people to which we ourselves belong is not sufficient--rather the very part of our nation must present features in still closer relation to the conditions, life, and existence of our own times. To take an example of what we mean, we find ourselves in the Niebelungenlied geographically on a soil that belongs to us still, but the Burgundians and King Etzel are so absolutely cut off from all that touches our present civilization and every interest which is now coincident with patriotism that, without borrowing anything from the learning of the subject, it is but simple truth to say we feel infinitely more at home in the poems of Homer[400]. Klopstock, no doubt, in his enthusiasm for everything that concerned the Fatherland, was prompted to substitute his Scandinavian gods for those of Hellenic mythology; but, for all his zeal, Wotan, Walhalla, and Freja remain mere names for us, which appeal to our imaginations and patriotic emotions even less than Zeus and his compeers of Olympus.
The point above all we desire to emphasize is this. Works of art are not composed primarily for the mere student or the professor, but with the express purpose that they shall be intelligible on their face, and a source of enjoyment without any one having to undertake first a circuitous route of extensive historical investigation. For Art is not addressed to a small and select circle of the privileged few, but to the nation at large. What, moreover, is generally valid for a work of art applies also to the external form of the historical reality therein portrayed. Such exposition also must express itself with clearness open to the common apprehension requiring no considerable research to make it intelligible, must be clear to ourselves as representations of our century and our own people, so that we may be able to find ourselves entirely at home in it, and not have before us a world foreign to that we live in, if not actually unintelligible.
(_γ_) Considerations such as the foregoing have already brought us within reach of the truer conception of the objective truth of art and the mode under which it assimilates the material of past history. We propose now to offer further illustrations in support of the same.
(_αα_) And we may start at once by drawing attention to a characteristic which is common alike to the genuine national poetry of all peoples and in every period of past history, namely, that the historical and formal aspect of that poetry is entirely national, that is to say, it retains nothing incongruous to the people for whom it is composed. This is a feature shared alike by the great epics of India, the Homeric poems and the Greek drama. Sophocles never made his Philoctetes, Antigone, Ajax, Orestes, Œdipus, his choregi and choruses speak in the speech and manner that would have been entirely appropriate to their own times. The Spaniards have written their romances of the Cid under the same guiding principle. Tasso in his "Jerusalem Liberated" celebrated the universal interests of Catholic Christendom. Camoens, the poet of Portugal, depicted the discovery of the seaway to the East Indies round the Cape of Good Hope, and all the infinitely various adventures of the sea heroes that made it possible; and these acts of daring were the acts of his own people. Shakespeare threw into dramatic form the tragic history of his own country and even a Voltaire wrote his "Henriade." Far indeed have we Germans strayed from the path thus marked for us when we hope to work up into national epics histories remote from our own, which carry no longer with them a national interest of any kind. Bodmer's "Noachide" and Kloptock's "Messias" have started a new fashion of their own, ay, as they have overturned that old one which taught us that it redounds to a nation's glory to have its Homer, to say nothing of its Pindar and Sophocles.
Those biblical stories, it is true, present points of special affinity with the national imagination owing to our close acquaintance with the old and new Testaments; but the historical material in its association with ancient custom and the like remains for all that only intelligible to the savant, and all the most of us can pick up from such epics is the prosaic interfusion of events and characters, which, in such a process of translation, have merely some novel form of speech thrust into their mouths, and the final result can only impress us as hollow and artificial.
(_ββ_) At the same time art cannot be restricted wholly to material borrowed from one nation. And as a matter of fact the more nationalities have come into contact with one another, the more their poets have looked abroad among all nations and times for the subject-matter of their poems. But however this may be the case, it is none the less an error to suppose that the mere fact that a poet is able, so to speak, to live into times aloof from his own at once stamps him as a man of creative genius. It is more to the point to recollect that this historical framework must, in the co-ordination of a poem, be retained only in strict subordination, and as a means of expressing that which permanently belongs to our humanity. Precisely in this way the Middle Ages long ago borrowed much from antiquity, but so absolutely suffused it with the content of its own epoch that, in this respect verging on the opposite extreme, we really get nothing from that antiquity but the bare names of Alexander, Aeneas, and the emperor Octavius.
