Ad LECTURE III.
uttered something very profound and: secure from contro- versy. At present, however, I only wish to know this,— whether you do not feel constrained to respect and admire in the highest degree such a course of thought and action, quite independently of any consideration of its prudence, upon which no judgment is now demanded.
Let us cast a glance on the world around us. You know that even now many tracts of the Earth’s surface are still covered with putrid morasses and impenetrable forests, the cold and damp atmosphere of which gives birth to noxious insects, and breathes forth devastating epidemics; which are almost entirely the dwelling-place of wild animals, and only afford to the few creatures in human form who are to be found in them the means of dragging on a dull and joyless existence, without freedom, usefulness, or dignity. History informs us that the countries which we inhabit at the present day formerly bore the same character to a large extent. Now, the morasses are dried up; the forests cleared out and changed into fruitful plains and vineyards which purify the air and fill it with enlivening fragrance; the rivers are taught to keep their channels, and enduring bridges are laid across them; villages and towns have arisen, with lasting, convenient, and agreeable dwelling-places for men, and public buildings, which have already braved the storms of centuries, for the purposes of mental improvement and elevation. You know that, even at the present day, savage hordes roam over vast wildernesses, maintaining a miserable life upon impure and loathsome food, and yet, when they encounter each other, engaging in warfare for the sake of this scanty subsistence, and of their wretched implements of acquisition and enjoyment,—extending the fury of their vengeance even to devouring their fellow- men. It is in the highest degree probable that we are all of us descendants of such races; that our forefathers, at least in some of their generations, have passed through this condition, Now, men are assembled from out the THE LIFE ACCORDING TO REASON. 45 forests and united together in masses. In the savage state each family had to provide for its manifold wants immediately and without assistance from others, and had even to fabricate for itself the utensils for that purpose, with much loss of time and waste of energy:—Now, the human multitudes are divided into classes, each of which pursues its own profession, to the acquirement and exercise of which its life is devoted; providing in its own department for all other classes, and provided for by them with respect to all its other wants; and thus are the forces of Nature confronted by the greatest possible amount of the cultivated, ordered and combined powers of Reason. The laws and their administrators interpose an insuperable barrier to the fury of personal warfare and spoliation; quarrels are adjusted without bloodshed, and the lust of crime is scared back by severe punishments into the dark recesses of thought;— and thus is internal peace secured, and every one moves in safety within the limits which are prescribed to him. Large masses of men, frequently sprung from the most dissimilar origin, and united one scarce knows how, encounter similar masses in as wonderful combination, and neither being fully acquainted with the power of the other, reciprocal fear steps in between them, so that men are sometimes blessed even with external tranquillity; or when it does come to war, the superior power is often worn out and broken by the determined resistance of its opponent, and instead of the secretly desired extermination, peace is the result;—and thus has sprung up a kind of international law between independent countries, and from among opposing tribes a kind of republic of nations has arisen. You know how, even to the present time, the timid savage, unacquainted even with himself, finds a hindrance or a destroying foe in every power of Nature. To us, Science has laid open our own spiritual being, and thereby, in a great measure, subjected to our will the outward physical forces of the universe. Mechanical science has multiplied, almost to infinity, the 46 LECTURE IIL.
feeble powers of man, and continues to multiply them. Chemistry has introduced us into many chambers of the secret workshop of Nature, and enabled us to apply her wonders to our own uses, and to protect ourselves from the injuries they might otherwise inflict upon us. As- tronomy has scaled the heavens for us, and measured their paths. You know, and the whole history of the Past as well as the description of the savage tribes which still exist upon the earth proves it to you, that all nations, the most cultivated not excepted, flying from the horrors of external Nature, and penetrating to the secret depths of their own heart, have first discovered there the most fearful of all horrors;—the Godhead as their enemy. By cringing humiliation and entreaty, by sacrifice of that -which was dearest to them, by voluntary self-imposed penances, by human immolation, by the blood of an only- begotten Son, if need were, have they sought to bribe this Being so jealous of human happiness, and to reconcile him to their unexpected strokes of fortune, by humbly deprecating his resentment.
