder what she had heard. I thanked her most unaffectedly, but took the liberty of cautioning her at the same time to be more solici- tous in all her readings of Swedenborg to read with free open insight or understanding than with zealous literal apprehensiveness, for if we came to Sweden- NEW NATURAL SPIRIT OR LIFE IN MAN. 381 borg with any idea that he addressed a single word to our natural ears, and not exclusively to our spirit- ual-rational senses, we were assuredly done for before we began. And I had accordingly discovered that among the very few persons I knew who unblush- ingly called themselves literal adherents of Sweden- borg there was not one, singularly enough, who, so far as I perceived, manifested the slightest spiritual discernment of that author's meaning. And there- upon I wished my friends good-night. 1 c g g ^^^ ^ LETTER XXV. i^^mY DEAR PRIEND : — The subject of my sixteenth letter was the church in antag- onism with the prevalent tendencies of human nature, which are selfishness and worldliness. And the tenor of the letter was to show that whereas the church combats and sup- plants these purely natural evils in man, all its ability to do so comes from its quietly and uncon- sciously originating a far deeper spiritual evil in him, infinitely worse than the other two: the evil of proprium, that is, of private selfhood or unrelated, independent character. Men do not get their private selfhood (that is, what gives to every man his dis- tinctive worth or reality from every other) from their nature, because their nature is what they all possess in common, and therefore distinguishes none. In fact human nature is merely the principle of iden- tity or community among men, and so intense, all- pervading, and exacting is it that whatever be man's private, individual, or spiritual pretensions it will insist first of all upon holding him to a perfectly rigid accountability to itself, allowing no one a spir- itual passport until he has paid every jot or tittle of his just dues to men's natural brotherhood.* If then men possess a distinctive selfhood or projmum, that is, a private substance or reality individualizing or differencing them one from another, now in a favorable sense, now in an unfavorable, it is clear that the possession cannot be in any case an original fruit of their nature, but of some subsequent Divine or authoritative modification of their nature. Now the only claim to be such modification of human nature is that put forward by the church. The church unquestionably and plausibly claims to be a Divine institution, engineered in the express inten- tion of modifying human nature or abating its in- fluence over its subjects with a view to their spir- itual enfranchisement; and there is accordingly no shadow of a reason possible why we should not hold the church liable by its own showing for the origination of private selfhood or personality among * That is to say : nature is a dread uufaltering nemesis to those who are in any way ambitious to achieve an exceptional personal holi- ness, or aspire to compass direct spiritual relations with God : relations independent of, and uncontrolled by, their previous natural obligations to human society, fellowship, or equality. 384 CHRISTIANITY SPIRITUALLY FULFILLED men ; that is, for their pretension to enjoy an indi- vidual character, standing, and responsibility before God. Now I will not attempt to disguise my conviction that this statement will prove very offensive to two large and influential classes of persons among us ; nor will I affect a cynical indifference to such a result. For the classes I shall most offend embrace all the conventionally respectable people of the earth, my own humble friends and brethren among the rest ; and it is idle to pretend that one's own blood, that is, one's conventional standing, is not dear to him, or is not very costly to lose. But my humilia- tion on this account admits of a striking alleviation : it is direcily in the line of Christian tradition. We know from the gospels that the fight of Jesus Christ — parva commoner e magnis — was with the scribes and Pharisees, that is, the leaders of his people, or those particularly identified with the Jewish church and state. Now that these were the most respecta- ble persons of his nation, and naturally therefore the most remunerative to any ordinary man's self-love, is perhaps sufficiently indicated by the fact of his provoking their incurable pride and resentment in professing to be the special friend of publicans and sinners. But we have more direct evidence of their untarnished conventional respectability. For Jesus m THE EVENTS OF OUR OWN HISTORY. 385 Christ himself testified that the righteousness of these men was the highest righteousness convention- ally recognized on earth, when he said that even that would not qualify a man for the skies. Verily, verily, I say unto you that unless your riyhteousness EXCEED that of the sc?ides and Pharisees, ye shall 171 no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now I am by no means so presumptuous as to aspire to following Christ literally ; but I will allow no man — especially no respectable or conventionally right- eous man — to deny me the praise of following him spiritually. There is no such thing possible to men nowadays as a literal following of Christ. This pre- tension had a semblance of possibility only while Christ was in the flesh, or lent himself in finite visible form to the tentative faith of his bewildered disciples. But even then how continually did he feel himself called upon to bufiet their carnal ideas of his kingdom and authority, by summoning them to a spiritual following ! But at this day the voca- tion of following Christ literally has become abso- lutely too absurd. I think even that it has grown to all modest minds a revolting and disreputable cant. For his friends and his foes are now both alike spiritual; being in no wise friends or foes of his proper person, but only of that Divine or infinite love towards the human race which he first livingly 386 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL FOES ARE THEY exhibited in such adequate or self-sacrificing hnea- ments as to constitute him an eternal symbol or revelation of God's name. Who then are Christ's spiritual foes, the only foes possible to him at this day? They are friends — in varying sort, some respectful and distant, others attached and obsequious — -to Ids carnal or historic personality. The first class may for convenience' sake be called moralistic : being made up of that very large number of persons who live and thrive in contentment with the existing very infirm con- stitution of society : poets, literary essayists, scholars, artists, transcendental aspirants or idealists, men of science, men of merchandise and trade, men of un- controlled wealth, of idle lives, voluptuaries, in short men of whatever commonplace habitual and enforced routine : all of whom blindly regard morality as the absolute law of human life, and look upon duty as the highest expression of human character, especially for other people. The second class is mainly ecclesiastical, of course, and lives and thrives in sage contentment, not with this world to be sure, but with another one which by all accounts is greatly more unequal or undivine and vicious even than this. It comprises all those of every sect who regard the traditional church as directly in the line of man's spiritual welfare, or as "WHO GREATLY EXALT HIS FINITE PERSON. 387 supplying by Divine appointment a literal pathway to heaven. I offend men of the former category in maintaining that morality is not absolute ; that is, that it does not constitute its own end in the existing constitu- tion of things, but is rigidly subservient to a higher style of life in man in which spontaneity displaces will, and duty succumbs to delight. I offend men of the latter category in maintaining that the church is not in a spiritual point of view (however much it may be in a moral) directly min- isterial to human welfare, but only indirectly so. I hold that the church indirectly promotes human wel- fare in the highest degree, indeed, by ultimating or bringing to a head in her own vicious personality the deepest spiritual evils of our nature, and so affording the Divine providence an opportunity to deal summarily with the evils in her representative personality alone, instead of vaguely and indefinitely combating them in the endless forms of our indi- vidual manhood. But this notion is of course of deadly augury to the ecclesiastical mind. You see then that the opposition between these two categories of thought and feeling and my own thought and feeling could hardly be more pro- nounced than it is ; and if my reliance were not solely in the omnipotence of truth I could easily 388 ERROR IN POINT OF PHILOSOPHY despair of ever being able by any efforts of mine to bring our discords into harmony, First let us endeavor in an amicable spirit to correct the error of the moralist, vv'ho may be called thiS'World's vi^orldling ; after which we shall see what can be done to dispose of the churchman, who in like manner may be styled the other-world's world- ling. I deal with the first of these errorists first, because he is altogether the easiest to deal with; inasmuch as moralism is a mere parasitic disease of the mind, or has absolutely nothing to account for its existence or give it an intellectual locus standi, but the development of the church in our nature and history. That is to say, the church historically breeds, sweats, or throws off from its own flanks, the civilized state of man; and morality is the un- questionable law of civilization, the absolute sub- stance, condition, and measure of all our civic right- eousness. It is only in recent years comparatively, while the church as an institution has been provi- dentially declining in men's estimation, or ceasing spiritually to function, that morality has been pro- moted to the guardianship of men's spiritual interests no less than their natural. The whole Unitarian movement in the church was a development of the church's latent spiritual stupidity and senility, no longer able indeed spiritually to discern between OF THE MORALIST OR STATESMAN": 389 its right hand and its left; for what can be more hugely preposterous than the logic upon which that movement was founded, namely : that one and the same law operated man's spiritual and material life ? But this is not our immediate theme. Our theme at present is the civic state of man which the Chris- tian church has bred and nurtured, and of which morality is the unchangeable fundamental law; and we must rigidly cleave to it as time and space are failing us, and both my nerves and your patience doubtless are seriously pleading for a good long holiday. No evil attaches to man in God's sight but the evil of a finite or infirm nature, and this is an evil which being natural attaches to all men alike with- out distinction of persons. This natural or generic evil of man has various specific forms of manifesta- tion, such as false-witness, theft, adultery, murder, and covetousness. But under none of these forms does the evil out of natural become spiritual in the Divine sight, and attach to its individual subject, unless the individual subject himself really and unmistakably avouch his love for it: that is, make it his own in heart as well as in act, or inwardly no less than outwardly. In that case a man's adul- tery, or untruth, or what not, signalizes a deeper evil in him than any which is imposed by his na- 390 THAT HE THINKS CIVILIZATION BASED ture, namely, a spiritual evil, which is the evil of a confirmed selfhood or proprium. For no man is spiritually hurt or degraded by subjection to any form of natural evil, unless he remain impenitent for it : that is, so love the particular evil as to make it his own or identify himself with it. But with spiritual evil in man we are not called upon to busy ourselves just here. We shall say what we have to say about it farther on when we address ourselves to understanding the error of the churchman. Just now I have to do with the mor- alist alone, who vehemently distrusts me because I maintain that what we call moral evil (say the evil of false witness, theft, adultery, or murder) does not attach to the moral subject in God's sight, unless he be spiritually depraved as well : that is, make self the end of his activity in preference to God and the neighbor : but attaches to human nature itself. The reason why the man of the world condemns this doctrine is that it makes intellectual havoc, if it be accepted, with the claims of our existing civ- ilization to be a finality of the Divine administra- tion in human nature. Our civilization is based he thinks upon the absoluteness of morality, that is, upon the truth that a man's moral, or outward and actual, relations to his fellow-man are of paramount Divine obligation upon him, and that any contrary UPON THE ABSOLUTENESS OF MORALITY. 391 idea to this in weakening the foundations of civic order would expose us to the Divine judgment. No one can doubt that a man's moral character as good or evil is based, and based exclusively, upon the outward and actual relations he sustains to society or his fellow-man : the man being characteristically good if he actually or outwardly abstain in his inter- course with his kind from the evils of lying, theft, adultery, murder, and covetousness, and character- istically had if he does not so abstain. But this does not prove by any means that our civilization is based upon the absoluteness of morality, or upon the idea that duty is the Divine ideal of human action. In the first place, if morality were absolute in its demands upon human nature, and duty constituted the Divine ideal of human action, then the teaching of the church, and the soothing ministry of its clergy at our death-beds, would be wholly out of place in civilized life. For civilization being based upon the absoluteness of the moral sentiment the instinct of self-defence or its own preservation would keep it from tolerating any influence which went to the weakening of this sentiment. But the church, at least the church in its orthodox aspect, is practi- cally the sworn foe of the moral pretension in men. The church, so long at all events as it witnessed 392 THE CHURCH PRIMARILY AND to man's spiritual life, allowed no moral differences among men to intervene between the soul and God, or complicate the gospel blessings to universal man. Its founder earned the odium of all the morally righteous men of his nation by proclaiming him- self the friend of publicans and sinners, and it would be indeed difficult, nay impossible to dis- cover why his gospel w^as called a gospel, if it had not been addressed primarily to the special rehef of those who had a conscience of sin towards God only because they had violated the law upon which their national dignity was founded. And the apos- tles of Christ emulating the teaching of their mas- ter, and inspired by him, everywhere instructed the awakened conscience of their Jewish converts that what the law notoriously could not do in that it icas weak through the flesh : namely, beget a man to spiritual peace and hope in God : this the gospel infallibly did, and thereby avouched its eternal supremacy to the law as a mode of intercourse between man and God. It is idle then for the moralist to appeal to the church for confirmation to his doctrine that morality is the absolute law of human life, or furnishes an adequate rule to the soul in its aspirations after spiritual life. For the church, so long as it continued to be worthy of its name in the Divine sight, and evinced such worthi- INVETERATELY HOSTILE TO MORALISM. 393 ness by providentially succeeding to the inheritance of the Roman empire, always persisted in stigma- tizing that doctrine as of especially treacherous au- gury to the Christian tradition upon which its own fortunes were founded. The truth is that the theoretic moralist is totally out of place in this spiritual day and generation : as much out of place as an owl or a bat would be after natural daybreak. His visual organs served him excellently well during the spiritual night of the mind to discriminate between moonhght or star- light and shade; but now that the full splendor of spiritual daylight is inwardly bursting upon the soul they are of no avail but to make him a laughing-stock to the unsympathetic or unfeeling. He insists upon holding natural daylight and spir- itual to be one and the same thing, or of one and the same essential quality though admitting of quan- titative differences ; and consequently does not see that they require different visual organs for their discernment : one exclusively outward or material, the other exclusively inward or rational. What originally stultifies our belated critic and friend, and makes him spiritually so owlish or bat-like in appearance, is the fixed idea with him that creation is primarily natural, and spiritual only by derivation from that. Whereas, the spiritual truth would teach 394 THE LATEST CHURCH DEVELOPMENT him, if he were only willing to receive it, that our heing is altogether spiritual or real, while it is our mere superficial or supposititious existence alone which is natural or phenomenal. Still it is vastly better for the moralist to cling to his fixed idea of creation being originally natural, than it would be for him to abandon it save at the instance of the spiritual truth upon the subject. For in that case he would be left destitute of all reverence for the Divine name even as an outward power, and sink rapidly into the condition of a mere spiritual tramp and vagabond preying remorselessly upon the peace, order, and innocence of civilized mankind. But all men in this day of the church's spiritual imbecility are more or less moralistic. The Uni- tarian or latest form of church development which represents the church in its vastated spiritual plight more faithfully than is at all agreeable to the or- thodox imagination, has pushed moralism so far as to have almost openly declined, itself, into a mere school of good manners, while the orthodox congre- gations by a necessary reaction have been driven to contra-distinguish themselves by a gospel of fervent but puerile ritualism. Thus between the " world " and the "church" the only discernible spiritual dif- ference is that while the former continues to be seriously moralistic in its doctrinal beliefs as to PROVES ITS UTTER SPIRITUAL DECEASE. 