First in importance, then, is this permanent condition of true art, immediate intelligibility. It will be found an invariable truth that all nations have emphasized precisely that in this life which was most agreeable to their artistic sense, their desire being always to find what was most intimate to themselves, their life and existence in their art. It was this independent flavour of patriotism which Calderon worked into such characters as his Zenobia and Semiramis; and Shakespeare in the same way was able to imprint upon the most varied subject-matter the hall-mark of his English ancestry, although he knew how to preserve along with it the essential traits of historical characters belonging to nations foreign to his own, the Roman for example, in a far profounder degree than was possible to the Spanish poets. Even the Greek tragedians had their eyes constantly directed to the actual conditions of their times and the particular city in which they lived. The "Œdipus Colonus" in its local references is not merely in a peculiar way associated with Athens but, by virtue of the fact that Œdipus dies in this locality, at once indicates him as the future Preserver of that city. In somewhat other associations the "Eumenides" of Aeschylus is, owing to the decisive sentence of the Areopagus, marked by an interest of more vital interest to the Athenians[401].
On the other hand Greek mythology, despite all the varied and oft repeated use that has been made of it since the revival of the arts and learning, has never fully come home to the general sense of modern emotions and in various degrees in the plastic arts and still more in poetry, despite its very extensive influence here, has failed to arouse real enthusiasm. No one thinks now of writing an ode to Venus, Zeus, or Pallas[402]. Sculpture, it is true, can hardly get along even in modern times without the assistance of the Greek Pantheon, but for that very reason it is mainly only appreciated by and intelligible to a select circle of cultivated men who are either connoisseurs or critics.
As one of these, Goethe spared no pains in his endeavour to arouse in contemporary artists an enthusiasm which should go so far as to imitate the pictures of Philostratus, but for the most part his pains were thrown away. Such examples of the work of antiquity, on account of the very flavour of past time and a life that has vanished, which clings to them, remain as strange to contemporary art as they do to the general public. As a contrary example of real success on the part of Goethe we may instance the far profounder insight he has shown us during the later period of his poetic activity in fusing by means of his "Westöstlicher Divan" the colour of the East with the poetry that really appeals to us to-day, giving to the Orient, in fact, its modern embodiment. In this process of assimilation he has clearly shown himself alive to the fact that he is a poet of the West and a German as well, and consequently while preserving the fundamental key-note of the Oriental spirit in his delineation of characters and situations to which it was appropriate, was able at the same time fully to satisfy the claims of the modern spirit and those of his own personality.
Subject to such reservations it is undoubtedly in the province of a poet to borrow his material from remote regions, past centuries and foreign nations, maintaining in their broad and most characteristic outlines the historical form of ancient mythology, custom, and institution. At the same time he will take care to utilize such forms only as the external frame of his delineations, never permitting the essential content of such productions to fall into any disharmony with the profounder instincts of his own native world. As the most extraordinary example of this Goethe's "Iphigenia" still stands without a rival.
In their relation to such a transformation the several arts dispose of their material very differently. In the love-poems of lyrical poetry very little use is made of local associations depicted with historical accuracy. The emotional situation and the movement of sentiment is here the main thing. We receive, for example, in the sonnets of Petrarch a very small substratum of natural fact relatively to Laura, hardly anything more than her name, which might just as well have been another. Of local interest we get the barest scraps, and that entirely of general significance, such as the existence of the fountain of Vaucluse and things of that kind. Epical poetry, on the contrary, requires the greatest detail in its natural descriptions, and we are most readily pleased with their historical truth, provided always that the picture is both clear and intelligible. The use of the external truth of historical facts presents the greatest pitfalls to dramatic art, more particularly in reference to its theatrical presentation, where everything is directly addressed to an audience, or purports to strike upon sense with the vividness of life, so that we are willing to recognize and entrust ourselves therein with equal directness. Here the delineation of historical truth in its external aspects must for the most part be of subsidiary importance, in fact retain little more than the framework of it. It must, in short, remain true to that natural relation we find in love-poetry, in which at the same time that we are able completely to sympathize with the feelings expressed in every way another name is given to the beloved than that of the lady most loved by ourselves[403]. It does not here in the least signify whether or no our critics fail to discover absolute precision in the picture presented of the particular manners, culture, and emotional expression of the time. In Shakespeare's historical dramas we find a great deal that remains strange to us and of no considerable interest.
