"The whole of our mental experience, from the earliest excitement of the soul by the first sensation to the ultimate development of its intellectual and moral powers, is expressed by one word, the life or active state of the soul. In the investigation of our interior being, two errors seem to have been committed in the analysis of the powers of the soul; either the inquirer has lost sight of the unity, which is implied in its existence, or the soul itself has been regarded wholly as a thinking being, and from its capacity to form ideas, all its actions have been derived. This is an imperfect view, which makes a right exposition of what is within us impossible, and which Jacobi wished to avoid, when he derived that which is highest in our intellectual life, religious belief, not from the capacity to know, but from the capacity to feel; or, as it is commonly denominated, the heart. The life of the soul commences with its first feeling, with its first sensation of pain by means of its connexion with the body, and through it with the external world. Through the impressions thus made the various affections and powers dormant in the soul are excited and developed. Without such excitement it would never awake out of its sleep, and the life or active state of the soul would never exist. Through the body the soul is put in a condition to act upon the external world, and becomes capable of its various manifestations. The body having performed its office is released from its service; and as was the birth so is the death of the body, the passing of the soul into a new sphere of existence. Through the effects of the external world, high manifestations of the life of the soul are revealed; but there is a yet higher influence acting upon the soul; there is a divine influence, that spirit which comes from God, and binds the soul to God; in other words, God acts immediately upon the soul; he wakes in it holy stirrings, and the more it follows them, the more it is united with God. Thus the soul is endowed with various capacities: but they require development, and a fit object to draw them into outward expression. This development and this object are of two kinds, from within and from without; through the body or by the soul itself; and they come from God and from the external world. Neither body nor spirit (in this peculiar use of the term) are the soul itself, but both are given to her, the body that she may rule it, the spirit that she may obey it. This distinction accords with the language of the Scriptures, ] Thess. v. 23, And I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved,' &c. Gal. v. 16, Walk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.' Ch. vii. 8, He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth to the spirit shall from the spirit reap life everlasting.""

66

On Consciousness.

Through the attention, which accompanies sensation, a higher grade of life is soon awakened and manifested, that is, conscious existence. The soul is now not merely a being that feels desires and is excited, but also a thinking being, and therefore a being which has in itself the cause of its own actions. It has an inward eye, by which it can discern itself, and perceive what passes within itself. It brings the various changing feelings and affections before its own consciousness as ideas, and can now retain them there. These it is able to unite after the necessary laws of its own consciousness; it thinks. In this consciousness we discern the soul as an abiding existence, and through it we have the conscious being, myself. With the light of conscious existence the soul comes out of its former darkness, having found the chord which strings all its different states to one

another, and now she can say to herself, I exist; I am myself; and I am perpetually the same being."

On Will.

"By the affections which accompany feeling the will is developed, the highest manifestation of the life of the soul, its power of self-motion; the power which it possesses to follow one or another of its different and often conflicting appetencies; to govern them, more or less, also its feelings and ideas; and to do this freely, that is, independently of any compulsory determination to act thus or otherwise; and therefore to direct its power upon this or that point, self-determined, but confined within the circle of its affections. This freedom of the will is an internal fact which no unbiassed observer can deny, because every man is conscious of it in every self-determination. By the freedom of the will every endeavour of the soul becomes its own act and deed, and by this the active, conscious being is raised to personality. The actions of men do indeed proceed out of the heart, in which is the spring of the affections which give to human life impulse and aim; but desire is not will; it is a merely passive state; it furnishes to us the objects of action, but it does not determine the direction of the active power. This is done only by the highest power of the soul, the will, through which its course of living becomes its own act, and through which it raises or degrades itself, according as it yields itself up to the higher or lower affections. Thus the relation between the three faculties of the soul, capacity to feel, consciousness and will, and the order in which they are unfolded, appears to be this-the heart is the source out of which the others flow, and out of which they create their matter and their object."

On the Ideas of Morality and Religion.

"An idea is the necessary inward image of the received impression; it is not a creation; it is only a representation. The clearer the impressions, the more distinct are the ideas produced by them. These are retained and expressed by us through the instrumentality of language; and a word has been described the vehicle of a thought formed out of an invisible breath. The information of others can obtain entrance into the mind only as it has a relation to our prior experience. We understand it only as it is composed of ideas which we can recognize; but if it contains any thing quite insulated, and which has never stood before our attention, it is not intelligible by us; for the soul can conceive only what it has experienced, and by no art can we raise in one born blind an idea corresponding to our idea of colour. It is the same with the ideas of intellect as with those of sensation : we obtain them only by reflection upon that which has first been felt by us. Whence should the thought of a suprasensible world occur to us, if not suggested to us by our internal feeling, by that inquisitive and monitory intimation from which the thought of it is at length clearly developed? How should the belief of immortality be awakened in us, if the heart did not feel a reluctance from annihilation, and an appetence to a continued existence? And how should we attain to the idea of a divine government, if the active feeling of our dependence upon a higher power did not force it upon our minds? The feelings exist within us before the ideas which represent them. They are the offspring of our inmost nature. They are not derived from impressions of the sensible world: rather, their source is a secret to ourselves, and we can ascribe them only to the influence of the great Creator: for this reason they are represented in the Scriptures as effects of the Holy Spirit. This source of ideas which are obtained from