This is the Religion of the ancient world, and of the savage tribes which still exist, and I challenge the student of History to point out any other, From us this phantom has disappeared long ago; and the redemption and satis- faction spoken of in a certain system is a public matter of fact, in which we may either believe or not,—and which is all the more a matter of fact the less we believe init. Our Age, far from shunning the Godhead, has, by its represen- tatives, constituted the Deity the minister of its pleasures. We, for our part, far from finding fault with them on ac- count of this want of the fear of God, rather count it one of their advantages; and since they are incapable of the right enjoyment of the Godhead,—of loving it, and living in it, and thus attaining Blessedness,—we may be well pleased that, at least, they do not fear it. Let them, if they please, throw it off altogether, or so fashion it as may be most agreeable to them.
THE LIFE ACCORDING TO REASON, 47 What I have declared in the first place, was once the form of Humanity, and in part is so still: what I have described in the second, is its present form, at least among ourselves, How, by whom, and by what manner of impulses, has this new creation been accomplished?
Who then, in the first place, gave to the countries of Modern Europe their present habitable shape, and made them worthy to be the dwelling-place of cultivated men? History answers the question. It was pious and holy men, who, believing it to be God’s Will that the timid fugitive of the woods should be elevated to civilized life, and thereby to the blessed knowledge of a Godhead full of love to man, left the abodes of civilization and all the physical and intellectual enjoyments to be found there,—left their fami- lies, friends and associates, and went forth into the desert wilderness, enduring the bitterest privations, encountering the severest labour, and, what is more, pursuing their end with unwearied patience, that they might win the confidence of untutored tribes, by whom they were persecuted and robbed;—frequently terminating an anxious and weary life by a martyr’s death at the hands of those for whom, and for us their descendants, they died,—rejoicing in the hope that from their ashes a worthier generation should arise. These men, witliout doubt, gave up their personal life and its enjoyments for their Idea, and in this Idea for the Race. And should any one offer this objection:—‘ They indeed sacrificed the present life for the expectation of an infinitely higher, heavenly, and blessed life, which they hoped to de- serve by these sacrifices and sufferings; but still it was only enjoyment for enjoyment, and indeed the lesser for the greater;’'—then I would entreat such an objector earnestly to consider with me the following. How inadequately soever they might express themselves in words as to the Blessed- ness of another world, and with what sensuous pictures soever they might clothe their descriptions of this happi- ness, J ask only to know how they arrived at this firm 48 LECTURE III.
Faith in another world, which they attested so nobly by their deeds; and what this Faith, as an act of the mind, really is. Does not the mind which faithfully accepts another world as certain, in this very acceptance renounce the present?—and is not this Faith itself the sacrifice, - once and for ever accomplished and perfected in the mind, and whick only manifests itself outwardly when special circumstances call it forth? Let it be no wonder at all, but quite a conceivable thing, and only what thou thyself, who makest this objection, wert thou in the same position, wouldst do,—that they willingly sacrificed everything to their belief in an Eternal Life:—let this be so; then is it the wonder that they did belteve; in which belief the Egoist, who is incapable of letting the Present escape, even for a moment, from his view, can never follow nor even approach them.
Who has united rude races together, and reduced oppos- ing tribes under the dominion of law, and to the habits of peaceful life? Who has maintained them in this condition, and protected existing states from dissolution through in- ternal disorder,or destruction by outward power? Whatever name they may have borne, it was Heroes, who had left their Age far behind them, giants among surrounding men in material and spiritual power. Theysubdued to their Idea of what ought to be, races by whom they were on that account hated and feared; through sleepless nights of thought they pondered their anxious plans for their fellow-men; from battlefield to battlefield they rushed without weariness or rest, renouncing the enjoyments which lay within their grasp, making their life a spoil, often shedding their blood. And what sought they by these labours?—and how were they rewarded? It wasan Idea, a mere Idea of'a new condi- tion of things to be brought about by them, to be realized for its own sake alone, and without reference to any ulterior purpose;—this it was which inspired them; and it was the unspeakable delight of this Idea which rewarded and THE LIFE ACCORDING TO REASON, 49 indemnified them for all their labours and sacrifices;— it was this Idea which lay at the root of their inward life,—which cast the outward life into shade, and threw it aside as something undeserving of thought;—it was the power of this Idea which made them giants in phy- sical and mental energy, although by birth like their fellow-men; and their personal life was dedicated to this Idea which first moulded that life into a worthy and accepted offering.