We are contented enough on a mere reading, but in the theatre our enjoyment ceases. Critics and men of learning no doubt stick fast to their idea that such exquisite scraps of genuine history should be presented on the stage on their own merits and come down severely upon the wretched taste of the public, when it lets us see how bored it is over such things. Unfortunately a work of art and the direct enjoyment we receive from it is in no sense particularly for critics or savants, but for this very public. Critics have really no reason to give themselves such airs. They are after all but units of this public, and the mere attention to historical detail can be of as little serious interest to them as any other members of it. For this reason the English nowadays in their theatrical performances only include such scenes from the Shakespearean drama which require nothing further to make them clear and intelligible, being happily free from the pedantry of our aesthetic professors who held that all that is most remote in historical incident from the apprehension of an average audience should be thrust before their eyes. It follows also from our view of the matter that when foreign dramas are reproduced on the stage the public is clearly entitled to have them considerably remodelled[404]. Even that which is excellent in itself may require some alteration. No doubt it will be contended that what is essentially first-rate art retains its excellence for all times; but a work of art has also an aspect of transitory worth, which yields to the years, and it is this of course which requires remodelling. As people change so too the sense of beauty alters; and it is important that the particular public, before whom any work is represented, should feel themselves quite at home in the whole of such a work including that aspect which derives all its significance from external history.
It is this conditional acceptance of historical truth which at once explains and justifies that which is generally known in Art as _anachronism_, and which is usually attributed to artists as a serious defect. Primarily such examples of anachronism will be found to attach to matters of purely external interest. That a Falstaff should talk about pistols is no matter of consequence whatever. The case is more serious when we have a violin placed in the hands of Orpheus, for here the association of such prehistorical times with an instrument so essentially modern as the violin, one which everybody knows was not invented in those days, presents too glaring a violation of truth.
For this reason it is now the fashion in theatrical circles to bestow incredible pains and care upon the historical accuracy of details in the matter of costume and the getting up of a piece, as, for example, the infinite trouble lavished upon the historical procession in the "Maid of Orleans."[405] Such efforts are in the majority of eases lost labour, for the simple reason that they only concern matters of relative interest or points that might be wholly passed over. The more important type of anachronisms has nothing whatever to do with stage costume and all that with which stage business is concerned, but consists in making characters express their emotions and ideas, venture upon soliloquies and actions in a form or of a substance which absolutely contradicts the conditions of their times and culture, their religious and general preconceptions. It is common to apply the conception of natural truth to such examples of anachronism, in other words, to say that it is unnatural for characters to speak or act otherwise than they would have spoken and acted in their own days. If we stick, however, too closely to the logic of this naturalism we shall only land ourselves in further complications[406]. For an artist, in depicting the emotional life with all that results from it, and the fundamental passions that belong to it, being mainly interested in the affirmation of individuality, ought not merely to repeat that life under its ordinary daily dress; it is rather his business to show every true manifestation of pathos in the particular light which best reveals its real quality. The whole object of his attainment as an artist is not merely to understand what is of vital significance in the truth he faces, but to be able to give it the precise form which will best direct our own eyes and ears and heart to his own discovery. To attain this it is obvious that he must keep in view the particular culture of his own time no less than all its various powers of expression. In the time of the Trojan war the kind of speech in general use, and indeed the whole fabric of social life, was as far removed from the type of culture which is reflected on us from the pages of the "Iliad" as the mass of the nation and the pre-eminent worthies of the royal houses then reigning in Greece were separated from the fully developed form of ideas and expression such as arouse our wonder when we read our Aeschylus, or behold the perfected beauty of the style of Sophocles.
A violation of the so-called "path of Nature" of this kind is in art an anachronism implied in her laws. The inward kernel of that which she reveals remains unaffected, but the more developed power at the artist's command, in revealing and disclosing this essential core of his subject, renders some change in the mode of its expression inevitable. It is a wholly different matter when a modification of this kind proceeds so far as to impose ideas and conceptions of a later form of the religious and moral consciousness on a century or a nation whose entire spiritual outlook is opposed to such more recent conceptions.
