No More Learning

The first object on
which man's spirit of inquiry first attempted its strength was, at all
times, the universe. Hypotheses relating to the origin of the world, and
the combination of its parts, had occupied the greatest thinkers for
ages, when Socrates called down the philosophy of his day from heaven to
earth. But the limits of human wisdom were too narrow for the proud
intellect of his followers. New systems arose on the ruins of the former
ones. The penetrating mind of subsequent ages explored the immeasurable
field of possible answers to those ever-recurring questions, bearing on
the mysterious interior of nature, which could not be disclosed by any
human intellect. Some, indeed, succeeded in giving a certain coloring of
distinctness, completeness, and evidence to their views. There are many
conjuring tricks by which the pride of reason seeks to avoid the disgrace
of not being able to exceed the bounds of human nature in extending the
circle of its knowledge. It is a frequent conceit with men to believe
that they have discovered new truths, when they have dissected a
conception into the separate elements out of which it was first
compounded by an act of caprice. Not unfrequently an imperceptible
assumption lies at the basis of a chain of consequences, whose breaks and
deficiencies are cunningly concealed, while the false conclusions are
admired as sublime wisdom. In other cases, partial experiences are
accumulated to found a hypothesis, and all contradictory phenomena are
either ignored, or the meaning of words is changed according to the
requirements of the reasoning. Nor is it only the philosophical quack
who employs these conjuring tricks to deceive the public; without being
conscious of it, the most upright and the least prejudiced thinker uses
analogous means to satisfy his thirst for knowledge directly that he
issues from the only sphere where reason can legitimately enjoy the fruit
of its activity.

After what you have heard me say on former occasions, Julius, these
expressions must cause you no little astonishment; yet they are not the
product of a sceptical caprice. I could lay before you the foundations
on which they rest, but this would require, as prelude, a somewhat dry
examination into the nature of human knowledge,--and I prefer to reserve
this for a time when you will feel the want of it. You have not yet
arrived at that state of mind when humiliating truths on the limits of
human knowledge can have any interest for you. Make a first essay with
the system which has supplanted your own in your mind. Examine it with
the same impartiality as severity. Proceed in the same manner with other
theories with which you have recently become acquainted; and if none of
them can fully satisfy your requirements, you will ask yourself if, after
all, these requirements are reasonable.

Perhaps you will tell me this is a poor consolation. You will infer that
resignation is your only refuge after so many brilliant hopes had been
raised. "Was it worth while," you will say, "to challenge me to a full
exercise of my reason in order to set bounds to it at the very moment
when it was beginning to bear the noblest fruit? Was I only to become
acquainted with a higher enjoyment in order to feel with a double
keenness how painful it is to be thus bounded? "

Nevertheless, it is this very feeling of discouragement that I expressly
wish to banish from your soul. My aim is this: to remove all that places
an obstacle to the free enjoyment of your being, to bring to life in you
the germ of all lofty inspiration--the consciousness of the nobility of
your soul. You have been awakened from the slumber in which you were
rocked by the slavery of others' opinions; but you would never reach the
degree of grandeur to which you are called if you dissipated your
strength in the pursuit of an unattainable end. This course was all
proper up to the present time; it was the natural consequence of your
recently acquired freedom. It was necessary that the ideas which had
most engaged you previously should give the first impulse to the activity
of your mind. . Among all possible directions that your mind could take,
is its present course the most fertile in results? The answer would be
given, sooner or later, by your own experience. My part was confined to
hastening, if possible, this crisis.

It is a common prejudice to take as a measure of the greatness of man
that matter on which he works, and not the manner of his work. But it is
certain that a superior Being honors the stamp of perfection even in the
most limited sphere, whilst He casts an eye of pity on the vain attempts
of the insect which seeks to overlook the universe. It follows from this
that I am especially unwilling to agree to the proposition in your
papers, which assumes that the high destiny of man is to detect the
spirit of the Divine Artist in the work of creation. To express the
activity of infinite perfection, I admit that I do not know any sublimer
image than art; but you appear to have overlooked an important
distinction. The universe is not the pure expression of an ideal, like
the accomplished work of a human artist. The latter governs despotically
the inanimate matter which he uses to give a body to his ideas. But in
the divine work the proper value of each one of its parts is respected,
and this conservative respect with which the Great Architect honors every
germ of activity, even in the lowliest creature, glorifies it as much as
the harmony of the immeasurable whole. Life and liberty to all possible
extent are the seal of divine creation; nowhere is it more sublime than
where it seems to have departed most widely from its ideal. But it is
precisely this highest perfection that prevents us from grasping the
limits in which we are at present confined. We embrace only too small a
part of the universe, and the explanation of most of its discords is
inaccessible to our faculties. Each step we climb in the scale of being
will make us more susceptible of these enjoyments of art; but even then
their only value will be that of means, and to excite us to an analogous
exercise of our activity. The idle admiration of a greatness foreign to
ourselves can never be a great merit. A superior man is never wanting in
matter for his activity, nor in the forces necessary to become himself a
creator in his sphere. This vocation is yours also, Julius; when you
have recognized this you will never have a thought of complaining of the
limits that your desire of knowledge cannot overstep.

When you have arrived at this conviction I expect to find you wholly
reconciled to me. You must first know fully the extent of your strength
before you can appreciate the value of its freest manifestation. Till
then, continue to be dissatisfied with me, but do not despair of
yourself.






ON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE ANIMAL AND THE SPIRITUAL NATURE IN MAN.


"It behooves us to clearly realize, as the broad facts which have most
wide-reaching consequences in mental physiology and pathology, that all
parts of the body, the highest and the lowest, have a sympathy with one
another more intelligent than conscious intelligence can yet, or perhaps
ever will, conceive; that there is not an organic motion, visible or
invisible, sensible or insensible, ministrant to the noblest or to the
most humble purposes, which does not work its appointed effect in the
complex recesses of the mind, and that the mind, as the crowning
achievement of organization, and the consummation and outcome of all its
energies, really comprehends the bodily life. "--MAWDESLEY, Body and Mind.