395 another life, the latter grows more and more frivo- lously so. The consequence is that the church tra- dition of God's spiritual or creative infinitude is now practically discredited and as it were discarded among men, and the great creator of men has accordingly sunk into a mere moral pedagogue or schoolmaster intent upon publicly vindicating his own paltry self-consequence by rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies. It is rare indeed to meet with any one who, speculatively at least, does not look upon our shabby moral history as a source of legitimate pride to us rather than humility ; who does not regard conscience as designedly a ministry of righteousness rather than sin, of justi- fication not of condemnation, of life not death; and who is not unfeignedly surprised therefore when any sincere votary of it is found incurring death at its hands. There is doubtless good ground for surprise, and even shock, when any one of assured civic standing, enjoying the esteem of his fellow-citi- zens, turns out so wantonly imprudent as to violate the moral law, and expose himself to men's reproach. Imprudent, I allow, even to the pitch of insanity every such man must be; but there is no need of imputing the least spiritual turpitude to him. Falsehood, fraud, adultery, murder, covetousness, are vices exclusively of our moral or voluntary constitu- 396 OUR HIGHEST MORALITY CLAIMS tion ; and a liability to them therefore does not any more argue spiritual depravity in a man, than a lia- bility to small-pox, which is a vice of our physical constitution, argues moral depravity. Many a violator of the law moreover suffers so poignant a sense of guilt as to be willing even — if that were possible — to give his life a ransom for his offence. And clearly the spiritual state of such a man is infinitely more hopeful than that of any person, who himself as yet undrilled or inexperienced in the deadly letter of the law, and grossly ignorant therefore of its redeeming spirit, triumphs over him, or withdraws his fellowship from him. In fact human nature has so inward, so spiritual, so living a root in the infinite mercy of God, that the average man does not find it easy to obey an outward law, a law which aims to regulate his in- tercourse with others. No one seems able to do so sincerely who does not do it on religious grounds; that is, who does not put a great deal of conscience towards God into his conformity, and obey chiefly for his soul's sake. Other people do not necessarily dis- obey it by any means, but their apparent conformity to it is in reality a conformity to something else. We all of us well-to-do-people for example habit- ually maintain a good moral repute in the community, but then it is by virtue of the prudential instinct NO HIGHER SANCTION THAN PRUDENCE. 397 in US, or an ever active self-love. We are kept, the mass of us, honest, chaste, and gentle because it is our interest to be vv^ell-esteemed by our fellow-men. The esteem of others is so dear to me, for instance, that I could almost die rather than do anything vol- untarily to impair my conventional standing ; at all events my children's. But what I mean when I say that no one sincerely obeys the moral law but by the grace of God, is that no one is capable of giving it a hearty allegiance, a spontaneous or disinterested obedience, until the force of selfhood in him is effect- ually broken and routed. And this consideration ought by the way to be allowed much more weight in all questions of practical casuistry than we usually concede to it. It is not enough to stamp a man a liar to a spiritual regard that he should have told a lie on a certain occasion ; nor a thief, an adulterer, a murderer that he should have committed the offences designated by those names. For these offences are for the most part committed inadvertently, that is, in utter ignorance of their spiritual quality; what is really false in them, or fraudulent, or adulterous, or murderous, being so obscured and swallowed up for the time by their subtle and extreme agreeable- ness to sense, as to seem an actual good. And surely men will forgive any weakness to the average human will, when it is thus placed in hand-to-hand conflict 398 MORAL OFFENCES NOT CONTRARY with the tremendous force of the physical organiza- tion on the one side, and is unbacked on the otlier by a hving faith in God. For my own part, and I do not know that I fall below the moral average of men, I have always found myself thoroughly impotent, f when tempted, to overcome evil simply as evil ; and for this excellent reason, that when I have been tempted by evil it was never under its own linea- ments, but always in the counterfeit guise of good : so that my only chance to avoid it lay at last in giving submissive heed to the voice of my religious con- science, which tells me that whatsoever the flesh reckons to be supremely good is ipso facto spiritually evil. I say emphatically : when tempted ; observe that. There are very many persons who will not understand this limitation — their number seems indeed to be growing; at least I think it could never have been so great as now — inasmuch as they themselves are exempt from moral conflict, and do not know except from hearsay what false-witness, or theft, or adultery, or murder is. These persons exhibit a great natural advance upon the average man, being of an almost purely aesthetic turn, with the ordinary moral virus all left out. Of course they know very well what is signified to the ear by the off'ences in question, but they have no idea of the spiritual substance which TO NATURE BUT TO CULTURE. 399 is covered by them. They suppose that false-witness and theft and adultery and murder are not only so many literal words but so many veritable thin(]s as well, physically determined; which a vulgar sort of people are prone to do, but to which they themselves have not only no leaning, but a marked distaste and repugnance. But this in my opinion is a very superficial judg- ment. West pas pecheur qui veut. No such thing is known to nature as false-witness, as theft, as adul- tery, or murder ; otherwise of course animals might incur guilt. And surely no well-wisher of these could desire to see their innocent life converted into a moral and rational one. The offences in question are not the least physical, as against nature, but strictly moral, as against culture. They characterize man not as he stands inwardly affected to the interests of Divine justice in the earth, or the evolution of human society ; but as he stands outwardly related to a strictly factitious or conventional order of human life which is called the State, and to which he is born subject: and they have no shadow of philosophic pertinency but in application to such subjection on his part. In other words the terms indicate so many strictly instituted or Icyal offences of men : the tem- porary order of which they confess themselves viola- tions having been providentially instituted, not with 400 MEANING OF OUR any view to bound men's aspirations, or define their just hopes and expectations towards God, but rather with a view to foreshadow a permanent or Divine- natural order of human Ufe one day to appear in the earth, and by the insufRciences of the present order gradually prepare them for it. In short the existing order of human life is essentially educative or disciplinary : its whole practical purpose being to lead the mind out of carnal into spiritual ideas of justice or righteousness ; or what is the same thing out of selfish into social conceptions of human life. I repeat then that false-witness, theft, adultery, murder, and covetousness are not the least physical offences, or offences against nature, but purely moral offences, or offences against law. They are vices of our civic constitution exclusively, and therefore be- long quite equally to all the subjects of that consti- tution, if not actually yet potentially : in which case of course we have none of us any more right to boast ourselves inwardly over our neighbor in respect to moral purity, than we have a right to boast ourselves outwardly over him in respect to physical health. And if you, dear friend, ask me hereupon to state more explicitly what I mean by our civic constitu- tion, I will do so with all necessary fulness and dis- patch. By our civic constitution I mean the form of public CIVIC CONSTITUTION. 401 order under which you and I have always lived, and which is called civilization, because it suspends every man's consideration upon the relation he voluntarily sustains to the State, regarded as the power of a present Divine life in the world, in opposition to the Church, which claims to be the power of a future Divine life. This antagonism between Church and State was never indeed overt or pronounced till after the Reformation; but it was always latent, because the Church in spite of her pedigree always bore the State in her flanks, and nursed it to maturity ; and the child is bound to inherit of the parent, or thrive by the latter 's decline and decease. It is only now in our own day accordingly when they both feel the hand of doom upon them, and are reluctantly pre- paring to be swallowed up in the long-promised reign of God's JUSTICE upon earth, that they abandon them- selves to unlovely but well-merited mutual recrimi- nation, and would literally fly — if they were not all the while mere shadows devoid of human substance — at each other's vicious throat. But the ideal of the State however faithless the State itself has been to it, is to make men good citizens, or reproduce upon an enduring basis their lost paradise ; while that of the church, however little she herself has practically exemplified the influence of her ideal, has always been to make men saints, or show them para- 402 IT IS A MERE STEWARD dise well lost for heaven. And there can be no doubt as to which of these ideals is most likely in the long run to captivate men's imagination, especially as the chm-ch's practice has always supplied so exquisitely inverse a commentary upon its preaching. Understand then : civilization all unconsciously to itself yet aims at the practical secularization of marts religious conscience, or his hope towards God. But its method is hopelessly infirm and imbecile because it has, to begin with, no adequate conception of human nature and human destiny. It is in truth a mere steward of humanity, and has never had the least pretension to be taken into its counsels or to direct its fortunes. Thus it assumes without misgiving that man is by nature or creation a moral and rational force, not at all perceiving that it thereby denies him all generic or race quality. If man be an essentially moral and rational existence, that is to say, a subject primarily of truth in his understanding, then it is plainly impossible that he should ever attain to uni- versal form or realize his social destiny : inasmuch as that is to be led primarily by good in his heart, and only derivatively by truth in his understanding. And to make a universal consciousness impossible on man's part, is really to deny the creative infinitude and heap practical contempt upon it. The truth is we are moral and rational only because we have not OF MAN'S SPIRITUAL DESTINY. 403 yet intellectually realized our nature or spiritual crea- tion, but stupidly insist on the contrary upon iden- tifying it with our vulgar and pragmatical selves. Undoubtedly we are the creation of infinite love and wisdom, but we are this only in our generic or uni- versal, and not the least in our specific or private, capacity. But there is just as little doubt that to be the creature of infinitude is existential!^ to be a finite form of will and understanding ; because with- out such limitation the infinite substance could have no fulcrum or point ctappui in the created conscious- ness whereby to operate its universal results. Never- theless we are not authorized to confound what is strictly existential to a thing with what is properly essential to it. And yet this is what civilization habitually does. For what is properly essential to man is his nature as a creature of infinitude, since without it he could not as a race, or absolutely, he: and what is strictly existential to him is his private selfhood or conscious distinction from all other exist- ence, since without this he could not contingently exist or appear. Now civilization confounds this merely personal or existential element in human ex- perience with its natural or essential element; and consequently makes our nature, which in its last analysis is Divine and immaculate, the stalking-horse of all our immeasurable personal folly and corruption. 404 IT UTTERLY MISAPPREHENDS Starting with this monstrously inadequate concep- tion of what man is by nature or creation, the method which civihzation employs to effect its own compara- tively low ends, or make men good citizens, cannot help proving signally inefficient. For regarding man as an essentially rational and moral force, whose heart is firmly bound to the allegiance of his head, and whose normal activity consequently is voluntary not spontaneous, calculated not free, it seeks to accomplish its ends with men by an appeal to their prudence mainly : that is, through the pressure of an instituted order and decency, or one which is guaranteed in the last resort not by the inward consent of the subject, but by the outward force of the community. In other words, it utterly excludes from its horizon any social or distinctively r^ce-destiny for man, and would doubtless freely commute that heavenly birth- right any day for whatever steaming and savory mess of pottage might be complacently proffered us by political economy. Thus civihzation is organized upon the truth of an absolute or unconditioned self- hood in man, instead of a rigidly phenomenal or provisional one ; and hence it regards him not as a typical or shadowy and unsubstantial person, literally masking an infinite reality, but as a strictly real or secular and finite tldng, rightly and rigidly amenable to all other things for the good and evil consequences ITS PROVIDENTIAL FUNCTION. 405 which inhere in his actions. T am sure then that you, good friend, will justify the indictment I bring against our existing order — the merely instituted decency, the merely leffal justice or righteousness under which we have been sheltered all these cen- turies — when I say that it stays itself mainly upoo self-love and worldly prudence in its votary as his ruling principles of action, and hence not only specu- latively ignores his spiritual nature or social destiny, but systematically obstructs and resists its providen- tial evolution, by practically authenticating all the baser, and outlawing all the more generous, attributes of humanity. The mistake has been unavoidable. Men do not know their own nature as determined primarily by their creator, that is, as pre-eminently spiritual or social; but only as determined by themselves, that is, as pre-eminently personal or selfish ; and hence they lend themselves without scruple to the enforced conventional order of human life represented by priest and king, and embodied in the institutions of Church and State. And the reason why we thus inevitably conceive our nature to be determined by ourselves and not by our creator is, that creation itself, spirit- ually viewed, means the actual transfiguration of the created nature by the plenary creative perfection, neither more nor less; and hence can only report 406 THE SPIRITUAL FORM OF OUR itself intelligibly or credibly to the creature in so far as he feels toitJiin himself a life or spirit truly Divine : and notoriously we as a general thing have been utterly void of such life or spirit. The nearest ap- proach we have ever made to it has been purely formal and picturesque, consisting in the unaffected reverence we have hitherto paid — a reverence which at this day, and especially in this land, has become purely wilful and superstitious — to certain traditional institutions, such as the altar and the throne, under which the creative energy has always masked or accommodated itself to our carnal and stupid recog- nition. And now that a bumptious but providential and inexorable science is fast robbing these hoary institutions of their absolute sanctity, and reducing them to a relative or representative worth at most, all those of us who are intellectually honest will be obliged, henceforth, either to accept creation exclu- sively as a living or spiritual truth falling primarily within the compass of our generic or race conscious- ness, and only derivatively thence within that of the private consciousness : or else to reject it altogether. The spiritual form of nature or creation — its form as determined by God, is constituted by what we call SOCIETY ; meaning by that word not any merely em- pirical or tentative order of human life, such as we are now groaning and stifling under, but the essential NATURE OR CREATION IS SOCIAL. 407 brotherhood, fellowship, equality of each man with all men, and all men with each, in God. For inasmuch as by the exigency of His perfect love God is essen- tialhj creative, or finds His proper life only in com- municating Himself to what is not Himself, to what- soever in fact is in se most opposite and repugnant to Himself, the nature of His creature in order to reflect such love must be supremely social; since society alone enables us naturally to love others as we love ourselves, and even more than we love our- selves. If God's love be essentially creative as freely endowing others created from itself with its own life or being, then it must also be essentially social — as finding all its own felicity in the creature's receptivity to its advances. And if the absolute life or being we have in our creator be social, then it follows that the mere contingent or incidental existence Ave have in ourselves, however egregiously unsocial it may for a time appear, is necessarily tributary to that being, and must infallibly tend in the long run to avouch and reproduce it. But obviously this social or regenerate tendency in our nature cannot be fully constituted, cannot be livingly or spiritually realized by us, save in so far as we shall have practically renounced — save in so far as we shall have cordially lived down, so to speak — our selfish or gregarious instincts. This renun- 408 ^5UT WE ARE BORN DESPERATELY ciation accordingly has been the one great lesson of God's providence to us in all the dreary past. To this end alone prophets have taught, priests minis- tered, and magistrates borne rule. We have been extremely slow to learn no doubt, yet millions of men see to-day what but a handful saw a century ago, namely -. that civilization has had no other providen- tial mission than gradually to socialize the human consciousness, by thoroughly demonstrating the vanity of all human pretension, the vice that is latent in all our virtue, the selfseeking that underlies and arms our fiercest piety, the love of dominion that animates our loving-kindness even, and turns it often to cruel tyr- anny. In fact our historic past has apparently existed for no higher providential end than to make manifest the evil which is latent in the finite selfhood, and so prepare a permanent foundation in experience for human society. The evil thus latent is commensurate in quantity and quality with the infinite Divine good- ness : because it is really that in substance, though formally perverted by a finite recipiency; and no diviner mercy could befall us consequently than to allow it to be played out betimes in all its hideous malignity. Every thoughtful parent knows the philo- sophic value of this principle of the mamfestation of evil in the education of his children. For every child upon earth is liable to inherit evil dispositions with UNSOCIAL OR SELFISH. 