Hegel's Philosophy of Mind Part 17

-- 554. The absolute mind, while it is self-centred _ident.i.ty_, is always also ident.i.ty returning and ever returned into itself: if it is the one and universal _substance_ it is so as a spirit, discerning itself into a self and a consciousness, for which it is as substance. _Religion_, as this supreme sphere may be in general designated, if it has on one hand to be studied as issuing from the subject and having its home in the subject, must no less be regarded as objectively issuing from the absolute spirit which as spirit is in its community.

That here, as always, belief or faith is not opposite to consciousness or knowledge, but rather to a sort of knowledge, and that belief is only a particular form of the latter, has been remarked already (-- 63 note). If nowadays there is so little consciousness of G.o.d, and his objective essence is so little dwelt upon, while people speak so much more of the subjective side of religion, i.e. of G.o.d's indwelling in us, and if that and not the truth as such is called for,-in this there is at least the correct principle that G.o.d must be apprehended as spirit in his community.

-- 555. The subjective consciousness of the absolute spirit is essentially and intrinsically a process, the immediate and substantial unity of which is the _Belief_ in the witness of the spirit as the _certainty_ of objective truth. Belief, at once this immediate unity and containing it as a reciprocal dependence of these different terms, has in _devotion_-the implicit or more explicit act of wors.h.i.+p (_cultus_)-pa.s.sed over into the process of superseding the contrast till it becomes spiritual liberation, the process of authenticating that first certainty by this intermediation, and of gaining its concrete determination, viz. reconciliation, the actuality of the spirit.

Sub-Section A. Art.

-- 556. As this consciousness of the Absolute first takes shape, its immediacy produces the factor of finitude in Art. On one hand that is, it breaks up into a work of external common existence, into the subject which produces that work, and the subject which contemplates and wors.h.i.+ps it.

But, on the other hand, it is the concrete _contemplation_ and mental picture of implicitly absolute spirit as the _Ideal_. In this ideal, or the concrete shape born of the subjective spirit, its natural immediacy, which is only a _sign_ of the Idea, is so transfigured by the informing spirit in order to express the Idea, that the figure shows it and it alone:-the shape or form of _Beauty_.

-- 557. The sensuous externality attaching to the beautiful,-the _form of immediacy_ as such,-at the same time _qualifies_ what it _embodies_: and the G.o.d (of art) has with his spirituality at the same time the stamp upon him of a natural medium or natural phase of existence-He contains the so-called _unity_ of nature and spirit-i.e. the immediate unity in sensuously intuitional form-hence not the spiritual unity, in which the natural would be put only as "ideal," as superseded in spirit, and the spiritual content would be only in self-relation. It is not the absolute spirit which enters this consciousness. On the subjective side the community has of course an ethical life, aware, as it is, of the spirituality of its essence: and its self-consciousness and actuality are in it elevated to substantial liberty. But with the stigma of immediacy upon it, the subject's liberty is only a _manner of life_, without the infinite self-reflection and the subjective inwardness of _conscience_.

These considerations govern in their further developments the devotion and the wors.h.i.+p in the religion of fine art.

-- 558. For the objects of contemplation it has to produce, Art requires not only an external given material-(under which are also included subjective images and ideas), but-for the expression of spiritual truth-must use the given forms of nature with a significance which art must divine and possess (cf. -- 411). Of all such forms the human is the highest and the true, because only in it can the spirit have its corporeity and thus its visible expression.

This disposes of the principle of the _imitation of nature_ in art: a point on which it is impossible to come to an understanding while a distinction is left thus abstract,-in other words, so long as the natural is only taken in its externality, not as the "characteristic" meaningful nature-form which is significant of spirit.

