No More Learning

How general are the expressions that finite beings are modifications or consequences | of God; what a
* In a review of the recent writings by | Fichte in the Heidelberg Annuals of Literature (vol. 1, No. 6, p. 139), the advice that Mr. Fr. Schlegel gives to the latter is to stick exclusively to Spinoza in his polemical efforts because in Spinoza alone the utterly complete system of pantheism in form and con- sequence is encountered--one which, according to the statement cited above, would be at the same time the system of pure reason. Incidentally, this advice may indeed offer certain advantages, yet it strikes one as strange that Mr. Fichte is without doubt of the opinion that Spinozism (as Spinozism) has already been refuted through the Doctrine of Knowledge [Wissenschaftslehre] in which he is entirely correct--or is idealism perhaps not the work of reason, and the supposedly sad honor of being a system of reason remains only for pantheism and Spinozism?
gulf there is to fill here, what questions there are to answer! One could look at the rigidity of Spinozism as at Pygmalion's statue that had to be made animate [beseelt] through the warm breath of love;22 but this comparison is incomplete since Spinozism is more like a work sketched out only in barest outline in which many still missing or un- finished features would first become noticeable if it were made ani- mate. It would be preferable to compare Spinozism to the most an- cient images of divinities which appeared that much more mysterious the less their features bespoke individuality and liveliness. In a word, it is a one-sidedly realist system, which expression indeed sounds less damning than pantheism, yet indicates what is characteristic of the system far more correctly and is also not employed here for the first time. It would be irksome to repeat the many explanations that have been made concerning this point in the author's early writings. A mu- tual saturation of realism and idealism in each other was the declared intent of his efforts. Spinoza's basic concept, when infused by spirit (and, in one essential point, changed) by the principle of idealism, re- ceived a living basis in the higher forms of investigation of nature and the recognized unity of the dynamic with the emotional and spiritual; out of this grew the philosophy of nature, which as pure physics was indeed able to stand for itself, yet at any time in regard to the whole of philosophy was only considered as a part, namely the real part that would be capable of rising up into the genuine system of reason only through completion by the ideal part in which freedom rules. It was claimed that in this rising up (of freedom) the final empowering [po- tenzierende] act was found through which all of nature transfigured it- self in feeling, intelligence and, finally, in will. 23 In the final and highest judgment, there is no other Being than will. Will is primal Being [Ur- sein] to which alone all predicates of Being apply: groundlessness, eternality, independence from time, self-affirmation. All of philosophy strives only to find this highest expression. 24
In our times philosophy has been raised up to this point by | ideal- ism, and only at this point are we really able to begin the investiga- tion of our topic in so far as it by no means could have been our in- tention to take into account all those difficulties that can be raised and were raised long ago against the concept of freedom from the one-sidedly realistic or dogmatic system. Still, idealism itself, no mat- ter how high it has taken us in this respect, and as certain as it is that we have it to thank for the first complete concept of formal freedom,
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is yet nothing less than a completed system for itself, and it leaves us no guidance in the doctrine of freedom as soon as we wish to enter into what is more exact and decisive. In the first connection we note that, for idealism which has been constructed into a system, it is by no means adequate to claim that "activity, life and freedom only are the truly real" with which even Fichte's subjective idealism (which misunderstands itself) can coexist; rather, it is required that the re- verse also be shown, that everything real (nature, the world of things) has activity, life and freedom as its ground or, in Fichte's ex- pression, that not only is I-hood all, but also the reverse, that all is I- hood. 25 The thought of making freedom the one and all of philosophy has set the human mind free in general, not merely with respect to it- self, and brought about a more forceful change in all divisions of knowledge than any prior revolution. The idealist concept is the true consecration for the higher philosophy of our time and, especially, for its higher realism. Were those who would judge or appropriate this realism to ponder that freedom is its innermost presupposition, in what a totally different light would they consider and grasp it! Only one who has tasted freedom can feel the longing to make everything analogous to it, to spread it throughout the whole universe. One who does not come to philosophy by this path follows and merely imi- tates what others do without any feeling for why they do it. It will al- ways remain odd, however, that Kant, after having first distinguished things-in-themselves from appearances | only negatively through their independence from time and later treating independence from time and freedom as correlate concepts in the metaphysical discus- sions of his Critique of Practical Reason, did not go further toward the thought of transferring this only possible positive concept of the in- itself also to things; thereby he would immediately have raised him- self to a higher standpoint of reflection and above the negativity that is the character of his theoretical philosophy. 26 From another per- spective, however, if freedom really is the positive concept of the in- itself, the investigation concerning human freedom is thrown back again into the general, in so far as the intelligible on which it was alone grounded is also the essence of things-in-themselves. Mere idealism does not reach far enough, therefore, in order to show the specific difference [Differenz], that is, precisely what is the distinc- tiveness, of human freedom. Likewise, it would be an error to think that pantheism has been abolished and destroyed by idealism, a view
that could only arise from the confusion of pantheism with one- sided realism. For it is entirely the same for pantheism as such whether individual things are in an absolute substance or just as many individual wills are included in a primal will [Urwille]. In the first case, pantheism would be realist, in the other, idealist, but its grounding concept remains the same. Precisely here it is evident for the time being that the most profound difficulties inherent in the con- cept of freedom will be just as little resolvable through idealism, taken by itself, than through any other partial system. Idealism pro- vides namely, on the one hand, only the most general concept of free- dom and, on the other hand, a merely formal one. But the real and vital concept is that freedom is the capacity for good and evil.
This is the point of most profound difficulty in the entire doctrine of freedom, one which has been perceived in all times and which does not affect merely this or that system but, more or less, all. * | Yet, it affects most noticeably the concept of immanence; for either real evil is admitted and, hence, it is inevitable that evil be posited within infinite substance or the primal will itself, whereby the con- cept of a most perfect being is utterly destroyed, or the reality of evil must in some way be denied, whereby, however, at the same time the real concept of freedom vanishes. 27 The difficulty is no slighter though, if even the most distant connection between God and beings in the world is assumed; for even this connection is limited to a so- called mere concursus [coming-together, coincidence] or to that nec- essary participation [Mitwirkung] of God in his creatures' actions, which must be assumed due to the essential dependence of the lat- ter on God, incidentally, even when freedom is asserted. Thus God appears undeniably to share responsibility for evil in so far as per- mitting an entirely dependent being to do evil is surely not much bet- ter than to cause it to do so. Or, likewise, the reality of evil must be denied in one way or another. The proposition that everything posi- tive in creatures comes from God must also be asserted in this system. If it is now assumed that there is something positive in evil, then this positive comes also from God. Against this can be objected:
* Mr. Fr. Schlegel has the merit of asserting this difficulty especially against pantheism in his book on India and in several other places, | where it is only to be regretted that this astute scholar did not see fit to communicate his own point of view on the origin of evil and its relation to the good.
