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448 of the Kālāmans. They asked him: "Master, so many teachers come to us with their doctrines. Who of them is right and who is wrong?" "Not because it is tradition," he answers, "not because it has been handed down from one to another, not because ye think 'Our teacher is one to whom great deference is due,' should ye accept a doctrine. When, O Kālāmans, when ye of yourselves recognize that such and such things are bad and conduce to evil and sorrow, then do ye reject them." And again, "When a man's conviction of a truth is dependent on no one but himself, this, O Kaccāna, is what constitutes Right Belief." It is hard for us of the twentieth century to estimate aright the significance of Buddha's attitude. He lived in a land and age when deference to authority was well-nigh universal. To break with it as he did, implies an intelligence far beyond the common and a lofty courage.

Secondly as to the intrinsic excellence of Buddha's teaching. That teaching is well characterized by a few brief phrases which occur as a commonplace in the canonical texts and are used as one of the forty subjects of meditation or "businesses" by devout Buddhists: "Well taught by the Exalted One is the doctrine. It avails even in the present life, is immediate in its blessed results, is inviting, is conducive to salvation, and may be mastered by any intelligent man for himself." Frankly disclaiming knowledge of what happens after death, Buddha addressed himself to the problem of sorrow as we have it here and now, and sought to relieve it by leading men into the path of righteousness and good-will and freedom from lust. A would-be disciple once asked him to answer certain dogmatic questions about life after death. Buddha parried them all as irrelevances in the dialogue which Warren gives and which is one of the finest presentations of Religion versus Dogma to be found in antiquity. The holy life, he says, does not depend upon the answers to any of these questions.

If a physician of forty years ago had been asked to foretell the then presumable advances of medical science, his guesses might well have included the discovery of new specifics, such as quinine for malaria; for medicine was then the healing art, its aim was to


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The Child of Pleasure/Book II/Chapter 1

Convalescence is a purification, a new birth. Never is life so sweet as after the pangs of physical suffering, and never is the human soul so inclined towards purity and faith as after having had a glimpse into the abyss of death.

After his terrible wound, after a long, slow, agonising struggle, Andrea Sperelli came back to life renewed in body and spirit--like another man, like a creature risen out of the icy waters of death, with a mind swept bare of all that has gone before. The past had receded into the dim perspective, the troubled waters had calmed, the mud sunk to the bottom; his soul was cleansed. He returned to the bosom of Mother Nature, and he felt her re-inforce him maternally with goodness and with strength.

The guest of his cousin at her villa of Schifanoja, Andrea returned to life again in sight of the sea. The convalescent drew his breath in harmony with the deep, calm breath of the ocean; his mind was tranquillised by the serenity of the horizon. Little by little, in these hours of enforced idleness and retirement, his spirit expanded, bloomed out, erected itself slowly, like the grass trodden under foot on the pathway, and he returned to truth and simple faith, became natural and free of heart, open to the knowledge and disposed to the contemplation of pure things.

August was drawing to a close. An ecstatic serenity reigned over the sea; the waters were so transparent that they repeated every image with absolute fidelity, and their ultimate line melted so imperceptibly into the sky that the two elements seemed as one, impalpable and supernatural. The wide amphitheatre of hills, clothed with olives, oranges and pines and all the noblest forms of Italian vegetation, embraced the silent sea, and seemed not a multiplicity of things, but a single vast object under the all-pervading sunshine.

Lying on the grass, or sitting on a rock or under a tree, the young man felt the river of life flow within him; as in a trance, he seemed to feel the whole universe throb and palpitate in his breast; in a species of religious rapture, he felt that he possessed the infinite. That which he experienced was ineffable, divine. The vista before him opened out by degrees into a profound and long continued vision, the branches of the trees overhead supported the firmament, filling the blue, and shining like the garlands of immortal poets. And he gazed and listened and breathed with the sea and the earth, placid as a god.

Where were now all his vanities and his cruelties, his schemes and his duplicities? What had become of all his loves and his illusions, his disappointments and his disgusts, and the implacable reaction after pleasure? He remembered none of them. His spirit had renounced them all, and with the absence of desire, he had found peace.

Desire had abandoned its throne and intellect was free to follow its proper course, and reflect the objective world purely from the outside point of view; things appeared clearly and precisely under their true form, in their true colours, in all their real significance and beauty; every personal sentiment was in abeyance.

'_Die Sterne, die begehrt man nicht--Man freut sich ihrer Pracht._'

One desires not the stars, but rejoices in their splendour--and for the first time in his life the young man really recognised the poetic harmony of summer skies at night.

These were the last nights of August, and there was no moon. Innumerable in the deep starry vault, the constellations throbbed and palpitated with ardent life. The two Bears, Hercules, Cassiopeia, glittered with so rapid a palpitation that they seemed almost to approach the earth, to penetrate the terrestrial atmosphere. The Milky Way flowed wide like a regal aerian river, a confluence of the waters of Paradise, over a bed of crystal between starry banks. Brilliant meteors cleft the motionless air from time to time, gliding lightly and silently as a drop of water over a sheet of glass. The slow and solemn respiration of the sea sufficed to measure the peace of the night without disturbing it, and the pauses were almost sweeter than the music.

In every aspect of the things around him he beheld some analogy to his own inner life. The landscape became to him a symbol, an emblem, a sign to guide him through the labyrinthine passes of his own soul. He discovered secret affinities between the visible life around him and the intimate life of his desires and memories. 'To me, high mountains are a _feeling_'--and as the mountains were to Byron, so the sea was to him a _sentiment_.

Oh, that limpid September sea! Calm and guileless as a sleeping child, it lay outstretched beneath the pearly sky--now green, the delicate and precious green of malachite, the little red sails upon it like flickering tongues of fire, now intensely--almost one might call it heraldically--blue, and veined with gold like lapis-lazuli, with pictured sails upon it as in a church procession. At other times, it took on a dull metallic lustre as polished silver mingled with the greenish-yellow tint of ripe lemons, indefinable, strange and delicate, and the sails would come crowding like the wings of the cherubim in the background of a Giotto picture.

Forgotten sensations of early youth came back to him, that impression of freshness which the salt breath of the sea infuses into young blood, the indescribable effects produced by the changing lights and shadows, the tints, the smell of the salt water upon the unsullied soul. The sea was not only a delight to his eyes, but also an inexhaustible wellspring of peace, a magic fount of youth wherein his body regained health, and his spirit nobility. The ocean had for him the mysterious attraction of a mother country, and he abandoned himself to it with filial confidence, as a feeble child might sink into the arms of an omnipotent mother. And he received comfort and encouragement; for who ever confided his pain, his yearnings or his dreams to her in vain?

For him the sea had ever a profound word, some sudden revelation, some unlocked for enlightenment, some unexpected significance. She revealed to him, in the secret recesses of his soul, a wound still gaping though quiescent, and she made it bleed again, but only to heal it with balm that was doubly sweet. She re-awakened the dragon that slumbered within him, till he felt once more the terrible grip of its claws, and then she slew it once for all and buried it deep in his heart never to rise again. No corner of his being but lay open to the great Consolatrix.

But at times, under the continuous dominion of this influence, under the persistent tyranny of this fascination, the convalescent was conscious of a sort of bewilderment and fear, as if both the dominion and fascination were insupportable to his weak state. The incessant colloquy between him and the sea gave him a vague sense of prostration, as if the sublime language were beyond his restricted powers, so eager to grasp the meaning of the incomprehensible.

But this period of visions, of abstractions, of pure contemplativeness was of short duration. By degrees, he began to resume his attitude of self-consciousness, to recover the sensation of his personality, to return to his original frame of mind. One day at the hour of high noon, the vast and terrible silence when all life seems suspended, a sudden glimpse into his own heart revealed shuddering abysses, inextinguishable desires, ineffaceable memories, accumulations of suffering and regret--all the wretchedness he had gone through, all the inevitable scars of his vices, all the results of his passions. He seemed to be witnessing the shipwreck of his whole life. A thousand voices cried to him for succour, imploring aid, cursing death--voices that he knew, that he had listened to in days gone by. But they cried and implored and cursed in vain, feeling that they were perishing, choked by the hungry waves; then the voices grew faint, broken, irrecognisable--and died away into silence.

He was alone. Of all his youth, of all his boasted fulness of inner life, of all his ideality, not a vestige remained; within--a black and yawning abyss, around him--impassive nature, endless source of pain to solitary souls. Every hope was dead, every voice mute, every anchor gone--what use was life?