The Christian religion has gathered in its train forms of the moral life, which were entirely foreign to the moral consciousness of ancient Greece. That inward introspection of conscience, for example, ever on the alert to decide the ethical significance of action, with its accompanying remorse and repentance, first appears in the moral culture of a more modern date. The heroic character knows nothing of a repentance which sets itself in hostility to its past. What it has done it abides by. Orestes does not repent of his mother's murder. The Furies that rise out of the shadow of his action pursue him, no doubt; but the Eumenides are, at the same time, represented as universal powers, and not as voices that cry out to him from his own conscience simply. This very heart and substance of a given period of man's history a poet must master, and only when we find him interfusing with this central core of reality matter that directly contradicts it is he guilty of any truly grave anachronism. In conclusion, then, we may say that it is indeed part of the poet's function to live into the spirit of past times and foreign peoples, for this substance of their life, if it be truly such, remains a possession for all time; but to attempt to reflect with every accuracy of detail all the definition of that external show now buried beneath the rust of antiquity is merely the effort of a learning essentially childish, intent on preserving what is itself shadow rather than substance. No doubt even in this direction, the truth of general outlines should be carefully respected, but never to such lengths as would compel art to forfeit her claim of drawing upon the fiction of her invention, and the truth of fact with equal impartiality.
(_γγ_) We are now in a better condition to understand all that is really implied in the assimilation by art of that which is strange in the external features of remote history, and the true conception of the _objective_ life of her creations. A work of art must primarily enclose for us within its embrace the higher interests of spirit and volitional power, all that is essentially human, and possesses real weight, the depths, that is to say, of man's emotional life. The main thing of all is that this embodied content[407] should transpierce all purely external conditions of manifestation, should ring, as it were, through all that is less vital in its significance[408] this fundamental chord of truth. The real objectivity, therefore, unfolds as from a sheath, the _pathos_, that is the substantive content of a situation, unfolds, moreover, the rich and powerful personality in which the essential phases of spirit are alive, and find their realization and expression. For such embodiment all that is absolutely indispensable is a definition and determination of the real, which is generally suitable to the object thus defined, and which requires nothing further to explain it. If we have once got hold of such a form unfolded in strict accordance with our Ideal principle, then we have a work of art essentially objective in the true sense, and the question whether each and every historical detail is justified is of no further importance.
We have before us a work of art which appeals directly to our inner life, and one which is our own possession. Once possessed of that, and we may take as much as we please of that element of the form which lay more closely to periods of life which have passed; but the eternal foundation is that which appeals to all men in all places, which is carried forward with a power that never wanes or fails to influence us, and it does so because the objective life it reveals is the same that abounds in and overflows our own souls. That which is merely historical in the appearance is, on the contrary, the element that vanishes; and, in dealing with works of art created in days remote from our own, we must do our best to resolve the discordance, and, indeed, must be fully prepared to blot out from our vision similar defects in works that spring from our own times. Thus it is that the Psalms of David, with their immortal celebration of the Lord in His goodness, and the wrath of His almightiness, no less than the profound sorrows of the Hebrew prophets as they face Babylon and Zion, touch men with the same force to-day as they did of old time: nay, even a moral diatribe, such as is sung by Sarastro in the "Zauberflöte," may come home to the hearts of us all, including the sons of Egypt[409], owing to the soul and vitality which rings through its melodies.
And we may add that every individual to whom a work of art objective in this, the true sense, is presented, must on his part discard his own false prepossessions, wherein he merely wishes to find his own idiosyncrasies repeated. On the first reproduction of "William Tell," it appears, not a single Swiss among the audience was satisfied. In much the same way, when the most beautiful love-songs have been sung, many another, failing to find therein his own passions reflected, has presumed to think the beauty untrue to life; just as so many more, whose knowledge of love is confined to the perusal of romances, have imagined that the love-god would only then be their immortal possession when they found themselves face to face with precisely the same emotions and situations their favourite studies had propounded.
C. THE ARTIST We have, in this first part of our aesthetical philosophy, examined as a first step the universal Idea of beauty; we then proceeded to inquire in what respects it was defective in its existence as the beauty of Nature, and after thus clearing the way we were in a position to grasp the complete notion of the Ideal as the adequate realization of beauty.
We developed the Ideal, _first_, as conceived abstractly according to the _general_ notion of it, and having determined that were assisted thereby to elucidate the modes of its _particular_ manifestations.
Inasmuch, however, as a work of art has its origin in the human spirit it requires the pregnant activity of an individual life from which it proceeds, and as the creation of the same exists for others, that is, a Public which is emotionally receptive. This spiritual and informing activity is the imagination of the _artist_. We have consequently now, and this is the _third_ and last aspect of the Ideal to which we shall refer, to raise the question how it comes about that this product of men's inner world is not the direct and native growth[410] of that world, but receives its due form through the _creative impulse_ of particular men, in other words, by virtue of the genius and talent of the artist. At the same time we must admit that the question is only raised that we may be able to add the statement that it really is excluded from the sphere of scientific investigation, or, at the most, we can only furnish a few general remarks towards its solution.