feelings awakened in us by God, appears most plainly in that lofty idea out of which as a centre all the rest emanate, in the idea of holiness or moral goodness. What it is, we feel. It is the liveliest feeling of the heart. It is recognized in the involuntary homage which we pay it, in the inward satisfaction with which it is contemplated, and the dissatisfaction which is excited by its contrary, of both which the feeling is distinct and complete. The soul is conscious of the feeling, and seeks to make it plain to itself through the understanding; but the feeling is so far from being generated in us through the idea of the morally good, that the idea comes far behind the feeling, and it is long before it can assume a distinct form. We all feel what moral goodness is, but in whom does an exact and precise idea of it exist? Many thinking men have tried to set forth its essence, but none have been able to give a satisfactory definition; and the poet's expression, in its fullest sense, is true of virtue; What no understanding of the wise sees clearly, the feeling of the child puts forth simply in practice.' Were there, indeed, a being who could think, yet wanted the moral feeling, in no way could we give him the idea of moral goodness. He would have no sense, no organ for its reception. It would be to him as foreign as light to the blind. For this reason all moral instruction consists in awakening the moral feeling, more or less dormant in another, by placing before him our own, that he may by his own responding experience apprehend what is the morally good. This is, in fact, confessed by Tzcherner, when he says, the suggestions of the religious and moral feelings are sleeping tones, which then only awake to clearness and distinctness when they are awakened by words which strike upon them from without. The conclusion is, that not knowledge, but feeling, is the element out of which all the powers of the soul are developed. But when we derive ideas in this manner from the indwelling feelings, it is scarcely necessary to say, that by this is not meant the feelings and affections occasioned by the changes of human condition, or excited by the images of fancy, often very delusive, and to which the weakest souls are most a prey; but those deep feelings which lie originally in every soul of man, and which we may more or less benumb, confuse, and silence, but can never utterly extinguish within us; and such are the moral and religious feelings. These are so far from being changeable, uncertain, and obscure, that they are rather what is most determinate and abiding in our souls."

On the Nature and Origin of Moral Evil.

"When the soul is not well instructed in the relation of its sensual feelings and instincts to its higher affections, and does not order and rule them according to this view of them, they master the whole life of the soul, they manifest themselves as vehement desires and blind passions, which, like a torrent, carry the heart before it, and overwhelm in their unbridled course the more elevated feelings. In such a condition man is spoiled of his dignity, and is as if he were fallen under the dominion of a blind physical force. All the sensual inclinations and desires come out of self-love, the wish to be and to possess that which gratifies us; an affection of the mind which is not only innocent, but useful, since it is indispensable to the unfolding of the powers of the soul. But when, instead of ruling and moderating this selflove, we suffer it to be unbridled in its strength, and to contradict the dictates of the spirit, it settles into selfishness, the fountain of all moral evil. The sensual desires by their nature easily pass into selfishness; they seek only their own gratification; they wish to be, to possess, to reject, solely for