Suddenly the image of Elena rose up before him, then that of other women whom he had known and loved. Each of them smiled a hostile smile, and each one, as she vanished, seemed to carry away something of him--what, he could not definitely say. An unspeakable distress weighed upon him, an icy breath of age swept over him, a tragic, warning voice rang through his heart--Too late! Too late!

All his recent comfort and peace seemed now a vain delusion, a dream that had flown, a pleasure enjoyed by some other spirit. Every wound he had ruthlessly dealt to his soul's dignity bled afresh; every degradation he had inflicted upon his conscience started out and spread like a leprosy. Every violation he had committed upon his ideality roused an endless, despairing, terrible remorse in him. He had lied too flagrantly, had deceived, debased himself beyond all power of redress. He loathed himself and all his evil works--Shame! Shame! Nothing could wipe out those dishonouring stains, no balm could ever heal those wounds, he must for ever endure the torment of that self-loathing.--Shame!

His eyes filled with tears, and dropping his head upon his arms he abandoned himself to the weight of his misery, prostrate as a man who has no hope of salvation.

With the new day, he awoke to new life, one of those awakenings, so fresh and limpid, that are only vouchsafed to adolescence in its triumphant springtide. It was a marvellous morning--only to breathe the air was pure delight. The whole earth rejoiced in the living light; the hills were wrapped about with a diaphanous silvery veil and seemed to quiver with life, the sea appeared to be traversed by rivulets of milk, by rivers of crystal and of emerald, by a thousand currents forming the rippling intricacies of a watery labyrinth. A sense of nuptial joy and religious grace emanated from the concord between earth and sky.

And he breathed and gazed and listened, not a little surprised During his sleep the fever had left him. He had slumbered, lulled by the voice of the waters as if by the voice of a faithful friend--and he who sleeps to the sound of that lullaby enjoys a repose that is full of healing peace.

He gazed and listened mutely, fondly, letting the flood of immortal life penetrate to his heart's core. Never had the sacred music of a great master--an Offertory of Haydn, a Te Deum of Mozart--produced in him the emotion caused now by the simple chimes of the distant village churches, as they greeted the rising of the sun into the heavens. His soul swelled and overflowed with unspeakable emotion. Some vision, vague but sublime, hovered over him like a rippling veil through which gleamed the splendour of the mysterious treasure of ultimate felicity. Up till now, he had always known exactly what he wished for, and had never found any pleasure in desiring vainly. Now, he could not have named his desire, but he had no doubts that the thing wished for was infinitely sweet, since the very act of wishing was bliss. The words of the Chimera in 'The King of Cyprus'--old world, half-forgotten verses, recurred to him with all the force of a caressing appeal--

'Would'st thou fight? Would'st kill? would'st thou behold rivers of blood? Great heaps of gold? white herds of captive women? Slaves? other, and far other spoils? Would'st thou Bid marble breathe? Would'st thou set up a temple? Would'st fashion an immortal hymn? Would'st (hearken,   Hearken, O youth, hearken!)--would'st thou divinely Love?'

He smiled faintly to himself. 'Whom should I love?--Art?--a woman?--what woman?' Elena seemed far removed from him, lost to him, a stranger--dead. The others--still further off, dead for evermore. Therefore he was free. But why renew a pursuit so useless and so perilous? Why stretch out his hand again towards the tree of knowledge? 'The tree of knowledge has been plucked--all's known!' as Byron said in Don Juan. What he desired, at the bottom of his heart, was to give himself freely, gratefully to some higher and purer being. But where to find that being was the question.

Truly his salvation in the future lay rather in the practice of caution, prudence, sagacity. His tone of mind seemed to him admirably expressed in a sonnet of a contemporary poet, whom, from a certain affinity of literary tastes and similar aesthetic education, he particularly affected--

'I am as one who lays himself to rest Under the shadow of a laden tree; Above his head hangs the ripe fruit, and he   Is weary of drawing bow or arbalest.

He shakes not the fair bough that lowliest Droops, neither lifts he hand, nor turns to see; But lies, and gathers to him indolently The fruits that drop into his very breast.

In that juiced sweetness, over-exquisite, He bites not deep; he fears the bitterness; Yet sets it to his lips, that he may smell,

Sucks it with pleasure, not with greediness, And he is neither grieved nor glad at it. This is the ending of the parable.'

Art! Art! She was the only faithful mistress--forever young--immortal; there was the Fountain of all pure joys, closed to the multitude but freely open to the elect; that was the precious Food which makes a man like unto a god! How could he have quaffed from other cups after having pressed his lips to that one?--how have followed after other joys when he had tasted that supreme one?

'But what if my intellect has become decadent?--if my hand has lost its cunning? What if I am no longer _worthy_?' He was seized with such panic at the thought, that he set himself wildly to find some immediate means of proving to himself the irrational nature of his fears. He would instantly compose some difficult verses, draw a figure, engrave a plate, solve some problem of form. Well--and what then? Might not the result be entirely fallacious? The slow decay of power may be imperceptible to the possessor--that is the terrible thing about it. The artist who loses his genius little by little is unaware of his progressive feebleness, for as he loses his power of production he also loses his critical faculty, his judgment. He no longer perceives the defects of his work--does not know that it is mediocre or bad. That is the horror of it! The artist who has fallen from his original high estate is no more conscious of his failings than the lunatic is aware of his mental aberration.

Andrea was seized with terror. Better--far better be dead! Never, as at this moment, had he so fully grasped the divine nature of that _gift_, never had the _spark_ of genius appeared to him so sacred. His whole being was shaken to its foundations by the mere suggestion that that gift might be destroyed, that spark extinguished. Better to die!

He lifted his head and shook off his inertia, then he went down to the park and walked slowly under the trees, unable to form a definite plan. A light breeze rippled through the tree tops, now and again the leaves rustled as if a band of squirrels were passing through them; patches of blue sky gleamed between the branches like eyes beneath their lids. Arrived at a favourite spot of his, a sort of tiny _lucus_ presided over by a four-fronted Hermes plunged in quadruple meditation, he stopped and seated himself on the grass, with his back against the pedestal of the statue and his face turned to the sea. Before him the tree-trunks, straight but of uneven height, like the pipes of the great god Pan, intercepted his view of the sea; all around him the acanthus spread the exquisite grace of its foliage, symmetrical as the capitals of Callimachus.

He thought of the words of Salamis in the _Story of the Hermaphrodite_,

'Noble acanthus, in the woods of Earth Tokens of peace, high-flowering coronals, Of most pure form; O ye, the slender basket That Silence weaves with light, untroubled hand To gather up the flowers of woody dreams, What virtue have ye poured on this fair youth Out of those dusky and sweet-smelling leaves? Naked he sleeps; his arm supports his head.'

Other lines came back to him, and yet others--a riot of verse. His soul was filled with the music of rhymes and rhythmic measures. He was overjoyed; coming to him thus spontaneously and unexpectedly, this poetic agitation caused him inexpressible happiness. And he gave ear to the music, delighting himself in rich imagery, in rare epithets, in the luminous metaphors, the exquisite harmonies, the subtle refinements which distinguished his metrical style and the mysterious artifices of the endecasyllabic verse learned from the admirable poets of the fourteenth century, and more especially from Petrarch. Once more the magic spell of versification subjugated his soul, and he felt the full force of the sentiment of a contemporary poet--Verse is everything!

A perfect line of verse is absolute, immutable, deathless. It encloses a thought as within a clearly marked circle which no force can break; it belongs no more to the poet, it belongs to all and yet to none, as do space, light, all things intransitory and perpetual. When the poet is about to bring forth one of these deathless lines he is warned by a divine torrent of joy which sweeps over his soul.

Andrea half closed his eyes to prolong this delicious tremor which with him was ever the forerunner of inspiration, and more especially of poetic inspiration, and he determined in a moment upon the metrical form into which he would pour his thoughts, like wine into a cup--the sonnet.

While composing Andrea studied himself curiously. It was long since he had made verses. Had this interval of idleness been harmful to his technical capacities? It seemed to him that the lines, rising one by one out of the depths of his brain, had a new grace. The consonance came of itself, and ideas were born of the rhymes. Then suddenly some obstacle would intercept the flow, a line would rebel and the whole verse would be displaced like a shaken puzzle; the syllables would struggle against the constraint of the measure; a musical and luminous word which had taken his fancy had to be excluded by the severity of the rhythm, do what he would to retain it, and the verse was like a medal which has turned out imperfect through the inexperience of the caster, who has not calculated the proper quantity of metal necessary for filling the mould. With ingenious patience he poured the metal back into the crucible and began all over again. Finally the verse came out full and clear, and the whole sonnet lived and breathed like a free and perfect creature.