Yet it is undoubtedly a question frequently raised this, namely, from what source an artist receives the gift and faculty of conception and execution with which he creates his work. We should all of us like, no doubt, to have a ready prescription, a recipe of what we must exactly do, what conditions we must impose on ourselves to produce something as wonderful. We would emulate Cardinal von Este when he asked Ariosto, with reference to his raging Roland: "But, Master Louis, where in the world did you get all this damned stuff from?" Raphael replied to a similar question in a letter we still possess, that he was hunting after a certain idea.
The more obvious aspects of artistic activity we propose to examine under the following heads of discussion: _First_, we will give our definition of the general conception of artistic _genius_ and the inspiration it implies.
_Secondly_, we will make a few observations on the _objective_ character of this creative activity.
_Thirdly_, we will endeavour to ascertain in virtue of what real artistic _originality_ consists.
1. IMAGINATION, GENIUS, AND INSPIRATION Before inquiring more closely into the meaning of the term "genius" we must obviously limit the field within which we propose to discuss it. Genius is an expression of very wide connotation, and is used not merely in its application to artists, but equally when we refer to great generals and kings, as also to the heroic captains of scientific discovery. For the sake of simplification we would once more discuss the distinctions involved under a triple division of our subject-matter.
The most conspicuous faculty of an artist which arrests our attention when we direct it expressly upon the capacities implied in artistic productivity is the _imagination._ And we must be careful here not to confuse it with a _visionary fancy_ which is wholly passive. The imagination creates.
(_α_) And, in the first place, we shall find that this creative activity carries with it in possession and endowment a peculiar power of _grasping reality_ and the forms it presents, all that through the channels of alert eyes and ears imprints pictures of infinite variety caught from the external world upon the mind, and further implies an exceptionally retentive _memory_ wherein to store up this varied world of innumerable reflections. The artist, therefore, in this initial stage of our analysis is not merely thrown back upon images of his own creation, but is rather compelled to turn aside from the dull level of ideals falsely so called and to boldly enter the fields of Nature and Life. To attempt art or poetry merely with fanciful ideas of our own is always a suspicious way of starting on our journey; for the artist must mould his creations from the abundance of his life and by no means from the overplus of abstract generalities. It is not, as in philosophy, thoughts, but the real external forms of what actually exists which furnishes the material for artistic production. In contact with this raw material to work upon the artist must feel thoroughly at home. He must have seen much, heard much, and stored away a great deal as well; and in illustration of this we almost invariably find that a great personality is distinguished by a capacious memory. All that interests mankind he will lay hold of, and the more profound his spirit the more it will enlarge the field of its interests in countless directions. This was the way in which we find the genius of Goethe first opened its wings, and throughout his life the circle of his spirit's restless horizon broadened and broadened. This peculiar gift of receptiveness, this interest in the comprehension of facts after their true definitions and colour, their steadfast adherence to the truth of experience is the first thing we look for in a great artist.
And this accurate knowledge of the truth of form must be accompanied in equal measure by a proved acquaintance with the souls of men, the passions that rise in the heart, and everything that it yearns and strives for. And, in addition to this twofold armory of knowledge, he must understand yet further all the various ways that this world of the human soul expresses itself on the face of the reality which confronts his senses, transpiercing thus the outer veil.
(_β_) But, in the second place, this imaginative power is not exhausted with merely receiving that which is presented to the senses, or is inferred as the content of the human soul. The ideal work of art does not merely embrace the outward semblance of the inward spirit as clothed in the forms of its actual existence, but should rather succeed in manifesting the essential truth and reason of the real itself. This _element of reason_, as determined in the particular object the artist has selected, must not merely be pressed in his own consciousness, as an active influence, but must already have been reflected upon in that essential and rich significance which brings it into relation with the entire breadth and depth of reality. Without reflection no man can grasp fully the wealth that is in him, and it is consequently an inseparable feature of any great work of art that everything which attaches to it both as a whole and in its detail has been long and deeply weighed and thought out. No artistic work of real sterling value can be thrown off with any mere imaginative _tour de force._[412] We do not, of course, suggest that the artist must therefore comprehend in the form of _philosophical_ thought this essential core of reason in his experience; albeit such is the fundamental rock upon which religion no less than philosophy and art is based. Philosophy is by no means essential to his outfit; and, in fact, if he once begins to think about things as a philosopher, he busies himself with modes of thought which are diametrically opposed to that which should engage an artist's attention. For what the imagination undertakes to do and only to do is not to bring to consciousness this inner core of reason in the form of general propositions and conceptions, but to apprehend it clothed in the concrete form of actual existence and individuality.