"It is an indisputable truth that what we call the material world is only
known to us under the forms of the ideal world, and, as Descartes tells
us, our knowledge of the soul is more intimate and certain than our
knowledge of the body. "--HUXLEY.



INTRODUCTION.

S 1.


Many philosophers have asserted that the body is, as it were, the
prison-house of the spirit, holding it only too firmly to what is
earthly, and checking its so-called flight towards perfection. On the
other hand, it has been held by another philosophic school that knowledge
and virtue are not so much an end as a means towards happiness, and that
the whole perfection of man culminates in the amelioration of his body.

Both opinions [1], methinks, are one-sided. The latter system has
almost entirely disappeared from our schemes of ethics and philosophy,
and is, I am inclined to think, not seldom cast out with over-fanatical
zeal--(nothing assuredly is so dangerous to truth as when one-sided
opinions meet with one-sided opponents). The former system has on the
whole been more patiently endured, since it has the greatest capacity for
warming the heart towards virtue, and has already justified its value in
the case of truly great souls. Who is there that does not admire the
strength of mind of a Cato, the lofty virtue of a Brutus and Aurelius,
the equanimity of an Epictetus and a Seneca? But, in spite of all this,
the system in question is nothing more than a beautiful aberration of the
understanding, a real extreme, which in its wild enthusiasm underrates
one part of our human nature, and desires to raise us into the order of
ideal beings without at the same time relieving us of our humanity,--a
system which runs directly contrary to all that we historically know or
philosophically can explain either of the evolution of the single man or
of that of the entirer race, and can in no way be reconciled with the
limitations of our human soul. It is therefore here, as ever, the wisest
plan to hold the balance between the two opinions, and thus reach with
greater certainty the middle line of truth. But, inasmuch as a mistake
has very often been committed by treating the mental powers in an
exclusive way, that is, in so far as they can be considered in
independence of the body, and through an intentional subordination of
this same body, the aim of this present essay will be to bring into a
clearer light the remarkable contributions made by the body to the
workings of the soul, and the great and real influence of the animal
system of sensations upon the spiritual. But this is as like the
philosophy of Epicurus as the holding of virtue to be the summum bonum is
stoicism.

Before we seek to discover those higher moral ends which the animal
nature assists us in attaining to, we must establish their physical
necessity, and come to an agreement as to some fundamental conceptions.


[1] Huxley, speaking of psychology and physiology (idealism and
materialism), says: "Our stem divides into two main branches, which grow
in opposite ways, and bear flowers which look as different as they can
well be. But each branch is sound and healthy, and has as much life and
vigor as the other. If a botanist found this state of things in a new
plant, I imagine he might be inclined to think that his tree was
monoecious, that the flowers were of different sexes, and that, so far
from setting up a barrier between the branches of the tree, the only hope
of fertility lay in bringing them together. This is my notion of what is
to be done with physics and metaphysics. Their differences are
complementary, not antagonistic, and thought will never be completely
fruitful until the one unites with the other. "--HUXLEY, Macmillan's Mag. ,
May 1870.

Descartes' method (according to Huxley) leads straight up to the critical
idealism of his great successor, Kant, in declaring that the ultimate
fact of all knowledge is a consciousness and therefore affirming that the
highest of all certainties, and indeed the only absolute certainty, is
the existence of mind. But it stops short of Berkeley in declaring that
matter does not exist: his arguments against its existence would equally
tend to prove the non-existence of soul. In Descartes' stem, the body is
simply a machine, in the midst of which the rational soul (peculiar to
man) is lodged, and which it directs at its will, as a skilful engineer
familiar with its working might do--through will and through affection he
can "increase, slacken, and alter their movements at his pleasure. " At
the same time, he admits, in all that regards its mere animal life--in
active functions, such as those connected with hunger, respiration,
sleep, digestion; in many passive ones, such as we are accustomed to call
mental, as in memory, the perception of color, sound--a purely automatic
action of the body, which it pursues simply by following out its own
laws, independent of the soul's direction or interference.



PHYSICAL CONNECTION.

THE ANIMAL NATURE STRENGTHENS THE ACTION OF THE SPIRIT.

S 2. --Organism of the Operations of the Soul--of its Maintenance and
Support--of Generation.


All those conditions which we accept as requisite to the perfection of
man in the moral and material world may be included in one fundamental
sentence: The perfection of man consists in his ability to exercise his
powers in the observation of the plan of the world; and since between the
measure of the power and the end towards which it works there must exist
the completest harmony, perfection will consist in the highest possible
activity of his powers, and, at the same time, in their mutual
subordination. But the action of the human soul is--from a necessity
which I do not understand--bound fast to the action of matter. The
changes in the world of matter must be modified and, so to speak, refined
by a peculiar class of secondary powers--I mean the senses--before they
can produce in me any corresponding ideas; while, on the other hand, a
fresh set of organic powers, the agents of voluntary movements must come
into play between the inner spirit and the outward world in order to make
the changes of the former tell upon the latter; thus must the operations
of thinking and sensation alike correspond to certain movements of the
internal sensorium. All this goes to make up the organism of the soul's
activities.

But matter is spoil stolen from the eternal change, and wears itself
away, even as it works; in its movement its very element is driven from
its grooves, chased away and lost. Because now, on the contrary, that
simple essence, the soul, possesses in itself permanence and stability,
and in its essence neither gains nor loses aught,--matter cannot keep
step with the activity of the spirit, and there would thus soon be an end
of the organism of spiritual life, and therewith of all action of the
soul. To prevent which there must be added to the first system or
organic powers a second one, which shall make good the losses sustained,
and sustain the decay by a chain of new creations ready to take the place
of those that have gone. This is the organism of maintenance.