Thus he composed--now slow, now fast--with a delight never felt before. As the day grew, the sea cast luminous darts between the trees as between the columns of a jasper portico. Here Alma Tadema would have depicted a Sappho with hyacinthine locks, seated at the foot of the marble Hermes, singing to a seven-stringed lyre and surrounded by a chorus of maidens with locks of flame, all pallid and intent, drinking in the pure harmony of the verses.

Having accomplished the four sonnets, he heaved a sigh and proceeded to recite them silently but with inward emphasis. Then he wrote them on the quadrangular pedestal of the Hermes, one on each surface in the following order--

I

'Four-fronted Hermes, to thy four-fold sense Have these my marvellous tidings been made known? Suave spirits, singing on their way, have flown Forth from my heart, light-hearted; and from thence

Have cast forth every foul intelligence, And every foul stream dammed, and overthrown The old unguarded bridges, stone by stone, And quenched the flame of my impenitence.

Singing, the spirits ascend; I know the voice, The hymn; and, inextinguishable and vast, Delighting laughters from my heart arise.

Pale, but a king, I bid my soul rejoice To hearken my heart's laughter, as at last Low in the dust the conquered evil lies.

II

The glad soul laughs, because its loves have fled, Because the conquered evil bites the dust Which into intertangled fires had thrust, As into fiery thickets, feet now led

Into the circle human sorrows tread; It leaves the treacherous labyrinths of lust, Where the fair pagan monsters lure the just, In hyacinth robes, a novice, garmented.

Now may no Sphinx with golden nails ensnare, No Gorgon freeze it out of snaky folds, No Siren lull it on a sleepy coast;

But, at the circle's summit, see, a fair White woman, in the act of worship, holds In her pure hands the sacrificial Host.

III

Beyond all harm, all ambush, and all hate, Tranquil of face, and strong at heart, she stands, And knows till death, and scorns, and understands All evil things that on her passage wait.

_Thou hast in ward and keeping every gate, The winds breathe sweetness at thy sweet commands, Might'st thou but take, when with these restless hands I lay at thine untroubled feet my fate!_

_Even now there shines before me in thy meek And holy hands the Host, like to a sun. Have I attained, have I then paid the price?_

She, that is favourable to all that seek, Lifting the Host, declares: _Now is begun And ended the eternal sacrifice!_

IV

_For I_, she saith, _am the unnatural Rose, I am the Rose of Beauty. I instil The drunkenness of ecstasy, I fill The spirit with my rapture and repose_.

_Sowing with tears, sorrowful still are those That with much singing gather harvest still. After long sorrow, this my sweetness will Be sweeter than all sweets thy spirit knows._

So be it, Madonna; and from my heart outburst The blood of tears, flooding all mortal things, And the immortal sorrow be yet whole;

Let the depths swallow me, let there as at first Be darkness, so I see the glimmerings Of light that rain on my unconquered soul!

Die XII. Septembris MDCCCLXXXVI.'

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Child of Pleasure/Book II/Chapter 1


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 Rh chief man of their country-side, then by an assembly of the whole island and the introduction of law. The paradoxes of the Icelandic constitution have been explained by Mr. Bryce in one of his lectures; they might be summed up very roughly, as 'all law and no government.' Apud illos num est rex nisi tantum lex. Their very careful law took them a long way from pure anarchy; but there never was any political power to enforce the law. The local courts and the national assembly determined what was right, but there was no compulsion in the country, except public opinion and private revenge.

This commonwealth, founded in the days of Harald Fairhair and of Alfred the Great, is a kind of embodiment of the Germania of Tacitus, with the Germanic essence, so to speak, still further refined; the independence, the spirit of honour, the positive, worldly, unmystical character, which seems to be capable of all heroism, except that of the visionary martyr.

When the Cardinal William came to Norway in the reign of King Hacon and got to know about the Icelanders, he was scandalized at their freedom, and sent a message to them to ask why they could not come in and be governed by a king, like the rest of the world. It is true enough that their ideas and ways were not those of the thirteenth century, and that they have the example of all Christendom against them.

Nevertheless, the Icelandic State in its pride, its seclusion, its opposition to the common way of the world, is a creation as miraculous as the contemporary achievements of the Northern race at the other end of the scale—I mean the political work of the Normans in the new-fashioned kingdom of England.

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text: Author:Paschasius Radbertus

title: Author:Paschasius Radbertus


text:
User talk:92.23.87.244

Revert
Your edit to Brand, Thomas (DNB00) was reverted, Did not find a Wikipedia article for the subject. Jeepday (talk) 15:57, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * There is an article on Wikipedia now. Seems like you are logged in at Wikipedia but not here. Jeepday (talk) 16:04, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Murragh Boyle
There is a better match to this WP biography in connection with the title created for his father, Michael, on his behalf. The current link (somewhat misleading) takes the reader to a WP article about the father which mentions Murragh and the title creation. As a reader I would expect the link to take me to a separate biography about the son, Murragh. Good luck...JamAKiska (talk) 20:45, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Earl of Bristol.
Better match for this link aligns with 2nd creation link found on Earls of Bristol page. JamAKiska (talk) 21:21, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

title: User talk:92.23.87.244


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 6 The intellectual fortunes of Iceland are as strange as its social history. There is the same mixture of very old Teutonic ideas with others that seem to have escaped the Middle Ages altogether, or at any rate to be more at home in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. Nowhere is this more manifest than in the histories of Iceland, the prose narrative literature of the republic, in which Sturla, son of Thord, is one of the last and one of the most eminent names. Icelandic prose of the great age is in contradiction to a number of things that are commonly believed and reported about medieval literature: such as, that it is quaint, absurd, superstitious, childish, without perspective. For example: the Edda of Snorri Sturluson is a thirteenth-century prose book that has very little to learn from any renaissance or revival of learning. The tone of it, in its treatment of the stories of the gods, is not what is generally supposed to be medieval; it is more like what one expects from the eighteenth century, amused, ironical, humorous. At the same time Snorri is generous to the old gods and thoroughly interested in their adventures. Peacock, in his dealing with Welsh antiquities, is the modern author who is most like Snorri in this respect, in this curious combination of levity and romance, so unlike the medieval earnestness on the one hand, the medieval farce on the other.

The great work of the Icelanders is to be found in their family histories; those to which the name Saga is commonly given as if by some special right; the stories of Njal, of Egil Skallagrimsson and other famous men of the early days. These books leave the ordinary critical formulas fluttering helplessly about them. They seem to accomplish what for several generations, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was one of the

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 Rh ideals of literary men, the heroic narrative in prose, the prose epic. For this was once a favourite ambition, one of the abstract ideas that tempted many writers, along with the perfect form of Tragedy and the pattern of an Epic Poem. Cervantes in Don Quixote has given one of the best descriptions of this ideal by the mouth of the Canon of Toledo, explaining what might be made of prose romances if they were taken up by the right kind of author. The prose story, says the Canon, offers a large free field for all kinds of adventures, descriptions, and characters, for the craft of Ulysses, the valour of Achilles, the misfortunes of Hector, and so on. A web woven of many various strands—that shall be the new kind of romance; a story written without exaggeration of style, and drawn truly; using the freedom of prose narrative so as to include among other things both tragedy and comedy, 'with all those parts that are included in the most delightful and pleasant sciences of poetry and oratory; for the epic may be written not less in prose than in verse'. Something of what is here outlined had been accomplished long before in the Icelandic Sagas—the wisdom of Njal, the valour of Gunnar and Skarphedin, the misfortunes of Grettir the Strong. Those Northern books are written sometimes with a spirit like that of Cervantes himself, with dialogue unmatched except in the great novelists.

This rich imaginative history had its source in real life. Njal and Egil and their adventures were kept in traditional memory, their stories were the property of no one in particular, handed down from one age to another till the time came for them to be put into shape and written out in their present form. Icelandic prose is very near to the spoken language; it is rich in idiom and in conversation, and the artistic form given

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 8 to it by writing men seems to follow easily from the natural growth of the spoken traditional tale.

By the early part of the thirteenth century most of the old stories had been written; and not only the Icelandic Sagas of the heroic age, but also the lives of the kings of Norway, which are best known in the work of Snorri, commonly called Heimskringla. In these Kings' Lives the largest space had been given to the two Olafs, Tryggvason and Haraldsson (St. Olaf); so that both for Iceland and Norway the tenth and early eleventh century—two hundred years before the time of Snorri—were better represented in literature than the later periods. But something had been done to bring down the memoirs of Iceland and the history of Norway to living memory, and it is here that Sturla the historian comes in, to complete the task.