-- 559. In such single shapes the "absolute" mind cannot be made explicit: in and to art therefore the spirit is a limited natural spirit whose implicit universality, when steps are taken to specify its fullness in detail, breaks up into an indeterminate polytheism. With the essential restrictedness of its content, Beauty in general goes no further than a penetration of the vision or image by the spiritual principle,-something formal, so that the thought embodied, or the idea, can, like the material which it uses to work in, be of the most diverse and unessential kind, and still the work be something beautiful and a work of art.

-- 560. The one-sidedness of _immediacy_ on the part of the Ideal involves the opposite one-sidedness (-- 556) that it is something _made_ by the artist. The subject or agent is the mere technical activity: and the work of art is only then an expression of the G.o.d, when there is no sign of subjective particularity in it, and the net power of the indwelling spirit is conceived and born into the world, without admixture and unspotted from its contingency. But as liberty only goes as far as there is thought, the action inspired with the fullness of this indwelling power, the artist's _enthusiasm_, is like a foreign force under which he is bound and pa.s.sive; the artistic _production_ has on its part the form of natural immediacy, it belongs to the _genius_ or particular endowment of the artist,-and is at the same time a labour concerned with technical cleverness and mechanical externalities. The work of art therefore is just as much a work due to free option, and the artist is the master of the G.o.d.

-- 561. In work so inspired the reconciliation appears so obvious in its initial stage that it is without more ado accomplished in the subjective self-consciousness, which is thus self-confident and of good cheer, without the depth and without the sense of its ant.i.thesis to the absolute essence. On the further side of the perfection (which is reached in such reconciliation, in the beauty of _cla.s.sical art_) lies the art of sublimity,-_symbolic art_, in which the figuration suitable to the Idea is not yet found, and the thought as going forth and wrestling with the figure is exhibited as a negative att.i.tude to it, and yet all the while toiling to work itself into it. The meaning or theme thus shows it has not yet reached the infinite form, is not yet known, not yet conscious of itself, as free spirit. The artist's theme only is as the abstract G.o.d of pure thought, or an effort towards him,-a restless and unappeased effort which throws itself into shape after shape as it vainly tries to find its goal.

-- 562. In another way the Idea and the sensuous figure it appears in are incompatible; and that is where the infinite form, subjectivity, is not as in the first extreme a mere superficial personality, but its inmost depth, and G.o.d is known not as only seeking his form or satisfying himself in an external form, but as only finding himself in himself, and thus giving himself his adequate figure in the spiritual world alone. _Romantic art_ gives up the task of showing him as such in external form and by means of beauty: it presents him as only condescending to appearance, and the divine as the heart of hearts in an externality from which it always disengages itself. Thus the external can here appear as contingent towards its significance.

The Philosophy of Religion has to discover the logical necessity in the progress by which the Being, known as the Absolute, a.s.sumes fuller and firmer features; it has to note to what particular feature the kind of cultus corresponds,-and then to see how the secular self-consciousness, the consciousness of what is the supreme vocation of man,-in short how the nature of a nation's moral life, the principle of its law, of its actual liberty, and of its const.i.tution, as well as of its art and science, corresponds to the principle which const.i.tutes the substance of a religion. That all these elements of a nation's actuality const.i.tute one systematic totality, that one spirit creates and informs them, is a truth on which follows the further truth that the history of religions coincides with the world-history.

As regards the close connexion of art with the various religions it may be specially noted that _beautiful_ art can only belong to those religions in which the spiritual principle, though concrete and intrinsically free, is not yet absolute. In religions where the Idea has not yet been revealed and known in its free character, though the craving for art is felt in order to bring in imaginative visibility to consciousness the idea of the supreme being, and though art is the sole organ in which the abstract and radically indistinct content,-a mixture from natural and spiritual sources,-can try to bring itself to consciousness;-still this art is defective; its form is defective because its subject-matter and theme is so,-for the defect in subject-matter comes from the form not being immanent in it. The representations of this symbolic art keep a certain tastelessness and stolidity-for the principle it embodies is itself stolid and dull, and hence has not the power freely to trans.m.u.te the external to significance and shape. Beautiful art, on the contrary, has for its condition the self-consciousness of the free spirit,-the consciousness that compared with it the natural and sensuous has no standing of its own: it makes the natural wholly into the mere expression of spirit, which is thus the inner form that gives utterance to itself alone.