409 his blood ; and nothing could be more impoverishing and indeed fatal to his manhood, in so far as his manhood is contingent upon a true self-knowledge, than that these dispositions should be violently sup- pressed by parental rigor, instead of being allowed to manifest themselves in the gristle, and so become tenderly corrected. This letter outrages all bounds, I know, my friend, but I must make it still more tedious by a word of additional appeal to you. I want you definitely to understand, then, as the upshot substantially of all I have said, that selfhood or personal consciousness, though it is doubtless perfectly implied in our spiritual creation as stem is implied in rose, is yet not our creation any more than stem is rose — any more even than the base earth out of which the stem itself grows, is the stem. It has always been our supreme infatu- ation to regard it in that deceptive hght; to look upon it as an all-sufficient exjMcaiion of creation, and not as a mere abject implication of it. By thus sys- tematically identifying oiu- spiritual creation with our preposterous and idiotic selves, the personal preten- sion within us becomes so inflamed and inflated out of its normal provisional dimensions, as to insist upon being no longer base but superstructure to our nature, and to require accordingly the most deadly machinery of morality to keep us each from turning out a fla- 410 THE PERSONAL ILLUSION grant nuisance to every other. We have been taught from time immemorial by our pastors and governors, that we are each of us a direct creature of God, a vahd creation in our own personal or private right, and not by virtue exclusively of our natural solidarity with our kind. And this illusion breeds such un- wholesome mists of vanity in our breasts, and such dense clouds of error in our understanding, that the heat of God's love and the light of His truth have at last lost all power to penetrate our indurated moral hides ; and the entire spiritual world consequently — the world of our true being, of what ought to be oiu* undefiled and unshackled commerce with God and man — necessarily takes on a divided aspect, or re- solves itself as it were in spite of the creative unity, and by a sheer instinct of self-preservation, into two hemispheres of good and evil respectively, or heaven and hell : the former a realm of ever active inward association or assimilation between the Divine and human natures ; the latter a realm of ever active out- ward waste or elimination, by which all things per- manently incommensurate with the created form, because alien to the creative substance, may be grad- ually brought to the surface of consciousness, and so definitively sloughed off. And I for my part am perfectly persuaded that if the stupendous illusion of moral responsibility, or a private selfhood in man SOLE EOOT OF HELL IN US. ^H adequate to the highest wants of his nature, had not been thus utihzed spiritually, by being made the base of a quasi Divine life in the earth, or a ^jrovisional kingdom of God in human affairs, ichich might at least correspondentially reflect and inaugurate the true and permanent things of creative order, om* minds could never have become — as they have now be- come — enlarged and disciplined to the discernment of spiritual truth. The moralist then, as it seems to me, is very fairly answered. His error consists in maintaining the absoluteness of om' moral judgments, and this error I think I have sufficiently demonstrated by showing that our moral experience, in place of being abso- lute, has been rigidly subservient in the miraculous wisdom of God to a superior providential end : which is, first, the manifestation through the church of living or spiritual evil, the evil of confirmed self- hood or self-righteousness, in men's natural person- ality ; and then through that again, the definite rescue of our race-consciousness from the dominion of such evil, in its own reduction to social form and order. Let us then leave the moralist, and hasten with what speed we may to consider the opposition of the churchman : so bringing our some- what protracted labor to its natural close. LETTER XXVI. f^yteT^Y DEAR FRIEND : It is the idea of the morahst, as we saw in our last letter, that civilization is an absolute end ' of God's earthly providence. But I have endeav- ored to show you that it is a wholly mediate and subordinate end, being strictly contingent for its own development upon the manifestation of the Divine good-will to universal man, or, what is the same thing, the revelation of the Divine infinitude or omnipotence in our nature, and bovmd therefore to disappear whenever the necessary machinery of such manifestation allows the Divine omnipotence to be- come visibly or actively efficient in human affairs. The misconception of the churchman with respect to God's heavenly counsels is strikingly analogous in point of form to this of the moralist with respect to His earthly counsels ; but it is vastly more serious and alarming in point of substance, since a mistake in earthly things is of comparatively no moment MORALIST AND CHURCHMAN DEFINED. 413 beside a mistake in heavenly or Divine things. The churchman conceives that the Divine love for man is fitly or perfectly exjpressed in the re(/eneratio7i of individuals : and this although it is evident that every case of individual regeneration is effected at the cost of a proportionate ^t^generation and degradation to other individuals. The moralist, stupid soul that he is ! foolishly as- sumes that because he himself is inwardly content with our existing order, although that order be stayed upon any amount of force, or necessarily involve in itself a huge infernal enginery of bayonets, prisons, dungeons, and scaffolds to give it permanence, there- fore God most high must be inwardly content with it also. In like manner precisely the churchman — because his own social sympathy, or sense of fellowship with his kind, is so shallow as not to be scandalized by the thought of himself being declared righteous and blessed, while other men exactly as good as he by nature, and very much better perhaps than he by actual culture, are remorselessly cast out of the Divine favor — just as foolishly assumes, self-right- eous soul that he at heart is ! that a state of things so flagrantly irrational and inequitable cannot be otherwise than eternally grateful to the pure heart of God also. 414 THE ROOT-ERROR IN BOTH THE SAME, It is plain then that the error of both these men has one and the same root : the infatuation of pro- prium or selfhood ; only with the moralist the infatu- ation is venial, as being addressed to the selfhood naturally regarded; while w^ith the churchman it is fatal, as having reference to the selfhood spiritually regarded. Both men have an insane belief that one man has a capacity to be better i?i himself than an- other; but this belief is much more insane in one than the other, as the moralist thinks such capacity due to the man's nature merely, while the church- man thinks it due in every case to the man's spiritual culture or regeneration, that is at bottom, to the man himself: and this latter persuasion is far more in- veterate than the former. Thus the men are alike blind, only one superficially, the other substantially, so ; the moralist being outwardly blind, blind to the light of natural fact, and the churchman inwardly or spiritually bhnd, blind to the light of Divine truth. You see then that the outlook of the moralist, who is this w^orld's worldling, is not half so gloomy spirit- ually as that of the churchman, who is the worldling of another and a better world, as it is called : for the former is simply unintelligent or errs by defect, while the latter's lack of intelligence is handicapped by a wholly fatuous or misleading light, which is that of self-righteousness. BUT MORE CURABLE IN THE FORMER. 415 There seems accordingly but little hope for the churchman. The moralist may be safely left for correction to the course of events, which seems to be fast ushering in a more stable order than that he is wont to delight in. For the moralist's judg- ment follows the guidance of sense exclusively, and when sense itself attests the spiritual truth of things he will no longer be victimized by error. But the churchman has not this agreeable prospect before him. His inioard light has itself become darkness, and when that is the case the darkness is utter and absolute : for it is no longer the subject eye that is in fault (as with the moralist), but the objective light itself, lohich alone empowers any eye to see, has under- gone eclipse. The churchman as such * accordingly is without a future, his lot being to decrease as the substance he has always spiritually symbolized or stood for increases : this substance being the Lord, of Divine Natural man, that is, Society. * For I Lope no reader of these letters will deem me so presump- tuous as to think of pronouncing judgment upon the future of concrete flesh-and-blood men — whether they be cliurchmen or statesmen — for I venture to say that these in common with us niucli happier nauieless men wUl have a greatly better personal fortune at the Divine hands than any of them ecclesiastically or politically deserve, whether that fortune consign them to heaven or hell. It is only the abstract churcli- man and statesman (as alone representatively existing to the Divine mind) whom my strictures have to do with, and by no means any lit- eral person so named. 416 IT IS MORE SUPERFICIAL IN THE ONE, Doubtless tlie reason why the evil which the churchman formally embodies, or with which he is representatively identified, is so much more hopeless than that which the moralist propagates and perpetu- ates, is, as I have perhaps already said, that it is spiritual or central, involving the heart, while the other is merely natural or circumferential, involving the senses. False witness, fraud, adultery, murder, and covetousness are natiu-al to man, that is, are inevitable to his nature as a creature of infinitude so long as he is intellectually unaware of the spirit- ual or inward and impersonal quality of such in- finitude, and instinctively seeks to realize it in this absurd personal way : as if the bonds of his person- ality (which are so useful and necessary in giving him fixity or standing-ground to his own conscious- ness) had only to be thrown ofi", and not reverently taken up into his own spiritual substance, in order to achieve the freedom he thus instinctively or hu- manly craves. It always seems to flesh and blood that freedom is one with emancipation from law, and it is nothing but this false persuasion that makes all our clandestine ways appear so sweet to the ordinary flesh-and-blood mind. The moment a thing is for- bidden to that mind, however indifferent to it the man may have been the moment before, he becomes eager to do it. The reason is that he mistakes the AND MORE SUBSTANTIAL IN THE OTHEE. 417 purpose of law, which is by no means to suppress our outward freedom, but by moderating its wan- ton and suicidal extravagance, or guarding it from license, to educate us to inward, spiritual, or Di- vine freedom. The flesh-and-blood mind is not the true or distinctively human mind, but merely the mind of the animal in us. And the animal mind is bound of its own nature to be servile to the human mind, and realize its only chance of freedom by acquiescing in such servitude. Of course the man himself has got to be de-animalized, that is, to become spiritual and human before the animal in him can be placated or subdued. The State prison convict no doubt finds it very hard to imagine loMle he is 1)1 prison that his nature entitles him to any truer freedom than that which the opening of the prison doors would give him. But this is only be- cause his misconduct in depriving himself of outward freedom has enhanced and inflamed the animal con- sciousness in him, and thereby deadened him for the time to all inward and higher manifestations of freedom. When one is incarcerated hi/ Ms oion mis- deeds I defy him to entertain anything but a most unmanly conception of freedom, being sure to make it outward solely, or to lie in the power of doing evil with impunity. If his folly had left him free to conceive of it in its human aspect, as the power 418 ALL MANNER OF SIN FORGIVEN TO MEN of doing good, and good alone, at the instance of one's heart, he would be instantly reconciled to his fetters, nay, would pray for additional bolts and stronger bars. But this natural ignorance of man, profound as it unquestionably is, is altogether excusable and tran- sient, and by no means leaves him without hope ; for any possible subsequent Divine enlargement of his nature will be sure to enlarge and improve his moral temper. Thus we may say that the slanderer, the swindler, the adulterer, the murderer, the covetous man universally in short, whatever be his spiritual ignorance or superstition, never finds it excluding him from immortal life, if indeed he himself have happily any aspiration towards such a thing. For, as Christ taught, ''all manner of sin and blasphemi/ shall be forgiven unto men, excejd the sin or blasphemi/ against the holy spirit, lohich has no forgiveness either in this world or that tvhich is to come." That is to say : our moral evils are natural, and spring from the circumstance that our nature is not yet Divinely redeemed or recovered from the influence of man's finite personality and reduced to permanent order ; hence they have only an actual force and will alto- gether disappear when human nature comes to spir- itual or social out of material or selfish form. But self-righteousness is an inward or spiritual condition BUT THAT AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. 419 of the subject laying hold upon a man not through his body, or what relates him to the outward world, but through his soul, or what relates him to God : so vitiating or falsifying him at the very core of his being. Tor a man's being is spiritually determined solely by the idea he entertains at heart of God as a being of really infinite goodness, towards whom his only logical or proper attitude therefore is one of prostrate adoration or humility. Now it is evident that no man who is at all satisfied with himself — much less a man whose self-satisfaction is motived upon a persuasion of his own exceptional private regeneration — is capable of feeling adoration towards the infinite goodness : or, to say the same thing in other words, is capable of a humble or deprecatory judgment in relation to himself. How shall a man dare to think meanly of himself when he looks upon that self as a piece of exquisite Divine or regener- ative workmanship ? This would be to think meanly of God, so that even the churchman's piety is a snare to him and constrains him to self-delusion. In fact the devil arms his hooks nowadays with no subtler or more specious bait than that of piety, and people who are so unfortunate as to have it in their blood, inheriting a more or less devout temperament from their ancestors, cannot be too thankful to the frosty providence that so often kindly nips in the bud their 420 SELF-rJGHTEOUSNESS THE OUTGROWTH OF A nascent aspirations after personal holiness, and so if need be compels them personally into the safer spir- itual paths of a frank and utter worldliness. Certainly then self-righteousness — which is a sat- isfactory estimate of one's own selfhood, character, or standing as compared with that of the vast ma- jority of men, those embraced in the " world " for example — is spiritually the only fatal form of un- godliness. And just as certainly it is a plant requir- ing for its development a church-soil ; so that if the church had never existed as an integral or repre- sentative factor in the development of human nature, we should have been at a loss to imagine any soil rank enough or tropical enough to produce it; and men accordingly would have been left to the much less harmful dominion and devices of their merely selfish and worldly loves. This at any rate is my own thorough intellectual conviction, and I am bound to show you the grounds of it. Do me the justice however not to imagine that I am going to overwhelm you with any scientific evidence of the truth of my conviction, such evidence as will compel your assent, or deprive you of freedom to think differently from me. For such evidence is out of place in reference to intellectual things or truths of perception. My conviction, for example, in relation to the intimate connection between a self- CHURCH-SOIL IN OUR NATURE. 