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the positive element of evil is good in so far as it is positive. Evil does not thereby disappear, although it is also not explained. For, if what has being in evil is good, whence that in which this being is, the basis that actually constitutes evil? Completely distinct from this assertion (though frequently, even recently, confused with it) is the assertion that in evil there is nowhere anything positive or, differently ex- pressed, that evil does not exist at all (not even with, or connected to, another positive) but rather that all actions are more or less posi- tive, and the distinction among them is merely a plus or minus of com- pleteness, whereby no opposition is established and, therefore, evil utterly | disappears. This would be the second possible assumption in regard to the proposition that everything positive comes from God. Then the force that appears in evil, though it would indeed be compar- atively less complete than that appearing in the good, yet considered in itself or aside from the comparison would surely be a complete whole itself which, thus, like any other, must be derived from God. What we call evil in this is only the lower degree of perfection, which appears merely for our comparison as a deficiency; in nature there is none. It is not to be denied that this is the true view of Spinoza. Some- one could attempt to bypass this dilemma through the answer: the positive that comes from God is freedom that in itself is indifferent to- ward good and evil; yet, if he but thinks of this indifference not merely negatively yet rather as a vital, positive capacity for good and evil, it is not comprehensible how a capacity for evil can result from God who is regarded as pure goodness. It is evident from this, to note in passing, that, if freedom really is what it must be according to this concept (and it unmistakably is), the derivation of freedom from God at- tempted above is then likely also not correct; for, if freedom is a capac- ity for evil, then it must have a root independent of God. Driven by this argument, one can be tempted to throw oneself into the arms of dualism. This system, however, if it is really thought as the doctrine of two absolutely different and mutually independent principles, is only a system of the self-destruction and despair of reason. But if the funda- mental being [Grundwesen] of evil is thought in some sense as depen- dent on that of the good, then the whole difficulty of the descent [Ab- kunft] of evil from good, though concentrated on One Being, is, however, thereby increased rather than diminished. Even if it is as- sumed that this second being was originally created good and
through its own fault fell away from the primal being, then the first ca- pacity for an act striving against God always remains inexplicable in all the previous systems. Hence, even if one | wished at last to abolish not only the identity, but every connection of beings in the world with God and wished to regard their entire current existence and, thus, that of the world, as an estrangement [Entfernung] from God, the difficulty would be removed only one point further but it would not be abol- ished. For, in order to be able to flow out from God, they had to exist already in some manner, and, thus, the emanation doctrine would be the least able to be opposed to pantheism since it presupposes an original existence of things in God and obviously, therefore, panthe- ism. To clarify this estrangement, however, only the following could be assumed: it is either an involuntary estrangement on the part of things but not on the part of God in which case they are cast out by God into a condition of disaffection and malice, and, therefore, God is the originator of this condition. Or it is involuntary on both sides, having been caused, for instance, by an overflow [U? berfluss] of being as some say, an utterly untenable idea. Or it is voluntary on the part of things, a tearing oneself away from God, therefore the consequence of a culpability from which ever deeper abasement [Herabsinken] re- sults; this first culpability is, then, precisely already evil itself, and hence reason provides no explanation of its origin. Without this auxil- iary thought, however, which, if it explains evil in the world, on the other hand entirely obliterates the good and introduces instead of pantheism a pandemonism, every genuine opposition of good and evil just vanishes in the system of emanation; what is first loses itself in in- finitely many intermediary levels through a gradual weakening into that which no longer has any appearance of the good, roughly as Ploti- nus* subtly, but unsatisfactorily, describes the transition from the original good into matter and evil. Accordingly, through a constant subordination and estrangement, something final emerges beyond which nothing more can come into being, and precisely this (which is incapable of further production) is evil. Or: if there is something after what is first, then there must also be something final that has nothing more in itself from that which is first, and this is matter and the neces- sity of evil. 28 |
* Ennead. I, L. VIII, c. 8.
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According to these reflections, it just does not seem appropriate to throw the entire burden of this difficulty only on a single system, especially since the supposedly higher one opposed to it affords so little satisfaction. The generalities of idealism also cannot be of help here. Nothing at all can be achieved with such abstract concepts of God as actus purissumus [purest actuality], the likes of which earlier philosophy put forward, or with such concepts as more recent philo- sophy has brought forth again and again out of a concern to remove God quite far indeed from all of nature. God is something more real than a merely moral world order and has entirely different and more vital motive forces in himself than the desolate subtlety of abstract idealists attributes to him. The abhorrence of everything real that finds the spiritual befouled through any contact with the latter must of course also blind one's eye to the origin of evil. Idealism, if it does not have as its basis a living realism, becomes just as empty and ab- stract a system as that of Leibniz, Spinoza, or any other dogmatist. The entire new European philosophy since its beginning (with Des- cartes) has the common defect that nature is not available for it and that it lacks a living ground. Spinoza's realism is thereby as abstract as the idealism of Leibniz. Idealism is the soul of philosophy; realism is the body; only both together can constitute a living whole. 29 The latter can never provide the principle but must be the ground and medium in which the former makes itself real and takes on flesh and blood. If a philosophy is lacking this living foundation, which is com- monly a sign that the ideal principle was originally only weakly at work within it, then it loses itself in those systems whose abstract concepts of aseity, modifications, and so forth, stand in the sharpest contrast with the living force and richness of reality. Where, however, the ideal principle is actually active to a great degree but cannot find a reconciling and mediating basis, it generates a bleak and wild en- thusiasm that breaks out into self-mutilation or, like the priests of the Phrygian goddess, | self-castration which is achieved in philosophy through the renunciation of reason and science. 30
It seemed necessary to begin this treatise with the correction of es- sential concepts that have always been confused, but especially in re- cent times. Hence, the preceding remarks are to be considered merely as an introduction to our genuine investigation. We have al- ready explained: that point of view which is fully adequate to the task to be undertaken here can only be developed from the fundamental
principles of a true philosophy of nature. We do not deny for that rea- son that this correct point of view has not been present in isolated minds for a long time already. But it is also precisely these minds that sought the living ground of nature without fear of the ever trite words of slander against real philosophy, like materialism, pantheism, and so on, and who were natural philosophers (in both senses of the word) in contrast to the dogmatists and abstract idealists who dis- missed them as mystics. 31
The natural philosophy of our time has first advanced in science the distinction between being in so far as it exists and being in so far as it is merely the ground of existence. 32 This distinction is as old as its first scientific presentation. * Notwithstanding that it is precisely this point at which natural philosophy most decisively turns away from Spinoza's path, in Germany it could indeed still be claimed up to this time that its metaphysical principles were the same as those of Spinoza; and, although it is precisely this distinction which at the same time brings about the most decisive differentiation of nature from God, this has not prevented accusation that it is a confusion of God and nature. Since this is the same distinction on which the present investigation is based, let the following remarks be made to- ward its explanation.
