henry james substance and shadow or morality and religion in their relation to life boston 1863

8/3/2019 Henry James SUBSTANCE and SHADOW or Morality and Religion in Their Relation to Life Boston 1863

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Sub0tQnct anh S\)ahovo:OR MORALITY AND RELIGION

IN THEIR RELATION TOLIFE: AN ESSAY UPONTHE PHYSICS OF

CREATION.

HENRY JAMES,

BOSTON:TICKNOR AND FIELDS.1863.


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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, byHenry James,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District ofRhode Island.

/ Ri'uerside Press:Stereotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGEThe Introduction 3CHAPTER r.

Relation of Swedenborg to the Intellect. His staunch vin-dication of human equality. The angels devoid of personalvirorth. Swedenborg's statements imply a profound Philosophy, Its fundamental notion, the dependence of Morality. Ourmoral force a perpetual communication 31

CHAPTER II.Moral life in order to spiritual. Kant and Swedenborg.

Swedenborg's doctrine of the origin of Evil. His sincere tes-timony to the actuality of creation. Infinite love necessarilycreative 50

CHAPTER III.How the letter of Revelation degrades its spiritual contents. Time and Space constitutional conditions of our conscious-

ness. Natural Religion affronts the heart even more than thehead. The Divine perfection is eminently human 65CHAPTER IV.

The Divine Humiliation. The creature must necessarilyantagonize the creative perfection. Personality the true mar-vel of creation. The creature's identity the prime interest ofcreation. The practical obstacle to it in the nature of thecreature. Revelation alone competent to the question 78


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iv Table of Contents.CHAPTER V. PAGE

Philosophy's true function.Treachery of philosophers to it. Sir William Hamilton makes scepticism the basis of faith.Kant makes real things unintelligible, and intelligible things un-real. Sir William Hamilton runs Kant's doctrine into theground. Between the two Philosophy is reduced to a pioushiccup. Philosophy is totally unharmed by the Positivists.The total problem of Philosophy is to reconcile Freedom withDependence. Swedenborg alone solves it honestly and with-out ostentation 89

CHAPTER VI.Swedenborg's Doctrine of Nature. Nature's total subordi-

nation to spirit. Discrimination of moral from spiritual life,largely illustrated 106

CHAPTER VII.Incompetency of reason in spiritual things. Nature is an

implication of the spiritual world. It is according to Swe-denborg the Hand of God's Power. Moral righteousness in-compatible with spiritual innocence. The Law is intendedto minister death. Moral force characterizes us only in theinfancy of our spiritual development. The Law alone givesa knowledge of sin. Delight in ritual righteousness fatal tospiritual life. Our spiritual creation contingent upon ournatural redemption. We are born only to be reborn - . 118

CHAPTER VIII.Morality is a platform for our spiritual regeneration. It is

the subject earth of spiritual existence. Natural existencesforms of use. Spiritual existences forms of power. Nature'sdiscords harmonized in man. Our moral discords harmonizedin the social development of the race. Society or fellowshipamong men the proper outcome of the Divine redemption ofNature. Thus the moral sentiment claims only a social glo-rification. Individual regeneration is a fruit of our naturalredemption. Church and State are mere factors of a perfectsociety. The Divine benignity 137

CHAPTER IX.The letter of religion inversely serviceable to its spirit.

Revelation implies a veiling of spiritual truth ; /. r. a lowering


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Table of Contents. vPAGE

of it to the capacity of carnal minds. The Divine is prima-rily akin to our least reputable interests; or has chief regard towhat men esteem the least. Hostility of the religious con-science to God's humane perfection. The fearful perversionwhich Orthodoxy makes of the Christian Atonement. Rit-uality fatal to spirituality 156

CHAPTER X.Testimony of experience. The aim of all God's dealingswith us is to undermine our virtue, or our conceit of our abilityto be better in ourselves than other people. Redemption the

sole secret of creation. The conscience of sin. It is theonly legitimate fruit of religious culture. Is the conscience ofsin real or dramatic ? '1 he sectarian view absurd. Thejudgment is exclusively a spiritual one. The philosophicmeaning of the judgment. The true confession of sin isnever a ritual one. One's conscience of sin means inwardlyhis worship of God's perfection. It is a mere practical decla-ration, that God's goodness is ineilable 168

CHAPTER XI.The Church affects a real sanctity. She lives by adroitly

flattering our self-righteous instincts. Moral righteousnesswhen regarded as a positive quantity, fatal to spiritual innocenceand peace. The church embodies and authenticates our nat-ural sottishness in Divine things. She is the refuge and cita-del of a frenzied egotism and unbelief. There are very manyin the church who are not of it. The church cannot conferboth a literal and a spiritual sanctity. Which alternative doesshe see fit to adopt? She adopts the latter 188

CHAPTER XII.Salvation and damnation, spiritually interpreted, mean sever-

,

ally to love and hate our kind. The tap-root of character isone's conception of God. The unhandsome fruits of Catholicreligiosity. The subtler but more harmful fruits of Protestantfanaticism. When the son of man cometh, shall he find faithon the earth ? The Jew and the Christian are, respectively,carnal type and spiritual substance. Religion is now the idolof men's impure devotion. The sole legitimate force of re-ligion cathartic not alimentative. The true enemy of God isalways the saint, never the sinner 105

b


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vi Table of Contents^CHAPTER XIII.

PAGEThe kingdom of God to come on earth. Man is a micro-cosm because the cosmos is a grand man. The heart of menis much in advance of their head. Regeneration impossiblesave through a redemption of Nature. In Christ God is re-vealed as a glorified Natural man : hence Christianity por-tends a Divine innocence for man in the sphere of his naturallife. Our religious life is a standing opprobrium to the Divinename. The life which Christ inaugurates in human nature isnot post-mortem existence. God is perfect Man 224

CHAPTER XIV.The thorough redemption of Nature in Christ. Christ is

not a spirit but a Divine natural man. Swedenborg scoutsthe notion of any arbitrary power in God, there being no infantwho has not more. Angel and devil both involved in Man. Influence of the Christian truth in the natural sphere ofthe mind. In Divine order the First is last, and the Lastfirst. Hell is glorified In conventional, Heaven in true. Man-hood 241

CHAPTER XV.Nature implied in Man. Incompetency of the church to

interpret Revelation. Both Theology and Philosophy as atpresent administered only inflame our native Pharisaism.There is but One Life, and we are His constant creatures. The philosophic idea of creation. It is the giving inwardsubstance to what in itself is pure form. Our subjective historyinvolved in our objective creation. A subject can never prop-erly be his own object. Kant refutes creation by the fictionof noumenal existence. Sir William Hamilton hereupon de-grades Philosophy into snivel 256

CHAPTER XVI.Constitution is not character, any more than heart and lungs

are the body. Kant habitually confounds the two things, orsupposes that you give being to things when you give themphenomenality. Idealism the bane of Philosophy from thebeginning of time till now. Swedenborg puts a stop to phil-osophic guessing. Hamilton and Mansel's testimony to Phi-losophy. They make it an abject scepticism relieved byCant 274


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Table of Contents. viiCHAPTER XVII.