Still further. After a short period of activity, when the equal balance
of loss and reparation is once removed, man quits the stage of life, and
the law of mortality depopulates the earth. There is not room enough for
the multitude of sentient beings, whom eternal love and wisdom seemed to
have called to a happy existence, to live side by side within the narrow
boundaries of our world, and the life of one generation shuts out the
life of another. Therefore was it necessary that new men should appear,
to take the place of those who had departed, and that life should be kept
up in unbroken succession. But of creation there is no longer any trace;
what now becomes new becomes so only by development. The development of
man must come to pass through man, if it is to bear a proportion to the
original number, if man is to be cultivated into man. On this account a
new system of organic powers was added to the two that had preceded it,
which had for its object to quicken and to develop the seed of humanity.
This is the organism of generation.

These three organisms, brought into the most thorough connection, local
and real, go to form the human body.



S 3. --The Body.


The organic powers of the human body naturally divide themselves into two
principal classes. The first class embraces those which no known laws
and phenomena of the physical world enable us to comprehend; and to these
belong the sensibility of the nerves and the irritability of the muscles.
Inasmuch as it has hitherto been impossible to penetrate the economy of
the invisible, men have sought to interpret this unknown mechanism
through that with which they were already familiar, and have considered
the nerves as a canal conducting an excessively fine, volatile, and
active fluid, which in rapidity of motion and fineness was held to excel
ether and the electric spark. This fluid was held to be the principle
and author of our sensibility and power of motion, and hence received the
name of the spirit of life. Further, the irritability of the muscles was
held to consist, in a certain effort to contract themselves on the touch
of some external provocation. These two principles go to form the
specific character of animal organism.

The second class of powers embraces those which we can account for by the
universally-known laws of physics. Among these I reckon the mechanism of
motion, and the chemistry of the human body, the source of vegetable
life. Vegetation, then, and animal mechanism, thoroughly mingled, form
the proper physical life of the human body.



S 4. -Animal Life.


This is not yet all. Since loss or misfortune, when it occurs, falls
more or less within the will-power of the spirit, the spirit must be
able to make some compensation for it. Further, since the body is
subjected to all the consequences of this connection, and in the circle
of circumstances is exposed to countless hostile forces, it must be
within the power of the soul to protect the body against these harmful
influences, and to bring it into such relations with the physical
world as shall tend most to its preservation. The soul must therefore
be conscious of the present evil or good state of its organs; from a
bad state it must draw dissatisfaction, from a good state satisfaction,
so that it may either retain or remove the condition, seek it or fly
from it. Here then we have the organism at once and closely linked to
the sensational capacity, and the soul drawn into the service of the
body. We have now something more than vegetation, something more than a
dead model and the mechanism of nerves and muscles. Now we have animal
life. [1]

A healthy condition of our animal life is, as we know, most important for
the healthy condition of our spiritual life; and we dare never ignore the
animal life so long as we are not quit of it. It must therefore possess
a firm foundation, not easily moved; that is, the soul must be fitted and
prepared for the actions of our bodily life by an irresistible power.
Were then the sensations of our animal loss or well-being to become
spiritual perceptions, and had they to be created by thought, how often
would the soul be obscured by the overwhelming blaze of passion; how
often stifled by laziness and stupidity; how often overlooked in the
absorptions and distractions of business! Further, would not, in this
case, the most perfect knowledge of his economy be demanded of the animal
man--would not the child need to be a master in a branch of knowledge in
which, after fifty years of investigation, Harvey, Boerhaave, and Haller
were only beginners? The soul could thus have positively no idea of the
condition she was called upon to alter. How shall she become acquainted
with it? how shall she begin to act at all?


[1] But we have something more than the animal life of the animal
(beast). A beast lives an animal life in order that it may experience
pleasant sensations. It experiences pleasant sensations that it may
preserve the animal life. It lives now, therefore, in order that it may
live again tomorrow. It is happy now that it may be happy to-morrow.
But it is a simple, an uncertain happiness, which depends upon the action
of the organism, it is a slave to luck and blind chance; because it
consists in sensation only. Man, too, lives an animal life,--is sensible
of its pleasures and suffers its pains. But why? He feels and suffers
that he may preserve his animal life. He preserves his animal life that
he may longer have the power to live a spiritual one. Here, then, the
means differ from the end; there, end and means seem to coincide. This
is one of the lines of separation between man and the animal.



S 5. --Animal Sensations.


So far we have met with such sensations only as they take their rise in
an antecedent operation of the understanding; but we have now to deal
with sensations in which the understanding bears no part. These
sensations, if they are not exactly the expression of the present state
of our organs, mark it out specifically, or, better, accompany it. These
sensations have quickly and forcibly to determine the will to aversion or
desire; but, on the other hand, they are ever to float on the surface of
the soul, and never to extend to the province of the reason. The part,
accordingly, played by thought, in the case of a mental perception, is
here taken up by that modification in the animal parts of us which either
threatens the destruction of the sensation or insures its duration: that
is, an eternal law of wisdom has combined with that condition of the
machine which confirms its welfare, a pleasant emotion of the soul; and,
on the other hand, with that condition which undermines it and threatens
ruin, an unpleasant emotion is connected; and this in such a manner that
the sensation itself has not the faintest resemblance to the state of the
organs of which it is the mark. Animal sensations have, on this showing,
a double origin: (1) in the present state of the machine; (2) in the
capacity or faculty (of sensation).