What impels the King, securely seated on a hereditary throne, with the fulness of the land spread out before him for his enjoyment,—what impels—(to combine my question with a well-known example so often miscon- strued by a race of pigmy sentimentalists)—what impels the Macedonian hero to leave his hereditary kingdom already well secured on all sides and richly provided for by his father and to seek foreign lands to the conquest of which he forces his way by unceasing efforts? Will he thereby be happier or more contented?—What chains victory to his footsteps, and scatters before him in terror the countless hordes of his enemies?—Is this mere fortune? No! it is an Idea which first gives the im- pulse, and which crowns the effort with success. Effeminate half-barbarians had looked down with scorn upon the most highly civilized people then living beneath the sun on account of their smaller numbers, and had even dared to entertain the thought of their subjugation; they bad actually subdued kindred tribes dwelling in Asia, and subjected the cultivated and the free to the Jaws and odious inflictions of rude and enslaved nations. This outrage must not be perpetrated with impunity: on the contrary, the civilized must rule and the un- civilized must obey, if Hight is to be the Law of the world. This Idea had already been long cherished in the nobler Grecian minds, until in Alexander it became a living flame which animated and consumed his personal g g 50 LECTURE III.
life. Tell me not of the thousands who fell around his path; speak not of his own early ensuing death:—after the realization of his Idea, what was there greater for him to do than to die?
(51 ) LECTURE IV.
THE LIFE ACCORDING TO REASON.
In our last lecture we set forth the principle directly opposed to that of the Third Age which we have under- taken to characterize,—the principle of the Life according to Reason;—this, namely,—that the personal life of man should be devoted to the Life of the Race, or, as we further defined this expression, to Ideas; and we found it desirable to prolong our consideration of this principle, as one of the more luminous points in our inquiry. I proposed, in the first place, to show you by your own nature, that you could not help approving, admiring, and respecting in the highest degree the sacrifice of the enjoyments of life for the realization of an Idea; that hence a principle upon which this judgment was founded must exist indestructibly within you; a principle namely to this effect—that the personal life ought to be given up for the Idea; and that, strictly speaking, personal existence 1s not, since it should thus be sacrificed; while, on the contrary, the life in the Idea alone as, since it alone ought to be maintained. I explained this expected admiration on your part by this proposition: All life necessarily loves itself, and therefore the Life according to Reason must love itself, and, as the only true and real Life, must love itself with a love far exceeding all other love. Now the Life according to Reason may exist and be known 52 LECTURE IV.
52 LECTURE IV.
to man in two different ways:—either in mere conception, and as the picture of a condition foreign to his own;—or by himself living this life. In the first case, it loves itself and delights in itself as seen in this conception, because this is at least the conception of the Life according to Reason, and is itself according to Reason; and then there arises the approval, admiration, and reverence of which we have spoken. In the second case, it rises to infinite enjoyment of its own being, which is Blessedness. The former con- dition,—that of approval,—I proposed to test by your own feelings in our last lecture; promising you for to-day a feeble description of the second.
And in the fulfilment of my first object, that I might not roam about at random, blindly groping among my materials, but arrange my thoughts around a common centre, I said— ‘Everything great and good on which our Age rests, and by the power of which it exists, has been brought about by the sacrifices which the Past has made for Ideas.’ By calling to mind that the land had been redeemed from the state of wildness to that of cultivation, mankind from the state of war to that of peace, from ignorance to knowledge, from blind terror before God to emancipation from such fear,-— I showed that the first of these changes, at least in the countries which we inhabit, had been effected by pious and holy men; and the last, everywhere and in all lands, by Heroes;—all of whom, the one class as well as the other, had sacrificed their life and its enjoyments for the sake of their Ideas, While I was proceeding to answer an objection which might be made with reference to this last point, my discourse was interrupted by the expiry of our usual time, and I now resume it at the same place.