He belonged to one of the great families of Iceland in the thirteenth century, the house of the Sturlungs, named from his grandfather, Sturla, of Hvamm. This family was one of the most ambitious, and did as much as any to spoil the old balance of the Commonwealth by 'struggling for life' in a reckless, arrogant, lawless way. The strange thing about them is that, with all their dangerous, showy qualities, they produced some of the finest literature: 'out of the eater came forth meat'. Snorri, son of Sturla, was for a long time one of the most persevering and successful capitalists of that time, making his fortune, greedily, by all available means; he is also great in Icelandic prose literature on account of his Edda and his Kings' Lives. His brother, Thord, had two sons, who were distinguished literary men: our Sturla the historian, who was also a poet, and Olaf the poet, who was also a philologist. Even the fighting men of the family might be fond of books: Sturla notes a fact

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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

PART II

DEFINITE RELIGION

II

THE DIVISION OF CONSCIOUSNESS WITHIN ITSELF (continued)

2. The Religion of Imagination or Phantasy.

(a.) Its Conception.

The second of the main forms of Pantheism, when this latter actually appears as religion, is still within the sphere of this same principle of the One substantial Power, in which all that we see around us, and even the freedom of man itself, has merely a negative, accidental character. We saw that the substantial Power, in its first form, comes to be known as representing the multitude of esssential determinations, and the entire sphere of these, and not as being in its own self spiritual. And now the question immediately arises as to how this Power is itself determined, and what is its content? Self-consciousness in religion cannot, like the abstract thinking understanding, limit itself to the idea of that Power known only as an aggregate of determinations which merely are. In this way the Power is not as yet known as real, as independently existing unity; not as yet as a Principle. Now the opposite form of this


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 determination is the taking back of the manifold determinateness of existence into the unity of inner self-determination. This concentration of self-determination contains the beginning of Spirituality.

1. The Universal, as determining its own self, and not merely as a multitude of rules, is Thought, exists as Thought. It is in our thoughts alone that Nature, the ruling Power which brings forth everything, exists as the Universal, as this One Essence, as this One Power which exists for itself. What we have before us in Nature is this Universal, but not as a Universal. It is in our thought that the truth of Nature is brought into prominence on its own account as Idea, or more abstractly as something having a universal character. Universality is, however, in its very nature Thought, and as self-determining is the source of all determination. But at the stage at which we now are, and where the Universal appears for the first time as the determining agent, as a Principle, it is not as yet Spirit, but abstract Universality generally. The Universal being known in this way as Thought, it remains as such shut up within itself. It is the source of all power, but does not externalise or make itself manifest as such.

2. Now to Spirit belongs the power of differentiation and the full development of the difference. Of the system of this complete development, the concrete unfolding of Thought on its own account, and that particular unfolding which as manifestation or appearance is Nature and the spiritual world, form an inherent part. Since, however, the Principle which makes its appearance at the present stage has not as yet got so far as to permit of this unfolding taking place within that principle itself, it being rather held fast in simple abstract concentration only, the unfolding, the fulness of the actual Idea, is found outside of the Principle, and consequently differentiation and manifoldness are abandoned to the wildest, most outward forms of imagination. The


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 of the Universal manifests itself in a multitude of independent powers.

3. This multiplicity, this wild abandonment, is once more taken back into the original unity. This taking back, this concentration of thought, would complete the moment of spirituality so far as the Idea is concerned, if the original universal thought resolved within its own self upon differentiation, and if it were known as essentially this act of taking back. Upon the basis of abstract thought, however, the taking back itself remains a process devoid of Spirit. There is nothing wanting here, so far as the moments of the Idea of Spirit are concerned, the Idea of rationality is present in this advance. But yet those moments do not constitute Spirit; the unfolding does not give itself the perfect form of Spirit, because the determinations remain merely universal. There is merely a continual return to that Universality which is self-active, but which is held fast in the abstraction of self-determination. We have thus the abstract One and the wildness of extravagant imagination, which, it is true, is recognised in turn as remaining in identity with what is primary, but is not expanded into the concrete unity of the Spiritual. The unity of the intelligible realm reaches the condition of particular independent existence; this last does not, however, become absolutely free, but remains confined within universal Substance.

But just because the unfolding does not as yet return in a true way into the Notion, is not as yet taken back into the Notion by its own inner action, it still retains its immediacy in spite of that return, still belongs to natural religion, and therefore the moments fall apart, and are kept independent and separate relatively to one another. This is the curse of nature. Everywhere we shall find tones that accord with the Notion, with the True, which, however, become the more horrible in the strain as a whole because they continue to retain the


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 character of separateness or mutual exclusion, and because the moments, being independent and objective in their particularity, are looked upon theoretically.

The further question which now presents itself is, What are the forms, the shapes in which this independence appears? We are actually in such a world, consciousness finds itself in an existing world, of such a mutually exclusive character—in a world of sense, and thus has to deal with a world of many-coloured manifoldness. Taking it as a whole, it is thus just “these,” these individual things; that is the fundamental determination here. We call “these,” Things, and this is the more precise characteristic we assign to the Objective, and by which we distinguish it from Spirit. In a similar way we have in inner life to do with manifold forces, spiritual distinctions and experiences, which the understanding in like manner isolates;—as, for example, this inclination, that passion, this power of memory, that power of judgment, &c. In thinking, too, we have determinations each of which exists for itself, such as positive, negative, being, not-being; this, for our consciousness, which takes things in their sensuous aspect, for our understanding, is independence. In this way we have a view or theory of the universe which is of a prosaic character, because the independence has the form of what is a thing, of forces, faculties of the mind, &c., and consequently its form is abstract. The thought is not Reason here, but Understanding, and is present in that form. But when we so regard the world, what we have is the reflection of understanding, which appears much later, and cannot as yet exist here. Not until prose, not until thinking, has permeated all relations, so that man everywhere assumes the attitude of one who thinks abstractly, does he speak of external things. The thinking in question here is, on the contrary, this Substance only; it is merely this self-containedness or being at home with self; it is not as yet brought into exercise, not applied


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 thought, and has not as yet permeated the entire man. The special Powers, which are partly objects, such as the sun, mountains, rivers, or else are more abstract ideas, such as origination, decay, change, assumption of form, and the like, are not as yet taken up into Spirit, are not as yet truly posited as ideal, and yet at the same time, too, are not as yet intelligently distinguished by the understanding from Spirit, and pure Being is still concentrated in that undeveloped state of Substance which is not as yet spiritual Substance.

Now we do not only say things “are,” but we add in the second place that they stand in manifold relation to one another; they have causal connection, they are dependent on one another: this second moment of the action of understanding cannot be present here. It is the understanding only as pure self-identity, or as a self-consistent process, which conceives of objects under these categories. “Since the one is, therefore the other is,” is its way of speaking; and without once turning back, it carries this chain of connection continuously on into the bad or false infinite. Thus the independence we are speaking of has not this form. The form of independence which is present here is no other than the form of that which is the form of concrete self-consciousness itself, and this first mode is therefore the human or animal mode. At this stage there is a filling-up; the concrete makes its appearance as existent, as something which is actually perceived, no longer as Power. In this last the Concrete is posited as merely negative, as in subjection to the Power; it is only the practical element which is objective in the Power, not the theoretical. Here, on the contrary, the theoretical element is set free.

Spirit, as being theoretical, has a double aspect. It relates itself as within itself to itself, and it relates itself to the Things, which “things” are for it universal independence. Thus for Spirit the things themselves break up into their immediate external varied form on


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 the one hand, and into their free independently existing Essence on the other. Since this is not as yet a Thing, nor represents, in fact, the categories of the Understanding, and is not abstract independence produced by thought, it is the free independence of ordinary conception; and this is the idea formed of man, or at least of what has life, which consequently may be, in a general sense, called the Objectivity of Imagination. In order to conceive of the sun, the sky, a tree as existing, as self-sustained, it is only necessary for us to have a sensuous picture or image of it, to which nothing which appears heterogeneous has to be added in order that it may be thus presented to us as self-sustained or independent. But show or semblance is a deception. The image, when represented to us as independent, as having Being, and when regarded by us as such, has for us just the character of Being, of a force, of a causality, of a form of activity, of a soul; it is in these categories that it has its independence. But in so far as the independence has not as yet advanced to the prose of Understanding, for which the category of force or of cause is the characteristic quality of objectivity generally, the apprehension and expression of that independence is this poetry, which makes the idea of human nature and outward form the supporting basis and Essence of the external world, or, it may be, even animal form, or the human form in combination with the animal. This poetry is, in fact, the rational element in imagination, for this rational element is to be kept firm hold of, although consciousness, as before stated, has not yet advanced to the category, and thus the element of independence is to be taken out of the world which is around us, and, in fact, in direct contrast to what is not independent, to what is conceived as external. And here it is animal and human existence alone which is the form, mode, and nature of what is free among things. The sun, the sea, a tree, and the like, are, as a matter of fact, without independence as compared with what lives and is free; and it is these forms of


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 which in this element of independent existence constitute the supports of the category for any content at all. A subjective soul is thus given to Matter, which, however, is not a category, but is concrete Spirituality and Life.