We are now able to understand how it is that the animal sensations have
the power to drive the soul with an irresistible tyranny in the direction
of passionate action, and not seldom gain the upper hand in a struggle
with those sensations which are most purely intellectual. For these last
the soul has produced by means of thought, and therefore they can by
thought be solved or even destroyed. Abstraction and philosophy have
this power over the passions, over opinions--in short, over all the
situations of life; but the animal sensations are forced upon the soul by
a blind necessity, by a stern mechanical law. The understanding, which
did not create them, likewise cannot dissolve them and make them as if
they were not, though by giving an opposite direction to our attention it
can do much to weaken their power and obscure their pretensions. The
most stubborn stoic, lying in the agony of the stone, will never be able
to boast that he did not feel its pain; but, lost in the consideration of
the end of his existence, he will be able to divide his whole power of
sensation and perception, and the preponderating pleasure of a great
achievement, which can subordinate even pain to the general welfare, will
be victorious over the present discomfort. It was neither absence of nor
annihilation of sensation that enabled Mucius, while he was roasting his
hand in the fire, to gaze upon the foe with the Roman look of proud
repose, but the thought of great Rome in admiration of his deed. This it
was that ruled in his soul, and kept it grandly self-possessed, so that
the terrible provocation of the animal pain was too slight to disturb the
equal balance of his nature. But not on this account was the pain the
Roman suffered less than it would have been in the case of the most
effeminate voluptuary. True enough, the man who is accustomed to pass
his days in a state of confused ideas will be less capable of manly
action, in the critical moment of sensuous pain, than he who lives
persistently among ideas distinct and clear; but, for all that, neither
the loftiest virtue, nor the profoundest philosophy, nor even divine
religion, can save a man from the result of a necessary law, though
religion can bless her servants even at the stake, and make them happy as
the pile gives way.

The wisest purpose is served by the power which the animal sensations
possess over the perceptive faculty of the soul. The spirit once
initiated in the mysteries of a higher pleasure would look with disdain
upon the motions of its companion, and would pay no heed to the poor
necessities of physical life, were it not that the animal feeling
compelled it to do so. The mathematician, soaring in the region of the
infinite, and dreaming away reality in a world of abstractions, is roused
by the pang of hunger from his intellectual slumber; the natural
philosopher, dismembering the solar system, accompanying through
immeasurable space the wanderings of the planets, is restored by the
prick of a needle to his mother earth; the philosopher who unfolds the
nature of the Deity, and fancies himself to have broken through the
fetters of mortality, returns to himself and everyday life when the bleak
north wind whistles through his crazy hut, and teaches him that he stands
midway between the beast and the angel.

Against an excess of the animal sensations the severest mental exertion
in the end possesses no influence; as they continue to grow stronger,
reason closes her ears, and the fettered soul moves but to subserve the
purposes of the bodily organization. To satisfy hunger or to quench
thirst man will do deeds at which humanity will shudder: against his will
he turns traitor or murderer--even cannibal:--

Tiger! in the bosom of thy mother wilt thou set thy teeth?

--so violent is the influence of the animal sensation over the mind.
Such watchful care has the Creator shown for the preservation of the
machine that the pillars on which it rests are the firmest, and
experience has taught us that it is rather the over-abundance than the
want of animal sensations that has carried destruction with it.

The animal sensations therefore may be said to further the welfare of the
animal nature, just as the moral and intellectual perceptions promote
spiritual progress or perfection. The system of animal sensations and
motions, then, comprises the conception of the animal nature. This is
the ground on which all the activities of the soul depend, and the
conformation of this fabric determines the duration of the spiritual
activity itself, and the degree of ease with which it works. Here, then,
we find ourselves in possession of the first member of the connection
between the two natures.



S 6. --Objections against the Connection of the Two Natures, drawn from
Ideas of Morality.


There is no doubt that thus much will be conceded; but the next remark
will be: "Here ends, too, any determining influence the body may possess;
beyond this point the body is but the soul's inert companion, with whom
she must sustain a constant battle, attendance on whose necessities robs
her of all leisure, whose attacks and interruptions break the thread of
the most intricate speculation, and drive the spirit from the clearest
and plainest conceptions into a chaotic complexity of the senses, whose
pleasures remove the greatest part of our fellow-creatures far from their
high original, and reduce them to the level of the beasts, which, in a
word, entangles them in a slavery from which death only can deliver them.
Is it not senseless and injust," our complainer might go on to say, "to
mix up a being, simple, necessary, that has its subsistence in itself,
with another being that moves in an eternal whirl, exposed to every
chance and change, and becomes the victim of every external necessity? "
On cooler afterthought we shall perhaps see a great beauty take its rise
out of this apparent confusion and want of plan.



PHILOSOPHICAL CONNECTION.

ANIMAL IMPULSES AWAKEN AND DEVELOP THE IMPULSES OF THE SOUL.

S 7. --The Metho.


The surest way, perhaps, to throw some light upon this matter is the
following: Let us detach from man all idea of what can be called
organization,--that is, let the body be separated from the spirit,
without, however, depriving the latter of the power to attain to
representations of, and to produce actions in, the corporeal world; and
let us then inquire how the spirit would set to work, would develop its
powers, what steps it would take towards its perfection: the result of
this investigation must be founded upon facts. The actual culture of the
individual man is thus surveyed, while we at the same time obtain a view
of the development of the whole race. In the first place, then, we have
this abstract case: the power of representation and will are present, a
sphere of action is present, and a free way opened from the soul to the
world, from the world to the soul. The question then is, How will the
spirit act?



S 8. -The Soul viewed as out of connection with the Body.


We can form no conception without the antecedent will to form it; no
will, unless by experience of a better condition thereby induced, without
[some] sensation; no sensation without an antecedent idea (for along with
the body we excluded bodily sensations), therefore no idea without an
idea.