Since nothing is prior to, or outside of [ausser], God, he must have the ground of his existence in himself. All philosophies say this; but they | speak of this ground as of a mere concept without making it into something real [reell] and actual [wirklich]. This ground of his existence, which God has in himself, is not God considered abso- lutely, that is, in so far as he exists; for it is only the ground of his ex- istence. It [the ground33] is nature--in God, a being indeed insepara- ble, yet still distinct, from him. This relation can be explained analogically through that of gravity and light in nature. 34 Gravity precedes light as its ever dark ground, which itself is not actu [ac- tual], and flees into the night as the light (that which exists) dawns. Even light does not fully remove the seal under which gravity lies contained. ? Precisely for this reason gravity is neither the pure es- sence nor the actual Being of absolute identity but rather follows
* See this in the Journal for Speculative Physics, vol. II, no. 2, comment to ? 54, further comment to ? 93 and the explanation on p. 114.
? Ibid. , pp. 59, 60.
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only from its own nature* or is absolute identity, namely considered as a particular potency. For, incidentally, that which relative to grav- ity appears as existing also belongs in itself to the ground, and, hence, nature in general is everything that lies beyond the absolute Being of absolute identity. ? Incidentally, as far as this precedence is concerned, it is to be thought neither as precedence according to time nor as priority of being. In the circle out of which everything be- comes, it is no contradiction that that through which the One is gen- erated may itself be in turn begotten by it. Here there is no first and last because all things mutually presuppose each other, no thing is another thing and yet no thing is not without another thing. 35 God has in himself an inner ground of his existence that in this respect pre- cedes him in existence; but, precisely in this way, God is again the prius [what is before] of the ground in so far as the ground, even as such, could not exist if God did not exist actu.
A reflection starting out from things leads to this same distinction. First, the concept of immanence is to be set aside completely in so far as thereby a dead containment of things in God is supposed to be ex- pressed. We recognize rather that the concept of | becoming is the only one appropriate to the nature of things. But they cannot become in God, considered in an absolute manner, since they are different from him toto genere or infinitely, to speak more correctly. In order to be divided from God, they must become in a ground different from God. 36 Since, however, nothing indeed can be outside of God, this contradiction can only be resolved by things having their ground in that which in God himself is not He Himself,? that is, in that which is the ground of his existence. If we want to bring this way of being closer to us in human terms, we can say: it is the yearning the eternal One feels to give birth to itself. 37 The yearning is not the One itself but is after all co-eternal with it. The yearning wants to give birth to God, that is, unfathomable unity, but in this respect there is not yet unity in the yearning itself. Hence, it is, considered for itself, also will; but will in which there is no understanding and, for that reason, also not independent and complete will, since the understanding is really the will in will. Nevertheless it is a will38 of the understanding, namely
* Ibid. , p. 41.
? Ibid. , p. 114.
? In the sense that one says: the logic of the enigma [das Wort des Ra? tsels].
yearning and desire for the latter; not a conscious but a divining will [ahnender Wille] whose divining is the understanding. 39 We are speaking of the essence of yearning, considered in and for itself, that likely must be brought into view, although it has long been repressed by the higher things that have arisen out of it, and although we can- not grasp it by the senses but rather only with the mind and [in] thought. After the eternal act of self-revelation, everything in the world is, as we see it now, rule, order and form; but anarchy still lies in the ground, as if it could break through once again, and nowhere does it appear as if order and form were what is original but rather as if initial anarchy had been brought to order. 40 This is the incompre- hensible base of reality in | things, the indivisible remainder, that which with the greatest exertion cannot be resolved in understand- ing but rather remains eternally in the ground. The understanding is born in the genuine sense from that which is without understanding. Without this preceding darkness creatures have no reality; darkness is their necessary inheritance. 41 God alone--as the one who exists-- dwells in pure light since he alone is begotten from himself. The arro- gance of man rises up [stra? ubt sich] against this origin from the ground and even seeks moral reasons against it. Nevertheless we would know of nothing that could drive man more to strive for the light with all of his strength than the consciousness of the deep night from which he has been lifted into existence. The effeminate lamenta- tions that what is without understanding is thus made the root of understanding, the night into the beginning of light, indeed rest in part on a misunderstanding of the matter (since one does not grasp how, from this point of view, the conceptual priority of understanding and essence can nevertheless be maintained), yet do express the true system of today's philosophers who happily want to make fumum ex fulgore [smoke from lightning]42 for which, however, even the most violent Fichtean impetuosity is not sufficient. 43 All birth is birth from darkness into light; the seed kernel must be sunk into the earth and die in darkness so that the more beautiful shape of light may lift and unfold itself in the radiance of the sun. 44 Man is formed in the maternal body; and only from the obscurity of that which is with- out understanding (from feeling, yearning, the sovereign [herrlich] mother of knowledge) grow luminous thoughts. Thus we must ima- gine the original yearning as it directs itself to the understanding, though still not recognizing it, just as we in our yearning seek out
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unknown and nameless good, and as it moves, divining itself, like a wave-wound, whirling sea, akin to Plato's matter, following dark, un- certain law, incapable of constructing for itself anything enduring. 45 But, corresponding to the yearning, which as the still dark ground is the first stirring of divine existence, an inner, reflexive representation is generated in God himself through which, since it can have no other
object but God, God sees himself | in an exact image of himself. This representation is the first in which God, considered as absolute, is re- alized [verwirklicht], although only in himself; this representation is with God in the beginning and is the God who was begotten in God himself. This representation is at the same time the understanding-- the Word--of this yearning* and the eternal spirit which, perceiving the word within itself and at the same time the infinite yearning, and impelled by the love that it itself is, proclaims the word so that the understanding and yearning together now become a freely creating and all-powerful will and build in the initial anarchy of nature as in its own element or instrument. 46 The first effect of the understanding in nature is the division of forces, since only thus can the understanding unfold the unity that is unconsciously but necessarily immanent in nature as in a seed, just as in man the light enters into the dark yearn- ing to create something so that in the chaotic jumble of thoughts, all hanging together, but each hindering the other from emerging, thoughts divide themselves from each other, and now the unity hid- den in the ground and containing all raises itself up; or as in the plant the dark bond of gravity dissolves only in relation to the unfolding and expansion of forces, and as the unity hidden in divided material is developed. Because, namely, this being (of primordial nature) is nothing else than the eternal ground for the existence of God, it must contain within itself, although locked up, the essence of God as a re- splendent glimpse of life in the darkness of the depths. 47 However, yearning aroused by the understanding strives from now on to retain
* This is the only correct dualism, namely that which at the same time per- mits a unity. The above discussion concerned the modified dualism, whereby the evil principle is not coordinated with, but subordinated to, the good principle. It is hardly to be feared that someone will confuse the relationship put forward here with that dualism in which the subordinate is always an essentially evil principle and, precisely for that reason, in re- spect of its origin in God remains completely incomprehensible.