421 righteous temper in man and the atmosphere of the church institution, is not the fruit of any scientific observation or inductive reasoning on my part, though these things aptly enough come in to enforce it. And a parade therefore of the scientific grounds of such a conviction would not only be uncalled for or inappropriate, but would prove derogatory to the interests of a much larger and Diviner life in man than that of science, to which I at all events feel my sympathies primarily due : I mean of course our distinctively intellectual life, or the life which is authenticated by our affections, and not by our senses. Neither is the conviction in question the fruit pri- marily of any private spiritual regeneration on my part, but is such fruit only in a rigidly secondary sense, that is, only in so far as my private spiritual regeneration is itself the fruit altogether of a Divine redemption of our common nature. In short, you must all along assiduously remember that we are not now talking of any paltry fact of organic experience, or fact of sense, which can be scientifically probed or proved : proved, that is, to men's senses : but of a truth of men's inward or regenerate nature exclu- sively, of their living or spiritual experience, of their soul-history as it were; a truth which has slowly flowered out of the suffering human heart, and which therefore appeals for its ratification in every mind 422 BOTH "THE CHURCH" AND "THE WORLD" solely to the man's cultivated or disciplined affections. It is a truth which no amount of merely scientific culture, nor any ardor of ratiocinative acumen, will ever qualify a man to do justice to. In fact these things are very apt to disqualify men for the ac- knowledgment of spiritual or living truth, since the method of science and that of intellectual cognition are directly opposed : the one proceeding from with- out inwards, or from sense to soul; the other from within outwards, or from soul to sense.* But let me at least present some orderly consid- erations to you which may throw light upon the grounds of my conviction that all our spiritual evil — evil of self-righteousness — is intimately connected with the outgrowth and development of the church in human nature. Por the "church" is just as much a natural fact, or outgrowth of human nature as the "world" is. In casting our eyes back to the beginnings of man's earthly genesis we find his consciousness almost com- * A man shaving himself before a looking-glass always appears, to one whose eye is fixed upon the glass, to be shaving himself with his left baud. This illustrates the immature judgment of science in making sense the supreme arbiter of truth as well as of fact. Of course the man's living or intellectual judgment of the truth of the case is sure to correct this scientific judgment, inasmuch as, to the intellect or life, the sensible form or appearance of things is never in direct but always in inverse accord with their spiritual substance or being. A MERE GERMINATION OF HUMAN NATURE. 423 pletely submerged by his senses. The needs of their visible subsistence are at first imperative upon men, and they know httle more than the instincts and the arts that relate them to the satisfaction of their bod- ily appetites. Some men are endowed with quicker senses, with greater physical force and endurance, with subtler inventive ingenuity and alertness, than others, and these qualities insure their subjects an exceptionally successful career. Men of a slower nature on the other hand, men of a defective wit and sagacity, men of a sluggish individual genius with perhaps a greater tendency to sociability or companionship than others, constitute a comparatively unfortunate or inferior and dependent class. The foraier no doubt in every community are a small minority of men, and "keep the world going," as we say, for their superior practical or productive en- ergy soon throws the government of the community into their hands. The latter are a very large ma- jority of the human family, and are doomed to gravi- tate erelong into the condition of mere proletaries, keeping up the fecundity of the race. All which is only saying, in other words, that the former constitute a select or distinguished class of men, while their brethren as a class are totally without distinction. Now to the devout imagination : for it is almost needless to say, that in face of this great and formi- 424 "CHURCH" AND "WORLD" A DISTINCTIVELY dable reality of a fixed outward world, and before the world has betrayed its latent humanity, or sub- serviency to Divine uses, all men are helplessly, or as we say instinctively, devout, even to the pitch of superstition or fetichism : to the devout imagination of men, I repeat, there is in this obvious charac- teristic division of men into two classes a natural basis for the church, or for the acknowledgment of a Divinely providential order in the earth. There is as yet of course no such thing as the church in name, or as a corporate organization fenced in from the outlying world of mankind by ritual ceremonies or observances ; but it is there practically or in substance all the while, inwardly recognizable to every one in whom a strong virus of personality, or selfhood, or character has had opportunity to assert itself, and it only awaits the imposition of its name to be sub- missively recognized or acquiesced in by the vulgar intelligence as well. For the fundamental idea of the church as a corporate or visible institution is that of a select or chosen few of mankind Divinely culled, or called out, from the undistinguished, cha- otic or monotonous mass of men, and set apart to the Divine service and honor. And where to the eye of our innocent or unsophisticated carnal intel- ligence is this idea better embodied than it is in those who either by their productive genius and NATURAL DEVELOPMENT IN MAN. 425 energy first make the earth fruitful, and introduce the community to the acquaintance of wealth and its resources, or else by their manifest military skill and prowess teach the community how to defend and pro- tect their life and property from the cupidity of in- vaders ? These men by their inventive sagacity and enterprise, by their heroism, by their administrative skill and ability, are for the time a true Divine seed in human nature, and mark or constitute the dis- tinctively providential movement in humanity. They are the astute Abrams, and Isaacs, and Jacobs who all unknown to themselves marshal the otherwise imbecile masses of men into line with man's Di- vine-natural destiny. And they constitute accordingly God's true church in the earth so long as the church is at all a puissant reality : that is to say, long before it has attained to the outward name or conscious- ness of being a church, and sunk into the unwhole- some and emasculate spiritual dilettantism which that unfortunate name or consciousness connotes. Here then is my first point made : the church and — by virtue of its inclusion in that — the world are both alike rigidly natural facts, are both alike indubitable historic j^owers or /mictions of human na- ture, and represent nothing more than the alter- nate spiritual and material aspect wdiich human history derives from its undoubted natural factors. 426 "CHURCH" AND "WORLD" NATURAL FACTS. And the second point which I intended to establish was that our existing self-righteous tendencies, which spiritually viewed are the only reprehensible tenden- cies of human nature, come from the church, and are a wholly proper development or expression of her spirit in us. That is to say, my general purpose in establishing this point is to show that the sacred element in human life, in so far as it has come to the surface of consciousness in institutions, or can he in any way literally identified, is infinitely less innocent than the rival secular element, and does infinitely more harm to the spiritual life of man. But this proposition, because it involves a much more spiritual apprehension of the meaning of human nature, and a much closer insight into its metaphysical principles, had better be left for its working out to another letter. -^rr-tv It in »» »i VI It i'j III iii »i m> i-t LETTER XXVII. 'Y DEAR FRIEND : We saw in the last letter that the church and the world are both alike facts of human nature, and ex- press nothing but her composite parentage, her mixed Divine and human genius. Human nature has an equal aspect towards God and man, for it is confessedly the nature of a creature, and a creature is nothing in itself but the existence or going forth of its creator. Thus we may say it has both a Divine side by virtue of God alone being a creator, and a human side by virtue of this creator being essential man. For we must always bear in mind that the human side of our nature is not in the least consti- tuted by us phenomenal men (by you and me, for instance, and others like you and me, who call our- selves men) but solely by God the Lord who alone is Man both spiritually and naturally. You and I, you know, are merely conscious men ; that is, we seem to ourselves to be a human realitv, but in tfuth we are 428 WE DO NOT INHERIT HUMAN NATURE, BUT mere shadows of such reahty, having no more of human substance in ourselves, no more pretension either of us actually to be the man Ave seem, than our shadow in a looking-glass has to be our personal substance. We are just the same seeming or sem- blance in the natural sphere, or sphere of conscious- ness, which that phenomenon is in the scientific sphere, or sphere of sense, with precisely the same claim to objective reality or spiritual being, as it has to subjective reality or moral consciousness, not a particle more or less. Besides you know that nature is one and universal, while we are nothing if we are not many and particular. You know moreover, at least I have no doubt you do, I do at all events, that though we all the while flatter ourselves that we pos- sess this universal substance, and are wont to claim human nature as our own, what a struggle it always costs us to arrive at the least inward realization of it, or universalize ourselves in our affections one jot. And then, after all our struggles, we are compelled to lay aside our familiar flesh and bones in the grave, as if w^e had been confessedly animals all along and not men. Thus I admit that you and I and all other men are phenomenal or conscious forms of humanity, and give forth or reproduce in our petty persons some faint shadow of her stupendous substance. But this is a totally distinct thing from saying that we - ATTAIN TO IT BY REGENERATION. 429 ourselves constitute humanity, unless indeed we are willing to reckon the shadow of a thing identical with its substance. For if we are veritable phenomena, manifestations, products of human nature, unques- tionable deliverances of her miraculous womb, it is simply preposterous to suppose that she can feel her existence contingent for a moment upon ours, how- ever much indeed the consciousness of such existence may be confined to us. Remember then, my friend, that you and I and all the other minim personalities of the universe are so far from constituting the human side of our nature that we are full surely constituted by it, deriving all our power consciously to exist and act from it, and it alone. Nor can any of us atomic men, however much we may claim to be children of nature, ever boast himself of being in any sense her favorite child. She makes small account of persons at any time, allowing us to be cut down in myriads whenever she feels her- self impelled to a fuller manifestation of herself, and she drenches us with a perpetual shower of personal disasters, which rob us of assured health or fortune or of stable domestic felicity in a way to prove even to the dullest imagination, that she is at deadly and deliberate war with our private Avelfare save in so far as it is a mere reflection of our public worth. The undeniable reason of this inveterate hostility on the 430 OUR NATURAL HISTORY IS part of nature to men's private consequence when unconditioned upon their pubhc desert, is that being human cm fond her form is necessarily social, being the intense marriage unity of its particular and uni- versal interests, or its private and public elements : and so long therefore as this natural marriage unity lacks its literal or ritual consecration in our outward or phenomenal personalities, this social form of hu- manity will never come to men's knowledge, and every man accordingly must be left to perish in his selfish- ness. Our natural history in fact is providentially de- signed for no other purpose than to exemplify the vanity or nothingness of human individuality when underived from race or nature, and the gospel it pro- claims to every man as the only gospel of immor- tality, as at least the only one he can inwardly live by, is that of a thoroughly righteous self-contempt, or a just disdain of his own interests whenever they bring him into collision with those of society or his fellow-man. For the only real fellow that the indi- vidual man has in nature, is by no means some other individual man (for this would be not fellowship or equality but identity) but the complex or composite man, society. Society is the only real or Divine nat- ural man, and we individual men (falsely so-called) attain to a real or Divinely recognizable individuality A DIVINELY REDEMPTIVE PROCESS. 431 only in identifying ourselves with him : that is, in losing our life in ourselves and finding it again, resur- gent, in society. The intellectual meaning with which this great fact of experience is fraught is, that what we call nature, meaning thereby the outward world, the world apprehended by sense, and in spite of its over- whelming reality to sense, is at bottom a profound Divine imposture or cheat which is most providen- tially engineered all the while in the interest of in- effable (that is to say, infinite and eternal) spiritual realities of which it is the exact counterpart and cor- respondence, and which therefore we should always remain ignorant of unless we were thus figuratively or experimentally taught. These ineffable and (unless they be revealed) unthinkable spiritual realities are God : as He is called by those who recognize Him mainly as he is outwardly revealed to the understand- ing under the form of Truth : and Man : as he is named by those who recognize Him mainly as he is inwardly revealed to the heart under the form of Good : but God-man, or the Lord, as He is more comprehensively designated by those who recognize him as a practical providence in history, that is, as He becomes revealed to sense under the form of power, or goodness and truth united, in order to effect the actual redemption of human nature or the human race from death. 432 HUMAN NATURE IS A UNIVERSAL What tlien finally is nature in herself regarded ? I don't mean what is commonly called nature, being the external world, which is a mere chaos of mineral, vegetable, and animal existence without rhythm or law in itself to make it intelligible, for this in truth is not nature but merely that necessary background or basis of specific existence which nature requires to emphasize or set off" her own universality. No, I mean by nature human nature, the nature of man, for this is the only nature that objectively exists to its own subjects, and so is capable of giving them elevation out of themselves. And if we ask what human na- ture, or the nature of man, is, we have a sure index to the answer in ascertaining what man himself is : for the nature of a thing is merely the development of its being to its own consciousness. Now man is a purely personal, unreal, or phenome- nal subject, existing only to consciousness, not to sense, but firmly related to lower or outward things by his bodily organization or senses which give him fixity or finiteness, and to higher or inward things by his in- organic, percipient soul which gives him freedom or rational enlargement. And human nature, then, be- ing the nature of man, must be the sphere of con- sciousness in him, the sphere of his conscious life, out- side of which he does not exist. How then does it differ from the man himself? If human nature be REALM OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN MAN. 433 the sphere of consciousness in men, and man have no existence out of consciousness, what hinders me iden- tifying myself with my nature ? This fact alone : that I being a person am a finite or particular form of con- sciousness, without universal quality, whereas nature not being a person is not a finite or particular form of consciousness, but a most indefinite or universal one, without particular quality. Accordingly nature is to be logically defined as the realm of consciousness in man, the peculiarly human realm, inasmuch as it sepa- rates him from the realm of sense which he shares in common with animal and vegetable and mineral. It is no thin(/, nor yet any congeries of things save to sense and the judgment begotten of it, but a cer- tain undefined or purely potential and promissory existence which subjectively never is but is always becoming or to he, and on its sensibly objective side images or reflects the intercourse of infinite and finite, God and man, spirit and flesh, constituting indeed to our sensuous imagination the eternal link or liaison of the two. For as God being creative is infinite in himself, that is, spirit or life, and therefore essentially inward, and as man being created is finite in himself , that is, matter or death, and therefore essentially out- ward, there must be spiritually an endless and fatal subjective disagreement between the two creative fac- tors: so that if some middle term did not exist to 434 HUMAN NATURE NOT THE SPIRITUAL fuse or reconcile these discordant factors in her o^Yn commanding objectivity, creation would be a failure in first principles. Now nature is this actual middle term. She offers her effectual mediation to the rival or opposite creative factors, and by her strictly un- defined or universal objectivity covers up or makes amends for their subjective disagreement by allowing them to become objectively one or united, witJiin her own strict limits mind you, or mutually to change places, infinite becoming finite and finite infinite, in a new and immortal human individuality. Nature accordingly is not creation, nor any part of creation (though she is included in it as the crea- ture's constitutional or mother-substance), for creation is wholly spiritual, living, or subjective, being the work of omnipotence, or of God's infinity and eternity, and is therefore inscrutable to mortal ken. But though nature is not either in whole or in part God's spirit- ual creation, she nevertheless most truly reveals or accommodates it to our nascent and obstinate in- telligence, and is herself frankly unintelligible and misleading save as such revelation. We should never have been able even to dream of creation as a living and spiritual or miraculous work of God, nor of God himself consequently as a being infinite and eternal in love, wisdom, and power, if nature were a fixed physical existence or quantity shut up to the dimen- CREATION, BUT REVEALS IT. 435 sions of space and time. But this is just what she is not — a fixed physical existence, but a wholly unfixed or metaphysical one, forever enlarging to men's affec- tion and thought as their affection and thought them- selves become penetrated and interfused by the Divine infinitude, or moulded to the inspiration of the creative goodness and truth. It is true that being the abjectly helpless and dependent intelhgences we are, we are indebted for our earliest recognition of nature's pres- ence and power to the gross sensible forms of min- eral, vegetable, and animal existence, and for a long time indeed do not scruple to identify her personality with such forms. But it is not long before we begin to divine her intensely human quality, and thenceforth we come to acknowledge her only as the perfect mar- riage fusion or unity of the Divine and human natures. Remember then that nature in herself or subjectively is neither God nor man, but the rigid neutrality or indifference of the two, while on her objective side, or viewed from the maternal uses she contributes to the spiritual creation, she reflects each to the knowledge of the other, and so enables them each to reap the transcendent spiritual or subjective fruits of such knowledge. Or, to say the same thing in other words, remember that nature is neither a spiritual nor yet a physical existence, but a most strictly metaphys- ical or empirical one, provisionally mediating between 436 SHE FILLS OUT OUR UNREAL PERSONS the two, since while it owes its base or fixed body to physics, it owes its superstructure or free expansive soul entirely to spirit. But although nature is a purely metaphysic realm, it will not do to infer that she is therefore without cognizable form. Existence is not possible without cognizable form, nor even conceivable without think- able form, because distinctive form is the essence of a thing or what it derives from the creative Esse. It is true that nature being metaphysic substance is with- out material form in se, form discernible to sense ; but the entire realm of personality is hers, and the material world exists only to furnish a basis to person- ality. Thus though nature herself is not material she yet holds the whole realm of physics subject to her metaphysic will. Sense in fact is simply con- sciousness in solution. And the reason doubtless therefore why personality is never discernible to sense but only to consciousness, is because sense is included in consciousness as the marble in the statue, or what- ever mere materies in whatever ojms. And surely you would not expect the dead matter of a thing to be able to judge of the living form to which it is subservient. It is very much the fashion just now with scientific fledglings and unintellectual people generally to decry metaphysics, or sneer at them in fact, as though meta- WITH VALID HUMAN SUBSTANCE. 