Jt is Honour, some one may say, which inspires the Hero,—the burning image of his fame now and in after- times, which impels him onward through difficulty and danger, and which repays him for his life of sacrifice and self-denial in the coin on which he sets most value. I THE LIFE ACCORDING TO REASON. 53 answer, even if this should be so, what then is this Hon- our? Whence has this thought of the judgment which others may pass upon us, particularly of the judgment of future generations whose praise or blame shall echo over our graves unheard by us;—whence has it acquired this amazing power which enables it to suppress and extinguish the personal life of the Hero? Is it not obvious that in the depths of his mind there lies a principle which tells him that only on one condition can his life be of any value to him,—can be even endurable by him;—this, namely, that the voices of Mankind at large shall unite in ascribing a value to it? Is not this very thought the Idea of the Race, and of its judgment as a Race on the Indi- vidual, and the admission that the Race alone is entitled to pass the final judgment upon true merit? Is it not the supposition that this final judgment must be grounded on the inquiry whether the Individual has or has not devoted himself to the Race?—and is it not a silent, respectful ac- quiescence in this judgment proceeding on these premises? —in a word, is not this Idea precisely that in which we have placed the Life according to Reason? But let us more thoroughly investigate this matter, The Hero acts:—undoubtedly then, I add, he acts ina certain way;—in order, it is said, thereby to acquire fame in the eyes of Present and Future Ages:—undoubtedly then, I add again, without having first interrogated the Present and Future Ages whether they would laud a life so employed;—without, I add yet again, having had tt in his power to seek counsel of experience in any way upon this question; because his mode of action, so surely as it proceeds upon an Idea, is a new, hitherto unknown mode,. upon which therefore no human judgment has ever yet been pronounced. But, it is said, he reckons so securely on fame being the result of this mode of action, that he is ready to peril his life on the accuracy of his calculations. How does he know, then, that he has not miscalculated 2 54 LECTURE IV.
At the time when he goes forth into action, and has already once forall completed in his own mind the consecration of his life, he and he only, and none other but himself, has examined and approved the mode of life which he has set before him;—how then does he know that Present and Future Ages will likewise approve it and cover it with im- mortal glory?—how does he come so boldly to ascribe to the whole Race his own standard of what is honourable and praiseworthy? Yet he does this, as is alleged; and this single remark of itself proves, that, in acting as he does, far from being moved thereto by the hope of future fame, he holds up to future Ages, in his own deeds springing forth in native purity from the primeval fountain of honour, the example of what they must approve and reverence, if their judgment isto have any weight with him;—despising and even utterly rejecting such judgment if it be not in ac- cordance with that which has already approved itself to him as worthy of eternal honour and respect. And thus it is not ambition which is the parent of great deeds, but great deeds themselves give birth to faith in a world in which they must command respect. That form of Honour, indeed, which comes before us in every-day life, and of which we do not now speak, proceeds entirely from fear of dis- grace; without power to excite man to active duty, it only holds him back from that which would be notoriously despised, and disappears as soon as he can hope to pass unnoticed. Another Ambition, of which too we do not now speak, which first pores over ancient chronicles to discover what in them is commended, and then endeavours to imitate that, so as also to become an object of commen- dation; and which being incapable of creating the New, strives to reproduce in itself certain effete memorials of the Past, which once indeed may have possessed life and energy:—such an ambition may sacrifice itself, but that to which it devotes itself is not an Idea but a Con- ceit —and it misses its purpose; for what is once dead THE LIFE ACCORDING TO REASON. 55 never lives again,—and whatever may be its success in the senseless and purblind Present, the Future will assuredly despise the Imitator who mistakes himself for a Creator.
This remark upon Honour, which has been here ad- duced only in reference to Heroism, is also applicable to what is to follow, where in like manner superficiality is wont to speak of an ambition the nature and possibility of which it has not power to comprehend.
In our former lecture we said that the once timid savage, to whom every power of Nature was an obstacle and a hindrance, is now through Science made acquainted with his own constitution, and has thus attained a mastery over the powers of the outward universe. Who are they who have discovered and extended the Sciences?—have they accomplished this without labour and sacrifice 3— what has been their reward?