the glimpse of life seized within itself and to close itself up in itself so that a ground may always remain. Since, therefore, the understand- ing, or the light placed in primordial nature, arouses the yearning that is striving back into itself to divide the forces (for the surrender of darkness), while emphasizing precisely in this division the unity closed up within the divided elements--the hidden glimpse of light-- something comprehensible and individuated first emerges in this manner and, indeed, not through external representation but rather | through genuine impression [Ein-Bildung], since that which arises in nature is impressed [hineingebildet] into her or, still more correctly, through awakening, since the understanding brings to the fore the unity or idea hidden in the divided ground. 48 The forces split up (but not fully dispersed) in this division are the material from which the body is subsequently configured; the vital bond which arises in divi- sion--thus from the depths of the natural ground, as the center of forces--however, is the soul. Because the original understanding raises the soul up as something inner [als Inneres] out of a ground that is independent of it, the soul thereby remains independent of the original understanding as a particular and self-sufficient being.
It is easy to see that, in the resistance of the yearning that is neces- sary for any complete birth, the innermost bond of forces loosens it- self only in a gradually occurring unfolding; and at each point of divi- sion of forces a new being emerges from nature whose soul must be that much more complete the more it contains divided what is not di- vided in other things. 49 To show how each succeeding process ap- proaches closer to the essence of nature, until the innermost center appears in the highest division of forces, is the task of a comprehen- sive philosophy of nature. For the current purpose only the following is essential. Each being having emerged in nature according to the manner indicated has a dual principle in itself which, however, is ba- sically but one and the same considered from both possible sides. The first principle is that through which things are separated from God or through which they exist in the mere ground; since, however, an original unity indeed occurs between what is in the ground and what is prefigured in the understanding, and the process of creation involves only an inner transmutation or transfiguration of the initial principle of darkness into the light (because the understanding or the light placed in nature genuinely seeks in the ground only the light that is related to it and turned inward), the--by its nature--dark principle
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is exactly what is transfigured in the light, and both are, though only to a certain point, | one in each natural being. The principle, to the extent that it comes from the ground and is dark, is the self-will of creatures which, however, to the extent that it has not yet been raised to (does not grasp) complete unity with the light (as principle of understanding), is pure craving or desire, that is, blind will. The understanding as universal will stands against this self-will of crea- tures, using and subordinating the latter to itself as a mere instru- ment. But, if through advancing mutation and division of all forces, the deepest and most inner point of initial darkness in a being is fi- nally transfigured wholly into the light, then the will of this same being is indeed, to the extent it is individual, also a truly particular will, yet, in itself or as the centrum of all other particular wills, one with the primal will or the understanding, so that now from both a single whole comes into being. This raising of the deepest centrum into light occurs in none of the creatures visible to us other than man. In man there is the whole power of the dark principle and at the same time the whole strength of the light. In him there is the deepest abyss and the loftiest sky or both centra. The human will is the seed--hidden in eternal yearning--of the God who is present still in the ground only; it is the divine panorama of life, locked up within the depths, which God beheld as he fashioned the will to nature. In him (in man) alone God loved the world, and precisely this likeness of God was possessed by yearning in the centrum as it came into op- position with the light. Because he emerges from the Ground (is creaturely), man has in relation to God a relatively independent prin- ciple in himself; but because precisely this principle--without it ceasing for that reason to be dark in accordance with its ground--is transfigured in light, there arises in him something higher, spirit. For the eternal spirit proclaims unity or the word into nature. The pro- claimed (real) word, however, is only in the unity of light and dark- ness (vowel and consonant). 50 Now both principles are indeed in all things, yet they are without complete consonance [Konsonanz] due to the deficiency of that which has been raised out of the ground. Only in man, therefore, | is the word fully proclaimed which in all other things is held back and incomplete. But spirit, that is, God as existing actu, reveals itself in the proclaimed word. In so far as the soul is now the living identity of both principles, it is spirit; and spirit is in God. Were now the identity of both principles in the spirit of
man exactly as indissoluble as in God, then there would be no dis- tinction, that is, God as spirit would not be revealed. The same unity that is inseverable in God must therefore be severable in man--and this is the possibility of good and evil. 51
We say expressly: the possibility of evil. And we are seeking at the moment to make intelligible only the severability of the principles. The reality of evil is the object of a whole other investigation. The principle raised up from the ground of nature whereby man is separ- ated from God is the selfhood in him which, however, through its unity with the ideal principle, becomes spirit. Selfhood as such is spirit; or man is spirit as a selfish [selbstisch], particular being (separ- ated from God)--precisely this connection constitutes personality. Since selfhood is spirit, however, it is at the same time raised from the creaturely into what is above the creaturely; it is will that beholds it- self in complete freedom, being no longer an instrument of the pro- ductive [schaffenden] universal will in nature, but rather above and outside of all nature. Spirit is above the light as in nature it raises it- self above the unity of the light and the dark principle. Since it is spirit, selfhood is therefore free from both principles. Now selfhood or self-will is, however, only spirit and thus free or above nature by virtue of the fact that it is actually transformed in the primal will (the light) so that it (as self-will) indeed remains in the ground (because there must always be a ground)--just as in a transparent body the matter which has been raised to identity with the light does not for that reason cease being matter (the dark principle)--yet, it does so merely as a carrier and, as it were, receptacle of the higher principle of light. Since, however, selfhood has spirit (because this reigns over light and darkness)--if it is in fact not the spirit | of eternal love-- selfhood can separate itself from the light; or self-will can strive to be as a particular will that which it only is through identity with the uni- versal will; to be that which it only is, in so far as it remains in the cen- trum (just as the calm will in the quiet ground of nature is universal will precisely because it remains in the ground), also on the periph- ery; or as created being (for the will of creatures is admittedly out- side of the ground, but it is then also mere particular will, not free but bound). For this reason there thus emerges in the will of man a separ- ation of selfhood having become animated by spirit (since spirit is above the light) from the light, that is, a dissolution of the principles which are indissoluble in God. If, to the contrary, the self-will of man
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remains as central will in the ground so that the divine relation of the principles persists (as, namely, the will in the centrum of nature never elevates itself over the light but remains under the latter as a base in the ground), and if, instead of the spirit of dissension that wants to sep- arate the particular from the general principle, the spirit of love pre- vails in it, then the will is in divine form [Art] and order.