PAGEKant's analysis of knowledge. He makes knowledge afact of physical constitution, not of spiritual creation. Sci-

ence has to do with the constitution of things ; Philosophy withtheir creation. Science deals with the finite and relative ;Philosophy with the infinite and absolute. Facts of life knownfrom withm ; facts of existence from without. The consti-tution of a thing, or what makes it appear, is never what cre-ates it, or makes it be. Life implies existence ; soul body- 286

CHAPTER XVIII.Life or consciousness unites what sense and reason disunite. Sir William Hamilton's curious theory of the causal judg-

ment. He finds the cause of a thing in the thing's own en-trails. Thus he thinks saltpetre is not merely constituted butcaused by K O and N 06. Cause evoked only to explainsome breach of natural order. We never ask the cause ofThings, but only of their mutations. Sir W. Hamilton stul-tifies intelligence by confounding Finiteness with Phenomenal-ity. They are as distinct as sense and jeason. -^ Cause isadduced to explain facts of phenomenal not of fixed existence. It is not a sensible but a rational inquest. Cause is a sci-entific rudiment of the philosophic idea of creation. Theforce of the causal judgment is in its educating or discipliningthe intellect 299

CHAPTER XIX.John Mill's broad human sympathies. His failure never-

theless to explain the causal instinct. He also sinks thephilosopher in the man of science. He restricts cause to amerely constitutive not creative import. He makes it signifyonly what identifies, not what individualizes things. Philoso-phy reverses this judgment, giving cause a creative efficacy, ormaking it an attestation exclusively of the spiritual side of life,not of its material. Cause invariably opens up the supernat-ural realm. It is in this point of view solely that Philosophyenvisages it, Men of mere thought, not of life, like Kant,Sir William Hamilton, and the rest, deny cause a spiritual im-plication, because they resolve spiritual being itself into physi-cal constitution. Kant makes the dissecting-room the schoolof Philosophy. He found life so dazzling a thing to contem-plate, that he betook himself, to the unspeakable comfort of


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his optics, to the contemplation of death instead : only unfor-tunately he misnamed that death///;?; and so, by his great au-thority over men cf thought, not of life, stirred up any amountof dreary sepulchral literature. His pretension to be the Co-pernicus of Philosophy. His German and Scotch disciples- 322

CHAPTER XX. \The fundamental misconception of the Critical Philosophy. Kant's dread of Philosophy, lest it plainly avouch creation. Common sense affirms creation. Pseudo Philosophy deniesit. Kant's fatal philosophic delinquency, in exteriorating ob-

ject to subject. The extraordinary performances of Fichte,Schelling, and Hegel thereupon. The testimony of sense onething ; that of consciousness another. Kant confounds them. He thought finite and relative to be one and the same con-ception. Sense divorces what consciousness marries. Kantreduces Philosophy to a requiem over deceased hopes. Na-ture a correspondence of the things of the mind. Man itssole unity 347

CHAPTER XXI.Alleged duality of Man and Nature in consciousness.

Their real unity there. The objective sphere in life alwayscontrols the subjective sphere. The ground of Kant's mis-take. Are we properly active or passive in knowledge?Noumenal existence fatal to creation. Nature necessary toposit the creature, or give him identity. Import of the dis-tinction between Identity and Individuality. Philosophy mustaccept the guidance of Revelation. Uncontrolled by Philoso-phy science is necessarily atheistic and logic pantheistic 37

CHAPTER XXII.God is not voluntarily but spontaneously creative. He can-not create Life, but only communicate it. Before life can becommunicated, a basis of communication must be organized. Creation in order to be real exacts selfhood in the creature ;and hence claims to be a purely spiritual operation of God. Orthodoxy turns creation into a mere physical exploit of God. In truth, however. Nature is but a mask of God's spiritual

presence. The creature's identity the supreme care of thecreative Love. This interest requires that he be an inverseimage of God's perfection. Community, the essence of Na-


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ture, inversely images the Divine unity. Nature's sole func-tion is to embody the spiritual creation. - She incorporatesspirit 395

CHAPTER XXIII.Nature's part in creation is purely mediatorial. It is im-

plied in Man as body is implied in soul. History is the vindi-cation of the human form in creation. Adam a symbol ofthe Divine celestial, Eve of the Divine natural, mind. . Weknow ourselves at first only as sensuously defined. -^ Sweden-borg compels Nature into the limits of consciousness. Ouridentity and our individuality equally abject masks of God'screative presence in us- 419

CHAPTER XXIV.The problem of creation. Insoluble to faith and science

alike. Atheism or Pantheism a necessary logical result.God must give His creature moral consciousness as well asphysical being. The inevitable implication of the finite con-sciousness. Science is but a bridge between Religion andPhilosophy. Formula of our intellectual progress : Religion,Science, Philosophy. Natural religion is bound to give wayto science, while science herself however has no pretension tofinality. Science is only a handmaid to Philosophy. Phi-losophy alone has power livingly to reinstate religion. Relig-ion the heart, science the lungs, of the mind. Science purgesFaith of its sensuous elements. Philosophy is the brain ofthe mind ' 434

CHAPTER XXV.History summed up in the interests of church, state, and so-

ciety. Its practical scope is to free Eve from the dominationof Adam ; that is, invert the relation of subserviency whichthe principle of Individuality is under to that of Universality. It transfigures our natural communism itself into the intensestindividuality. Man by creation is perfectly imbecile in him-self. Neither man angel nor devil has the least power in him-self. Man's freedom utterly pliant to the Divine behests.Marble is not so pliant to the hand of the sculptor. Our na-tive evil a negative witness to the divinity of our origin. Ourexperience of evil strictly constitutional or subjective. Evilfor man means the domination of the individual by the commonI


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life. Good on the other hand means the social subjection ofthe common to the individual life 4^1

CHAPTER XXVI.Spiritual import of the Gospel. Creation means the giving

natural substance to spiritual form. Nature means the princi-ple of community in all existence. Philosophic bearing ofthe Christian truth. Consciousness always identifies us withmaternal nature. Why does the wife's personality merge inthat of the husband ? The reason to be found only in the sym-bolism of marriage. Marriage typifies the union of infiniteand finite in true manhood. What has so long blinded us tothe spiritual contents of Revelation ? The church's supersti-tion. Gloria in exceltis domino . 484Appendix . 509


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THE INTRODUCTION.The leading words of my title-page call 'for

a precise definition, in order that the reader mayclearly discern the aim of the discussion to whichI invite his attention.By morality I mean that sentiment of self-hood or property which every man not an idiotfeels in his own body. It is a state of consciousfreedom or rationality, exempting him from thefurther control of parents or guardians, and en-titling him in his own estimation and that ofhis fellows, to the undivided ownership of hiswords and deeds. It is the basis of consciencein man, or what enables him to appropriate goodand evil to himself, instead of ascribing the for-mer as he may one day learn to do exclusivelyto celestial, the latter exclusively to infernal in-fluence. The word is often viciously used as asynonyme of spiritual goodness, as when wesay, "A is a very moral man," meaning a justone ; or, " B is a very immoral man," meaningan unjust one. No man can be either good orevil, either just or unjust, but by virtue of hismorality; /. e. unless he have selfhood or free-dom entitling him to own his action. This is aconditio sine qua non. The action by which he


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4 The IntroduElion.becomes pronounced either the one sort of manor the other could not be his action, and conse-quently could never afford a basis for his spirit-ual development, unless he possessed this origi-nal moral force, or strict neutrality with respectto heaven and hell ; but would on the contrarybe an effect in every case of overpoweringspiritual influence. We should be very care-ful, therefore, not to confound the condition ofan event with the event itself, as we do whenwe call the good man moral, and deny moralityto the evil man. For if the good man alonebe moral, while the evil man is immoral, thenmorality ceases to be any longer the distinctivebadge of human nature itself which separatesit from all lower natures (so furnishing a plat-form fbr God's spiritual descent into it), andbecomes the mere arbitrary endowment of cer-tain persons. The error in question originatesin, at least is greatly promoted by, our habitof calling the decalogue "the moral law." Asthe law is instinct with an ineffable Divine sanc-tity, we get at last to think that the word whichwe so commonly couple with it partakes ofright the same sanctity, and accordingly callonly the man who obeys it moral, while hewho disobeys it is immoral. In point of fact,however, morality means nothing more nor lessthan that state of natural neutrality or indiffer-ence to good and evil, to heaven and hell, whichdistinguishes man from all other existence, andendows him alone with selfhood or freedom.Thus the term properly designates our natural


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The Iniroduffion. 5fiiajority or manhood, what every man, as man,possesses in common with every other man.By religion I mean what is invariablymeant by the term where the thing itself stillexists such a conscience on man's part of aforfeiture of the Divine favor, as perpetuallyurges him to make sacrifices of his ease, hisconvenience, his wealth, and if need be his life,in order to restore himself, if so it be possible,to that favor. This is religion in its literalform ; natural religion ; religion as it standsauthenticated by the universal instincts of therace, before it has undergone a spiritual con-version into life, and while claiming still apurely ritual embodiment. It is however inthis gross form the germ of' all humane cul-ture. Accordingly we sometimes use the termin an accommodated sense, /. e. to express thespiritual results with which religion is fraughtrather than the mere carnal embodiment it firstof all offers to such results. Thus the apostleJames says: Pure and undefiled religion (/'. e.,religion viewed no longer as a letter, but as aspirit), is to visit the fatherless and the widow,and keep oneself unspotted from the world (/.e., has exclusive reference to the life). We alsosay proverbially, handsome is that handsomedoes; not meaning of course to stretch theword handsome out of its literal dimensions, butonly by an intelligible metonomy of body forsoul, or what is natural for what is spiritual, toexpress in a compendious way the superiorityof moral to physical beauty. My reader will