437 physical existence were confessedly no existence, or as if all existence were bound to be real or impersonal, and confess itself in the last analysis a thing. I don't mean to profess any contempt for things, for at times I feel a very considerable relish for them, and derive much comfort from them. But at the same time I should be wretched to think all existence confined to them. My affections are very apt to go out to- wards persons, and if I could be persuaded therefore that persons had no souls, but only bodies, my proper human life would be very much diminished. Instead of being as I had thought it a house of three stories at the very least, I should find it reduced to a house of one story, and that a squalid basement sunk in earth. These persons to be sure are but finite forms, im- perfect images, of goodness and truth. But in conse- quence of that very fact they exert a most benignant power or influence upon my life : for I cannot know goodness and truth in themselves, but only as they approximate themselves to my feeble understanding in finite types. I am much impressed also with the beauty of certain persons, with their artistic genius or their executive talent and skill, and if the persons did not exist who betrayed these attractive qualities to me, I should feel myself sadly mystified or trifled with. But if these persons exist at all, they exist one and all only metaphysically. That is to say, their 438 SHE IS THE LIFE OF LAW OR ORDER existence — while it acknowledges a physical basis, imperatively claims at the same time a free or sjjiritual superstructure. And it is only a priggish or pedantic person who is liable to the gross mistake alike in science as in art of making base dominate superstruc- ture, or body govern soul. Now by what signs is metaphysical existence char- acterized that it shall not be swamped in physics? In other words, how do we recognize the natural force in things, and recognize it so infallibly as to be in no danger of ever confounding it in thought with their material force ? I think this question admits of a satisfactory answer. The natural force in things then signalizes itself by this infallible earmark, namely : it is a force of law or order, constraining our allegiance under pain of death. This is the invariable distinction of natu- ral law : its strictly negative or death-hearing quality towards its finite subject. It has on its face no posi- tive or life-bearing quality whatever for its subject, absolutely none, but remorselessly shuts him up to despair and death in himself, as if to warn him past all possibility of mistake that nature disowns a finite subjectivity, and will never therefore under any cir- cumstances justify his private pretension to be her proper offspring. It chases the subject out of every hidden nook and corner of his personal conscious- IN ALL LOWER EXISTENCES. 439 ness, and makes even his most innocent and transient animal delights perilous to his freedom, or danger- ous to his soul's peace. Thus when I eat and drink and sleep, or enact any other automatic function pre- scribed by my animal organization, I am constrained to be very prudent lest I suddenly find myself in undesigned conflict with my nature ; and this is the only way that I gradually come to natui'al conscious- ness, or learn to separate myself from the animal chained up in my body. For I never eat and drink and sleep, you will observe, at the instance of my proper nature, which is exclusively human, and there- fore Divine and infinite, or free from all want, but at the prompting of those gross animal, vegetable, and mineral wants or appetites which are necessarily bound up or involved in my nature by way of afford- ing it a ground of evolution to the consciousness of its subject. For human nature has no outward or objective evolution, that is, no evolution in itself, but only to its conscious subject, and as the true or metaphysic form of such subjectivity. Thus it has no existence to sense, but only to consciousness. And no man who does n't come to his consciousness of it in the purely inward or metaphysic way I have de- scribed, that is, only in a loaij of hearty resistance to his tyrannous animal aj^petites and tendencies, has any consciousness of it at all, but remains at his very 440 SHE IS INWARDLY INSTINCT WITH LOVE best a mere conscious animal in human form. Ac- cordingly let me eat or drink to excess, and sleep without regard to time and place, or perform any other of my automatic or animal functions with a full animal absorption in it, that is, without a primary respect to the superior human convenances which qualify such functions to men, and I am instantly sure to hear an inward Divine voice arraigning me as a culprit to my own nature, and compelling me perhaps to walk humbly many days afterwards.* * Sic itur ad astra : there is no way of getting to heaven but the way of self-deni'dl, which is inward or spiritual humility. There are but few who are content to walk in this heavenly way, I know, because it is uot half so sweet and alluring to carnal thought as the way of self-indulgence, which is that of saintly asceticism. There is nothing so inwardly nour- ishing to SELF-hood in man as the culture of asceticism, or the practice of needlessly snubbing one's innocent and unconscious flesh : for of course the more that is done of this unrequired or gratuitous work, the more the subject's complacency in himself abounds, and the greater grows his sense of merit, which is the source of all our spiritual defile- ment. Our nature never prompts any mortification to the flesh in us : for the flesh is always Divinely sweet and modest until it has been be- devilled by our ascetic efforts to worry some comfort out of it to our 5^^-righteous pretensions : but only to the Jieshhj mmd, which is the exact mind of the ascetic or church-saint. If accordingly you want to see how exquisitely filthy a man may inwardly be who is outwardly expert and cultivated in the spirit and methods of ascetic piety, you have only to look up some of Swedenborg's Memorable Relations, describing certain of the Romish saints as they appear in their spiritual undress, when stripped of their decent and honorable natural clothing, and if I mistake not you will find yourself agreeably edified. To judge from Sweden- AXD THEREFORE LOATHES ASCETICISM. 441 Such is human nature, and its adverse bearing upon men's animal or finite and outward person- ahties. But this inauspicious bearing of it seems very much heightened when it assumes moral form, and is seen no longer simply controlling the relations that bind a man to his own body, or to the animal force in his own body, but much more the inward or metaphysic relations of man to man. For now its death-bearing animus becomes vividly enhanced in its stamping men no longer vicious merely, with the hospital and lunatic asylum in prospect, but criminal as well, with the jail and the scaffold in the distance to emphasize or give force to the verdict. It now practically says in fact that men are not only corrupt borg's remarkable daguerreotypes (for they have all the softness of the daguerreotype, betraying the ■n'armth of love iu their production, no less than the light of intelligence) I should say tliat this class of persons, the church-saint, of all our spiritual mauvais sujets, displays the most inveterately subterranean proclivities or shows men's evil possibilities at their ne plus ultra of development, their utmost refinement of natural degeneracy. I say this of course not because the saints in question happen to be E-omish (though the Romish church unquestionably deals with a lower order of heart and mind than the Protestant does, and is very apt to breed therefore much more coarse and brutal conceptions of sanctity when it breeds any), but simply because the aspiration after personal holiness, whether in Protestant or Catholic, is the most de- praved spiritual tendency of the human heart, and is utterhj fatal there- fore to God's love in the human soul. For the infallible law of spirit- ual life is that he who exalts himself shall be abased, and he who abases himself (not hisfesh, mind you !) shall be exalted. 442 BUT ONLY AS A MORAL FORCE SHE SHOWS or worthless on their passive physical side, which is the mother's side in them, but also and much more on their active, voluntary, or moral side, which they inherit from the father. Thus my nature finally reveals itself in its moral form of evolution not merely as the organ of my instincts, but as the true and sole organic power behind my will or personality : so assailing my moral or self-righteous power, my pride of freedom or selfhood, in the most secret fastnesses of its strength, and asserting its death -bearing energy over my human person with new emphasis in making my fellow-man henceforth the register and vindicator of its decrees, in addition to or in place of my own less faithful private conscience. I have now at length, I hope, succeeded in making two points of first-rate philosophic moment perfectly clear to you. 1. We have seen what human nature is in itself, namely : a middle-ground, or transition- point, between creator and creature, God and man, infinite and finite, spirit and flesh, making the two freely interchangeable. 2. We have seen also by what infallible tokens it reveals itself in men's finite or private consciousness, namely : as a free or regen- erative spiritual force in them aiming to give them life out of death by releasing them from their finite limitations, or the bondage of their animal, vegetable, and mineral ties (which merely give men visible con- HER TRUE INFINITING TENDERNESS. 443 stitution or make them phenomenal to themselves), so allying them at last in conscious fellowship with God's spiritual infinitude. But a third point remains to be considered, not perhaps of equal speculative importance with these, but of eveh greater practical consequence, and that is, briefly stated : What is the machinery by which oiu* Divinized human nature vindicates itself, or avouches its existence, to the public conscience of mankind, so inaugurating the reign of God's justice or righteous- ness upon earth ? — The answer to this question, however, will re- quire a letter to itself, but I hope this letter will be a final one, and gather up all that yet remains to be understood between us. BB^S^^r*^ ^ Jlm^ 1 ^S ^y 1 i^ LETTER XXVIII. Y DEAR FRIEND : — In my last letter I ]■ answered, or tried to answer, two ques- tions each of sovereign import to the speculative welfare of philosophy. The first question was about human nature itself, its ori- gin and quality. The second led us to consider its method of actual development to the consciousness of its carnal votary, as conscience, or the negative laio of human freedom. If you will allow me now briefly to resume or recapitulate the answers I gave to these questions, bearing as they do so profoundly on the speculative interests of religion and philosophy, we shall both of us be better able to do justice to a third question which we are more particularly bound to consider in the present letter, and which is of transcendent practical importance to the inter- ests, not of any special science perhaps, but certainly to the general science of human life. We saw then in our last letter that human nature HUMAN NATUEE METAPHYSICAL. 445 is a strictly metaphjsic existence, postulating the entire realm of physics beneath it or under it pre- cisely as the pedestal is postulated in the statue, or the body in the soul: in order adequately to base it, that is, to finite it, or give it on its objective side permanent fixity or isolation. Human nature origi- nates spiritually in God who is real or essential man, and it merely expresses on its inward or spiritual side the ceaseless eSbrt of His providence to manifest itself creatively, that is, to attain to adequate actual or existential form in His creature. The creature of course ex vi termini is in himself, or quel creatiu'e, utterly " without form, and void " of distinctive qual- ity, and any form or quality he may exhibit therefore is not attributable to himself but to the creator in him : unless indeed it be a purely evil and fallacious form or quality, in which case it exists only to con- sciousness, and has no fibre of reality outside of it. But although God is in truth most real or es- sential man it will not do to infer that He is, ipso facto merely, formal or existential man as well. Of course He who alone is real or essential man is ijjso facto also virtually/ formal or existential man, since there can be no such thing as an absolute divorce between substance and form: but only virtually, or in potency, not actually. His becoming actually what He is potentially, or outwardly what He is in- 446 GOD ALONE IS MAN EITHER wardly, depends entirely upon His being creative and thus having a sphere of actual or outward mani- festation put within His grasp. For the creator who is real or inward and essential man becomes actual or outward and existential man only through His creatm-e, or by virtue of His first giving spiritual or inward being to the creature. The creature no doubt, unapprised as yet save by revelation of his being spiritually created, or of his having any inward potency of life, seems to himself to be a most verid- ical actual man. But this is all a seeming. For he being created is of necessity in himself a mere finite form or image of humanity; and even as such form or image can only reproduce the human type in so far as he is freely united to his brethren : which he can never be, which in fact he selfishly loathes to be, until his proper interest tardily con- strains him to that mercenary policy. Besides, as I have already intimated, it is illogical and stupid to suppose that any one can be actual or formal man but He who is first real or substantial man. For if substance and form diff'ered in themselves, and not simply in relation to a finite intelligence, creation would be at a nonplus. In truth then God alone is both real, or inward and essential man, and actual, or outward and existential man. In short, He alone is man in substance, and man in form. m SUBSTANCE OR IN FORM. 447 Be it understood then between us that we our- selves, however truly we may be said to symbolize actual human nature, or typify formal manhood, have yet no shadow of a claim to constitute such man- hood, any more than we have a shadow of claim to constitute Divinity, or real and essential manhood. For we are only at our best finite phenomenal men, and neither singly nor in mass therefore can we ever hope to be that actual and unitary for??i of man, which as being correlative to its real or essential Divine substance, must be every way proportionate to such substance, and therefore itself Divine and infinite. But though we have no shadow of justifi- cation in so doing, we do nevertheless all the while betray our spiritual ignorance in assuming bona fide to constitute the whole of the formal and actual hu- manity which exists on earth, and which in theory reflects the inward and essential humanity of God : thus and thereby baffling or indefinitely retarding the Divine purpose (and indeed the Divine ability) eventually to show us the spiritual truth of the case. For God is too wise and good a being (since He is real or essential man) practically to contemn or over- ride His creature's natural prejudices, and very much prefers to make His creature also, like Himself, wise and good by gradually illumining those natural preju- dices, and bending them to the truth. 