While the Age in which they lived spent its days in gay enjoyment, they sat wrapt in solitary thought, in order that they might disclose a law or a relation which had called forth their admiration, and with respect to which they had absolutely no other desire than simply to disclose it; sac- rificing pleasure and fortune, neglecting their outward con- cerns, and lavishing their finest genius in these researches; laughed at by the multitude as fools and dreamers. Now, their discoveries have proved of manifold advantage to hu- man life, as we have already called to mind. But have they themselves enjoyed these fruits of their labours? have they foreseen or even conjectured these results?— have they not rather, when their spiritual aspirations have been repressed by such views of their occupation, uttered truly sublime lamentations over the desecration of the Holy to the profane uses of life, it being concealed from them that life itself must be thereby sanctified? Only when, through their labours, these discoveries had been made so compre- hensible, and a knowledge of them had been so widely 56 LECTURE IV.
diffused, as to be carried out into practice by less inspired minds (whom we, looking from an entirely different point of view, would by no means on that account despise, but of whom it should be distinctly understood that they are not of so noble a nature as the first;)}—only then have these discoveries been applied to the wants of life, and so become the means of arming the Human Race with supe- rior power over the forces of Nature. If, thus, no vision, not even a presentiment, of the usefulness of their disco- veries could indemnify them for their sacrifices, what was their reward 7—and what, at the present day, is the reward of those, if at the present day there be such, who with the same devotion, the same sacrifices, the same disinterested zeal, amid the scorn and mockery of the vulgar, raise their eyes towards the ever-flowing fountain of Truth? This it is:—they have entered into a new life-element of spiritual clearness and purity, whereby life in any other form be- comes absolutely repulsive to them. A Higher World, which is first and most intimately made known to us by the light which is native within it, has arisen upon them; this light has filled their eyes with its beneficent and in- spiring radiance, so that henceforth and forever they can regard nothing but that illumined height shining in deep surrounding darkness, This heavenly vision so rivets their gaze, so enchains their whole being, that every other sense is silently absorbed therein. They need no recom- pense; they have made an incalculable gain.
The dreadful phantom of a Deity hostile to Mankind has vanished, and the Human Race is now delivered from this horror, and enjoys tranquillity and freedom. Who has eradicated this error, so widely spread and deeply rooted among al] nations?—has this been accomplished without sacrifice?—what has been the reward of such sacrifice?
Jt is the Christian Religion alone which has wrought this stupendous miracle, and it has accomplished this triumph by means of countless sacrifices on the part of THE LIFE ACCORDING TO REASON. 57 those whose lives have been filled by its inspiration and devoted to its service. What they have endured;—what the Exalted Founder himself,—what his immediate fol- lowers,—what their successors through a long series of ages, until even to us, as to a later birth, their word came;—what they all have wrought and suffered among rude and superstitious nations, animated only by the gladdening and inspiring truth which had risen upon their souls and become the ruling impulse of their lives, —I shall not here call to mind. his Age is not ignorant of these things; it brings them sufficiently into notice, in order that it may laugh at the fanaticism which is all it can discover in them. Only through Christianity; through the vast miracle in which it had its origin, and by which it was ushered into the world, has this change been effected. It is no doubt quite conceivable that after the Truth has once been proclaimed, and in consequence of its numerous adherents has even acquired an authority among men, we may by peaceful inquiry investigate its foundations, reconstruct it by the power of our own under- standing,and so,in a certain sense, rediscover it: hut whence the great Founder obtained courage boldly to confront the phantom which had been consecrated by the universal assent of all former Ages, and the very thought of which had paralysed every exertion, and to discover that it was not, but that instead of it there was only Happiness and Love:—this was the miracle. So far as regards the re- presentatives of this Age, it is very certain, if we may judge by other proofs of their acuteness and penetration, that it is not this acuteness, but only the unacknowledged influence exercised over them by this very tradition,—an influence which they deride wherever their dull eye can reach it,—to which they owe it that they do not, even to the present day, smite their faces before idols of wood, and pass their children through the fire to Moloch. Whether you can forbear from passing a sentence of A 58 LECTURE IV.
approval on the sacrifice of personal enjoyment for the sake of Ideas manifested in all these examples, is the question which I must now leave you to answer for yourselves, and also to draw from this phenomenon the inferences which, as we formerly maintained, must neces- sarily follow from it.
This approval is,as we formerly explained, the immediate effect of the contemplation of the Life in Idea merely in conception, and as a condition foreign to ourselves. We added that the existence of this Life, not in conception only, but in living reality, was the source of an infinite self-enjoyment, which is Blessedness; and we promised a description of this state, which may indeed prove but weak and inadequate, as every mere picture of a living reality must prove.
This is the place more definitely to explain the peculiar nature of the Idea as such;—an explanation for which we have endeavoured to prepare the way by our previous course of thought.
I say, then, that the Idea is an independent, living, matter- inspiring Thought.