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6 'The Introduction.always understand me, then, as using the wordreh'gion in its strictly literal signification, to in-dicate our ritual or ceremonious homage to theDivine name.Now morality and religion, thus interpreted,are regarded on my title-page as concurring topromote the evolution of man's spiritual destinyon earth.Man's destiny on earth, as I am led to con-ceive it, consists in the realization of a perfectsociety, fellowship, or brotherhood among men,proceeding upon such a complete Divine subju-gation in the bosom of the race, first of self-loveto brotherly love, and then of both loves to uni-versal love or the love of God, as will amountto a regenerate nature in man, by convertingfirst his merely natural consciousness, which isone of comparative isolation and impotence,into a social consciousness, which is one of com-parative omnipresence and omnipotence; andthen and thereby exalting his moral freedom,which is a purely negative one, into an aestheticor positive form : so making spontaneity andnot will, delight and no longer obligation, thespring of his activity.

But morality and religion are further regardedon the title-page as bearing, in the evolution ofthe spiritual destiny of man on earth, the rela-tion respectively of substance knd shadow. Itonly remains that I explicate this point, in orderto put in the reader's hands the clew to my entirethought.A shadow is a phenomenon of vision pro-


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The IntroduSfion. 7duced by some body intercepting the light.Thus the shadow of the tree upon the lawn isan effect of the tree intercepting the sun's rays.My shadow on the wall is an effect of my bodyintercepting the rays of the candle, and so forth.Evidently then three things concur to constitutea shadow : i . a light ; 2. an opaque body whichdrinks up or refuses to transmit its rays ; 3. abackground or suitable plane of projection onwhich such refiisal becomes stamped. Thus theshadow which anything casts is strictly propor-tionate to its power of absorbing the light, orappropriating it to itself: which is only saying,in other words, that the shadow of a thing isthe exact measure of its finiteness or imperfec-tion, /'. e. of its destitution of true being. Andthis remark prepares us to ask what purposethe shadow serves, what intellectual use itrenders.

Obviously the use or pbrpose of shadows isto attest finite substance, or separate betweenphenomenal and real existence. Real existenceis that which exists in itself, being vitalizedfrom within. Phenomenal existence is thatwhich exists only by virtue of its implicationin something not itself, being vitalized whollyfrom without. In short real existence is spir-itual; phenomenal existence natural. So far asI am spiritual, that is, to all the extent of myjesthetic or spontaneous life, I am a real exist-ence, possessing life in myself So far as I amsimply natural, that is, to all the extent of myinstinctual and voluntary life, I am a phenome-


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8 The lntrodu5tion.nal existence, derLving my life from without.My spiritual manhood consequently casts noshadow. Whatsoever I do spontaneously; what-soever I do in obedience to the inspiration ofBeauty; whatsoever I do, in short, from individ-ual taste or attraction in opposition to the com-mon instinct of self-preservation ; is good andbeautiful in itself, is positively or infinitely good,as being without any contrast or oppugnancyof evil. But my physical and moral existencenever fails to project a shadow. Let me be asbeautiful physically as Venus or Apollo, still Iam not really or positively, but only actually orapparently, so ; as by contrast with some oppo-site ugliness. Let me be morally as good as allsaints and angels, it is yet not a good whick ispositive or stands by itself, but one which standsin the opposition of evil. In short, my beautyin the one case, and my goodness in the other,is finite ; and like all finite existence claims itsattendant and attesting shadow.

Clearly, then, the purpose of shadows is toattest finite or imperfect existence, existencewhich does not involve its own substance. Theshadow which the tree casts upon the lawn, andthat which my body projects upon the wall be-hind me, are a mute confession on the part ofbody andv tree that they are purely finite andphenomenal existences: that while they sensiblyappear to be in themselves, their being is yet insomething very superior to themselves. Seekthis tree a few years hence, and you will find novestige of it remaining. Ask for this body a


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The IntroduSlion. 9few months hence, possibly, and it will be in-distinguishable frona the dust of the earth. Thisis what the shadow invariably says : that thesubstance which projects it is a mere appear-ance to the senses, not a reality to the philo"sophic understanding; and that if we wOuldpenetrate the world of realities we must trans-cend the realm of sense, the finite realm, andenter that of mind or spirit.We now fairly discern the constitution ofthe shadow, and what is its rational scope andsignificance; and are thus prepared to interpretthe greatest of shadows which we call Religion,and which falls everywhere across the page ofhumaa history darkening the face of day, turn-ing the fairest promise of nature to blight, un-^dermining the most towering pride of moralityby a subtle conscience of sin, and forbiddingman to content himself with a righteousness, apeace and a power which shall be aiiything lessthan Divine.The reader recalls the constitution of theshadow, namely, that it is always ati effectof some opaque body intercepting the rays oflight. Thus the shadow which the tree projectsupon the lawn is an effect of the tree intercept-ing the sun's rays ; and the shadow of my per-son on the wail an effect of my body intercept-ing the rays of the lamp. In like mannerprecisely this stupendous shadow designated bythe name of Religion, is an effect produced byour moral consciousness intercepting the raysof the Divine Truth as they shine forth from


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10 Ihe IntroduElion.man's social destiny. The three elements whichdetermine its constitution as a shadow are thusdistributed : History being the sole field of itsprojection; Morality the opaque substance whichalone projects it; and the Social principle, theprinciple of a perfect society fellowship or broth-erhood among men, being the great Divine light,of whose obscuration by morality religion hasalways been at once the shadow and the scourge.

So much definition seems due by way of pref-ace in vindication of the title of my book, orin order to apprise my reader that I regard Re-ligion and Morality as respectively shadow andsubstance in their relation to the social develop-ment of the race. Society fellowshipequal-ity fraternity, whatever name you give it, isthe central sun of human destiny, originating allits motion, and determining the pathway of itsprogress towards infinite Love and Wisdom.Morality and Religion together constitute thesubject-earth of self-love which revolves aboutthis centre, now in light now in shade; moralitybeing the illuminated side of that love, religionits obscured side; the one constituting the splen-dor of its day, the other the darkness of its night.Morality is the summer lustihood and luxurianceof self-love, clothing its mineral ribs with vege-table grace, permeating its rigid trunk with sap,decorating its gnarled limbs with foliage, glori-fying every reluctant virgin bud and every mod-est wifely blossom into rich ripe motherly fruit.Religion is the icy winter which blights thissummer fertility, which arrests the ascent of its


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The Introdu&ion, 1vivifying sap, and humbles its superb life to theground, in the' interests of a spring that shall beperennial, and ofautumns bursting with imperish-able fruit. In other words, religion has no sub-stantive force. Her sole errand on earth hasbeen to dog the footsteps of morality, to humblethe pride of selfhood which man derives fromnature, and so soften his interiors to the recep-tion of Divine Truth, as that truth stands ful-filled in the organization of human equality orfellowship.The backbone of morality has long beenprovidentially broken. The moral force menonce had, the power of controlling natural ap-petite and passion, has abated, and in its placehas come a sense of God's presence in Nature, andthe aspiration to realize in life the infinite Beautywhich she reveals. Almost no one is now strongby himself, strong against the floods of naturalarrogance and cupidity which are sure to assailhim, but only by association with others. Scarce-ly any one resists the temptation ta which he isnaturally prone on religious grounds, or from asentiment of reverence to the Divine name, butonly on social grounds or from a sentiment ofwhat is due to good-fellowship. The failure tosee this great change in human nature, and toorganize it betimes in appropriate institutions,is what keeps us in this state of public andprivate demoralization, which has at last resultedin the downfall of our political edifice. Seewhat thorough-paced unconscious scoundrels wehave long had for politicians. Observe how apt