But that pre- cisely this elevation of self-will is evil is clarified by the following. The will that steps out from its being beyond nature [das U? bernatu? rliche], in order as general will to make itself at once particular and creaturely, strives to reverse the relation of the principles, to elevate the ground over the cause, to use the spirit that it obtained only for the sake of the centrum outside the centrum and against creatures; from this re- sults collapse [Zerru? ttung] within the will itself and outside it. The human will is to be regarded as a bond of living forces; now, as long as it remains in unity with the universal will, these same forces exist in divine measure and balance. But no sooner than self-will itself moves from the centrum as its place, so does the bond of forces as well; in its stead rules a mere particular will that can no longer bring the forces to unity among themselves as the original will could and, thus, must strive to put together or form its own peculiar life from the forces that have moved apart from one another, an indignant host of desires and appetites (since each | individual force is also a craving and appe- tite), this being possible in so far as the first bond of forces, the first ground of nature itself, persists even in evil. But since there can in- deed be no true life like that which could exist only in the original re- lation, a life emerges which, though individual, is, however, false, a life of mendacity, a growth of restlessness and decay. The most fitting comparison here is offered by disease which, as the disorder having arisen in nature through the misuse of freedom, is the true counter- part of evil or sin. Universal disease never exists without the hidden forces of the ground having broken out [sich auftun]: it emerges when the irritable principle, which is supposed to rule as the innermost bond of forces in the quiet of the depths, activates [aktuiert] itself; or when aroused Archaeus leaves his peaceful dwelling in the centrum and steps into his surroundings. 52 Just as, by contrast, all original heal- ing consists in the reconstruction of the relation of the periphery to the centrum, and the transition from disease to health can in fact only occur through its opposite, namely through restoration of the separate and individual life into the being's inner glimpse of light, from which
restoration division [Krisis] once again proceeds. Even particular dis- ease emerges only because that which has its freedom or life only so that it may remain in the whole strives to be for itself. As disease is ad- mittedly nothing having inherent being [nichts Wesenhaftes], really only an apparent picture of life and merely a meteoric appearance of it--an oscillation between Being and non-Being--yet announces itself nevertheless as something very real to feeling, so it is with evil.
In more recent times Franz Baader especially has emphasized this concept of evil, the only correct one, according to which evil resides in a positive perversion or reversal of the principles, and has ex- plained this through profound analogies, in particular, that of dis- ease. * | All other explanations of evil leave the understanding and moral consciousness equally unsatisfied. They all rest fundamentally on the annihilation of evil as a positive opposite and on the reduction
* In the treatise, "On the Assertion that There Can Be No Wicked Use of Rea- son," in the Morgenblatt, 1807, No. 197, and in "On | Solids and Liquids," in the Annuals of Medicine as Science, vol. III, No. 2. Let the relevant comment at the end of this latter treatise, at p. 203, be set out here for comparison and further explanation: "Here common fire (as wild, consuming, painful heat) provides instructive clarification [Aufschluss] as opposed to the so- called organic, beneficial heat of life; since in the latter fire and water come together in a (growing) ground or conjunction while in the former they dis- perse in discord. Now, neither fire nor water existed as such, however, i. e. as separate spheres in the organic process, rather the former existed as centrum (mysterium), the latter openly or as periphery in it, and precisely the unlocking, raising, igniting of the first together with the closing up of the second gave disease and death. Thus, in general, I-hood, individuality is now admittedly the basis, foundation or natural centrum of any creature's life; but as soon as it ceases to be the serving centrum and enters as ruling into the periphery, it burns in I-hood as the selfish and egotistical rage (of enflamed I-hood) of Tantalus. From ? now comes ? --that is: in one single place of the planetary system this dark centrum of nature is closed up, latent, and for that very reason serves as a carrier of light for the entry of the higher system (illumination or revelation of the ideal). For that very reason this place is thus the open point (sun--heart--eye) in the system and, if the dark centrum of nature were also to raise or open it- self there, then the light point would eo ipso close itself up, light would be- come darkness in the system or the sun would be extinguished! "
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of evil to the so-called malum metaphysicum [metaphysical evil] or the negating concept of the imperfection of creatures. It was impos- sible, says Leibniz, that God conferred on man all perfections without making man himself into God. The same is valid for created beings in general; for that reason various degrees of perfection and all manner of limitation pertaining to them had to occur. If one asks from whence comes evil, the answer is: from the ideal nature of creatures to the ex- tent that it depends on the eternal truths that are contained in the di- vine understanding, but not on the will of God. The region of the di- vine truths is the ideal cause of good and evil and must be posited in place of the | matter of the ancients. * Yet, there are, he says in an- other spot, two principles, both however in God; these are the under- standing and will. The understanding yields the principle of evil, al- though it does not thereby become evil itself, for it represents natures as they are in accordance with the eternal truths: it contains in itself the ground that permits evil, but the will alone is directed to- ward the good. ? God did not bring about this sole possibility since the understanding cannot be its own cause. ? ,53 If this differentiation of the understanding and will as two principles in God, whereby the first possibility of evil is made independent of the divine will, accords with the richness of this man's way of thinking, and if even the idea of understanding (of divine wisdom) as something in which God is pas- sive rather than active alludes to something more profound, evil nonetheless--as can be derived from any purely ideal ground-- amounts once again to something merely passive, to limitation, lack, deprivation, concepts that are in complete conflict with the actual na- ture of evil. For the simple reflection that only man, the most com- plete of all visible creatures, is capable of evil, shows already that the ground of evil could not in any way lie in lack or deprivation. The devil, according to the Christian point of view, was not the most lim- ited creature, but rather the least limited one. ? ,54 Imperfection in the general | metaphysical sense is not the common character of evil, since evil often shows itself united with an excellence of individual
* Tentam. Theod. Opp. T. I, p. 136.