Let us consider now the case of a child; that is, according to our
hypothesis, a spirit conscious in itself of the power to form ideas, but
which for the first time is about to exercise this power. What will
determine him to think, unless it be the pleasant sensation thereby
arising, and what can have procured for him the experience of this
pleasurable sensation? We have just seen that this, again, could be
nothing but thinking, and he is now for the first time to think.
Further, what shall invite him to a consideration of the [external]
world? Nothing but the experience of its perfection in so far as it
satisfies his instinct of activity, and as this satisfaction affords him
pleasure. What, then, can determine him to an exercise of his powers?
Nothing but the experience of their existence; and all these experiences
are now to be made for the first time. He must therefore have been
active from all eternity--which is contrary to the case as stated--or he
will to all eternity be inactive, just as the machine without a touch
from without remains idle and motionless.



S 9. --The Soul viewed in connection with the Body.


Now let the animal be added to the spirit. Weave these two natures so
closely together as they really are closely woven, and cause an unknown
something, born of the economy of the animal body, to be assailed by the
power of sensation,--let the soul be placed in the condition of physical
pain. That was the first touch, the first ray to light up the night of
slumbering powers, a touch as from a golden finger upon nature's lute.
Now is sensation there, and sensation only was it that before we missed.
This kind of sensation seems to have been made on purpose to remove all
these difficulties. In the first case none could be produced because we
were not allowed to presuppose an idea; here a modification of the bodily
organs becomes a substitute for the ideas that were lacking, and thus
does animal sensation come to the help of the spirits inward mechanism,
if I may so call it, and puts the same in motion. The will is active,
and the action of a single power is sufficient to set all the rest to
work. The following operations are self-developed and do not belong to
this chapter.



S 10. -Out of the History of the Individual.
Let us follow now the growth of the soul in the individual man in
relation to what I am trying to demonstrate, and let us observe how all
his spiritual capacities grow out of motive powers of sense.

a. The child. Still quite animal; or, rather more and at the same time
less than animal--human animal (for that being which at some time shall
be called man can at no time have been only animal). More wretched than
an animal, because he has not even instinct--the animal-mother may with
less danger leave her young than the mother abandon her child. Pain may
force from him a cry, but will never direct him to the source from which
it comes. The milk may give him pleasure, but he does not seek it. He
is altogether passive.

His thinking rises only to sensation.
His knowledge is but pain, hunger--and what binds these together.

b. The boy. Here we have already reflection, but only in so far as it
bears upon the satisfaction of the animal impulse. "He learns to value,"
says Garve [Observations on Ferguson's "Moral Philosophy," p. 319], "the
things of others, and his actions in respect of others, first of all
through the fact of their affording him [sensuous] pleasure. "

A love of work, the love to his parents, to friends, yea even love to
God, must go along the pathway of physical sense [Sinnlichkeit] to reach
his soul. "That only is the sun," as Garve elsewhere observes, "which in
itself enlightens and warms: all other objects are dark and cold; but
they too can be warmed and illumined when they enter into such a
connection with the same as to become partakers of its rays. "
[Observations on Ferguson's "Moral Philosophy," p. 393. ] The good things
of the spirit possess a value with the boy only by transferrence--they
are the spiritual means to an animal end.

c. Youth and man. The frequent repetition of this process of induction
at last brings about a readiness, and the transferrence begins to
discover a beauty in what at first was regarded simply as a means. The
youth begins to linger in the process without knowing why. Without
observing it, he is often attracted to think about this means. Now is
the time when the beams of spiritual beauty in itself begin to fall upon
his open soul; the feeling of exercising his powers delights him, and
infuses an inclination to the object which, up to this time, was a means
only: the first end is forgotten. His enlightened mind and the richer
store of his ideas at last reveal to him the whole worth of spiritual
pleasures--the means has become the highest end.

Such is the teaching more or less of the history of each individual man--
whose means of education have been fairly good; and wisdom could hardly
choose a better road along which to lead mankind. Is not the mass of the
people even to this day in leading-strings? --much like our boy. And has
not the prophet from Medina left us an example of striking plainness how
to bridle the rude nature of the Saracens?

On this subject nothing more excellent can be said than what Garve
remarked in his translation of Ferguson's "Moral Philosophy," in the
chapter upon the Natural Impulses, and has developed as follows: "The
impulse of self-preservation and the attraction of sensual pleasure first
bring both man and beast to the point of action: he first comes to value
the things of others and his own actions in reference to them according
as they procure him pleasure. In proportion as the number of things
under whose influence he comes increases do his desires cover a wider
circle; as the road by which he reaches the objects of his wishes
lengthens, so do his desires become more artificial. Here we come to the
first line of separation between man and the mere animal, and herein we
may even discover a difference between one species of animal and another.
With few animals does the act of feeding follow immediately upon the
sensation of hunger; the heat of the chase, or the industry of collection
must come first. But in the case of no animal does the satisfaction of
this want follow so late upon the preparations made in reference thereto
as in the case of man; with no animal does the endeavor wind through so
long a chain of means and intentions before it arrives at the last link.
How far removed from this end, though in reality they have no other, are
the labors of the artisan or the ploughman. But even this is not all.
When the means of human subsistence have become richer and more various
through the institutions of society; when man begins to discover that
without a full expenditure of time and labor a surplus remains to him;
when at the same time by the communication of ideas he becomes more
enlightened; then he begins to find a last end for all his actions in
himself; he then remarks that, even when his hunger is thoroughly
satisfied, a good supply of raiment, a roof above him, and a sufficiency
of furniture within doors, there still remains something over and
above for him to do. He goes a step further, he becomes conscious that
in those very actions by which he has procured for himself food and
comfort--in so far as they have their origin in certain powers of a
spirit, and in so far as they exercise these powers--there lies a higher
good than in the external ends which thereby are attained. From this
moment on he works, indeed--in company with the rest of the human race,
and along with the whole animal kingdom--to keep himself alive, and to
provide for himself and his friends the necessaries of physical
existence;--for what else could he do? What other sphere of action could
he create for himself, if he were to leave this? But he knows now that
nature has not so much awakened in him these various impulses and desires
for the purpose of affording so many particular pleasures,--but, and far
more, places before him the attraction of those pleasures and advantages,
in order that these impulses may be put in motion--and with this end,
that to a thinking being there may be given matter for thought, to a
sensitive spirit matter for sensations, to the benevolent means of
beneficence, and to the active opportunity for work. Thus does
everything, living or lifeless, assume to him a new form. All the facts
and changes of life were formerly estimated by him only in so far as they
caused him pleasure or pain: now, in so far as they offer occasion for
expression of his desire of perfection. In the first case, events are
now good, now bad; in the latter, all are equally good. For there is no
chance or accident which does not give scope for the exercise of some
virtue, or for the employment of a special faculty. At first he loved
his fellows because he believed that they could be of use to him; he
loves them now far more--because he looks upon benevolence as the
condition of the perfect mind. "



S 11. -From the History of Humanity.