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12 l^he IntroduStion.our men in office are to lend themselves to atro^cious jobbery ; how incessantly public and pri-vate trusts are betrayed; how our clergy in suchlarge numbers habitually emasculate and stultifythe gospel, in order to adapt it to the dainty earsof the fierce worldlings who underpin their ec*clesiastical consequence; how ostentation, un-bridled luxury of every sort, and the shamelessapery of foreign class-pretension, even down tothe decorating our imported servants withimported liverips, are corrupting us from ouroriginal democratic simplicity ; how rapidlyimmodesty, dissipation, insolence, and the mostunblushing egotism are vulgarizing the man-ners, hardening the visages, and hopelessly blast-ing the hereditary remains of innocence of ourrich young men and women ; and who candoubt that Jeff Davis, Joe Smith, filibusterWalker, secretary Floyd, James Buchanan, andall the other dismal signs and portents, of ourcurrent political and religious life^ have beenonly so many providential scourges sent todevastate and consume a world long ripe forthe Divine judgment ?The only possible explanation of the existingcrisis in human afKiirs, everywhere indeed, com-patible with the Divine sovereignty, is, that themoral foree in, man no longer subserves thegreat spiritual uses which once sanctified andsweetened it ; that the mission which was onceDiyinely given it of nurturing men for the skieshas been revoked and put in more competenthands. This to my judgment is as plain as any-


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The Introduction. 13thing can well be. The moral force was neveranything but a scaffolding for God's spiritualhouse in the soul; it was never designed to givepermanent substance but only temporary formto God's finished work in human nature ; andwhen accordingly it ceases to look upon itselfin this subordinate plight, and insists upon be-ing treated not as the scaffolding but as thehouse, not as the mould but as the substance tobe moulded, not as the matrix but as the gem,in short, not as an accessory but as a principal,it loses even this justification and becomes apositive nuisance. , The social sentiment, thesense of a living organic unity among men, isaccordingly fast absorbing it or taking it upinto its own higher circulation, whence it willbe reproduced in every regenerate sesthctic form.Art is the resurgent form of human activity.The artist or producer is the only regenerate imrage of God in nature, the only living revelationof the Lord on earth. Society itself will erelongrelease her every subject from that responsibilityto his own material interests which has hithertodegraded human life to the ground, and by provid-ing for his honest and orderly physical subsistence,leave his heart and mind and hand free to theonly inspiration they spontaneously acknowledge, that of infinite Goodness, Truth, and Besuty.This most profound and intimate life of God inour nature is groping its way to more and morevivid consciousness in us every day; and theconsequence is that we see the proud old Paganideal of moral virtue, a virtue which inheres in


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J 6 The IntroduBioTLination to our nature must have become, inorder to justify those hopes of the purely natu^ral heart towards him. It is impossible to go tothe Church in --^, and observe how skil-fully and yet unconsciously the gifted ministerof that parish appeals to all that is most selfishand most worldly in the bosoms of his hearers, inorder to build them up a fragrant temple for theDivine indwelling, without feeling one's heartmelt with adoration of the Infinite Love whichis taking to itself at last the riches of the earth,and making the kingdoms of this ivorld alsoforever its own. In short, both the world andthe church from having been very dense are be^coming almost transparent masks of God's inefcfable designs of mercy to universal man, andare helping along in their blind delirious waythe speedy advent of a scientific human societyor brotherhood upon earth. If accordingly myreader discover as he conceives in the progressof my book any animus of hostility either to thepolite or the religious world, he will do me thejustice to believe that such appearance is onlythe negative or literal aspect of a love, whichon its positive or spiritual side embraces univer-sal man.

Let me indeed insist on this justice. It isevident enough throughout my book, of course,that I assail ritual or professional religion withundissembled good-will ; yet it is quite equallyevident, I hope, that I never for a moment doso in the interest of irreligion, but exclusivelyin the interest of its own imprisoned spirit.


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l8 'Hhe IntroduSiton.

interests. Unquestionably. But how if He can-not deal directly with its spiritual interests with-out impairing them ? How if His only safeway of dealing with them, is to do so indirect-ly, that is, by means of its material interests?Of course no reasonable man can doubt thatGod's real and primary delight is to appease thespiritual wants, and assuage the spiritual woesof humanity, which are accurately symbolizedunder these images of mere material destitutionand distress. But then we must recollect thatHe is utterly unable to effect these ends save bythe mediation of his own truth, or in so far asour private individual commerce with him hasbeen organized upon, and energized by, a pre-vious recognition of his boundless presence andoperation in human nature itself God's privatemercies to us, in other words, do not prejudice,but on the contrary irresistibly exact or presup-pose, this grander public operation of His, thisstupendous work of redemption which he haspractised in our very nature itself, as the basisof their own vitality. Let me elucidate thisproposition a little.

Whatever be the Lord's unmistakeable good-will towards the spiritual or immortal conjunc-tion of every individual soul of man with him-self it is nevertheless evident that such a resultto be permanent can never be forced, but mustconciliate in every case the legitimate instinctsof the soul, which are freedom and rationality.If God would have my love and have it eter-nally, he must exhibit his perfect worthiness to


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The IntroduHion. 19be loved in such a way as to take captive myheart and understanding. Now as naturallyconstituted, or when left to myself, I am a beingof consummate selfishness and covetousness. Iunconsciously exalt myself above all mankind,and would grasp, if that were possible, the richesof the universe. It were obvious and unmixeddeviltry simply to condemn this natural makeof mine, or turn it over to ruthless punish-ment. It is, on the other hand, unmixed divin-ity to condescend to these natural limitations, tocome down to the level and breathe the atmos-phere of these overpowering lusts, to live in thedaily and hourly intimacy of their illusions, theirinsanities, their ferocities and impurities, until atlength by patiently separating what is relativelygood in them from what is relatively evil, andthen subjecting the latter to the unlimited ser-vice of the former, the two warring elementsbecome bound together in the unity of a newor regenerate natural personality, in which in-terest will spontaiieously effect what principlehas hitherto vainly enjoined ; or self-love accom-plish with ease what benevolence has only beenable hitherto weakly to dream of accomplishing.If now we appeal to the word of God, which isChristian doctrine, this is precisely what Goddoes ; and if we appeal to his work, which is thehistory of Christendom, the response is equallyfull and clear. Revelation and History both alikeproclaim with unmistakeable emphasis that Godchooses the foolish things of the world to con-found the wise, the weak things to confound


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20 7he Introdullion.the mighty, and base things and things whichmen despise, yea and things which are not, hathGod chosen, to bring to nought establishedthings, in order that no flesh should exalt itselfin his presence.

This alone is why I love God, if indeed Ido at all love Him. I hate Him with a cordialhatred of this at least I am very sure forhis alleged incommunicable infinitude, for thatcold and solitary grandeur which my naturalreason ascribes to Him, and which entitles Him,according to the same authority, to exact theendless servile homage of us poor worms of thedust. For all this difference between God andme as affirmed by my natural deism,which ismy reason unillumined by revelation, mycrushed and outraged affections writhe with un-speakable animosity towards him. It is onlywhen I read the gospel of his utter condescensionto my foul and festering nature, and discern thelucent lines of his providence in the world illus-trating and authenticating every word and toneof that gospel, it is only, in other words, whenI see how sheerly impersonal and creative his loveis, /. e., how incapable of regarding itselfand howirresistibly communicative of its own blessednessto whatsoever is not itself, to whatsoever is mosthostile and repugnant to itself, that my soulcatches her first glimpse of the uncreated holi-ness, and heart and head and hand conspire inhelpless, speechless, motionless adoration.