The immediate result is that as soon as objects generally and universal thought-determinations have this free independence, that connection of things in the world which is the work of understanding is dissolved;—it is the categories of the relations of necessity, or the dependence of things upon one another in accordance with their quality, their essential definite character, which form this connection; all these categories, however, are absent, and thus nature, with nothing to support or give it stability, reels at the mercy of imagination. There may be any sort of unregulated fancy, any kind of chance occurrence and result; the movement in connection with any condition of things is not bound and limited by anything whatever; the whole splendour of nature and of imagination is available as a means of decorating the content, and the caprice of imagination has absolutely unbounded scope, and can follow whatever direction it pleases.

Passion in its natural untrained state possesses but few interests, and that in which it has an interest it negates, while on the other hand it pays no attention to whatever is void of interest. From this standpoint of imagination, however, all distinctions are taken special notice of and firmly clung to, and everything which has an interest for imagination becomes free, independent, and is exalted to the rank of fundamental thought.

But it is likewise owing to this very imagined independence itself that conversely the peculiar position of the content and of the definite outward forms disappears; for since they have a definite finite content, they would properly have their objective support, their return and abiding renewal, only in that connection of the


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 which has vanished, and by means of which their independence, instead of being a reality, becomes rather a complete contingency. The phenomenal world, the world of appearance, is therefore drawn into the service of imagination. The divine world is a realm of imagination, which becomes all the more infinite and manifold as it has its home in a region where Nature is exuberant; and this principle of passionless imagination, of a fancy built on a theoretical foundation, has enriched the character of the mind and its emotions,—emotions which in this gently hatching warmth are permeated in a pre-eminent degree by a strain of voluptuous and sweet loveliness, but at the same time of feeble softness.

The objective content, too, is not apprehended here in the form of Beauty; those powers, whether general natural objects or the forces of individual feeling, as, for example, love, are not as yet embodied in forms of beauty. To beauty of form belongs free subjectivity, which in the sensuous world and in concrete existence is both free and knows itself to be so.

For the Beautiful is essentially the Spiritual making itself known sensuously, presenting itself in sensuous concrete existence, but in such a manner that that existence is wholly and entirely permeated by the Spiritual, so that the sensuous is not independent, but has its meaning solely and exclusively in the Spiritual and through the Spiritual, and exhibits not itself, but the Spiritual.

Such is true beauty. In living human beings there are many external influences which check pure idealisation, this subsumption of the bodily sensuous element under the Spiritual.

Here this condition does not as yet exist, and for this reason, that the Spiritual is as yet only present in this abstract shape of Substantiality. It is, indeed, unfolded into these particular forms, into special Powers, but the substantiality still exists for itself; it has not


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 and overcome these its particular shapes, this sensuous concrete existence.

Substance is, so to speak, an universal space which has not as yet organised, idealised, and brought under it that with which it is filled up—the particularisation which issued from it.

For this reason, too, the form of beauty cannot be created here, because the content—these particularisations of Substance—is not as yet the true content of Spirit.

Since, then, the limited content is the foundation, and is known as spiritual, the subject—this definite spiritual agent—becomes, owing to this, an empty form. In the Religion of Beauty, the Spiritual, as such, constitutes the foundation, so that the content, too, is the spiritual content. In that religion, statues or pictures, as sensuous matter, are merely the expression of the Spiritual. Here, however, the content is not of a spiritual kind.

Thus, the art we find here is symbolical art, which does indeed express essential characteristics, but not characteristics of the Spiritual. Hence the unbeautiful, the mad, the fantastic character of the art which makes its appearance here. The symbolism is not the purely Beautiful, just because a content other than spiritual individuality is the basis. Free subjectivity is not the permeating element, and is not essentially expressed by the form. In this phantasy there is nothing fixed, nothing moulds itself into forms of the beauty which is given only by the consciousness of freedom. Speaking generally, what we have here is complete dissolution of form, the restless movement, the manifestation of the self-importance of the individual. Devoid of anything to give it stability, the inner element passes over into external existence, and the unfolding of the Absolute—a process which outdoes itself in this world of imagination—is merely an endless breaking-up of the One into the Many, and an unstable reeling to and fro of all content.


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 Rh of this sort about his cousin and namesake, Sturla Sighvatsson, who was in practical life the perfection of that unscrupulous, light-hearted vanity which made all the sorrows of Iceland in those years.

'The Sturlung Age' is a name commonly given to the period described in the Sturlunga Saga—roughly, the first half of the thirteenth century, the time of the great faction fights in which the liberties of Iceland went under. The Sturlunga Saga, as we have it, is a composite work; only part of it (and scholars are not agreed how much of it) is the work of Sturla, son of Thord. But he, the grandson of the founder of the house, wrote at any rate a large part of the history; there is no doubt of that, so that for this time there exists not only a contemporary chronicle, but the memoirs of one who was most intimately concerned, himself one of the persons in the drama.

And his work is the completion of Icelandic prose. It is hardly a metaphor to say that it is the mind of Iceland, expressing itself in the best way at the end of the old Icelandic life. Sturla's work is the Icelandic habit of thought and vision applied to the writer's own experience, whereas in the heroic Sagas it had dealt with things of a former age.

The beauty of it in both cases is its impartiality. But this is naturally more remarkable and surprising in the later than the earlier history. Sturla had been in the thick of it all himself, in many moss-trooping raids and forays; he had seen his kinsmen cut down; he had been driven to make terms with their chief enemy; it was his own daughter who was snatched out of the fire of

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 It is the system of universal fundamental determinations, the system determined in and for itself through the Notion, as that of the absolute sovereign powers to which everything returns, and which permeate everything through and through, which alone brings thorough stability into this region of caprice, confusion, and feebleness, into this measureless splendour and enervation. And it is the study of this system which is of the most essential moment. On the one hand, we have to recognise the presence of these determinations through the perverted sensuous form of the capricious, externally determined embodiment, and to do justice to the essential element which lies at their foundation; and on the other hand, we have to observe the degradation which they undergo. This degradation is partly owing to the mode in which the indifference of those determinations toward one another appears, partly owing to the presence of arbitrary human and externally local sense experience, through which they are transposed into the sphere of the every-day life, where all passions, local features—features of individual recollection—are joined on to them. There is no act of judgment, no feeling of shame, nothing of the higher mutual fitness of form and of content; the every-day existence as such is not made to vanish, and is not developed into beauty. The inequality or disproportion of form and content consist?, more strictly speaking, in this that the fundamental determinations are debased, inasmuch as they acquire the semblance of being similar to the disconnected facts of existence, and that conversely the external sensuous representation becomes depraved by means of its form.

From what has now been stated it will be already clear that these determinations of the divine Essence have their existence in the Indian religion. We have here to look away from its vast and characteristically endless mythology and mythological forms, in order to keep to the principal fundamental determinations alone,


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 which are on the one hand baroque and wild, and are horrible, repulsive, loathsome distortions, but at the same time prove themselves to have the Notion for their inner source; while in virtue of the development which it gets in this theoretical region, they recall the highest element of the Idea. At the same time, however, they express that definite stuntedness under which the Idea suffers when these fundamental determinations are not brought back again into their spiritual nature.

What constitutes the principal point of interest in this religion of India is the development or explication of form in contrast with an abstract monotheistic religion, and so too with the Greek religion—that is to say, in contrast with a religion which has spiritual individuality as its principle.

(b.) The general idea of the objective content of this stage.

What is the first in the Notion, what is true, the universal substantial element, is the eternal repose of Being-within-itself; this Essence existing within itself, which universal Substance is. This simple Substance, which the Hindus call Brahma, is regarded as the Universal, the self-existing Power; which is not, like passion, turned toward what is other than itself, but is the quiet, lustreless reflection into itself, which is, however, at the same time determined as Power. This abidingly self-enclosed Power in the form of Universality must be distinguished from its operation, from that which is posited by means of it, and from its own moments. Power is the Ideal, the Negative, for which all else exists merely as abrogated, as negated. But the Power, as that which exists within itself, as universal Power, distinguishes itself from its moments themselves, and these therefore appear on the one hand as independent beings, and on the other as moments which even perish in the One. They belong to it, they are merely moments of it, but as differentiated moments they come forward into


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 independent existence, and present themselves as independent Persons—Persons of the Godhead who are God, who are the Whole itself, so that that primary element vanishes in this particular shape or form, but on the other hand they again vanish in the one Power. The alternations—according to which we have now the One, now the distinction as entire totality—are the perplexing inconsistencies which present themselves in this sphere to the logical understanding, but they are at the same time that consistency of reason which is in accordance with the Notion, as contrasted with the consistency of the abstract self-identical understanding.