themselves, and the denial of their own gratification is wholly foreign to their nature. When they are strong they make war upon the noble feelings of justice and benevolence, and when the consequent selfishness fixes its roots in the soul, the heart becomes corrupt and vicious; and ambition, injustice, pride, avarice, envy, hatred, are its natural fruit. Great pains have been taken to discover the origin of the proneness to evil in man, since it could not come from God. A disposition to evil, as such, there is not in man. There is indeed a strong inclination to sensual pleasure, which often strives against the dictates of conscience, and then it becomes evil. Since the sensual part of his nature is first awakened in man, and that long before he perceives plainly in himself the monitions of the spirit, when the latter awake, he must immediately decree war against the sensual desires, which, because they are already strong, commonly resist the rule of the spirit. This is the origin of our sinfulness. Hence ignorance prevails over knowledge, sensual propensities over conscience, and the love of the world over the love of God. But since the higher instincts have already been awakened, the soul has always the power to subordinate the sensual desires to them, how difficult soever it may be; and if it omits to do this, it becomes conscious of guilt. The Creator has wisely ordained that habitual virtue shall be gained by conflict, because innate virtue were not virtue: no victory had been won by a struggle, no acquisition made by deserving it. Thus the sensual feelings and propensities are originally innocent, and they continue to be so as long as a discreet and strong will moderates, rules, and leads them, and subjects them to the nobler movements of the heart. The Scriptures justly derive the evil in man from the sensual part of his nature, denominated flesh (ap), not as if this were in itself evil, for it is also the work of God, and therefore as long as it is restrained by us within due limits, according to the will of the Creator, it is innocent and right but when our will, instead of leading, submits to be enslaved by it, which is entirely our own fault, it then becomes dominant in us, strives against the divine law which we have in our hearts, and is the parent of sin so James i. 13-15. The resistance of sense to the higher promptings of the Spirit is described by Paul, Gal. v. 17, For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.' But since sensualism consists in nothing else than the feelings and affections which are excited in us by the effects of the sensible world on our soul, its reign is justly described as the love of the world, and the servitude of the world. For the same reason Christ denominates those who delight in pleasure, children of this world, Luke xvi. 8; John xvii. 16. Hence John exhorts believers, 1 John ii. 15-17, Love not the world,' &c. This conflict, and sin, which is too often the issue of the conflict, are sufficiently explained by the freedom of the will, and the different influences which the soul receives from the sensible world and from above, without any necessity of assuming an entire corruption of human nature, and the influence of a powerful supernatural being who undoes the work of the Creator."

On a Divine Influence.

"There are in the soul of man affections which are not produced by means of the sensible world, but rise from the innermost depth of the heart; not changeable, like the passions of sense, but stamped with a fixed value; not a transient inebriety, but a feeling deep, elevated, and stable, conferring dignity and happiness on man. These are the religious feeling. They

awake within us after the powers of consciousness and will have been evolved, without our being able to regard them as the offspring of our minds. Rather, they are immediately imparted to our minds. They awake as of themselves in the heart, and we can regard them only as a gift from above.

"This view of an immediate divine agency upon our soul has been opposed, especially of late, by many divines as a mystical delusion. Tzcherner, in particular, says, Mysticism is the mistaken opinion that the spirit of man is immediately moved by the spirit of God, and is able to apprehend it. It appears to me to be an error, because in the thought of God I cannot penetrate to himself, the unapproachable light, and because I observe in myself no change in the heart which must be referred to an immediate influence of the Supreme.' We reply, It is true the human soul is not able to penetrate to God and his inaccessible light, but God can descend to us; he can communicate a ray of his light to our soul, and by his almighty power and universal presence act immediately upon our hearts, and such an effect we do in fact observe in our hearts. This is indeed acknowledged by Tzcherner, when he says, 'The Gospel were a dead letter, a dark and unintelligible word, were it not made quick and luminous by the light which God has kindled in our souls. Could we understand what Christianity communicates to us of the being and government of God without the glimpses of the supernatural, eternal, and infinite, in our soul? What were the promises of Heaven in the Gospel without the aspiration after a higher and greater good? Accordingly, Christianity leads us on to the plain and clear consciousness of that which we bear within ourselves. The revelation of God through the Gospel is a word of the Spirit, which, through the inward religious intimation and moral feeling, is apprehended by us in a definite form.' These expressions say plainly enough that the divining of the supernatural, the desire after what is higher, and the moral feeling, are originally prior in us: but these are the light which is kindled by God in our soul, and which is fanned by the word of Christ into a clear and ardent flame. We ascribe this to the immediate agency of God, because it exists in us in a quite different manner from the feelings of sense, which yet, like the whole of nature, are mediately the work of God. The latter are excited in us by external objects which we can shew, and they are not excited when these objects are remote from us : but with the religious feeling it is not so. Certainly we have not produced it; we have merely received it; and it often forces itself upon us in an unwelcome manner, when it brings with it painful reflections. We do not perceive whence it comes, for without being excited by any thing external, it enters secretly into the soul, and it exercises over it, not a compulsory, but a very powerful influence. There remains then nothing else, but that we consider the Creator himself as its author, and as we observe no means through which it is produced in us, we must ascribe it to the immediate act of God. It will be said, perhaps, that God, at the creation of man, imparted an index of the supernatural to his mind, and that now it belongs to the constitution of the soul, and with its development becomes plainer within it of itself. But it seems a contradiction to account it a part of our proper being, of ourselves, our personal unity, because it is often resisted, and more or less over-ruled and silenced within us. Besides, this view of the subject rests upon a merely human representation of the creation of God. We should consider creation not as an event which passes by, and after the accomplishment of which the Creator rested: no, it is a never-ending work, by which the universe is sustained and governed. The course of nature is progressive creation. The breath of God moves unceasingly in his world.