In short, no one can love God simply bywishing to love Him, still less by feeling it a


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The Introdullion. 21duty to love Him. At this rate one could neverlove his fellow-man even, but would come atlast infallibly to hate him. In other words,love is never voluntary but always spontaneous.Its objective or unconscious element invariablycontrols its subjective or conscious one. Ilove my wife or child not by any force of myown, but by virtue altogether of a force whichtheir innocence and sweetness lend me. It istheir natural or cultivated grace which empow-.ers me to love ; abstract this, and I should beimpotent as a clod. So also I can never loveGod by any force of my own. His absoluteworth indeed makes it even more impossiblefor me to love Him, than my wife's or child'srelative imperfection makes it impossible for meto love them : namely, by removing Him spirit'^ually to such a distance from me as to makehatred rather than love towards Him, an instinct-ive dictate of my own self-respect. If then Ican never hope to love God by my own force.He himself must enable me to love Him. Howshall He do this without overpowering my con-scious freedom or rationality ? Why simply bytaking upon Himself the conditions of my na-ture, or coming to know experimentally howirresistibly prone the finite mind is by the merefact of its finiteness to lie, to steal, to commitadultery and murder, in order that, being thustempted like as we are, yet without sin-beingthus touched with a feeling of our infirmities,and yet rigidly self-debarred from the actual dis-order in which they are sure to terminate with


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24 The IniroduEtion.ual impotence and self-distrust, but all simply tojump from a grossly absurd fear of God's per-sonal enmity to us grounded on our moral de-linquencies, or perhaps our purely ritual unclean-ness, into a more grossly absurd hope of Hispersonal complacency towards us, based uponsome inward mystical change which He himselfhas arbitrarily wrought in us. Thus viewed,religion no longer witnesses to the truth ofGod's immutable perfection, but only to thecapricious operation of His spirit ordaining cer-tain differences in human character, wherebyone man becomes avouched in his proper per-son an heir of heaven, another stigmatized as achild of hell. Look at the social consequencesof this most real but unrecognized spiritualbuffoonery, how inevitably it depresses all thatis sweet and modest and unexacting in manners,and forces into conspicuity whatsoever is for-ward, ungenerous, and despotic. Look at anyof our ecclesiastical coteries, and observe howtorpid grows the proper spiritual or human forceof its members, while every shabbiest patternof a formalist is radiant, twittering, and alertwith preternatural activity. No doubt verymany of the clergy are personally superior totheir office, and feel their instinctual modestyoutraged by the spirit of servility and adula-tion which it appears to have the faculty ofeliciting on the part of their adherents. Buthow can they help themselves? Professionalreligion means the claim of a private sanctity,of a strictly personal and individual worth in


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The Introduiiion. 25God's sight, by which the subject is eternallydifferenced from other men ; and the clergy arethe protagonists or defenders each in his sect ofthis debased state of the public mind, so that tobe personally flattered and cockered and excusedand apologized for out of all reasonable shapeof manhood, by precisely the style of peoplewhose opinions they least value, seems above allthings their just official Nemesis or retribution.In a spiritual point of view the clergy are mostreal martyrs to their perilous calling.As to the attitude of the Divine mind towardsthe separatist or Pharisaic portion of the world,/'. e. towards those who are identified with theoutward profession of serving Him, the NewTestament leaves no doubt on that subject, butratifies every instinct of our proper humanity.The parables of the Prodigal Son and of thePublican and Pharisee praying, justify everyprevision of common sense in the premises.Surely if I have a family of children the eldestof whom is alone legitimate, and therefore aloneentitled to my name and estate, while all theyounger children are bastards, and consequentlydestitute of all legal righteousness, I should bea worm ^nd no man, ifj while according to theformer his fullest legal consideration, I did notbestow my tenderest and ripest affection andindulgence uppn the latter. If my acknowl-edged heir, conceiving himself prejudiced bythis action on my part, should grow angry andreproach me thereupon, saying, " Lo ! thesemany years do I serve thee, neither have I


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The IntroduBion. 27eous, unexacting heart [7 will say unto him.Father, I have sinned against heaven and beforethee, and am no more worthy to be called thyson: make me as one of thy hired servants']which opens up the responsive fountains of myheart, which satisfies the hunger and thirst ofmy paternal bosom, and irresistibly compelstherefore every answering outward demonstra-tion of my inmost pride and joy, of my ex-quisite spiritual delight and blessedness. Youshall have accordingly your legal deserts to theutmost, all that you have bargained for; allthat I outwardly possess shall be yours, whileI bestow myself, all that I inwardly am, uponyour humbler brethren."Thus much I feel called upon to say to thereader by way of forewarning, or in order thathe may observe that I do not quarrel with theliving spirit of religion, which glows in everybreast of man where God's own spirit of humil-ity, meekness, equality, fellowship, is cultivatedand reproduced however feebly; but only withwhat the best men in history have always quar-relled with, namely, its dead and putrid bodywhich still goes unburied and taints God'swholesome air with its baleful exhalations. Re-ligion disdains any longer a literal or ritualestablishment. It claims a purely living andspiritual embodiment, such as flows from God'ssanctifying presence and animating power inevery form of spontaneous human action. Ithas no longer anything to do accordingly withchurches or with clergy, with sabbaths or with


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28 the IntroduSlion.sacraments, with papacy or with prelacy, withCalvin or Socinus ; but only with a heart in itssubject of unaffected love to all mankind, andunaffected fellowship consequently with everyperson and every thing however convention-ally sacred or profane, that seeks to further thatlove by the earnest distaste disuse and undoingof whatsoever plainly withstands perverts orabuses It.


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AN ESSAY

PHYSICS OF CREATION.


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By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down ; yea, we wegt,when we remembered Zion.We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song ;

and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying. Sing us one ofthe songs of Zion.How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land ?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cun-ning !

If 1 do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof ofmy mouth ; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy !Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom m the day of Jerusa-lem ; who said. Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed ; happy shall hebe, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones againstthe stones. PsALM cxxxvii.


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AN ESSAYPHYSICS OF CREATION.

CHAPTER I.Many of my friends have at various times

asked me to give them a brief statement of myviews as to the practical bearing of Sweden-borg's writings upon the intellect. As I under-stand the request, they do not care to have amere recapitulation of Swedenborg's intellectualprinciples, for these are palpable to sight onevery page of his books : they simply seek toknow what judgment I, who hold these prin-ciples to be rationally indisputable, feel myselfcompelled to form with respect to their prac-tical operation in the realms of speculation andaction.

Judgments of this nature must vary of courseaccording to the various temper and culture ofthe persons who render them. Truth is alwaysmodified to its subject by his own states of life/. e. by the attitude of his heart towards Good.What is grapes to one intelligence is thistles toanother, and the bramble bush of one spirituallatitude is the fig-tree of its opposite. To the


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32 Relation of Swedenborgpure God shows himself pure ; to the frowardhe shows himself froward. "A man receives,"says Swedenborg, "only so much as he eitherhas of himself, or makes his own by lookinginto things for himself: what exceeds these lim-its passes ofF."^

Interpreting Swedenborg's general relationthen to the intellect by the effect his booksproduce upon mine, I should say that theirdirect tendency was, to assert and vindicate suchan intimate Divine presence and operation inthe lowest depths of consciousness, as will ere-long practically obliterate all those superficialdifferences in human character upon which oursocial legislation has been hitherto exclusivelybased, by spiritually shutting up all mengoodand evil alike to a dependence upon God sovital and absolute, as to make the pretension ofindependence a mark of spiritual idiocyand death.

Let me explain. Human society what lit-tle of it at least the exigencies of Priest andKing, of church and state, have permitted toget body or become visible has been organ-ized in all the past upon the belief of a radicaldiversity in human nature, a fundamental dis-tinction among men of good and evil. Societyhas not been content to affirm that one manwas good and another evil, as they stood sever-ally related to herself, that is, to human prog-ress. She has declared them to be absolutelygood or evil, /'. e. good and evil in themselves,irrespective of their relations to any third thing.

' Arc. Cel., 3803.