448 THE CREATIVE POWER IN MEN CONTINGENT Allow me then to repeat to you a truth which we have as yet barely glanced at, but which is calcu- lated yet to shed an infinite amount of light upon the philosophy of human nature and human history. That truth is as follows, and I conjure you to ponder it well if you would ever hope to master the true secret of the spiritual creation : Although God our creator is real or spiritual and inward man, and hy that fact stands pledged eventually to show Himself sole actual or natural and outward man also, never- theless His entire ability to do this is in strict abey- ance to His creature's good pleasure in the premisses, or depends upon the human race giving Him a chance to accomplish the task. For He is the ab- solute creator of men, and by that very fact bound in such intimate solidarity with them, that He can- not bestow any of His own potencies and felicities upon them without their own free consent and con- currence. Much less therefore can He bestow upon them that knowledge of Himself as the only true subject of their nature which is immortal life, so long as they each stupidly persist in maintaining that they themselves are its sole true subjects, and He himself consequently its sole undeniable object. We cannot hope then to see God avouching himself both inwardly and outwardly, both really and actu- ally, both spiritually and naturally, true man, and UPON THEIR NATURE TAKING FORM. 449 alone fit to bear the untarnished name of Man, until the human race becomes so fused icUldn itself — that is, so constituted in felt or conscious unity with itself — as to form a perfect society, brotherhood, or fellowship of its particular and universal elements, each of its members spontaneously devoting himself to the welfare of all, and all the members in their turn freely espousing the welfare of each. Then doubtless, and not before, the creator of men will have become formal, existential, or natm-al man as well as substantial, essential, or spiritual man, and you and I will never again be such arrant idiots spiritually as to deem ourselves God's true creatures in our own private right, or out of social solidarity with all other men. For the great phenomenon of human society — of men made social out of, and so to speak hy virtue of, their extreme and inveterate selfishness — will then strike every eye as the con- summate miracle of God's spiritual perfection in our nature, and the eternally sufficing manifestation of His matchless adorable name. But until the human race attains to plenary social form we may be very sure that as the end of God's spiritual creation in human nature meanwhile must be perfectly obscured or overlaid by men's prevalent ignorance and super- stition, so, much more, the origin of that nature in God's infinite love and wisdom will be completely 450 NATURE THE SPHERE OF misapprehended, as we see in point of fact it has been. For men have always been wont to attribute any thing but a Divine genesis to their nature, as- signing a purely a posteriori origin to it in place of an a priori one. That is to say, they make it origi- nate in a gradual evolution of humanity from pre- cedent mineral, vegetable, and animal forms : thus in effect or figuratively making the head of creation take the place of its heels, or subjecting soul to body, statue to pedestal, oyster to shell, ship to sails, church to steeple, house to foundation, man to clothing. Now let me say that it is nothing but this help- lessly carnal habit of mind in us — this instinctive and inveterate tendency on our part to envisage cre- ation, not as a spiritual Divine life or truth in man, but only as a dead material fact or thing — which forever condemns us in ourselves to a purely natural or metaphysic and phenomenal existence; that is to say, to an existence which is as remote in itself from spiritual truth as it is from material fact, being equidistant from, and inaccessible to, the inward life of the angel on the one hand, and the purely out- ward or sensuous life of the devil on the other. And the obvious reason of this state of things : that is to say, the reason why nature exhibits this strictly neutral or equatorial quality — making the divided REDEMPTION IN" MAN. 451 hemispheres of good and evil, heaven and hell, spirit and flesh, eternally spherical in itself, that is, making them one and equal as the two opposing abutments of a bridge are made one and equal in the bridge — is that the problem of creation to the Divine mind, being how eternally to reconcile two factors, creator and creature, which are totally irreconcilable in themselves, one being all fulness, the other all want, one all spirit or life, the other all flesh or death, inexorably demands therefore for its solu- tion a third or middle term which shall be neutral or indifferent to either factor, infinite or finite, by avouching itself a rigidly indefinite or universal quan- tity as the unity of each and all. Accordingly this requisite and accommodating middle term which actually solves the creative problem is supplied by human nature. Human nature impartially solves the creative problem, because while it is absolutely neutral or rather altogether negative with respect to either interest, creative or created, i7i se, it is there- fore most positive or affirmative with respect to both as they become conjoined in living unity. The method of this conjunction, from which the spirit- ual creation results, arises from the gradual experi- mental conversion of the principle of self in man, the evil principle, which represents the finite man, into the principle of society or fellowship, the good 452 THE INWARD MEANING OF CREATION principle, which represents the infinite humanity, so making God and man naturally, as they always have been spiritually, one. This then is an explicit statement of what I im- plicitly said about nature in the last letter ; but after all it is an account of nature on its theoretic rather than its practical side, or as it exists to the mind of its author only and not as it appears to a finite dependent intelligence. Practically then, or to the finite mind, nature, as I went on to say in that letter, reveals itself not, to be sure, in its own perfect or consummate spiritual way, as an undefined or uni- versal form, being the unity of the whole and its parts, but in the specific form of conscience, or the law upon which man's natural freedom is negatively conditioned, the purpose of conscience being to re- deem him out of the bondage he is under by birth to his physical organization, and so qualify him for social or distinctively human form, which is the only form commensurate with the spiritual Divine per- fection or infinitude. In other words creation in its finite natural aspect, its aspect towards the carnal creature, necessarily wears the appearance of an eman- cipating, spirituahzing, or redemptive operation, di- vorcing the creature from the organic bondage to which he is born subject, and investing him instead with moral and rational freedom. IS MAN'S DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL. 453 But here I must beg you to note with most minute attention one thing, which is : that morality and rationality, althouyh they separate man from ani- mal, and thereby qualify Mm to take the name of man, yet they do this only provisionally. They do not invest him with absolute, but only with phenomenal, manhood, making his real participation of human nature altogether contingent upon his personal hu- mility, or the degree in which he freely admits the neighbor to a first place in his habitual regard, and limits himself to the second place. Freedom and rationality by no means give any of us a title to the Divine potencies and felicities which inhere in human nature ; they only make him, or inscribe him as, a candidate for such title. In short they give man a quasi or mere negative and seeming nat- ural consciousness, by no means a real or positive one, and hence they do not guarantee him the spir- itual Divine being of which human nature is the sole possible vehicle whether to man or angel. For example. My moral manhood, which stands in my felt freedom of will to choose between good and evil, is not absolute but contingent or condi- tional: being rigidly conditioned upon my actually choosing good. If, as some persons not very clear- sighted are wont to pretend, my will cannot feel itself free to do one thins unless it feel itself also 454 MAN'S FREEDOM AND EATIONALITY free at the same time to do the exact contrary thing, I would not call this latter faculty by the sacred name of freedom, but by that of bondage, since it can be exercised only at the expense of renouncing one's manhood. My moral manhood depends, and de- pends absolutely, ujpon my felt freedom alioays to take the side of good in preference to evil whenever and wherever I find them conflicting, and never the side of evil in preference to good. Thus if in case of conflict I actually choose evil, or prefer it to good, my moral or provisional manhood not only turns out an actual sham, but by the foreclosure of the condition on which its entire possibility ivas based, sinks below animality even, and becomes frankly evil or diabolic. It is true, I may not in so doing recognize that I am incurring a forfeiture of all human possibilities, and probably shall not, going on indeed to prate of my superb and lustrous manhood even after I have shut myself up in hell. But this will be simply because manhood is an inward not an outward form or quality, and therefore only to be inwardly dis- cerned, whereas I in the circumstances supposed am really or inwardly knavish not human, and rec- ognize manhood therefore only as accomphshed knavery. In like manner precisely my rational manhood, which stands in the freedom of my understanding DO NOT MAKE HIM MAN : 455 to discriminate the true from tlie false, proves itself no manhood at all, but the veriest monkeyhood and mockery of humanity, if I forbear to exert it, or devoutly exercise myself in it, htj actually loving ike true and rejecting the false. To be sure, as some of our egregious logic-choppers counsel me to do, I may interpret my moral and rational manhood into a state of utter serene indifference with respect to the rival claims of good and evil upon my heart, and the rival claims of truth and falsity upon my understanding. But in that event my vaunted moral and rational manhood turns out a mere faculty to prefer good or evil, truth or falsity, at my own un- godly pleasure. In which case my moral manhood is my right to do just as I please, without regard to any holier or higher law. In other words it ex- presses my actual independence both of God and man. But this is a manhood which can never come from God, for there is no fibre of foundation for it in the whole range of His perfection. He himself has no independence of action, and He could never impart to His creature therefore what He did not Himself possess. His inmost life is dependent upon His actually equalizing His creature with Himself, or making Himself over to the latter in all the plen- itude of His resources. And all His action is con- strained by this unselfish end, and addressed unfal- 456 THEY MERELY QUALIFY teringly to its promotion. Any freedom or man- hood therefore which looks towards independence, or makes the moral and rational subject his own law, should be indignantly spurned by him as a base infernal counterfeit of the true Divine manhood. That a man in loving good should feel himself free to love its opposite can only be possible on one of two conditions : Either good and evil must be at bottom identical, and differ only in name; which is an hypothesis too obviously stupid to invite con- sideration : or else the man does not honestly love good but for some temporary motive is willing to make a pretence of loving it : and this hypothesis thoroughly vitiates the problem, or reduces it to actual insignificance, by changing its terms. I do not deny of course that a man may actually or out- wardly take tea, when he really or inwardly prefers coffee. But that while he prefers coffee he should also feel himself free to prefer tea, is plainly a phe- nomenon referring itself to that grotesque world imagined by the late hard-headed but warm-hearted Mr. Mill, which no sun enlightens, but where a mild moonshine reigns supreme, and even the vir- tuous multiplication table grows wanton and indul- gent, permitting all its tender mathematical nurs- lings to say twice two are five, and if five, why not fifty? HIM TO BECOME MAN. 457 At any rate there is no such freedom as that here combated in God, and there can be no appearance of it in man His creature save as a diabohc illusion.* Whatever his silly creature may do in the premisses, * Swedenborg accordingly traces the existence of tlie hells to the strength of this illusion in men, and this undeniably is a sufficient foundation for them. That is to say, the hells simply mean — nothing more and nothing less — the enforced or obligatory companionship of all those among men who feel no inward liaison, or Divine-humau bond of cohesion, drawing them to unity, and hence depend for their highest happiness upon the activity of the prudential instinct in them, or a life involving the perpetual balance of hope and fear. And if men really persuade themselves that their Divinely given manhood or free- dom involves the power of being good or evil at their own pleasure, I cannot for my part see that the hells are not the logical spontaneous outcome of such a persuasion. In fact their existence at once ceases to be a mystery, and becomes an open exigency of human welfare, an obvious inevitable necessity of man's natural development. For human nature, or the human race, is absolutely conditioned for its develop- ment upon man's power to love God (tliat is, infinite goodness and truth) apparentli/, but not really, of himself; or as Swedenborg writ- ing in Latin prefers to say, as of himself, but not of himself. For if man spontaneously loved goodness, loved it of his own natural force, he would be God, and no longer a creature of God ; and yet, so long as he does not love God or goodness of himself, if lie did not at the same time love Him apparentli/ of himself, or as of himself, he would not even have a negative approximation to his creative source, much less furnish a background or basis to the Divine being for the development of human nature. And failing both a positive and negative relation to God, of course the man can have no reality in him, spiritual or natural, and must remain the subject of a mere illusory or fantastic existence : and to be such a subject is to be a hell in least or miniature form. 458 GOD IS ENTIRELY WITHOUT A POWER or rather boast himself of doing, God at least has no privilege of arbitrary or capricious action, because He has not the slightest power to do as He pleases, or make Himself into His own end of action. For God, as I have often enough said already, is essen- tially creative, creative by the whole force of His being; and His action therefore is inexorably under law to the welfare of His creature. He is not cre- ative from any inspiration of the head merely, that is, morally or voluntarily creative, as either from a sense of duty to His creatures, or from a sense of what is expedient with a view to enliven His own solitude, or better His own condition in any way; for His creatures have their being wholly in Him, and consequently can impose no outward obligation upon Him, and He himself consequently has no ex- istence save in His creatures, and can therefore feel no obligation to act with a view to the improvement of His own independent circumstances. Neither is He aesthetically creative, like the artist, that is, cre- ative from the hand, through taste or overpowering attraction : for His taste would utterly revolt from producing such loathsome vermin as His creatures are bound to be in their finite selves, if like the art- ist's creations those finite selves were unhappily to know no natural renewing. He is creative therefore only from the heart, that is, freely or spontaneously OF INDEPENDENT ACTION. 459 creative, creative in liimself, or with His whole vital energy: which insures in the first place that His inmost life lies in communicating His own deathless being to the creature, that is, His own infinite and eternal potencies, felicities, and beatitudes, and then that all His innocent wisdom will go to supplant or render superfluous the wretched 5^^-righteousness of the creature, in endowing him first of all with a righteous nature, or stable constitutional basis of ex- istence, whence he in his turn may every way freely or spontaneously react to the interior creative im- pulsion. We see then that the creator does not, and abso- lutely cannot, spiritually exist save in His creature. A fortiori therefore He has no power to make His own pleasure the law of His action, unless the bless- edness of his creature be always subsumed in that pleasure as its total substance and root. Thus He is absolutely inhibited by His essential infinitude or freedom from making self the end of His action, or ever doing under any circumstances as He pleases, without reference indeed to everybody else's welfare. He cheerfully allows us a monopoly of that saddest and most vulgar delight. For he who is essentially free or infinite as being creative, abjures all empirical, or felt conscious and phenomenal, freedom, because He is absolutely without selfhood, and has no contact 460 OUR MORAL AND RATIONAL MANHOOD with the unclean thing save in His creatures. All His infinitude or freedom is mortgaged to the neces- sity of bringing His creature to ripe natural or spontaneous manhood, and only when that burden is accomplished and that most Divine pleasure realized will He enjoy His first faint chance of seeing Him- self reflected — in the happiness of His creature. Very well then : our moral and rational manhood is not our natural manhood, but only a distorted and diffracted image of that unitary substance as seen in the mirror of our divided and discordant personalities. It is a similitude of our natural manhood, a sort of photographic negative of it, by whose constant school- ing the Divine Artist prepares and leads us eventually to descry and detect the positive truth upon the sub- ject. It is a similitude or semblance which we in- deed are long content to mistake for the reality, but this comes of our never having yet known the reality by living contact, but only by hearsay. It is true that the reality once made itself known to men in a general prophetic way through a very remarkable historic person, miraculously born at a great crisis of the church's history, when the church itself was putting off her ritual or ceremonial dress, and taking on actual flesh-and-blood substance. But the great and merciful truth at that time clothed itself in such weak, dejected, dying literal form, that though its NOT A REAL BUT A TYPICAL MANHOOD. 