All that ferments within his life the artist must reproduce in the body and envisagement, whose connected picture and general outlines he has already assimilated from the world outside, making such so far subservient to his creative effort that they in their turn may participate in the truth of his own substance and enable him to crown it with complete expression. In this interfusion of an intelligible content with an embodiment received from actual existence the artist will avail himself of the ever wakeful circumspection of his reflective faculties no less than the deep resources of emotional life which leave the stamp of vitality on his work. It is consequently but one more sample of critical aberration to imagine that poems such as the Homeric were introduced to our poet in his sleep. Without intelligent alertness, division, and distinctions of each part as related to the whole, an artist will be unable to assert his mastery over any form whatsoever that he may wish for; only fools are of the opinion that the genuine artist does not in the least know what his hands and senses are about.
Moreover, the concentration of the artist's emotional life on each aspect of his work is also as necessary to its success as the concentration of his mind. For it is mainly through the impression of emotion, which permeates and gives a vital colour to the entire work, that the artist asserts his claim to the substance and embodiment of his creation as a part of his own spiritual substance, as something he, a given personality, may peculiarly call his own. For the external aspect of his work, the mere picture of it as we may say, tends rather to place us outside it and apart; it is the emotional energy it expresses which primarily unites it with affinity to our very souls.
Only when thus understood shall we be able to realize the truth that an artist must not merely have much looked about him in the world and assimilated a rich knowledge both of its outward show and the very substance of its life, but, further, must himself have experienced many things and great things, things that have moved him to the quick and left their life-roots in his own heart and spirit--he must, as we say, have "gone through much" and "lived abundantly"--before he will find himself able to build from his stores in the concrete types of his art something approaching Life's unsounded repletion. And this will at once explain and justify the bluster and ferment of genius in its youth, as amply reflected in the lives of Goethe and Schiller. But only the age of maturity and gray hairs will bring us the perfect work of art in all its rounded ripeness[413].
_(b) Talent and Genius_ This productive activity of the imagination by means of which the artist gives, by a process of elaboration to that which is essentially rational in its nature, a real embodiment, a creation more his own than anything else--this is what is usually summarized as genius and talent.
(_α_) We have already drawn attention to those characteristics which are most obviously referable to genius. Genius is the general capacity of creating a genuine example of fine art no less than the energy implied in the execution and elaboration of the same. Moreover, this capability and the power which goes with it is essentially the property of a human soul; that is to say, self-conscious individuality alone is able to create in this sense that a spiritual creation of this quality is just what it sets before itself to produce. Critics, intent on closer definition, are wont to distinguish sharply between genius and talent. And, in fact, they are not absolutely the same things, although it is necessary to find them united in the artist who would give us artistic work of the highest class. To be more exact, Art, in so far as it generally becomes a _particular_ art, and is exemplified for us in the real and definite appearance of its products, requires various accomplishments appropriate to the peculiar modes of its realization.
Such forms of executive versatility we may call with propriety talent, as we may say that anyone possesses a talent for perfect playing on the violin, or anyone else for singing. But a mere talent for this or that can only effect for us anything really good in the, so to speak, insulated nooks and corners of art[414]; it moreover itself requires for its true perfection something of more universal art-capacity as also that soul-animation, something more which is essentially the hall-mark of genius. Talent, in short, without the vital spark of genius, never gets much beyond a purely mechanical facility.
(_β_) It is also an opinion very commonly held that superior talent and genius are _inborn._ Here again we must distinguish; for if there is a sense in which this is true, from another point of view it is equally mistaken. No doubt every man, by virtue of his humanity, receives at his birth the potential gifts of religion, thought, and science.
In other words he would not strictly be a man if he did not already possess a capacity to grasp the idea of a Supreme Being, and generally to become the subject of a thinking consciousness. All that he requires