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to the Intellect. 3^The good man has always been thought to begood in himself, absolutely good, arjd thus evenmore sure of attracting the Divine complacencythan ours. The evil man, the liar, thief, adul-terer, murderer, has always been regarded asessentially, or in himself, a worse man than hewho refrains from these odious practices. Andsociety accordingly in rewarding the one andpunishing the other, as the law of self-preserva-tion has hitherto bound her to do, has appar-ently never doubted that she was performinga work of absolute righteousness, permanentlyconsonant with the Divine name ; above all, hasnever for a moment suspected that the glaringdiversities of character and action she perpetu-ally signalized were all the while the fruit ex-clusively of her own immaturity.Now Swedenborg's writings reverse this su-perficial judgment, or turn it into a mere preju-dice on our part, having no more valid basistljan any other superstition which our devoutbut unenlightened reverence has temporarilyhallowed. His writings effectually invalidatethe alleged radical discrepancy among men inGod's sight, by proving all men without excep-tion to be in themselves, or apart from God'soperation in their nature, alike prone to eviland falsity. Swedenborg uniformly denies thatpersonal distinctions' among men, distinctions ofmerely natural temperament and character, havethe least spiritual validity. He denies that it ispossible for the Divine being to feel the slightestemotion of tenderness or complacency towards3


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of Human 'Equality. 35But he makes much more thorough work of

it than this. He maintains this uncompromis-ing truth of every man's equality wil;h everyother man before God, not merely in respectto men on earth, or as they stand reciprocallydistinguished to our sight by differences of nat-ural temperament and moral character; but alsowith respect to men in heaven, or as they standspiritually differenced one from another to theDivine sight by their various relation to theinfinite Goodness and Truth. "In heaven noattention is paid to person, nor the things ofperson, but to things abstracted from person.Hence they have no recognition of a man fromhis name or other personal attributes, but onlyfrom his distinctive human faculty or quality.The thought of persons limits the angelic idea,or gives it finiteness; whereas that of thingsdoes not limit it, but gives it infinitude. Noperson named in the Word is recognized inheaven, but only the human quality or sub-stance symbolized by that person ; neither anynation or people, but the human quality of suchnation and people. Thus there is not a singlefact of Scripture concerning person, nation, orpeople which is not completely ignored in heav-en, where the angels are totally unconcernedabout the personality of Abraham, Isaac, andJacob, and see no difference between Jew andGentile, but difference of human quality. Theangelic idea, refusing in this manner to be de-termined to persons, makes the speech of the an-gels compared with ours unlimited and univer-


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of Personal fVorth. 39showing no favor to any but those who shouldbecome his abject slaves. Such is the nature ofevery man, however ignorant he be of the factin consequence of his want of power to dowhat he would like; but give him the power,and release him from the obligations of pru-dence, and his inclination would fall no whitbehind his opportunity. The beasts are not sobad as this, for they are born into a certain orderof nature. Those that are fierce and rapaciousdo indeed inflict injury upon others, but onlyfrom self-preservation; and when they devourothers, it is to appease hunger, for when this isdone they cease from violence." ^

Certainly these are anything but slipshodstatements. They involve on their very faceindeed a philosophy which no merely meta-physic wit has yet sounded; which, on thecontrary, would seem to leave Schelling andSir William Hamilton forever to bump theirlearned heads, without striking out a solitaryspark available to human hope or progress.What, obviously, is the fundamental postu-late of this philosophy %

It is that man is in literal strictness a crea-ture of God, dependent every moment upon theDivine communication for all that he has andis and hopes to become. He is absolutely andat every moment void of life in himself, so thatif the fulness of the creative bounty were sus-pended towards him for a moment, or if it werefor an instant overclouded, he would at oncecease to be. 1 Arc. Cel., 987.


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42 Its Fundamental NotionFreedom or selfhood, then, is implied in God's

creature, just as the foundation of a house is im-plied in its superstructure ; because the creature,being destined for spiritual conjunction withGod, for the fellowship of his maker's perfec-tion, must of course first be to his own con-sciousness, or exist in himself, before he can be-come conjoined with God. I emphasize theword "implied" here, because I want the readerdistinctly to understand the point involved,which is: that that most distinctive and charac-teristic force in our nature which we call free-dom, rationality, selfhood, the moral force inshort, and upon which we are all so disposed torun riot, is not a finality; is by no means anabsolute gift; but is on the contrary a most strictand perpetual Divine communication or permis-sion, in the interest exclusively of a very supe-rior spiritual and eternal end. This is theinfirmity of all our ordinary traditional notionson the subject of creation, that man's selfhoodor moral force, his freedom or rationality, istacitly excepted from the Divine operation, andhis mere passive or physical experience account-ed for. But clearly if I am an unlimited crea-ture of God, my most characteristic experienceis precisely what that fact ought best to explain.If I am an indubitable creation of God's power,then whatsoever goes inmostly to. constitute meto my own perception, must especially fallwithin that framework, and not outside of it;must confess itself strictly incidental to mycreation, instead of accidental as we are inclined


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46 Our Moral Forceresult very probable whenever the occasion todecide shall arise.Now the popular theologian looking at thisexperience would say, that my natural feelingof freedom in the premises, was the exact meas-ure of the spiritual truth; that I felt free, in otherwords, to tell the lie, because I absolutely was free.He sees that so far as appearances go I am free;that so far as man's judgment or my own con-sciousness is concerned, I acted under no con-straint ; and having no idea that natural appear-ances are only inversely and not directly as theirspiritual realities, he concludes that my moralpower, the power which I consciously haveeither to tell the lie or not to tell it, is all myown, my own absolutely, and independently ofmy relations to other beings.

Swedenborg explodes this sensuous reasoningin toto. He deflies that my natural feeling offreedom in the premises is any measure of thespiritual reality. He affirms, in short, that Ifeel free to do evil, and therefore charge myselfwith it, not by virtue of anything in myself, forin myself I am and can be nothing but a recip-ient; but altogether by virtue of an operationof God in the spiritual world, or the unseendepths of the human mind, so sharply separatinggood from evil, heaven from hell, and then soexquisitely balancing the one by the other, as toprevent any preponderant influx of either intonature, and enable Him to endow me conse-quently with a sense of freedom, a feeling ofselfhood, so genial and exquisite that I cannot


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48 Our Moral Forcebasis or foundation in the individual bosom, fora stupendous spiritual edifice which the Divinewisdom is assiduously rearing in human natureitself] And if we regard it accordingly not asbeing purely ministerial to this diviner style ofmanhood, but as magisterial in fact, and havinga right to our unlimited allegiance, we shall belike a man who is so intent upon sinking thefoundations of his house to the greatest possibledepth, that he comes at last upon the elementalfires, or finds his ostentatious labor swallowedup of quicksands.

In short, our ordinary cosmology accountsor professes to account for Nature, which is thebare skeleton of existence; but it leaves Historywhich is the lifeblood and rounded flesh thatclothe that skeleton with beauty, wholly lawlessand accidental. Swedenborg, on the contrary,illustrates Nature by History, or makes the bodyof things rigidly authenticate their soul. Thistreatment converts creation from a mere ostenta-tious exhibition of unprincipled power, withoutrational beginning as without rational result, intoan infinitely tender and orderly procedure of theeternal Love and Wisdom, in all the endlesslyvarious but ineffably harmonious forms of hu-man nature.This is but a glimpse of Swedenborg's labor.Yet even this glimpse entitles us to expect ofhim a clear philosophic explication of the greatmystery of creation: /. e. a doctrine upon thatsubject which shall appease every aspiration ofthe heart towards God, and every demand of the


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perpetually communicated. 49intellect thence engendered. The invinciblewitness of the heart towards God is, that he isinfinite in love : i. e. that His love for his crea-tures is wholly untainted by any regard for Him-self It is the equally invincible witness of ourintelligence that He is infinite in wisdom : /. e.that his ability to carry out his designs of lovefalls no whit behind his disposition. A doctrineof creation, therefore, which should practicallyafiront either of these great witnesses, by affirm-ing a permanent imperfection in the creativework, or actual outcome of this infinite Loveand Wisdom, would stamp itself unworthy ofmen's lasting respect.