But with a further and deeper study, we see that the advent of art, in a religion still in the bonds of sensuous externality, shows that such religion is on the decline. At the very time it seems to give religion the supreme glorification, expression and brilliancy, it has lifted the religion away over its limitation. In the sublime divinity to which the work of art succeeds in giving expression the artistic genius and the spectator find themselves at home, with their personal sense and feeling, satisfied and liberated: to them the vision and the consciousness of free spirit has been vouchsafed and attained. Beautiful art, from its side, has thus performed the same service as philosophy: it has purified the spirit from its thraldom. The older religion in which the need of fine art, and just for that reason, is first generated, looks up in its principle to an other-world which is sensuous and unmeaning: the images adored by its devotees are hideous idols regarded as wonder-working talismans, which point to the unspiritual objectivity of that other world,-and bones perform a similar or even a better service than such images. But even fine art is only a grade of liberation, not the supreme liberation itself.-The genuine objectivity, which is only in the medium of thought,-the medium in which alone the pure spirit is for the spirit, and where the liberation is accompanied with reverence,-is still absent in the sensuous beauty of the work of art, still more in that external, unbeautiful sensuousness.

-- 563. Beautiful Art, like the religion peculiar to it, has its future in true religion. The restricted value of the Idea pa.s.ses utterly and naturally into the universality identical with the infinite form;-the vision in which consciousness has to depend upon the senses pa.s.ses into a self-mediating knowledge, into an existence which is itself knowledge,-into _revelation_. Thus the principle which gives the Idea its content is that it embody free intelligence, and as "absolute" _spirit it is for the spirit_.

Sub-Section B. Revealed Religion(172).

-- 564. It lies essentially in the notion of religion,-the religion i.e.

whose content is absolute mind-that it be _revealed_, and, what is more, revealed _by G.o.d_. Knowledge (the principle by which the substance is mind) is a self-determining principle, as infinite self-realising form,-it therefore is manifestation out and out. The spirit is only spirit in so far as it is for the spirit, and in the absolute religion it is the absolute spirit which manifests no longer abstract elements of its being but itself.

The old conception-due to a one-sided survey of human life-of Nemesis, which made the divinity and its action in the world only a levelling power, das.h.i.+ng to pieces everything high and great,-was confronted by Plato and Aristotle with the doctrine that G.o.d is not _envious_. The same answer may be given to the modern a.s.sertions that man cannot ascertain G.o.d. These a.s.sertions (and more than a.s.sertions they are not) are the more illogical, because made within a religion which is expressly called the revealed; for according to them it would rather be the religion in which nothing of G.o.d was revealed, in which he had not revealed himself, and those belonging to it would be the heathen "who know not G.o.d." If the word of G.o.d is taken in earnest in religion at all, it is from Him, the theme and centre of religion, that the method of divine knowledge may and must begin: and if self-revelation is refused Him, then the only thing left to const.i.tute His nature would be to ascribe envy to Him. But clearly if the word Mind is to have a meaning, it implies the revelation of Him.

If we recollect how intricate is the knowledge of the divine Mind for those who are not content with the homely pictures of faith but proceed to thought,-at first only "rationalising" reflection, but afterwards, as in duty bound, to speculative comprehension, it may almost create surprise that so many, and especially theologians whose vocation it is to deal with these Ideas, have tried to get off their task by gladly accepting anything offered them for this behoof. And nothing serves better to s.h.i.+rk it than to adopt the conclusion that man knows nothing of G.o.d. To know what G.o.d as spirit is-to apprehend this accurately and distinctly in thoughts-requires careful and thorough speculation. It includes, in its fore-front, the propositions: G.o.d is G.o.d only so far as he knows himself: his self-knowledge is, further, his self-consciousness in man, and man's knowledge _of_ G.o.d, which proceeds to man's self-knowledge in G.o.d.-See the profound elucidation of these propositions in the work from which they are taken: _Aphorisms on Knowing and Not-knowing, &c._, by C. F. G-l.: Berlin 1829.