461 perfect humanity was seen, men have always been afraid to argue from that to its equally perfect divin- ity, and have been content instead simply to cherish the ecclesiastical tradition on that subject.* On his * This tradition does not appear to have profited men mucli intellec- tually, but doubtless it has kept their memory, which is the porch of the mind, open to the admission of the spiritual truth on the subject. I remember a good many years ago conversing on this topic with a highly valued friend, who was besides a very distinguished name in literature. And he said in reply to an account I had been giving him of Sweden- borg's intellectual position with respect to the Christian revelation : The fatal critlcisiii upon C/irisfs jirefeiisioii to Diciuifi/ will always be the fact of his having ignominiousli/ succumbed to his persecutors, when if his personal pretension were well founded he ought to have annihilated them. If Christ had ever authentically revealed Deity, he would have fashed home the conviction of his truth to every man that saw him, in sheer despite too of the maiUs stro7igest rational prepossessions to the contrary. I ventured to rejoin, that my friend's own notion upon the subject seemed to reduce poor deity to what the French woidd call an impasse within his own creation, or what our own rustics would call " a very hard fix," inasmuch as it neither allows him to become known in himself, nor yet permits him to reveal himself to men's knowledge in the nature of his creature, without effcetually blighting at the same time all that makes that nature respectable, namely, the creature's freedom and rationality. This freedom and rationality, which alone give the creature a conscious- ness of manhood, are however what actually prevent his ever truly knowing God, for he both instinctively and deliberately claims these superb attributes as proper to himself or his own absolutely, and not exclusively as God^s attributes in his common nature. A revelation from God accordingly which should involve the least practical dishonor to these attributes in man, is not to be thought of as possible. In fact the only revelation at all possible or thinkable from God to man, is one which conciliates every man's private freedom and rationality to it. 462 CHRIST CRUCIFIED THE ONLY ADEQUATE Jewish side of course, which related him to a purely typical or figurative economy, Christ was bound to be accursed both of God and man ; for his personal pre- tension as the Jewish Messiah, sent to deliver his brethren according to the flesh from bondage, and exalt them to the supremacy of the nations, was as full of inward blasphemy toAvards the Divine name, as it was full of outward contempt towards the human race. It w^as only in his crucified aspect accordingly that he vindicates the spiritual truth of his mission, or allows any trace of his divinity to appear ; for here he is seen, in open contempt of every most sacred national tradition, sternly rejecting from himself a Jewish humanity, and putting on a universal one, that is, one which should be neither Jewish nor Gentile, but broadly unitary or universal, to the effacing of all literal discriminations whatever among men. But I have not taken so much pains to prove to you : that our moral and rational manhood is not a real manhood, but a quasi one, intended only as a preparation for our real or natural manhood when it comes : altogether for its own sake, but with a view also to get some needed light upon the answer to our third question, which it is high time we were con- by showing that God himself is the sole aud iiifiuite substance of these attributes, only in natural or impersonal, that is, universal aud unitary, human form. KEVELATION OF GOD IN HUMANITY. 463 sideriiig. Our actual manhood as we have seen is an altogether provisional one intended to serve as a mere scaffolding to our natural manhood, as a mere foil or set-off to it when it is ready to appear in its own infinite Divine lustre ; and I have thought that by first famiharizing your imagination somewhat with this mighty truth I might assist you to a fuller com- prehension of the answer I am about to give to the question now before us. That question may be for- nuilated thus : What precise macliinery does human nature require in order historically to avouch itself, or authenticate itself to the public conscience of men, as THE world's sole LIFE : SO at loug kst harmonizing the finite, phenomenal, or merely conscious man with God's spiritual infinitude or freedom ? The machinery of human nature by which it ulti- mates its proper life, turning all history into its obe- dient vehicle, and filling the entire public conscious- ness of men with its renown, is solely made up of what we call the church and the ivorld. These terms, however, remember, express no objective but a purely subjective reality in man ; or what is the same thing they neither of them indicate a physical or material, but on the contrary a purely metaphysical or imma- terial, substance in humanity. And a purely metaphys- ical or immaterial substance in humanity can only be A MIND. This accordingly is what the church and the 4G4 THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD PURELY loorld mean, a jpurely mental or subjective realitij in man; the former term being employed to designate in those to whom it is applied affections turned heaven- ward ; the latter, affections tmnied earthward : " the church," in other words, characterizing the sphere of man's progressive mental development, " the world " the sphere of his arrested mental development. The whole of humanity is comprised in these two forms of man's mental subjectivity. A man must neces- sarily have his affections turned towards heaven, or confined to earth, and according as either is the case with him, he is a least or miniature form either of the church, or the world. The church of course tends to issue spiritually in a heaven made up of inwardly regenerate men, and the world in its turn to issue in a coequal hell made up of inwardly Regenerate men, so that unless the Divine power had effectually ultimated itself in human nature, and thereby broken up this fatal spiritual equilibrium, heaven and hell must have practically forever divided the spiritual world between them, and forever have given the lie consequently to the sovereign truth of God's creative infinitude. Nothing, I venture to say, can be imagined more re- volting to our humanitary instincts of such infinitude than the perfectly veracious or unexaggerated pictures which Swedenborg's phlegmatic genius gives us of SUBJECTIVE REALITIES IN MAN. 4G5 what he witnessed among oiu* post-mortem friends and cronies. If the friend or crony in question had been on earth a reverential person, and now consequently had his lot among the angels, Swedenborg invariably found that the man's natural imbecility, or insufficiency to himself, had undergone no change through the event of death, the man being all the while spiritually restrained from the frankest pt^'ojligacy solel// by the providence of God exerted towards him through ancjelic association. And if, on the other hand, our deceased acquaintance had been on earth an habitual votary of self and the world, and therefore inwardly a mocker of God and the neighbor, so that he now found himself to his great delight enrolled among the lowest of the low, Swedenborg nevertheless invariably discovers that the fellow's braggart selfhood is at bottom a pure hallu- cination or sham, dependent every moment for its illu- sory existence upon hellish influx and association, and tolerated only for some transient incidental use pro- moted by it to other existence. Could any thing then well be more hideous and implacable to human pity than such a picture of men's celestial or infernal possibilities, if the picture were intended to represent an eternal reality ? The picture to be sure was not intended to represent an eternal reality, but we see from it excellently well what the eternal reality must have been (only much worse), 4GG THEY ARE THE SIMPLE MACHINERY if the true sphere of the creative infinitude had not been reahzed in our nature. Now the evolution of man's natural destiny, and with it consequently his participation of immortal life, has been strictly iden- tical with the growth of the civilized State, that is, with the growth of our earthly life out of absolute bondage to the material elements of nature into a con- dition of free citizenship : so that we may say with entire truth that the advent of this (prospectively) free State of man on earth under which we have the hap- piness to live, has been the fruit of a gradually fiercer attrition between the church and the world, and of that exclusively. The two universally recognized elements then of our Christian civilization, which are the church and the world, make up between them that requisite ma- chinery of human nature by whose conflicting yet con- current play it finally avouches itself the supreme law of man's activity. I do not say, mind you, that the church and the world are in the least identical with human nature, or that they have any claim to a parti- cle of her Divine prestige and dignity. God forbid ! All I say is that they constitute the mere machinery of human nature by which it gradually works itself out to the light of day. They are the simple machineri/ of its evolution by which it eventually succeeds in bringing itself to men's recognition as the conditio OF OUR NATURAL EVOLUTION. 467 sine qua non of their Divine and immortal life. Their sole historic or Providential purpose has been to serve as a platform to the development of men's real or natural consciousness, as utterly distinct from and in- veterately hostile to their phenomenal or personal con- sciousness \ and when this use has been accomplished they are bound, both of them, to tumble off into " the condition of weeds and worn-out faces." Thus the church and the world bear to each other the relation of base and superstructure, or negative and positive conditions of one and the same metaphysic result, that result being the evolution of humanity, or of men's natural consciousness in orderly social form. The incessant attrition to which these base mechanical factors of human nature are doomed by their fierce mutual antagonism, is practically obviated in great part by their engendering between them what we term the civilized State of man, as a temporary compromise between creature and creator, or a richly provisional outcome of human destiny while the social form of our nature is still unachieved, or its grand consummate celestial flower is still in abeyance to the coarse earthly necessities of leaf, and stem, and roots. And they both appear at last so approximately humanized, or weaned of their inveterate animosity, in their child the State, but especially in their grandchild, which is the free State or republic, that although they have neither 468 THE EXISTING WORLD-WIDE of them the least intrinsic fitness to guide or control human destiny, they have yet somehow had the art or address to perpetuate their bad empire over the hu- man mind down to this very day. This in fact is to-day the world-wide tragedy of human life. Human life, even now when its social ideal is so imperfectly realized even in thought, would be a tolerably clean and reputable thing, were not its honest interests so foully complicated with those of the self-righteous church and the selfish, servile world. This metaphysic machinery of human nature, instead of any longer unconsciously promoting its evolution, has consciously undertaken to stifle it by compressing its nascent activity. That is to say, the church and the world, in the persons of their more astute adepts, have begun dimly to feel that their joint offspring, the civilized State of man, was never intended by God's providence to be a finality in human history. I don't mean to say that worldly and ecclesiastical minds, however astute they may be, have the least intellectual insight of God's truth upon this subject. I have n't the slightest idea, myself, that they have any intel- lectual discernment of the entirely provisional or provi- dential character of our existing civilization, in that it was intended to base a Divine-fiafural evolution of human life, and disappear bag and baggage when that end is accomplished. But these secular and ecclesi- TRAGEDY OF HUMAN LIFE 4G9 astical minds are at least in sensible contact with the actual facts and leading providential tendencies of the time, and their own inordinate self-love and love of rule insure that none shall feel so keenly as they the gathering clouds that arc rolling up from within over the technical State, erelong to descend in floods of devouring rain, hail, and tempest upon the devoted heads of those whose hope in God is limited to it. Hence their present persistent efforts to perpetuate and extend their empire, by appealing no longer to the political or civic conscience of men for support, but to the hopes and fears of the private or personal consciousness. This however is a gross usurpation. Neither church nor world has a shadow of claim upon men's individual respect and attention, save in so far as men first of all have a purely superstitious regard for the State as a finality of God's earthly providence. Nothing can be more preposterous than this baleful superstition. The State has no permanent or absolute rights over the human conscience. It was never intended, as I have already shown, for any thing else than a mere locum tcnens, a simple herald or lieutenant, to Society, while Society itself was as yet wholly unrecognized, and indeed undreamt of, as the sole intellectual truth of man's Divine-natural destiny. And the church mean- while as the genitor of this temporary civihzed State 470 IS THAT CHURCH AND WORLD PERSIST of man, has no other office in the name of the celes- tial or paternal providence that presides over it, than prophetically to promise every man a mens sana, that is, a sound mind. Neither has the world, as the genitrix of the State, any other office derived from the earthly or maternal providence involved in the State, than prophetically to promise every man a corpus saniim, that is, a sound body, wherein his mens sana may house itself with comfort, and exercise its power unimpeded. But no one has ever been such an abject noodle as to maintain that this Divine prophecy and promise in behalf of universal man kept up by the church and the world, were ever intended to be ful- filled by the merely instituted State of man, that is, by a regimen of mere citizenship, in which the con- science of men should be persistently held submissive to tutors and governors. At all events, the actual facts of the case must soon disenchant him. For no fact is more notorious than that there is actually no man within the precincts of civilization possessing an absolutely healthy mind, or an absolutely healthy body. In truth the church and the world, in generating civil- ization, have had a purely prophetic relation to the human mind, and no pretension can be more utterly absurd on their part than to claim any relevancy to man's living or spiritual consciousness. They have never had the slightest claim to human respect in IN BURROWING IN MEN'S PRIVATE CONSCIENCE. 471 themselves, but only in producing their joint offspring, the State. They rightfully end or merge in her forma- tion, and have no logical pretension to survive it a single instant. Above all and at this day they have no particle of right to arrogate the least control over the mind of any man who does not conscientiously iden- tify his manhood with the State, or limit it to good citizenship, so forever rejecting the invitations of in- finite goodness and truth. For this empirical State of man, whereby he is providentially led into accurate self-knowledge, and so prepared for an immortal destiny, is with us — as our constitutional polity as a community announces — functus officio, or thoroughly exanimate as to the beneficent spiritual uses which once consecrated it to men's respect. Our constitutional polity as a com- munity makes no provision for priest or king, which seem essential to the State in its merely political form, and we may not unreasonably infer accord- ingly that the State mider these skies is casting its old political skin, and putting on one which is more decidedly flexible, and congruous with the perfected or social form of our nature. In other words : the common K life of man in this hemisphere is undergoing a marked ^. formal or providential change, in ceasing any longer \ to acknowledge outward sanctions, and learning more | and more to acknowledge only inward ones. Of ^ 472 STATES NO SOONER BECOME UNITED course this improvement in the common lot involves a corresponding demoralization in the private or per- sonal sphere, save where men's personal life distinctly reflects the common life, or acknowledges no law so sacred as that of the public welfare. For there are it must be admitted too many fierce and avaricious natures among us to whom the State no longer exists as the symbol or representative of an outward order in human life, and at the same time does not begin to re- veal itself as the symbol or representative of a much more constraining inward order, and all these neces- sarily look upon their fellow-men as delivered over to their use to be fleeced ad libitum. But notwithstand- ing these deplorable limitations I insist that the dis- tinctively common unconscious life of these spiritual latitudes — that is to say, the heart and mind of the- American people, uncontaminated by European and especially sacerdotal pauperism — is one of great eleva- tion. And there is no way to account for the fact but by acknowledging that the American State is really become the vehicle of an enlarged human spirit. I have myself no doubt of the constant operation of this cause.