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the Origin of Evil. 55have alleged, namely: that the creature havephenomenal or conscious selfhood, in order tobase his subsequent spiritual conjunction withGod: then it Follows that his highest welfaremust consist in his not being duped by this mereappearance, in his taking it at its actual worthas an appearance; and his deepest misery consistin his mistaking it for an absolute reality. Hisselfhood or conscious life in himself is indeedbut the outward form of his inmost spiritualdependence upon God; so that if he allows itto degenerate into a sentiment of independencetowards God, /. e. to become absolute, he fallsincontinently into evil.Now this result is inevitable to the creature'sinexperience : but Christianity teaches us that

so far from regretting it, we should rejoice in itas furnishing the only fitting opportunity for thetrue manifestation of the Divine power towardsus, as becoming able really to create us naturally,only by first redeeming us spiritually. Spiritualredemption, not physical creation, is the inmostsplendor of the Divine name ; and he who hasnot learned thus much of Christianity, has a gooddeal yet to learn. Let me explain.What I say is: that inasmuch as the senti-ment of selfhood or freedom is instinctive tothe human bosom, being a preliminary exigencyof our spiritual formation in the Divine image,it remains innocent only so long as it is an in-stinct, and does not assume to dominate the con-sciousness: that is, only so long as the race isin the infancy of its development. While the


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^6 Swedenlorg's Daiirine ofrace is still in infantile conditions, and has notcome to scientific consciousness, the conscious-ness of its destined power over nature, the senti-ment of selfhood or freedom in its bosom isbvit another name for the sentiment of its de-pendence upon God: and a tender religiousawe consequently hallows the Divine name toits bosom, just as a feeling of respect and affec-tion hallows a parent's name to a child. Un-doubtedly this awe would soon degenerate intoservile superstition (witness the heathen nations),unless the mind of the race grew by experience,by the gradual conquest of nature ; unless, inother words, it became scientifically enlarged:just as the child's habitual reverence for theparent would degenerate into chronic imbecility,if the chUd should not eventually grow to theparent's intellectual stature. The growth ofthe mind, accordingly, out of its purely instinct-ual beginnings into pronounced scientific formand order, is inevitable^ because necessary to itseventual philosophic sanity, or complete fellow-ship with God.

But now I say only what is known to theexperience of every reader, when I say that thechild as he grows to man's estate and becomesqualified himself to wield the paternal inherit-ance, puts off to his own observation theinnocence and docility which marked his in-fancy, the ready unquestioning obedience heexhibited to the paternal word, the tender con-fiding reverence he felt for the paternal mindand character. He now wishes to be wise, not


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the Origin of Evil. 57from his fether but from himself; and good, nolonger from outward tuition or constraint, butfrom his own prompting, from a sense of whatis due exclusively to his own personal dignity.It is the rise of a practically healthful scepticismor Protestantism in the soul ; a needful insurrec-tion against all purely external or arbitrary au-thority. So precisely does it fare with theanalogous history of the race, or the associatedconsciousness of man. Its infantile intelligencealso puts on erelong the characters of adoles-cence and manhood. As its power over naturewidens, as its passional and intellectual wantsstimulate and develop its active' powers, it looksup less reverently to heaven, and learns to con-fide more fully upon itself, upon what it feels andhence supposes to be its own absolute resources;the tender religious awe of its earlier days melt-ing thus infallibly into the scientific pride andpower of its majority.

This advancing scientific consciousness of therace has always been regarded as a fallen stateof the mind ; but it is not so absolutely ; it isso only relatively to the mental condition fromwhich it departs. Thus measured it is no doubta fall. If religion is bound to undergo the slowsepulture of science, with no hope of any subse-quent resurrection in living or glorified form : if,in other words, science constitute the perfectedform of the mind, the full measure of its expan-sibility : I, for one at least, have no hesitation insaying that it would have been better for therace to have remained to this day in its cradle,


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58 Swedenborgh DoElrine ofhearkening to the inspiration of naiad and dryad,of sea-nymph and of faun, than to have comeout of it only to find its endless spiritual capac-ities, its capacities of spontaneous action, hope-lessly stranded upon these barren rocks of science,ruthlessly imprisoned in her lifeless laws or gen-eralizations. For if the difference between thepurely religious or instinctual consciousness ofthe race and its growing scientific consciousness,be, as we have seen, the difference betweenthe child and the youth, between diffidence andself-confidence; then it is extremely easy stillfurther to see, that this subtle spiritual changewhich creeps over the mind of the race simplyby virtue of its increasing acquaintance withitself, with its own God-given powers, can onlydeepen as time rolls on, until the mind becomesconfirmed at last in all manner of pride and vul-gar self-assertion: until its infantile and innocentsentiment of freedom, becomes hardened intoone of complete unhesitating and blatant inde-pendence.

But there is no need to estimate the changeexclusively in this aspect, that is, in its relationto the mental condition out of which it springs.We must view it in relation to the mental con-dition in which it issues or brings up ; and herewe shall see that what men have called a fall, isreally a rise. For the object of the DivineProvidence having been to secure man^s cordialfellowship with Himself, who is infinite Love,love without any limitation of self-love, this ob-ject could only be attained empirically; that is,


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the Origin of Evil. 59by the creature undergoing in his own properexperience such a sickening conviction of theevils wrapped up in an unlimited abandonmentto self, as would make him heartily ashamed ofhimself, and lead him to seek purification fromGod. The experience of evil accordingly,which has been inseparable from our rationalexpansion, is strictly tributary in the Divinewisdom to a good which otherwise would neverhave dawned upon us ; a spontaneous good, asmuch higher than the merely instinctual goodwhich it displaces or rather exalts to a higherpower, as the tried wisdom of the mature manis higher than the tender, promise of childhood.

This, briefly stated, is Swedenborg's way ofdealing with the problem of evil ; and I for mypart cannot help considering it a very satisfactoryway, until I am shown a better. It has at leastthis commanding philosophic advantage overevery other suggestion I have met with on thesubject, that it makes evil a perfectly intelligibleincident, no longer a wholly mysterious accident,of our historic progress : so leaving it to under-go whatever healing modification the normalissues of that progress may engender. In otherwords it relegates the origin of evil away backto the instinctual realm of life ; and inasmuch asall our instincts are themselves utterly servile tothe needs successively of our voluntary andspontaneous life, of our moral and assthetic cul-ture, so it may fairly be presumed that any evilwhich these instincts involve will ultimately befound to have been itself most strictly tributary


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to the actuality of Creation. 63lem, is by vacating it of substance. It vindi-cates creation by denying it any actuality ; orreconciles man and God, creature and creator,finite and infinite, phenomenal and absolute, sim-ply by confounding them : i. e. by making thecreated consciousness a transient,form or mouldof the uncreated.

Swedenborg is the first man, so far as I amaware, in the literary history of the world, whohas put a decisive stop to this philosophic child's-play. He shows with commanding evidencethat the selfhood of man is a reality only inGod and not out of Him; and that there is noneed accordingly to sacrifice either element ofthe equation, in order to maintain the integrityof the other. He demonstrates with such over-powering lustre the veritable infinitude of theDivine resources, that this duality of creatureand creator which Philosophy has always foundso paradoxical, becomes henceforth common-place and obligatory; so that I at least do nothesitate to avow my conviction that he alonehas given true body to Philosophy, and put herat last upon a career of literally endless prosper-ity-

I said just now that Swedenborg satisfies theutmost need of Philosophy, by showing us thatthe selfhood of man is a reality only in God andnot out of Him, as our sensuous theologies havehitherto reported. What I mean by this state-ment is, evidently, that Swedenborg gives sucha surprising reality to the creative Love soavouches its rational infinitude or perfection


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CHAPTER III.The scientific difficulties which beset Natu-ral Religion, the notoriously endless embarrass-

ments it offers the intellect, reflect the nativepoverty of our understanding in Divine things,grow out of the habit we have of regarding thenatural sphere of creation as final. It is thisfutile habit of mind which makes us look uponthe sacred writings as a mine of literal historicinformation merely, and, not as a marvellousveiling over or clouding of purely spiritualtruth, in accommodation to the needs of ourgrossly sensual understanding.