-- 565. When the immediacy and sensuousness of shape and knowledge is superseded, G.o.d is, in point of content, the essential and actual spirit of nature and spirit, while in point of form he is, first of all, presented to consciousness as a mental representation. This quasi-pictorial representation gives to the elements of his content, on one hand, a separate being, making them presuppositions towards each other, and phenomena which succeed each other; their relations.h.i.+p it makes a series of events according to finite reflective categories. But, on the other hand, such a form of finite representationalism is also overcome and superseded in the faith which realises one spirit and in the devotion of wors.h.i.+p.

-- 566. In this separating, the form parts from the content: and in the form the different functions of the notion part off into special spheres or media, in each of which the absolute spirit exhibits itself; (a) as eternal content, abiding self-centred, even in its manifestation; () as distinction of the eternal essence from its manifestation, which by this difference becomes the phenomenal world into which the content enters; (?) as infinite return, and reconciliation with the eternal being, of the world it gave away-the withdrawal of the eternal from the phenomenal into the unity of its fullness.

-- 567. (a) Under the "moment" of _Universality_,-the sphere of pure thought or the abstract medium of essence,-it is therefore the absolute spirit, which is at first the presupposed principle, not however staying aloof and inert, but (as underlying and essential power under the reflective category of causality) creator of heaven and earth: but yet in this eternal sphere rather only begetting himself as his _son_, with whom, though different, he still remains in original ident.i.ty,-just as, again, this differentiation of him from the universal essence eternally supersedes itself, and, though this mediating of a self-superseding mediation, the first substance is essentially as _concrete individuality_ and subjectivity,-is the _Spirit_.

-- 568. () Under the "moment" of _particularity_, or of judgment, it is this concrete eternal being which is presupposed: its movement is the creation of the phenomenal world. The eternal "moment" of mediation-of the only Son-divides itself to become the ant.i.thesis of two separate worlds.

On one hand is heaven and earth, the elemental and the concrete nature,-on the other hand, standing in action and reaction with such nature, the spirit, which therefore is finite. That spirit, as the extreme of inherent negativity, completes its independence till it becomes wickedness, and is that extreme through its connexion with a confronting nature and through its own naturalness thereby investing it. Yet, amid that naturalness, it is, when it thinks, directed towards the Eternal, though, for that reason, only standing to it in an external connexion.

-- 569. (?) Under the "moment" of _individuality_ as such,-of subjectivity and the notion itself, in which the contrast of universal and particular has sunk to its identical ground, the place of presupposition (1) is taken by the _universal_ substance, as actualised out of its abstraction into an _individual_ self-consciousness. This individual, who as such is identified with the essence,-(in the Eternal sphere he is called the Son)-is transplanted into the world of time, and in him wickedness is implicitly overcome. Further, this immediate, and thus sensuous, existence of the absolutely concrete is represented as putting himself in judgment and expiring in the pain of _negativity_, in which he, as infinite subjectivity, keeps himself unchanged, and thus, as absolute return from that negativity and as universal unity of universal and individual essentiality, has realised his being as the Idea of the spirit, eternal, but alive and present in the world.

-- 570. (2) This objective totality of the divine man who is the Idea of the spirit is the implicit presupposition for the _finite_ immediacy of the single subject. For such subject therefore it is at first an Other, an object of contemplating vision,-but the vision of implicit truth, through which witness of the spirit in him, he, on account of his immediate nature, at first characterised himself as nought and wicked. But, secondly, after the example of his truth, by means of the faith on the unity (in that example implicitly accomplished) of universal and individual essence, he is also the movement to throw off his immediacy, his natural man and self-will, to close himself in unity with that example (who is his implicit life) in the pain of negativity, and thus to know himself made one with the essential Being. Thus the Being of Beings (3) through this mediation brings about its own indwelling in self-consciousness, and is the actual presence of the essential and self-subsisting spirit who is all in all.