Subjectivity is Power in itself, as the relation of infinite negativity to itself; it is not, however, only potentially power, but rather it is with the appearance of subjectivity that God is for the first time posited as Power. These determinations are indeed to be distinguished from one another, and stand in relation to the subsequent conceptions of God, and are also of primary importance to the understanding of the preceding ones. They are therefore to be considered more closely.

Power, in fact, at once in religion in the general sense, and in the wholly immediate and crudest religion of nature, is the fundamental determination, as being the infinitude which the finite as abrogated posits within itself. And in so far as this is conceived of as outside of it, as existing at all, it nevertheless comes to be posited merely as something which has proceeded out of that finite as its basis. Now the determination which is all-important here is, that this Power is, to begin with, posited simply as the basis of the particular shapes or existing forms, and the relation to the basis of the inherently existing Essence is the relation of Substantiality. Thus it is merely power potentially—power as the inner element of the existence; and as Essence which has Being within itself or as Substance, it is only posited as the Simple and Abstract, so that the determinations or


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 differentiations as forms existing in their own right are conceived of as outside of it. This Essence, which exists within itself, may indeed be conceived of too as existing for itself, as Brahma is self-thinking. Brahma is the universal Soul; when he creates, he himself issues as a breath out of himself; he contemplates himself, and exists then for himself.

But his abstract simplicity does not at once vanish owing to this, for the moments, the universality of Brahma as such, and the “_I_” for which that universality exists, these two are not determined as contrasted with one another, and their relation is therefore itself simple. Brahma exists thus as abstractly existing for himself. The Power and the basis of existences and all things have, in fact, proceeded out of him and vanished in him. In saying to himself, “I am Brahma,” all things have vanished back into him, have vanished in him. Whether as outside of him, existing independently, or within him, they have vanished; there is only the relation of these two extremes. But posited as differentiated determinations, they appear as independent existences outside of him, since he is primarily abstract, and not concrete in himself.

The Power posited in this manner potentially only works inwardly without showing itself as activity. I manifest myself as power in so far as I am cause and determine, in so far as I am a subject, when I throw a stone, and so forth. But this potentially existing Power works in a universal manner, without this universality being a subject for itself, a self-conscious subject. These universal modes of working, understood in their true character, are, for instance, the Laws of Nature.

Now Brahma, as the one, simple, absolute Substance, is the neuter, or, as we say, the Godhead: Brahma expresses this universal Essence more as a Person, as a subject. But this is a distinction which is not constantly made use of, and in the different grammatical cases this


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 distinction already spontaneously effaces itself, for the masculine and neuter genders have many cases which are similar. In another respect, too, no great emphasis is to be laid upon this distinction, because Brahma as personified is merely superficially personified in such a manner that the content still remains this simple substance.

And now distinctions appear in this simple Substance, and it is worth noting that these distinctions present themselves in such a way that they are determined in accordance with the instinct of the Notion. The First is totality generally as One, taken quite abstractly; the Second is determinateness, differentiation generally; and the Third, in accordance with the true determination, is that the differences are led back again into unity, into concrete unity.

Conceived of in accordance with its abstract form, this Trinity of the Absolute is, when it is formless, merely Brahma,—that is, empty Essence. From the point of view of its determinations it is a Three, but in a unity only, so that this threeness is merely a unity.

If we define this more accurately and speak of it under another form, the Second means that differentiations, different Powers exist: the differentiation, however, has no rights as against the one Substance, the absolute unity; and in so far as it has no rights it may be called eternal goodness, implying that what has determinate character,—this manifestation of the Divine,—should indeed exist; that differentiation too should attain to this, that it is. This is the goodness through which what is posited by the Power as a semblance or show of Being acquires momentary Being. In the Power it is absorbed, yet goodness permits it to exist independently.

Upon this Second follows the Third—that is, righteousness, implying that the existing determinate element is not, that the finite attains to its end, its destiny, its right, which is to be changed, to be transformed, in


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 fact, into another determinateness; this is righteousness in the general sense. To this, in an abstract way, belong becoming, perishing, originating: for Not-being too has no right; it is an abstract determination in contrast to Being, and is itself the passing over into unity.

This totality, which is the unity, a Whole, is what is called among the Indians Tri murti—murti = form or shape—all emanations of the Absolute being called murti. It is this Highest, differentiated within itself in such a manner that it has these three determinations within itself.

The most striking and the greatest feature in Indian mythology is unquestionably this Trinity in unity. We cannot call this Trinity Persons, for it is wanting in spiritual subjectivity as a fundamental determination. But to Europeans it must have been in the highest degree astonishing to meet with this principle of the Christian religion here: we shall become acquainted with it in its true form later on, and shall see that Spirit as concrete must necessarily be conceived of as triune.

The First, then, the One, the One Substance, is what is called Brahma. Parabrahma, which is above Brahma, also makes its appearance; and these are jumbled together. Of Brahma, in so far as he is a subject, all kinds of stories are related. Thought, reflection, at once goes beyond such a determination as Brahma, since one having such a definite character is conceived of as One of these Three, makes itself a Higher, which gives itself a definite character in the distinction. In so far as that which is absolute Substance again appears as merely One alongside of others, Parabrahma is expressive of the need of thought to have something yet higher; and it is impossible to say in what definite relation forms of this kind stand to one another.

Brahma is thus what is conceived of as this Substance out of which everything has proceeded and is begotten, as this Power which has created All. But while the one


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 Substance—the One—is thus the abstract Power, it at the same time appears as the inert element, as formless, inert matter; here we have specially the forming activity, as we should express it.

The one Substance, because it is only the One, is the Formless: thus this, too, is a mode in which it becomes apparent that substantiality does not satisfy; that is to say, it fails to do so because form is not present.

Thus Brahma, the one self-identical Essence, appears as the Inert, as that which indeed begets, but which at the same time maintains a passive attitude—like woman, as it were. Krischna therefore says of Brahma, “Brahma is my uterus, the mere recipient in which I lay my seed, and out of which I beget All.” In the determination, too, “God is Essence,” there is not the principle of movement, of production; there is no activity.

Out of Brahma issues everything,—gods, the world, mankind; but it at once becomes apparent that this One is inactive. In the various cosmogonies or descriptions of the creation of the world, what has just been thus indicated makes its appearance.

Such a description of the creation of the world occurs in the Vedas. In these Brahma is represented as being thus alone in solitude, and as existing wholly for himself, and a Being which is represented as a higher one then says to him that he ought to expand and to beget himself. But Brahma, it is added, had not during a thousand years been in a condition to conceive of his expansion, and had returned again into himself.

Here Brahma is represented as world-creating, but, owing to the fact that he is the One, as inactive, as one who is summoned by another higher than himself, and is formless. Thus the need of another is directly present. To speak generally, Brahma is this one absolute Substance.

Power as this simple activity is Thought. In the Indian religion this characteristic is the most prominent one of all;


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 it is the absolute basis and is the One—Brāhma. This form is in accordance with the logical development. First came the multiplicity of determinations, and the advance consists in the resumption of determination into unity. That is the basis. What now remains to be given is partly something of a merely historical character, but partly, too, the necessary development which follows from that principle.

Simple Power, as the active element, created the world. The creating is essentially an attitude of thought towards itself, an activity relating itself to itself, and in no sense a finite activity. This, too, is expressed in the ideas of the Indian religion. The Hindus have a great number of cosmogonies which are all more or less barbarous, and out of which nothing of a fixed character can be derived. What we have is not one idea of the creation of the world, as in the Jewish and Christian religion. In the Code of Manu, in the Vedas and Puranas, the cosmogonies are constantly understood and presented differently. Notwithstanding this, there is always one feature essentially present in them, namely, that this Thought, which is at home with itself or self-contained, is the begetting of itself.