For example : the opening chapters of Gene-sis report the work of creation as proceedingfrom the great orbs of space, through the succes-sive orders of vegetable and animal existence,until it attains its full rich diapason in man:thus presenting all the things of nature as col-lated into and culminating in the human form,which in point of instinct or natural force is thefeeblest and most contemptible of all forms, byway of symbolizing to our apprehension thegreat spiritual verity of the Lord or DivineNatural Humanity, as alone adequate to ac-count for the majesty and mystery of life.Now natural religion degrades this superb5


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68 Hew the Letter of Revelationmaterial, which no genius could anticipate andno skill overcome.But this alternative is wholly lacking in thecatastrophe imagined by orthodoxy. Orthodoxyalleges that God makes all things out of noth-ing, out of absolutely no material whatever; sothat if they turn out ill, the responsibility oftheir aberration in no way attaches to them-selves : for by the hypothesis they have noselfhood or character but what God imposesupon them, being summoned into instant con-sciousness by the creative fiat : and so attacheswholly to their maker. The orthodox concep-tion is that the creature is formed out of abso-lutely nothing, and hence is utterly destitute ofsubjective force or selfhood apart from his ob-jective being: so that any evil which may ap-pear in him attributes itself instantly to thecreator, confesses itself exclusively due either toHis original want of genius to conceive, or Hisoriginal want of skill to execute, a perfect work:in short, to some defect in the creative love orwisdom, or both.The mother fallacy which breeds all thesepetty fallacies in the popular understanding, con-sists in attempting to conceive of an infinitepower acting finitely, or under the limitationsof space and time. Natural religion conceivesthat there was originally a space where, and atime when, creation was not. It conceives ac-cordingly that these two great idle wildernessesof time and space were inhabited by a muteinactive Deity alone ; and that this extraordinary


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degrades its Spiritual Contents. 69Deity, tired at last of slumbering in eternal sloth,sent forth a great creative shout, or successionof shouts, which made the existing cosmos sud-denly appear as if it had always been.Even if we admit this hypothesis, creationturns out a vastly greater boon to the creatorthan it does to the creature. Whatever benevo-lence such a creation may be argued to involveto the creature, it unquestionably argues muchmore to the creator himself. For who canfancy the ghastly solitude to which, for so manyorthodox eternities, the creator's imputed inac-tivity had condemned Him, without a shudderof boundless horror ? And who therefore canperceive this hideous solitude suddenly blossominto the profusest society, without feeling thathe who alone had encountered the past desola-tion, was infinitely more to be felicitated uponthe present surprising transformation, than theywho were to have only an ex postfaSto knowl-edge of it ?

But the whole conception is boundlessly andbewilderingly absurd ; absurd enough to nourisha standing army of famished Tom Paines intoannual fatness. There were no time and spaceprior to creation, simply because time and spaceare experiences of the finite mind, of the createdconsciousness exclusively, and so fall withincreation not outside of it. They are constitu-tionally involved in all purely conscious or sub-jective existence ; time having no meaning saveto furnish a rational or relative basis spacea sensible or finite basis to such existence.


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Conditions of our Consciousness. 71dominated by sense, our science still swampedin imagination. A spiritual intelligence, whichmeans one no longer dominated but on the con-trary completely served by sense, perceives timeand space as embodying the true and entiremental subjectivity of the race ; and as havingtherefore no objective truth or validity save toan inferior or finite and derivative subjeSlivity.Every enlightened person perceives the true sub-stances of the universe to be exclusively humanor spiritual, as goodness and truth, love and wis-dom ; and regards time and space as mere sen-suous forms or appearances of these realities,accommodated to the needs of our infantile un-derstanding, by dimly imaging or symbolizingverities which it is as yet too gross to appre-hend. Of course the young must be talked toas if creation took place in space and time, /. e.as if it were a purely physical, and not a purelyspiritual, exertion of Divine power. Becauseas they are still under the dominion of sense andincapable of spiritual insight, we must eitherclothe our instruction in parables of sensuousimagery, or else give up instructing them alto-gether. But our orthodox theologians are menin understanding, being able to discern spiritualtruth or substance in its own light. They there-fore should be ashamed to regard creation as awork effected by God in space and time; andshould insist upon regarding it exclusively in thelight shed upon it by the great truth to whichmoreover they profess so much allegiance ofthe Incarnation; i. e. as a work Divinely


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74 'T^he Divine Perfelioncontempt. In short I hold the only Deity-worthy a human being's worship to be the Godand Father of the Lord Jesus Christ ; to be theDivinity revealed in that perfect Humanity ; aDivinity so incapable of all selfish regards* sopoor in every sentiment and resource of personalpride, as eternally to hide Himself under thenatural conceit and tyranny and lust of His owncreatures, if thereby He may spiritually wooand win them to their immortal blessedness, inthe free participation of His infinite goodnesswisdom and power.

Surely there is nothing in this statement whichmy reader's intelligence is not prepared to ratify.No one of my readers is capable of feeling theleast respect for an idle God, any more than foran idle man. Every one respects labor; everyone respects the man who does something moreto vindicate his human quality, than just liveupon his inheritance, or accumulated ancestralfat. And every one despises idleness ; every onedespises the man, who, being endowed as everyman is by his maker with one talent or two tal-ents or ten talents as the case may be, yet buriesthis Divine endowment in a napkin instead ofputting it out to profitable use. And the groundupon which these judgments proceed, is suffi-ciently obvious. It is that our sentiment ofhuman worth is violated, when we see one'sstrictly original or spiritual force^ one's God-given self, left out of one's life ; when we see aman content like a pig to live and die as pas-sively as he was begotten and born; content


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is eminently Human. 75to wear the livery of his splendid but tyrannousorganization, instead of compelling that organ-ization into the unstinted service of his own in-effable spiritual needs.The natural inheritance of every one who iscapable of spiritual life, is an unsubdued forestwhere the wolf howls and every obscene birdof night chatters; so that his very manhood iscontingent upon his subduing this inheritanceto light and air, and making it yield, instead ofits wild and poisonous undergrowths, every fruitgood for food. Every man who has reachedeven his intellectual teens begins to susp'ect this;begins to suspect that life is no farce ; that it isnot genteel comedy even; that it flowers andfructifies on the contrary out of the profbundesttragic depths. All that is distinctive in humanculture betrays an ever present conflict betweenthe inner and outer life, between the private andpublic soul, and exhibits in itself that conflictreconciled. Whatsoever is noblest in humancharacter, best in human action, most permanentin human achievement, most renowned in art,tells only of obstacles overcome, of difficultiestoilsomely vanquished, in short of hell patientlysubjugated to heaven, or evil reconciled to good,in some higher neutral and therefore positivequantity which men would never have otherwisedivined. Even the least human of our endow-ments which is visible beauty, beauty that thesenses can measure, disdains a passive genesis,proclaims itself the immediate offspring of a mar-riage between inward soul and outward body.


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76 Ihe Divine PerfeStionAn exquisitely regular face is not apt to be aninteresting one, because the mere mechanics ofbeauty are almost sure to prevail in it over thedynamics, over the free breezy play of soulwhich gives that mechanism life and puts it inexhilarating motion. It is the gaunt preliminaryframework of the house, rather than the sunnycompleted house itself. It is the skeleton ofbeauty without the warm blood and roundedflesh which alone make the skeleton presentable.Indeed our experience often witnesses that themost victorious beauty to the heart, rises sheerout of the lap of ugliness, exhibits the rich ex-pressive soul giving endless aggrandizement tothe poor penurious body.

But I have no need to heap up illustrationsof my position, since my reader knows as wellas I that nothing turns out permanently valuableeither in character or in performance, which it doesnot cost blood of the mind or blood of the bodyto produce. I only want in fact to signalize tothe reader's mind this indisputable quality of hu-man worth, the highest worth we recognize, in.order to claim for Deity the actual perfection ofsuch worth; in order to show in other wordsthat such being our most characteristic virtue asspiritually conjoined with God, namely, to disre-gard self, or freely consume it in our devotion totruth and beauty : such must be the characteristicperfection of our creative source : under penaltyof the creature having failed to image his creator.If, as the good book avers, the blood constitutethe life ; if, in other words man is pronounced


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is eminently Human. 77man by the supremacy of his heart to his head,or his power of self-abandonment to what is nothimself: then God as being the height of allcharacter, must be the essential perfection ofheart, the absolute infinitude of love : /. e. mustbe creative. For this is the essential implicationof an infinite love, that it have so little regard forself as of necessity to alienate, or communicateto another, what is its own ; as eternally to makeitself over in fact to what is not itself, to whatindeed is diametrically hostile to itself


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CHAPTER IV.Now it is just this essentially creative aspectof the Divine perfection, just this very infinitude

of the Divine Love, regarded not as a passivebut as an active quantity; not as an idle orna-mental fixture of the Divine name, but as theactual working-force of all the effects of theuniverse, turning every thing into miracle: whichNatural Religion blinks wholly out of sight,and which Revelation alone discloses to philo-sophic recognition. Revelation makes creation,as contradistinguished from redemption, a purelyobjective work of God, consisting in such a com-plete surrender of Himself to the creatu

henry james substance and shadow or morality and religion in their relation to life boston 1863

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