-- 571. These three syllogisms, const.i.tuting the one syllogism of the absolute self-mediation of spirit, are the revelation of that spirit whose life is set out as a cycle of concrete shapes in pictorial thought. From this its separation into parts, with a temporal and external sequence, the unfolding of the mediation contracts itself in the result,-where the spirit closes in unity with itself,-not merely to the simplicity of faith and devotional feeling, but even to thought. In the immanent simplicity of thought the unfolding still has its expansion, yet is all the while known as an indivisible coherence of the universal, simple, and eternal spirit in itself. In this form of truth, truth is the object of _philosophy_.

If the result-the realised Spirit in which all meditation has superseded itself-is taken in a merely formal, contentless sense, so that the spirit is not also at the same time known as _implicitly_ existent and objectively self-unfolding;-then that infinite subjectivity is the merely formal self-consciousness, knowing itself in itself as absolute,-Irony.

Irony, which can make every objective reality nought and vain, is itself the emptiness and vanity, which from itself, and therefore by chance and its own good pleasure, gives itself direction and content, remains master over it, is not bound by it,-and, with the a.s.sertion that it stands on the very summit of religion and philosophy, falls rather back into the vanity of wilfulness. It is only in proportion as the pure infinite form, the self-centred manifestation, throws off the one-sidedness of subjectivity in which it is the vanity of thought, that it is the free thought which has its infinite characteristic at the same time as essential and actual content, and has that content as an object in which it is also free.

Thinking, so far, is only the formal aspect of the absolute content.

Sub-Section C. Philosophy.

-- 572. This science is the unity of Art and Religion. Whereas the vision-method of Art, external in point of form, is but subjective production and s.h.i.+vers the substantial content into many separate shapes, and whereas Religion, with its separation into parts, opens it out in mental picture, and mediates what is thus opened out; Philosophy not merely keeps them together to make a total, but even unifies them into the simple spiritual vision, and then in that raises them to self-conscious thought. Such consciousness is thus the intelligible unity (cognised by thought) of art and religion, in which the diverse elements in the content are cognised as necessary, and this necessary as free.

-- 573. Philosophy thus characterises itself as a cognition of the necessity in the content of the absolute picture-idea, as also of the necessity in the two forms-on one hand, immediate vision and its poetry, and the objective and external revelation presupposed by representation,-on the other hand, first the subjective retreat inwards, then the subjective movement of faith and its final identification with the presupposed object. This cognition is thus the _recognition_ of this content and its form; it is the liberation from the one-sidedness of the forms, elevation of them into the absolute form, which determines itself to content, remains identical with it, and is in that the cognition of that essential and actual necessity. This movement, which philosophy is, finds itself already accomplished, when at the close it seizes its own notion,-i.e. only _looks back_ on its knowledge.

Here might seem to be the place to treat in a definite exposition of the reciprocal relations of philosophy and religion. The whole question turns entirely on the difference of the forms of speculative thought from the forms of mental representation and "reflecting" intellect. But it is the whole cycle of philosophy, and of logic in particular, which has not merely taught and made known this difference, but also criticised it, or rather has let its nature develop and judge itself by these very categories. It is only by an insight into the value of these forms that the true and needful conviction can be gained, that the content of religion and philosophy is the same,-leaving out, of course, the further details of external nature and finite mind which fall outside the range of religion. But religion is the truth _for all men_: faith rests on the witness of the spirit, which as witnessing is the spirit in man. This witness-the underlying essence in all humanity-takes, when driven to expound itself, its first definite form under those acquired habits of thought which his secular consciousness and intellect otherwise employs.