Yet once more, a glance at the universal history of the whole human
race--from its cradle to the maturity of full-grown man--and the truth of
what has been said up to this point will stand forth in clearest relief.

Hunger and nakedness first made of man a hunter, a fisher, a cowherd, a
husbandman, and a builder. Sensual pleasure founded families, and the
defencelessness of single men was the origin of the tribe. Here already
may the first roots of the social duties be discovered. The soil would
soon become too poor for the increasing multitude of men; hunger would
drive them to other climates and countries that would discover their
wealth to the necessity that forced men to seek it; in the process they
would learn many improvements in the cultivation of the soil, and perhaps
some means to escape the hurtful influence of many things they would
necessarily encounter. These separate experiences passed from
grandfather to grandson, and their number was always on the increase.
Man learned to use the powers of nature against herself; these powers
were brought into new relations and the first invention was made. Here
we have the first roots of the simple and healing arts--always, we admit,
art and invention for the behoof of the animal, but still an exercise of
power, an addition to knowledge; and at the very fire in whose embers the
savage roasted his fish, Boerhaave afterwards made his inquiries into the
composition of bodies; through the very knife which this wild man used to
cut up his game, Lionet invented what led to his discovery of the nerves
of insects; with the very circle wherewith at first hoofs were measured,
Newton measures heaven and earth. Thus did the body force the mind to
pay attention to the phenomena around it; thus was the world made
interesting and important, through being made indispensable. The inward
activity of their nature, and the barrenness of their native soil,
combined in teaching our forefathers to form bolder plans, and invented
for them a house wherein, under conduct of the stars, they could safely
move upon rivers and seas, and sail toward regions new:--

Fluctibus ignotis insultavere carinae.
(Their keels danced upon waves unknown. )

Here again they met with new productions of nature, new dangers, new
needs that called for new exertions. The collision of animal instincts
drives hordes against hordes, forges a sword out of the raw metal, begets
adventurers, heroes, and despots. Towns are fortified, states are
founded: with the states arise civic duties and rights, arts, figures,
codes of law, subtle priests--and gods.

And now, when necessities have degenerated into luxury, what a boundless
field is opened to our eyes! Now are the veins of the earth burrowed
through, the foot of man is planted on the bottom of the sea, commerce
and travel flourish:--

Latet sub classibus aequor.
(The sea is hid beneath the fleets. )

The West wonders at the East, the East at the West; the productions of
foreign countries accustom themselves to grow under other skies, and the
art of gardening shows the products of three-quarters of the world in one
garden. Artists learn her works from nature, music soothes the savage
breast, beauty and harmony ennoble taste and manners, and art leads the
way to science and virtue. "Man," says Schloezer [see Schloezer's Plan
of his Universal History, S 6], "this mighty demigod, clears rocks from
his path, digs out lakes, and drives his plough where once the sail was
seen. By canals he separates quarters of the globe and provinces from
one another; leads one stream to another and discharges them upon a sandy
desert, changed thereby into smiling meadow; three quarters of the globe
he plunders and transplants them into a fourth. Even climate, air, and
weather acknowledge his sway. While he roots out forests and drains the
swamp, the heaven grows clear above his head, moisture and mist are lost,
winter becomes milder and shorter, because rivers are no longer frozen
over. " And the mind of man is refined with the refining of his clime.

The state occupies the citizen in the necessities and comforts of life.
Industry gives the state security and rest from without; from within,
granting to thinker and artist that fruitful leisure through which the
age of Augustus came to be called the Golden Age. The arts now take a
more daring and untrammelled flight, science wins a light pure and dry,
natural history and physical science shatter superstition, history
extends a mirror of the times that were, and philosophy laughs at the
follies of mankind. But when luxury grows into effeminacy and excess,
when the bones begin to ache, and the pestilence to spread and the air
becomes infected, man hastens in his distress from one realm of nature to
another, that he may at least find means for lessening his pains. Then
he finds the divine plant of China; from the bowels of the earth he digs
out the mightily-working mercury, and from the poppy of the East learns
to distil its precious juice. The most hidden corners of nature are
investigated; chemistry separates material objects into their ultimate
elements, and creates worlds of her own; alchemists enrich the province
of physical science; the microscopic glance of a Schwammerdam surprises
nature in her most secret operations. Man goes still further; necessity
or curiosity transcends the boundaries set by superstition: he seizes the
knife, takes courage, and the masterpiece of nature is discovered, even
man. Thus did it behoove the least, the poorest, to help us to reach the
highest; disease and death must lend their aid to man in teaching him
Gnothi seauton ("Know thyself! "). The plague produced and formed our
Hippocrates, our Sydenhams, as war is the mother of generals; and we owe
to the most devastating disease that ever visited humanity an entire
reformation of our medical system.