? Ibid. , p. 240.
? Ibid. , p. 387.
? In this connection it is remarkable that it was not first the scholastics but
already several among the earlier fathers of the church, most notably, St.
forces, which far more rarely accompanies the good. The ground of evil must lie, therefore, not only in something generally positive but rather in that which is most positive in what nature contains, as is ac- tually the case in our view, since it lies in the revealed centrum or pri- mal will of the first ground. Leibniz tries in every way to make com- prehensible how evil could arise from natural deficiency. The will, he says, strives for the good in general and must demand perfection whose highest measure is God; if the will remains entangled in sen- sual lust to the detriment of higher goods, precisely this deficiency of further striving is the privation in which evil consists. Otherwise, he thinks, evil requires a special principle as little as do cold or dark- ness. What is affirmative in evil comes to it only as accompaniment like force and causal efficacy come to cold: freezing water bursts the strongest containing vessel, and yet cold really consists in the reduc- tion of movement. * Because, however, deprivation in itself is abso- lutely nothing and, in order to be noticeable, needs something posi- tive in which it appears, the difficulty arises as to how to explain the positive that nevertheless must be assumed to exist in evil. Since Leibniz can derive the latter only from God, he sees himself com- pelled to make God the cause of the material aspect of sin and to as- cribe only the formal aspect of sin to the original limitation of crea- tures. He seeks to explain this relation through the concept of the natural inertia of matter discovered by Kepler. He says that this is the complete picture of an original limitation in creatures (which pre- cedes all action). If two different objects of unequal mass are set in | motion at unequal speeds by the same impetus, the ground for slow- ness of movement in one lies not in the impetus but in the tendency to inertia innate to, and characteristic of, matter, that is, in the inner
Augustine, who posited evil as mere privation. Especially noteworthy is the passage in contr. Jul. L. I, C. III:
Quaerunt ex nobis, unde sit malum? Respondemus ex bono, sed non summo, ex bonis igitur orta sunt mala. Mala enim omnia participant ex bono, merum enim et ex omni parte tali dari repugnat. --Haud vero difficulter omnia expe- diet, qui conceptum mali semel recte formaverit, eumque semper defectum ali- quem involvere attenderit, perfectionem autem omnimodum incommunicabili- ter possidere Deum; neque magis possibile | esse, creaturam illimitatam adeoque independentem creari, quam creari alium Deum.
* Tentam. Theod. P. 242.
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limitation or imperfection of matter. *,55 But, in this regard, it is to be noted that inertia itself cannot be thought of as a mere deprivation, but actually as something positive, namely as expression of the inter- nal selfhood of the body, the force whereby it seeks to assert its inde- pendence. We do not deny that metaphysical finitude can be made comprehensible in this way, but we deny that finitude for itself is evil. ?
This manner of explanation arises generally from the lifeless con- cept of the positive according to which only privation can oppose it. But there is still an intermediate concept that forms a real opposition to it and stands far removed from the concept of the merely negated. This concept arises from the relation of the whole to the individual, from unity to multiplicity, or however one wants to express it. The positive is always the whole or unity; that which opposes unity is sev- ering of the whole, disharmony, ataxia of forces. The same elements are in the severed whole that were in the cohesive whole; that which is material in both is the same (from this perspective, evil is not more limited or worse than the good), but the formal aspect of the two is totally different, though this formal aspect still comes precisely from the essence or the positive itself. Hence it is necessary that a kind of being be in evil as well as in good, but in the former as that which is opposed to the good, that which perverts the temperance contained in the good into distemperance. 56 To recognize this kind of being is impossible for dogmatic philosophy because it has no concept of personality, that is, of selfhood raised to spirit, but rather only | the abstract concepts of finite and infinite. If, for that reason, someone wished to reply that, indeed, precisely disharmony is privation, namely a deprivation of unity, then the concept in itself would be nonetheless inadequate, even if the general concept of deprivation included that of abolishment or division of unity. For it is not the divi- sion of forces that is in itself disharmony, but rather their false unity that can be called a division only in relation to true unity. If unity is to- tally abolished, then conflict is abolished along with it. Disease is ended by death; and no single tone in itself amounts to disharmony.
* Ibid. ,P. I. ? 30.
? For the same reason, every other explanation of finitude, for example, from
the concept of relations, must be inadequate for the explanation of evil. Evil does not come from finitude in itself but from finitude raised up to Being as a self.
But just to explain this false unity requires something positive that must thus necessarily be assumed in evil but will remain inexplicable as long as no root of freedom is recognized in the independent ground of nature.