In this way the truth becomes liable to the terms and conditions of finitude in general. This does not prevent the spirit, even in employing sensuous ideas and finite categories of thought, from retaining its content (which as religion is essentially speculative,) with a tenacity which does violence to them, and acts _inconsistently_ towards them. By this inconsistency it corrects their defects. Nothing easier therefore for the "Rationalist" than to point out contradictions in the exposition of the faith, and then to prepare triumphs for its principle of formal ident.i.ty. If the spirit yields to this finite reflection, which has usurped the t.i.tle of reason and philosophy-("Rationalism")-it strips religious truth of its infinity and makes it in reality nought. Religion in that case is completely in the right in guarding herself against such reason and philosophy and treating them as enemies. But it is another thing when religion sets herself against comprehending reason, and against philosophy in general, and specially against a philosophy of which the doctrine is speculative, and so religious. Such an opposition proceeds from failure to appreciate the difference indicated and the value of spiritual form in general, and particularly of the logical form; or, to be more precise, still from failure to note the distinction of the content-which may be in both the same-from these forms. It is on the ground of form that philosophy has been reproached and accused by the religious party; just as conversely its speculative content has brought the same charges upon it from a self-styled philosophy-and from a pithless orthodoxy. It had too little of G.o.d in it for the former; too much for the latter.

The charge of _Atheism_, which used often to be brought against philosophy (that it has _too little_ of G.o.d), has grown rare: the more wide-spread grows the charge of Pantheism, that it has _too much_ of him:-so much so, that it is treated not so much as an imputation, but as a proved fact, or a sheer fact which needs no proof. Piety, in particular, which with its pious airs of superiority fancies itself free to dispense with proof, goes hand in hand with empty rationalism-(which means to be so much opposed to it, though both repose really on the same habit of mind)-in the wanton a.s.sertion, almost as if it merely mentioned a notorious fact, that Philosophy is the All-one doctrine, or Pantheism. It must be said that it was more to the credit of piety and theology when they accused a philosophical system (e.g. Spinozism) of Atheism than of Pantheism, though the former imputation at the first glance looks more cruel and insidious (cf. -- 71 note). The imputation of Atheism presupposes a definite idea of a full and real G.o.d, and arises because the popular idea does not detect in the philosophical notion the peculiar form to which it is attached.

Philosophy indeed can recognise its own forms in the categories of religious consciousness, and even its own teaching in the doctrine of religion-which therefore it does not disparage. But the converse is not true: the religious consciousness does not apply the criticism of thought to itself, does not comprehend itself, and is therefore, as it stands, exclusive. To impute Pantheism instead of Atheism to Philosophy is part of the modern habit of mind-of the new piety and new theology. For them philosophy has too much of G.o.d:-so much so, that, if we believe them, it a.s.serts that G.o.d is everything and everything is G.o.d. This new theology, which makes religion only a subjective feeling and denies the knowledge of the divine nature, thus retains nothing more than a G.o.d in general without objective characteristics. Without interest of its own for the concrete, fulfilled notion of G.o.d, it treats it only as an interest which _others_ once had, and hence treats what belongs to the doctrine of G.o.d's concrete nature as something merely historical. The indeterminate G.o.d is to be found in all religions; every kind of piety (-- 72)-that of the Hindoo to a.s.ses, cows,-or to dalai-lamas,-that of the Egyptians to the ox-is always adoration of an object which, with all its absurdities, also contains the generic abstract, G.o.d in General. If this theory needs no more than such a G.o.d, so as to find G.o.d in everything called religion, it must at least find such a G.o.d recognised even in philosophy, and can no longer accuse it of Atheism. The mitigation of the reproach of Atheism into that of Pantheism has its ground therefore in the superficial idea to which this mildness has attenuated and emptied G.o.d. As that popular idea clings to its abstract universality, from which all definite quality is excluded, all such definiteness is only the non-divine, the secularity of things, thus left standing in fixed undisturbed substantiality. On such a presupposition, even after philosophy has maintained G.o.d's absolute universality, and the consequent untruth of the being of external things, the hearer clings as he did before to his belief that secular things still keep their being, and form all that is definite in the divine universality. He thus changes that universality into what he calls the pantheistic:-_Everything is_-(empirical things, without distinction, whether higher or lower in the scale, _are_)-all possess substantiality; and so-thus he understands philosophy-each and every secular thing is G.o.d.