Our intention was to show the influence upon the perfecting of the soul
through the temperate enjoyment of the pleasures held out by the senses;
and how marvellously has the matter changed, even while under our hands!
We found that even excess and abuse in this direction have furthered the
real demands of humanity; the deflections from the primitive end of
nature--merchants, conquerors, and luxury--have, undoubtedly, tended to
hasten a progress which had otherwise been more regular, but very slow.
Let us compare the old world with the new! In the first, desire was
simple, its satisfaction easy; but how mistaken, how painful was the
judgment passed on nature and her laws! Now, the road is made more
difficult by a thousand windings, but how full the light that has been
shed upon all our conceptions!

We may, then, repeat: Man needed to be an animal before he knew that he
was a spirit; he needed to crawl in the dust before he ventured on a
Newtonian flight through the universe. The body, therefore, is the first
spur to action; sense the first step on the ladder to perfection.



ANIMAL SENSATIONS ACCOMPANY MENTAL SENSATIONS.

S 12. --Law.


The understanding of man is extremely limited, and, therefore, all
sensations resulting from its action must of necessity be also limited.
In order, therefore, to give these sensations greater impulse, and with
redoubled force to attract the will to good and restrain it from evil,
both natures, the spiritual and the animal, are so intimately connected
with each other that their modifications, being mutually interchanged,
impart strength to one another. Hence arises a fundamental law of mixed
natures, which, being reduced to its primary divisions, runs thus: the
activities of the body correspond to the activities of the mind; that is,
any overstraining of a mental activity is necessarily followed by an
overstraining of certain bodily actions,--just as the equilibrium, or
harmonious action, of the mental powers is associated with that of the
bodily powers in perfect accord. Further: mental indolence induces
indolence in the bodily actions; mental inaction causes them to cease
altogether. Thus, as perfection is ever accompanied by pleasure,
imperfection by the absence of pleasure, this law may be thus expressed:
Mental pleasure is invariably attended by animal pleasure, mental pain by
animal pain. [Complacency and Displacency perhaps more aptly express the
meaning of Lust and Unlust, which we translate by pleasure and pain. ]



S 13. --Mental Pleasure furthers the Welfare of the Human Frame.


Thus, a sensation which embraces within its range the whole spiritual
being agitates in the same measure the whole framework of the organic
body,--heart, veins and blood, muscles and nerves, all, from those mighty
nerves that give to the heart its living impulse of motion down to the
tiny and unimportant nerves by which hairs are attached to the skin,
share equally its influence. Everything tends to a more violent motion.
If the sensation be an agreeable one, all these parts will acquire a
higher degree of harmonious activity; the heart's beat will be free,
lively, uniform, the blood will flow unchecked, gently or with fiery
speed, according as the affection is of a gentle or violent description;
digestion, secretion, and excretion will follow their natural course; the
excitable membranes will pliantly play in a gentle vapor-bath, and
excitability as well as sensitiveness will increase. Therefore the
condition of the greatest momentary mental pleasure is at the same time
the condition of the greatest bodily well-being.

As many as there may be of these partial activities (and is not every
beat of the pulse the result perhaps of thousands? ) so many will be the
obscure sensations crowding upon the soul, each one of which indicates
perfection. Out of this confused complexity arises entire sensation of
the animal harmonies, that is, the highest possible combined sensation of
animal pleasure, which ranges itself, as it were, alongside of the
original intellectual or moral sensation, which this addition infinitely
increases. Thus is every agreeable affection the source of countless
bodily pleasures.

This is most evidently confirmed by the examples of sick persons who have
been cured by joy. Let one whom a terrible home-sickness has wasted to a
skeleton be brought back to his native land, and the bloom of health will
soon be his again; or let us enter a prison in which miserable men have
for ten or twenty years inhabited filthy dungeons and possess at last
barely strength to move,--and let us tell them suddenly they are free;
the single word of freedom will endow their limbs with the strength of
youth, and cause dead eyes to sparkle with life. Sailors, whom thirst
and famine have made their prey during a long voyage, are half cured by
the steersman's cry of "Land! " and he would certainly greatly err who
ascribed the whole result to a prospect of fresh food. The sight of a
dear one, whom the sufferer has long desired to see, sustains the life
that was about to go, and imparts strength and health. It is a fact,
that joy can quicken the nervous system more effectually than all the
cordials of the apothecary, and can do wonders in the case of inveterate
internal disorders denied to the action of rhubarb and even mercury. Who
then does not perceive that the constitution of the soul which knows how
to derive pleasure from every event and can dissipate every ache in the
perfection of the universe, must be the most beneficial to the whole
organism? and this constitution of the soul is--virtue.



S 14. --Mental pain undermines the Welfare of the Whole Organisms.


In the very same way, the opposite result is brought about by a
disagreeable affection of the mind. The ideas which rule so intensely
the angry or terrified man may, as rightly as Plato called the passions a
fever of the soul, be regarded as convulsions of the organ of thought.
These convulsions quickly extend through the nervous system, and so
disturb the vital powers that they lose their perfection, and all organic
actions lose their equilibrium. The heart beats violently and
irregularly; the blood is so confined to the lungs that the failing pulse
has barely enough to sustain it. The internal chemical processes are at
cross-purposes; beneficent juices lose their way and work harm in other
provinces, while what is malignant may attack the very core of our
organism. In a word, the condition of the greatest mental distress
becomes the condition of the greatest bodily sickness.

The soul is informed of the threatened ruin of the organs that should
have been her good and willing servants by a thousand obscure sensations,
and is filled with an entire sensation of pain, associating itself to the
primary mental suffering, and giving to this a sharper sting.



S 15. --Examples.


Deep, chronic pains of the soul, especially if accompanied by a strong
exertion of thought--among which I would give a prominent place to that
lingering anger which men call indignation--gnaw the very foundations of
physical life, and dry up the sap that nourish it. Sufferers of this
kind have a worn and pale appearance, and the inward grief betrays itself
by the hollow, sunken eyes. "Let me," says Caesar, "have men about me
that are fat":--

Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights;
Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much--such men are dangerous.