* Living as I for many years have done * It ought not to be forgotten in this connection that the form of our polity bears on its very face, that is, in its name, an intimation of the spiritual change it represents. It is not America, but the United States of America, "one out of many," as its motto reads, to "which the THAN SOCIETY IS INAUGURATED. among plain New England people, I am continually struck with the singular natural or interior refinement I encounter in persons who have obviously been all their lives without any exceptional outward advan- tages. They spread many of them such a humane or impersonal savor around them that they seem " native born " to the skies, and if their culture were only equal to their nature, or their manners as good as their morals, heaven would begin to be realized on earth. But we cannot have everything at once, and they give us the essential at least. The sum of all I have been alleging is that we as a community are fully launched at length upon that metaphysic sea of being whose mystic waters float the sapphire walls of the New Jerusalem, metropolis of earth and heaven. It is not a city built of stone nor of any material rubbish, since it has no need of sun or moon to enlighten it ; but its foundations are laid in the eternal wants or passions of the human heart sympathetic with God's infinitude, and its walls are the laws of man's deathless intelligence subjecting all things to his allegiance. Neither is it a city into which shall ever enter any thing that defileth, nor expiring states of Europe bow, or do deepest homage, in sending over to these shores their starving populations to be nourished and clothed and otherwise nursed into citizenship, which is a condition preliminary to their beiuEC socialized. 474 THE ONLY OBSTACLE TO GOD'S KINGDOM any thing that is contrary to nature, nor yet any thing that produceth a lie ; for it is the city of God coming down to men out of the stainless heavens, and there- fore full of pure unmixed blessing to human life, and there shall be no more curse. These things are hard to be believed as falling within the compass of our dishonored and bedraggled life. But this is only be- cause om- feeble-minded and narrow-hearted clergy have been so utterly incompetent as a general thing to divine God's infinitude, or enhghten the public sense in His adorable ways. For do not they them- selves regard our beggarly citizenship as the final achievement of God's omnipotence in our nature ? Do they not perpetually sacrifice the patient bleeding truth of human brotherhood or society to it ? Do they not consequently cling to their squalid and ven- omous little ecclesiasticisms as the last hope of hu- manity ? These very ecclesiasticisms it is which are the foulest stain upon humanity, and do more as Christ alleged than all the world to make men willing children of hell. At the bottom of every human heart, not ecclesiastically perverted, there is, we may be sure, a latent belief in God's spiritual omnipotence or in- finitude, and a hope of seeing it eventually realized in our natural form. But what chance have this benign belief and hope of surviving the torrent of falsity and unbelief which now descends from the Christian pul- IS THE HYPOCEISY OF THE CHURCH. 475 pit, orthodox and unitarian alike ? Christ's own name in the church has become a synonyme for the most signal dishonor shown to God's spiritual perfection, and he who was put to his death of shame only by the righteous men of his day and generation, now finds himself in ours resuscitated to one infinitely more infamous and helpless, in being made the shib- boleth of the frankest and most unconscious spiritual hypocrisy ever revealed under heaven. The best life of the world is growing more than suspicious of the sanctity which attaches to facts or events, and insists accordingly upon finding the Chris- tian facts and events interesting or memorable only in so far as they consent to represent a truth very much more universal than they literally, or on their face, constitute. And this accounts for that alleged " de- cease of faith," which has become among our dis- honest churchmen the fashionable religious cant of our day. Men of a spiritual or humanitary culture are becoming very contemptuous of any Divine cre- dentials that are not first of all exquisitely and in- tensely human. They unaffectedly resent the old dogmatic traditions of God's outward or physical activity in creation as dreams of the race's pagan infancy. They are ashamed any longer to acknowl- edge God as a clever charlatan or conjurer, seeking by an incongruous display of magical power and 476 THE LATE COLLAPSED MR. MOODY majesty to propitiate men's inward and rational rev- erence. And in confirmation of this statement I appeal to your own testimony whether, when an}' noisy " evangelist " so-called, like the late collapsed Mr. Moody, or the present distended Mr. Cook, comes along to insult this tender, ineffable Divine-natural renaissance in us, and menace it with the blight of the lower regions, you have not yourself always ob- served that the energumenous mountebank never suc- ceeds in doing any thing beyond inflaming his fellow- quidnuncs of the conventicle but convert himself into an object of quiet public contempt and derision ? This indeed is one of the most heavenly omens of our day, when we consider the hopeless inertness of the mass of men to the solicitations of spiritual truth, that some untidy zealot or other should ever and anon feel himself prompted by his irritable lusts to come forth from his subterranean lair, and vituperate the sun- shiny upper world — this sunshiny, respectable, com- monplace world — until by his grotesque antics he forces it in spite of itself to recognize the spiritual arrogance and blasphemy which are the veritable soul and substance of our professional religion. I don't, to be sure, very much love this respectable, commonplace world myself, and am very apt to feel my respiration impeded under its decent bondage ; but I easily con- done all its shortcomings, were they twenty times OR PRESENT DISTENDED MR. COOK. 477 greater than they are, whenever I am. thus made to see how steadfast a providential breakwater it makes to every recurrent wave of men's fanatical self-righteous- ness, or tyrannous love of dominion. But it is time to bring this letter, and the w^hole series of which it is a part, to an end, for though many an interesting point remains to be touched upon, I have substantially finished the task I con- templated when I set out, and my bodily health is no longer good enough to make work for its own sake attractive to me. Now that my task is done, I wish I could have accomplished it more skilfully ; though to have accomplished it at all, with the impover- ished nerves left me, is matter of no little thanks- giving. I have had no help in writing but that of the Holy Ghost, which nowadays is no private possession, but is the common property of all spiritually upright men, being the identical spirit of their nature. And accordingly my only dread all along has been lest my inevitably private and particular accents should some- how overlay and obscure its public or universal ones. What I thought by its inspiration to say to you at the beginning was a very simple thing. I intended to show the exact harmony between the literal per- sonal facts of Christ's life, and the spiritual or creative truth of which those facts have been our only adequate harbinger and revelation. Christ's suffering and glo- 478 THE AUTHOR TAKES AN AFFECTIONATE rified person was but a normal outcome and expression of the infinite creative love towards the human race, a love which contents itself with nothing short of the rescue of the created nature from the hands of the actual or phenomenal creature, and its exaltation to supreme dominion : and if we honor the historic type of this great transaction, much more ought we to hon- or the infinite and eternal spiritual substance which alone inwardly shaped it, and made it the only symbol of thoroughly perfect or Divine manhood the world has ever known, or ever will know. And having done this I thought to sing a paean over our despised and dishonored nature, which is at last enthroned in om- nipotent majesty above the spiritual world, so that the once divided but now united realms of heaven and hell fall beneath it, and equally attest its will : or if not equally, who knows whether in the miracu- lous providence of God, what is last in rank may not as heretofore avouch itself first in use ? This I repeat was all in effect I intended to say, and so do justice to the peaceful spiritual meaning of the Christian facts as they are reported in the gospels. But I found my pathway so beset with gainsaying not only on the part of our professional religionists, but on that also of our sectarian scientific zealots, that I was obliged to pay my respects to these several opponents as I went along, so that in spite of myself LEAVE OF HIS CORRESPONDENT, 479 my voice grew full of tumult even in setting forth the pacific gospel truth. The sectarian religionist cleaves to the Christian facts, hut denies their subserviency to a Idgher order of truth. The sectarian " scientist," as he is called, denies the authenticity of the Christian facts in submission to a lower order of facts. I hold the Christian facts to be authentic, because I see them to be needful ultimates or exponents of otherwise undis- coverable and inconceivable spiritual truth. Indeed I hold the life, death, and ascension of Jesus Christ to be the only facts of human history which are not in them- selves illusory or fallacious, because they alone base a new creation in man to which every fibre of his nature — starved and revolted by the actual creation — eagerly responds. But viewing the facts absolutely : that is, regarding them apart from the light they reflect upon the creative infinitude and the destiny of man the creature of that infinitude, and consequently as designed merely to set off the person of Christ to the everlasting homage of mankind : they seem to me utterly flat, vapid, and contemptible. I by no means desire to apologize then for the contentious strain of my letter, but prefer to end by rehearsing a lovely bit of Swedenborg's experience. " Once upon a time a numerous crowd of spirits was about me which I heard as a flux of something disorderly. The spirits complained, apprehending 480 BY A CITATION FROM SWEDENBORG, tliat a total destruction was at hand, for in the crowd there was no sign of association, and this made them fear destruction, which they supposed also would be total as is the case when such things [namely, the absence of mutual association] happen. But in the midst of this disorderly flux of spirits I apper- ceived a soft sound angelically sweet in which was nothing but harmony. The angelic choirs were witliin, and the crowd of spirits to whom the discord belonged was without. This flowing angelic strain continued a long while, and it was said that hereby was represented how the Lord rules things confused and disorderly which are without or on the surface, namely : by virtue of a central peace, whereby the inharmonic things in the circumference are reduced into order, each being restored from the error of its nature." If then you discern the central peace which is in my little book, I do not think its superficial polemics will seem out of place. And so, farewell. |Bns)B l^SS ^ssss ng^ra^R i^^wa^TO g^ji^jja P^^^iftr ^fo^p^ |j3SB^^js8iftr" gUEfflgKHVtf/^^ •oW^^^BM ^^ ^^rjTj ^ ^^^B ^^^S ^^^ ^m ^ ^^^m ^^^1^« nr^^raS sE^t n ^^^^^ ^ APPENDIX A. |EECY is equal wlietlier exhibited towards heaven or hell. It is of mercy to be punished, because all the evil of punislmient is made subservient unto good. — A. a 587. Equilibrium is so perfect in the spiritual world that evil always inevitably returns upon him who commits it, and so punishes him. This is called the permission of evil, and is allowed for the sake of amendment, and thus the Lord turns all the evil of punishment into good, so that nothing but good is from Him. — A. C. 592. An evil spirit told me that he was in heaven when he was in the life of self-love, and that it was impossible any other heaven could be than the one he made for himself. But it was replied that his (self-made) heaven is turned into hell whenever the real heaven flows into it. — A. C. 6484. By the marvellous providence of tlie Lord evils are con- tinually bent to good : for the Divine end to good universally reigns. Hence it is that nothing in the universe is permitted except for the end that some good may result from it. But whereas man has freedom to the intent thnt he may be re- formed, he is bent to good so far as he permits himself to be bent in freedom; thus continually from the most grievous 482 APPENDIX A. hell into which he strives assiduously to plunge himself, into a milder, if he absolutely cannot be led to heaven. — A. C. 6489 ; see also 3854. No evil can befall any one without its being immediately counteracted, for when evil preponderates tlien it is chastised, by the law of equilibrium ; but solely to this end, that good may ensue. — A. C. 689. "When any one in hell does evil, he is punished ; the Lord permitting this for the sake of his amendment, since He is essential justice. — True Christian Religion, 459. God governs and disposes all things by turning the evil of punishment and temptation into good. — A. C. 245. It is to be further observed that all evil inflows mto man from hell, and all good from the Lord through heaven. But the reason why evil, being thus an influx into man, is appro- priated to him or becomes his own, is because he believes and persuades himself that he thinks and does it of himself; where- as if he believed according to the truth of the case that it is always a veritable influx, evil would not then be appropriated to him, or become his own, but good from the Lord would be appropriated instead. For in this case w^hen evil flowed in the man would instantly think that it came from the evil spirits attendant upon him, and when he thought this, the angels would turn it aside or reject it. For the influx of the angels is into what a man knows and believes, and never into what he does not know and believe : since angelic influx is nowhere fixed or permanent save in things pertaining to man. When man thus makes evil his own, by obstinately believing that he originates it, he procures to himself a sphere of that particular evil, and so conjoins himself with hell, for in spir- itual life conjunction is effected by accordant spheres. Thus APPENDIX A. 483 the spiritual sphere of man or spirit exliales from the life of his love, and advertises his quality even to those at a distance from him. — A. C. 6206. They Avho think from an idea of space, as every one does who is in the world, perceive that hell and heaven are spatially very remote from man. But the fact is exactly contrary to their impression of it, heaven and hell being in man, and nowhere outside of him, heaven in the good man, and hell in the bad man. Furthermore every one after death floats into the exact heaven or into the exact hell with which he identifies himself in the world. — A. C. 8918. Sometimes spirits recently deceased, who have been evil inwardly during their life in the world, but outwardly orderly from prudence, comjjlain that they are not admitted into heaven, having apparently no other opinion of heaven but as a place into which admission is granted of favor. But they are told that heaven is denied to no one, and if they desire admission they may have it. But when they come into the most external and superficial of the heavenly societies, they perceive, by reason of the incongruity of the heavenly sphere with their own, what seems to them an infernal anguish and torment, and cast themselves down, saying that heaven is hell to them, and that they had no notion previously of its being such an uncomfortable place. — A. C. 4226. ^M ^^^E i ^^i^gl ^^m ^^^^^^ m ^^^l^^ras APPENDIX B. PROPRIUM OR SELFHOOD, THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL. AN^S appearing to himself to have a proprium, or private seKhood^ is a state, says Swedenborg, resem- bling sleep, because while he is in it he knows no otherwise than that he lives, tliinks, speaks^ and acts of him- self. When, however, he begins to know that this is false he starts as it were out of sleep and wakes up. — A. C. 147. Man^s proprium when viewed by heavenly light appears altogether like something osseous, inanimate, and thoroughly deformed, consequently as in itself dead. But when vivified by the Lord^s life it looks like flesh. Man^s proprium, or selfhood, is indeed a mere dead nothing, although to himself it looks so real and important as even to be his all. What- ever lives in man flows in from the Lord's life, and if this influx were arrested the man would drop stone dead ; for man is only an organ receptive of life, and according to his recipiency as an organ will be his reproduction of the life. Eeal proprium, or selfhood, belongs to the Lord alone, and from his proprium is vivified that of man. The Lord^s pro- prium is indicated by his saying after death to his disciples who thought him a spirit : " a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have/' — A. C. 149. APPENDIX B. 485 It has been proved to me by sensible experience that a man, a spirit, and an angel, considered in himself, is as the most vile and filthy excrement, and when left to himself breathes nothing but hatred, revenge, cruelty, and the foulest adulteries : these things making up his proprium, and will. This may appear to any person who reflects that man, "when first born, is more vile than any living animal, and that when he grows up, and is left to his own devices — unless he be prevented by external restraints, such as legal penalties, and those prudential restraints which he imposes upon himself in order to become great and rich — he would rush headlong into all sorts of wickedness, and never rest until he had subdued all men to himself, and seized their property, not sparing any but those who j)romised to become his slaves. Such is the nature of every man [by reason, no doubt, of the infinitude of his creative source, reflected in what is so obvi- ously unsuitable to reproduce it as the proprium, or private selfhood, of the creature] notwithstanding his own ignorance of it growing out of his actual inability to accomplish his latent evil purposes. But were it possible for him to accom- plish them, all restraints being removed, he would rush headlong into their execution. This is by no means the case with beasts, who are born, to a certain order of nature, and kill and devour purely to appease the cravings of hunger, and when this is satisfied they cease doing harm. — A. C. 987. A man's proprium, or private sclfliood, is actually his own particular hell, for by it he communicates with liell. Thus the selfhood of its o\m nature desires nothing more ardently than to precipitate itself into hell, and also to draw all others aloncc with it. — A. C. 1049. CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY University of California, San Diego DATE DUE SINT SPP 1 "^ NflSl lO KtPAIR- 1 CI 39 UCSD Libr. r^