It is only his own stupidity, and the falsifications due to such misconception, which generate the imagination and the allegation of such pantheism.

But if those who give out that a certain philosophy is Pantheism, are unable and unwilling to see this-for it is just to see the notion that they refuse-they should before everything have verified the alleged fact that _any one philosopher, or any one man_, had really ascribed substantial or objective and inherent reality to _all_ things and regarded them as G.o.d:-that such an idea had ever come into the hand of any body but themselves. This allegation I will further elucidate in this exoteric discussion: and the only way to do so is to set down the evidence. If we want to take so-called Pantheism in its most poetical, most sublime, or if you will, its grossest shape, we must, as is well known, consult the oriental poets: and the most copious delineations of it are found in Hindoo literature. Amongst the abundant resources open to our disposal on this topic, I select-as the most authentic statement accessible-the Bhagavat-Gita, and amongst its effusions, prolix and reiterative _ad nauseam_, some of the most telling pa.s.sages. In the 10th Lesson (in Schlegel, p. 162) Krishna says of himself(173):-"I am the self, seated in the hearts of all beings. I am the beginning and the middle and the end also of all beings ... I am the beaming sun amongst the s.h.i.+ning ones, and the moon among the lunar mansions.... Amongst the Vedas I am the Sama-Veda: I am mind amongst the senses: I am consciousness in living beings. And I am Sankara (Siva) among the Rudras, ... Meru among the high-topped mountains, ... the Himalaya among the firmly-fixed (mountains).... Among beasts I am the lord of beasts.... Among letters I am the letter A.... I am the spring among the seasons.... I am also that which is the seed of all things: there is nothing moveable or immoveable which can exist without me."

Even in these totally sensuous delineations, Krishna (and we must not suppose there is, besides Krishna, still G.o.d, or a G.o.d besides; as he said before he was Siva, or Indra, so it is afterwards said that Brahma too is in him) makes himself out to be-not everything, but only-the most excellent of everything. Everywhere there is a distinction drawn between external, unessential existences, and one essential amongst them, which he is. Even when, at the beginning of the pa.s.sage, he is said to be the beginning, middle, and end of living things, this totality is distinguished from the living things themselves as single existences. Even such a picture which extends deity far and wide in its existence cannot be called pantheism: we must rather say that in the infinitely multiple empirical world, everything is reduced to a limited number of essential existences, to a polytheism. But even what has been quoted shows that these very substantialities of the externally-existent do not retain the independence ent.i.tling them to be named G.o.ds; even Siva, Indra, &c. melt into the one Krishna.

This reduction is more expressly made in the following scene (7th Lesson, p. 7 sqq.). Krishna says: "I am the producer and the destroyer of the whole universe. There is nothing else higher than myself; all this is woven upon me, like numbers of pearls upon a thread. I am the taste in water;... I am the light of the sun and the moon; I am 'Om' in all the Vedas.... I am life in all beings.... I am the discernment of the discerning ones.... I am also the strength of the strong." Then he adds: "The whole universe deluded by these three states of mind developed from the qualities [sc. goodness, pa.s.sion, darkness] does not know me who am beyond them and inexhaustible: for this delusion of mine," [even the Maya is _his_, nothing independent], "developed from the qualities is divine and difficult to transcend. Those cross beyond this delusion who resort to me alone." Then the picture gathers itself up in a simple expression: "At the end of many lives, the man possessed of knowledge approaches me, (believing) that Vasudeva is everything. Such a high-souled mind is very hard to find. Those who are deprived of knowledge by various desires approach other divinities... Whichever form of deity one wors.h.i.+ps with faith, from it he obtains the beneficial things he desires really given by me. But the fruit thus obtained by those of little judgment is perishable.... The undiscerning ones, not knowing my transcendent and inexhaustible essence, than which there is nothing higher, think me who am unperceived to have become perceptible."