Fear, trouble, distress of conscience, despair, are little less powerful
in their effects than the most violent fevers. Richard, when in deepest
anxiety, finds his former cheerfulness is gone, and thinks to bring it
back with a glass of wine. But it is not mental sorrow only that has
banished comfort, it is a sensation of discomfort proceeding from the
very root of his physical organism, the very same sensation that
announces a malignant fever. The Moor, heavily burdened with crimes, and
once crafty enough in absolving all the sensations of humanity--by his
skeleton-process--into nothing, now rises from a dreadful dream, pale and
breathless, with a cold sweat upon his brow. All the images of a future
judgment which he had perhaps believed in as a boy, and blotted out from
his remembrance as a man, assail his dream-bewildered brain. The
sensations are far too confused for the slower march of reason to
overtake and unravel them. Reason is still struggling with fancy, the
spirit with the horrors of the corporeal frame. ["Life of Moor," tragedy
of Krake. Act. v. sc. 1. ]


MOOR. --No! I am not shaking. It was but a dream. The dead are not
beginning to rise. Who says I tremble and turn pale? I am quite well,
quite well.

BED. --You are pale as death; your voice is frightened and hesitating.

MOOR. --I am feverish. I will be bled to-morrow. Say only, when the
priest comes, that I have fever.

BED. --But you are very ill.

MOOR. --Yes truly; that is all. And sickness disturbs the brain and
breeds strange mad dreams. Dreams mean nothing. Fie on womanish
cowardice! Dreams mean nothing. I have just had a pleasant dream.
[He falls down in a faint.

Here we have the whole image of the dream suddenly forcing itself upon a
man, and setting in motion the entire system of obscure ideas, stirring
up from the foundation the organ of thought. From all these causes
arises an intense sensation of pain in its utmost concentration, which
shatters the soul from its depth, and lames per consensum the whole
structure of the nerves.

The cold horror that seizes on the man who is about to commit some crime,
or who has just committed one, is nothing else than the horror which
agitates the feverish man, and which is felt on taking nauseous
medicines. The nightly tossings of those who are troubled by remorse,
always accompanied by a high pulse, are veritable fevers, induced by the
connection between the physical organism with the soul; and Lady Macbeth,
walking in her sleep, is an instance of brain delirium. Even the
imitation of a passion makes the actor for the moment ill; and after
Garrick had played Lear or Othello he spent some hours in convulsions on
his bed. Even the illusion of the spectator, through sympathy with acted
passion, has brought on shivering, gout, and fits of fainting.

Is not he, then, who is plagued with an evil temper, and draws gall and
bitterness from every situation in life: is not the vicious man, who
lives in a chronic state of hatred and malevolence; is not the envious
man, who finds torture in every excellence of his neighbor,--are not
these, all of them, the greatest foes to their own health? Has vice not
enough of the horrible in it, when it destroys not only happiness but
health.



S 16. -Exceptions.


But a pleasant affection has sometimes been a fatal one, and an
unpleasant one has sometimes worked a marvellous cure. Both facts rest
upon experience: should they remove the limits of the law we have
expounded?

Joy is fatal when it rises into ecstacy: nature cannot support the strain
which in one moment is thrown upon the whole nervous system. The motion
of the brain is no longer harmony, but convulsion, an extremely sudden
and momentary force which soon changes into the ruin of the organism,
since it has transgressed the boundary line of health (for into the very
idea of health there enters and is essentially interwoven the idea of a
certain moderation of all natural motions). The joy as well as the grief
of finite beings is limited, and dare not pass beyond a certain point
without ruin.

As far as the second part is concerned, we have many examples of cure,
through a moderate fit of anger, of inveterate dyspepsia; and through
fright,--as in the case of a fire--of rheumatic pains and lameness
apparently incurable. But even dysentery has sometimes resolved an
internal stoppage, and the itch has been a cure for melancholy madness
and insanity: is the itch, for this, less a disease? --is dysentery
therefore health.



S 17. --Indolence of Mind brings about greater Indolence in the Organic
Movements.


As, according to the testimony of Herr von Haller, activity of mind
during the day tends to quicken the pulse towards evening, will not
indolence of mind make it more sluggish, and absolute inactivity
completely stop it? For, although the circulation of the blood does not
seem to be so very dependent on the mind, is it altogether unreasonable
to suppose that the heart, which, in any case, borrows from the brain the
larger portion of its strength, must necessarily, when the soul ceases to
maintain the action of the brain, suffer thereby a great loss of power?
A condition of phlegm is accompanied by a sluggish pulse, the blood is
thin and watery, and the circulation defective in the abdomen. The
idiots, whom Muzell has described for us [Muzell's "Medical and Surgical
Considerations. "], breathed slowly and with difficulty, had no
inclination to eat and drink, nor to the natural functions; the pulse was
slow, all bodily movements slumberous and indicative of weariness. The
mental numbness which is the result of terror or wonder is sometimes
accompanied by a general suspension of all natural physical activity.
Was the mind the origin of this condition, or was it the body which
brought about this torpid state of mind? But these considerations lead
to subtleties and intricate questions, and, besides, must not be
discussed in this place.



S 18. --Second Law.


All that has been said of the transferrence of the mental sensations to
the animal holds true of the transferrence of animal affections to the
mental. Bodily sickness--for the most part the natural result of
intemperance--brings its punishment in the form of bodily pain; but the
mind also cannot escape a radical attack, in order that a twofold pain
may more powerfully impress upon it the necessity of restraint in the
desires. In like manner the feeling of bodily health is accompanied by a
more lively consciousness of mental improvement, and man is thus the more
spurred on to maintain his body in good condition. We arrive thus at a
second law of mixed natures--that, with the free action of the bodily
organism, the sensations and ideas gain a freer flow; and learn that,
with a corrupted organism, corruption of the thinking faculty and of the
sensations inevitably follows.