As far as we can judge, it will be better to speak of the question concerning the reality of evil from the Platonic viewpoint. The no- tions of our era, which treats this point far more lightly and pushes its philanthropism [Philanthropismus] to the brink of denying evil, have not the most distant connection to such ideas. According to these no- tions, the sole ground of evil lies in sensuality or animality, or in the earthly principle, as they do not oppose heaven with hell, as is fitting, but with the earth. This notion is a natural consequence of the doc- trine according to which freedom consists in the mere rule of the in- telligent principle over sensual desires and tendencies, and the good comes from pure reason; accordingly, it is understandable that there is no freedom for evil (in so far as sensual tendencies predominate)-- to speak more correctly, however, evil is completely abolished. For the weakness or ineffectualness of the principle of understanding can indeed be a ground for the lack of good and virtuous actions, yet it cannot be a ground of positively evil ones and those adverse to vir- tue. But, on the supposition that sensuality or a passive attitude to external impressions | may bring forth evil actions with a sort of ne- cessity, then man himself would surely only be passive in these ac- tions; that is, evil viewed in relation to his own actions, thus subjec- tively, would have no meaning; and since that which follows from a determination of nature also cannot be objectively evil, evil would have no meaning at all. That it is said, however, that the rational prin- ciple is inactive in evil, is in itself also no argument [Grund]. For why does the rational principle then not exercise its power? If it wants to be inactive, the ground of evil lies in this volition and not in sensual- ity. Or if it cannot overcome the resisting power of sensuality in any way, then here is merely weakness and inadequacy but nowhere evil. In accordance with this explanation, there is hence only one will (if it can otherwise be called that), not a dual will; and, in this respect, since the names of the Arians, among others, have fortunately been introduced into philosophical criticism, one could name the adher- ents of this view Monotheletes, using a name also taken from church history, although in another sense. As it is, however, in no way the intelligent or light principle in itself that is active in the good,
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but rather this principle connected to selfhood, that is, having been raised to spirit, then, in the very same way, evil does not follow from the principle of finitude for itself but rather from the selfish or dark principle having been brought into intimacy with the centrum; and, just as there is an enthusiasm for the good, there is a spiritedness [Begeisterung] of evil. 57 Indeed, this dark principle is active in animals as well as in all other natural beings, yet it is still not born into the light in them as it is in man: it is not spirit and understanding but blind craving and desire; in short, no fall, no separation of principles is pos- sible here where there is still no absolute or personal unity. The con- scious and not conscious are unified in animal instinct only in a cer- tain and determinate way which for that very reason is unalterable. For just on that account, because they are only relative expressions of unity, they are subject to it, and the force active in the ground re- tains the unity of principles befitting them always in the same propor- tion. Animals are never able to emerge | from unity, whereas man can voluntarily tear apart the eternal bond of forces. Hence, Fr. Baader is right to say it would be desirable that the corruption in man were only to go as far as his becoming animal [Tierwerdung]; unfortunately, however, man can stand only below or above animals. *
We have sought to derive the concept and possibility of evil from first principles and to discover the general foundation of this doc- trine, which lies in the distinction between that which exists and that which is the ground for existence. ? But the possibility does not yet in- clude the reality, and this is in fact the main object in question. And, indeed, what needs to be explained is not, for instance, how evil be- comes actual in individuals, but rather its universal activity [Wirk- samkeit] or how it was able to break out of creation as an unmistak- ably general principle everywhere locked in struggle with the good.
* In the treatise cited above in the Morgenblatt 1807, p. 786.
? St. Augustine says against emanation: nothing other than God can come from God's substance; hence, creatures are created from nothingness, from whence comes their corruptibility and inadequacy (de lib. Arb. L. I, C. 2). This nothingness has been a crux for understanding for a long time now. A scriptural expression gives a hint: man is created ek t ? on m ? e ont ? on, from that which does not exist, just like the celebrated m ? e on of the ancients, which like the creation from nothingness, might receive for the first time a
positive meaning through the above-noted distinction.
Since it is undeniably real, at least as general opposite, there can in- deed be no doubt from the outset that it was necessary for the revela- tion of God; exactly this results from what has been previously said as well. For, if God as spirit is the inseverable unity of both principles, and this same unity is only real in the spirit of man, then, if the princi- ples were just as indissoluble in him as in God, man would not be distinguishable from God at all; he would disappear in God, and there would be no revelation and motility of love. For every essence can only reveal itself in its opposite, love only in hate, unity in conflict. Were there no severing of principles, unity could not prove | its om- nipotence; were there no discord, love could not become real [wirk- lich]. Man is placed on that summit where he has in himself the source of self-movement toward good or evil in equal portions: the bond of principles in him is not a necessary but rather a free one. Man stands on the threshold [Scheidepunkt]; whatever he chooses, it will be his act: but he cannot remain undecided because God must necessarily reveal himself and because nothing at all can remain am- biguous in creation. Nonetheless, it seems that he also may not be able to step out of his indecision exactly because this is what it is. That is why there must be a general ground of solicitation, of tempta- tion to evil, even if it were only to make both principles come to life in man, that is, to make him aware of the principles. Now it appears that the solicitation to evil itself can only come from an evil fundamental being [Grundwesen], and the assumption that there is such a being seems nonetheless unavoidable; it also appears that that interpreta- tion of Platonic matter is completely correct according to which mat- ter is originally a kind of being that resists God and for that reason is an evil being in itself. 58 As long as this part of the Platonic teaching remains in darkness, as it has until now,* a definite judgment about this issue is, however, impossible. The preceding reflections clarify in which sense, nonetheless, one could say of the irrational principle that it resists the understanding or unity and order without suppos- ing it to be an evil fundamental being on that account. In this way one is likely able to explain the Platonic phrase that evil comes from
* Would that this be elucidated by the incisive exegete of Plato or still sooner by the sturdy Bo? ckh who has already given rise to the best hopes in this respect through his occasional comments on Platonic harmonics and through the announcement of his edition of the Timaeus.
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ancient nature. For all evil strives back into chaos, that is, back into that state in which the initial centrum had not yet been subordinated to the light and is a welling up in the centrum of a yearning still with- out understanding. Yet we have proven once and for all that evil as such could only arise in creatures in so far as light and darkness or | both principles can be unified in a severable manner only in them. The initial fundamental being can never be evil in itself because there is no duality of principles in it. But we also cannot presuppose some- thing like a created spirit which, having fallen itself, tempted man to fall, for the question here is exactly how evil first arose in creatures. Hence, we are given nothing else toward an explanation of evil aside from both principles in God. God as spirit (the eternal bond of both) is the purest love: there can never be a will to evil in love just as little as in the ideal principle. But God himself requires a ground so that he can exist; but only a ground that is not outside but inside him and has in itself a nature which, although belonging to him, is yet also differ- ent from him. The will of love and the will of the ground are two differ- ent wills, of which each exists for itself; but the will of love cannot with- stand the will of the ground, nor abolish it because it would then have to oppose itself. For the ground must be active so that love may exist, and it must be active independently of love so that love may really exist. If love now wanted to break the will of the ground, it would be struggling against itself, would be at odds with itself and would no longer be love. This letting the ground be active is the only conceivable concept of permission that in the usual reference to man is completely unacceptable. Thus the will of the ground admittedly also cannot break love nor does it demand this, although it often seems to; for it must be particular and a will of its own, one turned away from love, so that love, when it nonetheless breaks through the will of the ground, as light through darkness, may now appear in its omnipotence. The ground is only a will to revelation, but precisely in order for the latter to exist, it must call forth particularity and opposition. The will of love and that of the ground become one, therefore, exactly because they are separate and each acts for itself from the beginning on. That is why the will of the ground already arouses the self-will of creatures in the first creation, so that when spirit now appears as the will of | love, the lat- ter finds something resistant in which it can realize itself.