This "All," which Krishna calls himself, is not, any more than the Eleatic One, and the Spinozan Substance, the Every-thing. This every-thing, rather, the infinitely-manifold sensuous manifold of the finite is in all these pictures, but defined as the "accidental," without essential being of its very own, but having its truth in the substance, the One which, as different from that accidental, is alone the divine and G.o.d. Hindooism however has the higher conception of Brahma, the pure unity of thought in itself, where the empirical everything of the world, as also those proximate substantialities, called G.o.ds, vanish. On that account Colebrooke and many others have described the Hindoo religion as at bottom a Monotheism. That this description is not incorrect is clear from these short citations. But so little concrete is this divine unity-spiritual as its idea of G.o.d is-so powerless its grip, so to speak-that Hindooism, with a monstrous inconsistency, is also the maddest of polytheisms. But the idolatry of the wretched Hindoo, when he adores the ape, or other creature, is still a long way from that wretched fancy of a Pantheism, to which everything is G.o.d, and G.o.d everything. Hindoo monotheism moreover is itself an example how little comes of mere monotheism, if the Idea of G.o.d is not deeply determinate in itself. For that unity, if it be intrinsically abstract and therefore empty, tends of itself to let whatever is concrete, outside it-be it as a lot of G.o.ds or as secular, empirical individuals-keep its independence. That pantheism indeed-on the shallow conception of it-might with a show of logic as well be called a monotheism: for if G.o.d, as it says, is identical with the world, then as there is only one world there would be in that pantheism only one G.o.d.

Perhaps the empty numerical unity must be predicated of the world: but such abstract predication of it has no further special interest; on the contrary, a mere numerical unity just means that its _content_ is an infinite multeity and variety of finitudes. But it is that delusion with the empty unity, which alone makes possible and induces the wrong idea of pantheism. It is only the picture-floating in the indefinite blue-of the world as _one thing_, _the all_, that could ever be considered capable of combining with G.o.d: only on that a.s.sumption could philosophy be supposed to teach that G.o.d is the world: for if the world were taken as it is, as everything, as the endless lot of empirical existence, then it would hardly have been even held possible to suppose a pantheism which a.s.serted of such stuff that it is G.o.d.

But to go back again to the question of fact. If we want to see the consciousness of the One-not as with the Hindoos split between the featureless unity of abstract thought, on one hand, and on the other, the long-winded weary story of its particular detail, but-in its finest purity and sublimity, we must consult the Mohammedans. If e.g. in the excellent Jelaleddin-Rumi in particular, we find the unity of the soul with the One set forth, and that unity described as love, this spiritual unity is an exaltation above the finite and vulgar, a transfiguration of the natural and the spiritual, in which the externalism and transitoriness of immediate nature, and of empirical secular spirit, is discarded and absorbed(174).

I refrain from acc.u.mulating further examples of the religious and poetic conceptions which it is customary to call pantheistic. Of the philosophies to which that name is given, the Eleatic, or Spinozist, it has been remarked earlier (-- 50, note) that so far are they from identifying G.o.d with the world and making him finite, that in these systems this "everything" has no truth, and that we should rather call them monotheistic, or, in relation to the popular idea of the world, acosmical.

They are most accurately called systems which apprehend the Absolute only as substance. Of the oriental, especially the Mohammedan, modes of envisaging G.o.d, we may rather say that they represent the Absolute as the utterly universal genus which dwells in the species or existences, but dwells so potently that these existences have no actual reality. The fault of all these modes of thought and systems is that they stop short of defining substance as subject and as mind.