This infinitely profound and true trait constantly reappears in the various descriptions of the creation of the world. The Code of Manu begins thus: “The Eternal with one thought created water,” and so on. We also find that this pure activity is called “the Word,” as God is in the New Testament. With the Jews of later times—Philo, for example—σοφία is the “First-created,” which proceeds out of the One. The “Word” is held in very high esteem among the Hindus. It is the figure of pure activity, definite existence of an externally physical character, which, however, does not permanently remain, but is only ideal, and immediately vanishes in its external form. The Eternal created the water, it is stated, and deposited fruit-bringing seed in it; this seed became a


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 resplendent egg, and therein the Eternal itself was born again as Brahma. Brahma is the progenitor of all spirits, of the existent and non-existent. In this egg, it is said, the great Power remained inactive for a year; at the end of that time it divided the egg by means of thought, and created one part masculine and the other feminine. The masculine energy is itself begotten, and becomes again begetting and active, only when it has practised severe meditation, that is to say, when it has attained to the concentration of abstraction. Thought is therefore what brings forth and what is brought forth; it is the bringer forth itself, namely, the unity of thinking with itself. The return of thinking to itself is found in other descriptions besides. In one of the Vedas, some passages out of which Colebrooke was the first to translate, a similar description of the first act of creation is to be found: “There was neither Being nor nothing, neither above nor below, neither death nor immortality, but only the One enshrouded and dark. Outside of this One existed nothing, and this brooded in solitude with itself; through the energy of contemplation it brought forth a world out of itself; in thinking, desire, impulse first formed itself, and this was the original seed of all things.”

Here likewise Thought in its self-enclosed activity is presented to us. But Thought becomes further known as Thought in the self-conscious Essence—in man, who represents its actual existence. The Hindus might be charged with having attributed to the One a contingent existence, since it is left to chance whether or not the individual raises itself to the abstract Universal—to abstract self-consciousness. But, on the other hand, the caste of the Brahmans is an immediate representation of the presence of Brahma; it is the duty of that caste to read the Vedas, to withdraw itself into itself. The reading of Vedas is the Divine, indeed God Himself, and so too is prayer. The Vedas may even be read unintelligently and in complete stupefaction; this stupefaction itself is


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 the abstract unity of thought; the “I,” the pure contemplation of it is perfect emptiness. Thus it is in the Brahmans that Brahma exists; by the reading of the Vedas Brahma is, and human self-consciousness in the state of abstraction is Brahma itself.

The characteristics of Brahma which have been indicated seem to have so many points of correspondence with the God of other religions—with the true God Himself—that it appears to be of some importance to point out, on the one hand, the difference which exists, and on the other, to indicate for what reason the logical determination of subjective existence in self-consciousness which marks the Indian pure Essence has no place among these other ideas. The Jewish God is, for example, the same One, immaterial Substantiality and Power which exists for thought only; He is Himself objective thought, and is also not as yet that inherently concrete One which He is as Spirit. But the Indian supreme God is merely the One in a neuter sense, rather than the One Person; He has merely potential being, and is not self-conscious; He is Brahma the Neutrum, or the Universal determination. Brahma as subject, on the other hand, is at once one among the three Persons, if we may so designate them, which in truth is not possible since spiritual subjectivity as an essential fundamental determination is wanting to them. It is not enough that the Trimurti proceeds out of that primal One, and also returns back again into that One; all that is implied in this is that it is represented merely as Substance, not as Subject. The Jewish God, on the contrary, is the One exclusively, who has no other gods beside Him. It is because of this that He is determined not only as Potentiality, but also as what alone has Actual Being, as the absolutely consuming or absorbing element, as a Subject having infinitude within itself, which is indeed still abstract and posited in an undeveloped manner, but which is nevertheless true infinitude. His goodness and His


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 remain so far also merely attributes; or, as the Hebrews frequently express it, they are His names, which do not become special forms or shapes, although too they do not become the content through which the Christian Unity of God is alone the spiritual one. For this reason the Jewish God cannot acquire the determination of a subjective existence in self-consciousness, because He is rather a subject in Himself. To reach subjectivity He does not therefore require an Other in which He should for the first time acquire this determination, but which, because of its being in an Other, would have a merely subjective existence also.

On the other hand, what the Hindu says in and to himself—“I am Brahma”—must be recognised, in its essential character, as identical with the modern subjective and objective “vanity”—with that which the “I” is made into by means of the oft-repeated assertion that we know nothing of God. For the statement that “I” has no affirmative relation to God, that He is a “Beyond” for the “I,” a nullity without any content, at once implies that the mere independent “I” is the affirmative for “I.” It is of no use to say, “I recognise God as above me, as outside of me;” God is an idea without content, whose sole characteristic, all that is to be recognised or known of it, all which it is to be for me, is wholly and entirely limited to this—that this absolutely indeterminate Being is, and that it is the negative of myself. In the Indian, “I am Brahma,” it is not, indeed, posited as the negative of myself, as being in opposition to me. But that apparently affirmative determination of God—that He is—is partly in itself merely the perfectly empty abstraction of Being, and therefore a subjective determination only, a determination which has an existence in my self-consciousness only, and which therefore attaches to Brahma also, and partly in so far as it still is to get an objective meaning, it would already be—and not in concrete determinations only, as, for instance, that God is a subject in


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 and for Himself—something which is known of God, a category of Him, and thus would be already too much. Being, consequently, reduces itself by its own act to the mere “something outside of me,” and it is intended expressly, too, to signify the negative of myself, in which negation nothing in fact remains to me but I myself. It is thrashing empty straw to attempt to pass off that negative of myself, that something outside of me or above me, for an alleged, or at least a supposed, recognised objectivity, for to do so is merely to pronounce a negative, and to do this, in fact, expressly through myself. But neither this abstract negation, nor the quality that it is posited through me, and that I know this negation, and know it as negation only, is an objectivity; nor is it an objectivity, so far, at least, as the form is concerned, even although it is not an objectivity so far as the content is concerned; for the truth rather is, that is just the empty form of objectivity without content, an empty form and merely subjective supposition. Formerly that which could be described as merely the negative, was called in the Christian world the Devil. Consequently nothing affirmative remains save this subjectively-supposing “I.” With a one-sided dialectic it has, by a process of evaporation, sceptically rid itself of all the content of the sensuous and super-sensuous world, and given to it the character of something that is negative for it. All objectivity having become for it vain and empty, what is present is this positive vanity itself—it is that objective “I” which alone is Power and Essence, in which everything has vanished away, into which all content whatever has sunk as finite, so that the “I” is the Universal, the master of all determinations, and the exclusive, affirmative point. The Indian “I am Brahma,” and that so-called religion, the “I” of the modern faith of reflection, differ from one another in their external relations only; the former expresses the primitive apprehension of the mind in its naive form, in which the pure substantiality of its thought


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 comes into existence for self-consciousness, so that it allows all other content whatever to exist beside it, and recognises it as objective truth. In contrast to this, that faith of reflection, which denies all objectivity to truth, holds fast to that solitude of subjectivity alone, and recognises it alone. In this fully developed reflection the divine world, like all other content, is merely something posited by me.

This first relation of the Hindu to Brahma is set down only in the one single prayer, and since it is itself the existence of Brahma, the momentary character of this existence at once shows itself to be inadequate to the content, and consequently a demand arises that this existence itself should be rendered universal and lasting like its content. For it is only the momentary time element which appears as the most obvious defect in that existence, it being that alone which stands in relation with that abstract Universality, compares itself with it, and shows itself to be inadequate to it; for in other respects its subjective existence—the abstract “I”—is equal or commensurate with it. But to exalt that merely single look into a permanent seeing means nothing else than to stop the transition from the moment of this quiet solitude into the full present reality of life, of its needs, interests, and occupations, and to preserve oneself continuously in that motionless abstract self-consciousness. This is what, in fact, many Hindus who are not Brahmans (of whom later on) virtually accomplish. They give themselves up with the most persevering callousness to the monotony of an inactivity extending over years, and especially to an inactivity of ten years’ duration, in which they renounce all the interests and occupations of ordinary life, and combine with this renunciation the constraint arising from some unnatural attitude or position of the body, as, for example, sitting even on, going with the hands clasped over the head, or else standing, and never even in sleep lying down, and the like.


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 We now come to the Second in the triad, Krishna or Vishnu; that is, the incarnation of Brāhma generally. Many and various are the incarnations of this kind which are reckoned up by the Hindus. The general meaning here is that Brāhma appears as man: it cannot, nevertheless, be said that it is Brahma who appears as man, for this assumption of humanity is not actually held to be the pure form of Brāhma.

Monstrous poetical fictions make their appearance in this region: Krishna is also Brahmā, Vishnu. These popular conceptions of incarnations appear partly to have in them echoes of what is historical, and point to the fact that great conquerors who gave a new shape to the condition of things are the gods, and are thus described as gods. The deeds of Krishna are conquests in connection with which the course of events was sufficiently ungodlike; indeed, conquest and amours are the two aspects, the most important acts of the incarnations.