The sight of nature as a whole convinces us that this arousal has occurred by which means alone all life first reached the final degree
of distinctiveness and definiteness. The irrational and contingent, which show themselves to be bound to that which is necessary in the formation of beings, especially the organic ones, prove that it is not merely a geometric necessity that has been active here, but rather that freedom, spirit and self-will were also in play. Indeed, every- where where there is appetite and desire, there is already in itself a sort of freedom; and no one will believe that desire, which deter- mines the ground of every particular natural being, and the drive to preserve oneself not in general but in this defined existence, are added on to an already created being, but rather that they are them- selves that which creates. The empirically discovered concept of the basis [Basis], which will assume a significant role for the entire sci- ence of nature, [if] acknowledged scientifically, also must lead to a concept of selfhood and I-hood. 59 But in nature there are contingent determinations only explicable in terms of an arousal of the irrational or dark principle in creatures--in terms of activated selfhood--hav- ing occurred already in the first creation. Whence unmistakable signs of evil in nature, alongside preformed moral relationships, if the power of evil was only aroused by man; whence appearances which, even without regard to their dangerousness for man, nonetheless arouse a general, natural abhorrence? * That all organic beings ad- vance toward | dissolution absolutely cannot appear to be an origi- nal necessity; the bond of forces that defines life could be just as in- dissoluble according to its nature, and if anything, a created being, which has restored what has become lacking in it through its own strength, appears destined to be a perpetuum mobile. Evil, in the meantime, announces itself in nature only through its effects; it can
* Thusthecloseconnectionthattheimaginationofallpeoples,especiallyall fables and religions of the east, makes between the snake and evil is cer- tainly not an idle one. The complete development of the auxiliary organs, which has reached its highest point in man, indeed already suggests the will's independence from desires or a relation of centrum and periphery that is really the only healthy one, since the former has stepped back into its freedom and sobriety, having removed itself from what is simply (pe- ripheral or) instrumental. Where, to the contrary, the auxiliary organs are not developed | or completely lacking, there the centrum has walked into the periphery; or it is the circle without a middle point in the comment to the above-mentioned citation from Fr. Baader.
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itself break through only in its immediate appearance at the endpoint [am Ziel] of nature. For, as in the initial creation, which is nothing other than the birth of light, the dark principle had to be as ground so that the light could be raised out of it (as from mere potency to actu- ality),60 so there must be another ground of the birth of spirit and, hence, a second principle of darkness that must be just as much higher than the first as spirit is higher than the light. This principle is the very spirit of evil that has been awoken in creation by arousal of the dark ground of nature, that is, the turning against each other [Entz- weiung] of light and darkness, to which the spirit of love opposes now a higher ideal, just as the light had done previously in regard to the anarchic movement of initial nature. For, just as selfhood in evil had made the light or the word its own and for that reason appears precisely as a higher ground of darkness, so must the word spoken in the world in opposition to evil assume humanity or selfhood and be- come personal itself. This occurs alone through revelation, in the most definitive meaning of the word, which must have the same stages as the first manifestation in nature; namely so that here too the highest summit of revelation is man, but the archetypical [urbildlich] and divine man who was with God in the beginning and in whom all other things and man himself are created. The birth of spirit is the realm of history as the birth of light is the realm of nature. The same periods of creation | which are in the latter are also in the former; and one is the likeness and explanation of the other. The same princi- ple, which was the ground in the first creation, only in a higher form, is here also the germ and seed from which a higher world is devel- oped. For evil is surely nothing other than the primal ground [Ur- grund] of existence to the extent this ground strives toward actuality in created beings and therefore is in fact only the higher potency of the ground active in nature. But, just as the latter is forever only ground, without being itself, precisely on this account evil can never become real and serves only as ground so that the good, developing out of the ground on its own strength, may be through its ground inde- pendent and separate from God who has and recognizes himself in this good which, as such (as independent), is in him. But, as the undi- vided power of the initial ground comes to be recognized only in man as the inner aspect (basis or centrum) of an individual, so in history as well evil at first remains latent in the ground, and an era of innocence
or unconsciousness about sin precedes the era of guilt and sin. In the same way, namely, as the initial ground of nature was active alone perhaps for a long time and attempted a creation for itself with the di- vine powers it contained, a creation which, however, again and again (because the bond of love was missing) sank back into chaos (per- haps indicated by the series of species that perished and did not re- turn prior to the present creation), until the word of love issued forth [erging]61 and with it enduring creation made its beginning, likewise, the spirit of love also did not immediately reveal itself in history, but rather, because God perceived the will of the ground as the will for his revelation and, according to his providential vision, recognized that a ground independent from him (as spirit) would have to be the ground for his existence, he let the ground be active in its indepen- dence; or, expressed in another way, he set himself in motion only in accordance with his nature and not in accordance with his heart or with love. Because the ground now held the whole of the divine being in itself as well, only not as unity, only individual divine | beings could preside over this being-active-for-itself [Fu? r-sich-wirken] of the ground. This primeval [uralt] time begins thus with the golden age of which only a frail memory in legend remains for modern mankind, a time of blessed indecision in which there was neither good nor evil; then there followed the time of the presiding gods and heroes or the omnipotence of nature in which the ground showed what for itself it had the capacity to do. 62 At that time understanding and wisdom came to men only from the depths; the power of oracles flowing forth from the earth led and shaped their lives; all divine forces of the ground dominated the earth and sat as powerful princes on secure thrones. This appeared to be the time of the greatest exaltation of na- ture in the visible beauty of the gods and in all the brilliance of art and profound [sinnreich] science until the principle active in the ground finally emerged as a world-conquering principle to subordi- nate everything to itself and establish a stable and enduring world empire. Because, however, the being of the ground can never generate for itself true and complete unity, there comes the time when all this magnificence dissolves and, as if by a terrible sickness, the beautiful body of the previous world collapses and chaos finally emerges once again.