Page images
PDF
EPUB

Floats in phantasmal indefinitude,

Invest ye with the permanence of thought.*

and space. That is a fanciful idea, not founded on its expressions, when taken in their just and real meaning. On the contrary, it promises us a mind like the present, founded on time and space, since it is like the present to hold a certain situation in time, and a certain locality in space, but it promises a mind situated in portions of time and of space different from the present, a mind composed of elements of matter more extended, more perfect, and more glorious, a mind which formed of materials supplied by different globes, is consequently able to see farther into the past, and to think farther into the future, than any mind here existing; a mind which, freed from the partial and uneven combination incidental to it in this globe, will be exempt from the changes for evil, to which the present globe, mind as well as matter, is liable, and will only thenceforth experience the changes for the better, which matter, more justly poised, will alone continue to experience; a mind which no longer fearing the death, the total decomposition to which it is subject in this globe, will thenceforth continue last and immortal."-HOPE on the Origin and Prospects of Man.

"1. And I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth, for the first Heaven and the first Earth were passed away, and there was

no more sea.

"2. And I John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

"3. And I heard a great voice out of Heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God.

"4. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away." -Rev. cap. xxi.

* God is the idea immanens, the true spiritual existence, the living principle which pervades the whole. The material universe is one phasis of his infinite attributes, namely, extension. But Spinoza rigidly and universally teaches, that the one infinite substance has two infinite attributes, extension and thought. Extension is visible thought, and thought is invisible extension. The use of the word "substance," by which he signifies existence, the prima materia of the schoolmen, have led to much misunderstanding, and his adversaries have replied, as if he meant by substance what we express by matter and body When Spinoza asserts thought to be the other infinite attribute of substance, he follows Parmenides, of whom Ritter says, “Thought appeared to him to exhibit merely one aspect of the all."

Spinoza had a remarkable influence upon the philosophy of Germany in the 18th century. Goethe was an especial admirer of the hold and uncompromising Jew. He says, ( Wahrheit und Dichtung), "This spirit that wrought so decidedly upon mine, and was to have so great an influence upon my entire mode of thinking, was Spinoza. After I had looked in vain round the whole world for a way to reduce my strange being to shape, I fell at length upon the ethics of this man. What I may have drawn out of that work, what I may have read in it, of that I could give no account, enough that I found here a stilling of my passions, it seemed as if a wide and unbroken view of the sensuous and moral world opened itself to

Heaven closes. The Archangels disperse.

MEPHISTOPHELES, alone.

The Antient now and then I gladly see,

And shall take care I do not with him break,
Handsome it is, in such a high grandee,
Such civil speeches to the devil to make.

me.

But what especially bound me to him, was the unbounded disinterestedness that beamed out of every sentence. The all-balancing calmness of Spinoza, contrasted with my all-agitating turbulence. His mathematical precision was the reverse of my poetical line of thought and expression; and even that regulated mode of treatment, which one could not find conformable to moral objects, made me his passionate scholar, his most decided admirer." The reader will find that the most obscure passages in the Faust can commonly be cleared up by a reference to the doctrines of Spinoza.

[blocks in formation]

FAUST, restless in his chair, at his desk, in a high vaulted small gothic chamber.

FAUST.*

Philosophy, and law, and medicine,

And to my sorrow, too, theology

By this time have I studied searchingly;
Poor fool, yet after all, all this hot toil of mine,
I find myself no wiser than before.

* Faust was born at Knittlingen, in Suabia, in the beginning of the 16th century, and was educated at Wittenberg. He then resided at Ingolstadt, where he devoted himself to medicine, astrology, and magic, and employed his acquirements in such a manner as to convince his countrymen that he had sold himself to the Devil.

Master of Arts, and Doctor, indeed

They call me, and now for this ten years I lead
Up and down, and in and out,

My scholars by the nose about,

And see that we can nothing know :*
It sears my heart it should be so.

"Man is constituted a speculative being; he contemplates the world, and the objects around him, not with a passive indifferent gaze, as a set of phenomena in which he has no further interest than as they affect his immediate situation, and can be rendered subservient to his comfort, but as a system disposed with order and design. He approves and feels the highest admiration of the harmony of its parts, the skill and efficiency of its contrivances. Some of these, which he can best trace and understand, he attempts to imitate, and finds that to a certain extent, though rudely and imperfectly, he can succeed; in others, that, though he can comprehend the contrivance, he is totally destitute of all means of imitation; while in others, again, and these evidently the most important, though he sees the effect produced, yet the means by which it is done, are alike beyond his knowledge and his control; thus he is led to the conception of a power and intelligence superior to his own, and adequate to the production and maintenance of all that he sees in nature, a Power and Intelligence to which he may well apply the term infinite, since he not only sees no actual limit to the instances in which they are manifested, but finds, on the contrary, that the farther he inquires, and the wider his sphere of observation extends, they continually open upon him in in

« PreviousContinue »