The Third is Siva, Mahādeva, the great god, or Rudra: this ought to be the return into self. The First, namely, Brāhma, is the most distant unity, the self-enclosed unity; the Second, Vishnu, is manifestation (the moments of Spirit are thus far not to be mistaken), is life in human form. The Third should be the return to the First, in order that the unity might appear as returning into itself. But it is just this Third which is what is devoid of Spirit; it is the determination of Becoming generally, or of coming into being and passing away. It has been stated that change in the general sense is the Third; thus the fundamental characteristic of Siva is on the one hand the prodigious life-force, on the other what destroys, devastates; the wild energy of natural life. Its principal symbol is therefore the Ox, on account of its strength, but the most universal representation is the Lingam, which was reverenced among the Greeks as φἀλλος, and it is this sign which is to be found in most of the temples. The innermost sanctuary contains it.


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 Such are the three fundamental determinations: the whole is represented by a figure with three heads, which again is symbolical and wholly without beauty.

The true Third, according to the deeper conception, is Spirit. It is the return of the One to itself; it is its coming to itself. It is not merely change, but is the change in which the difference is brought to reconciliation with the First, in which the duality is annulled.

But in this religion, which still belongs to nature, the Becoming is conceived of as mere becoming, as mere change; not as a change of the difference by means of which the unity produces itself as an annulling of differentiation and the taking of it up into unity. Consciousness, Spirit, is also a change in the First, that is, in the immediate unity. The Other is the act of judgment or differentiation, the having an Other over against one—I exist as knowing—but in such a manner that while the Other is for me, I have returned in that Other to myself, into myself.

The Third, instead of being the reconciler, is here merely this wild play of begetting and destroying. Thus the development issues only in a wild whirl of delirium. This difference, viz., the Third, is essentially based upon the standpoint of natural religion and based upon it in its entirety.

These differentiations are now grasped as Unity—as Trimurti—and this again is conceived of as the Highest. But just as this is conceived of as Trimurti, each person too in turn is taken independently and alone, so that each is itself totality, that is, the whole deity.

In the older part of the Vedas it is not Vishnu, and still less Siva, that is spoken of; there Brahma, the One, is alone God.

Not only is this principal basis and fundamental determination in the Indian mythology thus personified, but all else too is superficially personified by means of imagination. Imposing natural objects, such as the


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 Ganges, the Sun, the Himalaya (which is the special dwelling-place of Siva), become identified with Brahma himself. So too with love, deceit, theft, avarice, as well as the sensuous powers of nature in plants and animals, so that Substance has the form of animals and the like. All these are conceived of by imagination as free and independent, and thus there arises an infinite world of Deities of particular powers and phenomena, which is notwithstanding known as subordinated to something above it. At the head of this world stands Indra, the god of the visible heavens. These gods are mutable and perishable, and are in subjection to the Supreme One; abstraction absorbs them: the power which man acquires by means of these gods strikes them with terror; indeed, Vismavitra even creates another Indra and other gods!

Thus these particular spiritual and natural Powers, which are regarded as deities, are at one time independent, and at another are regarded as vanishing, it being their nature to be submerged in the absolute unity, in Substance, and to spring into existence again out of it.

Thus the Hindus say there have already been many thousand Indras, and there will yet be more; in the same way the incarnations, too, are held to be transient. The substantial unity does not become concrete because the particular Powers return into it, but, on the contrary, it remains abstract unity; and it also does not become concrete although these determinate existences proceed out of it; rather they are phenomena with the characteristic of independence, and are posited outside of that unity.

To form an estimate of the number and value of these deities is wholly out of the question here; there is nothing which takes a fixed shape, since all definite form is wanting to this fantastic imagination. These shapes disappear again in the same manner in which they are begotten; fancy passes over from an ordinary external mode of existence to divinity, and this in like manner returns back again to that which was its starting-point.


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 It is impossible to speak of miracles here, for all is miracle; everything is dislocated, and nothing determined by means of a rational connection of the categories of thought. Undoubtedly a great deal is symbolical.

The Hindus are, moreover, divided into many sects. Among many other differences, the principal one is this, that some worship Vishnu and others Siva. This is often the occasion of bloody wars; at festivals and fairs especially, disputes arise which cost thousands their lives.

Now these distinctions are in a general sense to be understood as meaning that what is called Vishnu even says again regarding itself that it is All, that Brahma is the womb in which it begets All, and that it is the absolute activity of form, that indeed it is Brahma. Here this differentiation represented by Vishnu is removed and absorbed.

If it is Siva who is introduced as speaking, then it is he who is absolute totality; he is the lustre of precious stones, the energy in man, the reason in the soul—in fact, he too in turn is Brahma. Here all the Powers, even the two other differences, as well as the other Powers, gods of nature and genii, melt into One Person, into one of these differentiations.

The fundamental determination of the theoretical consciousness is therefore the determination of unity, the determination of that which is called Brahma, Brahma, and the like. This unity, however, comes to have an ambiguous meaning, inasmuch as Brahma is at one time the Universal, the All, and at another a particularity as contrasted with particularity in general. Thus Brahma appears as creator, and then again as subordinate to something else, and he even speaks of something higher than himself—of a universal soul. The confusion which characterises this sphere originates in the dialectic necessarily belonging to it Spirit, which puts everything in organic connection, is not present here, and therefore if the determinations never make their appearance at all


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xii cheeses"—Horses and foals—Colonial gates—Aptness of horses to stray—Horse hunting—Obliged to hobble our horse—Horse gets rid of side-saddle—"Gum-suckers"—Headlong riders—Eating a dolghite—Description of one—Evergreen trees—Clearness of atmosphere—"Choosing frocks out of the sky"—Southern Cross—Thunder-storms—Chimney struck—Twisted trees do not attract lightning—Suitability of climate to consumptive patients—Peculiarities of climate—Bishop Salvado's opinion of it. …

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

WHEREIN NATURAL HISTORY MERGES INTO AN ACCOUNT OF SCARCITY OF WATER.

Parroquets—Twenty-eights—Rosella parroquets in pomegranate-tree—Native brings Rosella nestling—Love of pancakes—Wild Rosellas decoy away my tame one—Supposed single specimen of parrot—Crows—Silver Tongue—Wagtails and swallows—Bell-bird—

title: Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/25


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 in the form adequate to Spirit, they have to be abrogated as one-sided, and then a fresh form makes its appearance. The necessity of the Notion manifests itself merely as deviation, as confusion, as something which has nothing within itself to give it stability, and it is to the nature of the Notion that this confusion owes its origin.

The One shows itself as fixed or established in its own right, as that which is in everlasting unity with itself. But since this One must advance to particularisation, which, however, remains devoid of Spirit here, all differentiations are called and are in turn Brahma, are this One within itself, and thus also appropriate the epithet of the One, and so the particular deities are all Brahma likewise. An Englishman who, by a most careful investigation into the various representations, has sought to discover what is meant by Brahma, believes that Brahma is an epithet of praise, and is used as such just because he is not looked on as being himself solely this One, but, on the contrary, everything says of itself that it is Brahma. I refer to what Mill says in his History of India. He proves from many Indian writings that it is an epithet of praise which is applied to various deities, and does not represent the conception of perfection or unity which we associate with it. This is a mistake, for Brahma is in one aspect the One, the Immutable, who has, however, the element of change in him, and because of this, the rich variety of forms which is thus essentially his own is also predicated of him. Vishnu is also called the Supreme Brahma. Water and the sun are Brahma. Special prominence is given to the sun in the Vedas, and if we were to reckon up the prayers addressed to it, we might suppose that the ancient inhabitants of India found Brahma in the sun alone, and that they had thus a different religion from that of their descendants. The air, too, the movement of the atmosphere, breath, understanding, happiness are called Brahma. Mahadeva calls himself Brahma, and Sfva says of himself, “I am what


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 is and what is not; I have been everything; I am always and shall always be; I am Brahma and likewise Brahma; I am the cause which causes, I am the truth, the ox, and all living things; I am older than all; I am the past, the present, and the future; I am Rudra, I am all worlds,” &c.

Thus Brahma is the One, and is also everything independently which is conceived of as God. Among other prayers, we find one addressed to speech, in which it says of itself, “I am Brahma,” the universal supreme soul. Brahma is thus this One, which, however, is not exclusively held fast to as this One. He is not such a Being as we have in our minds when we speak of one God; this One God is universal unity; here everything which is independent, which is identical with itself says, “I am Brahma.”

By way of conclusion, another description may be given here, in which all the moments which we have hitherto considered in their divided state and dialectic are expressed unitedly.

Colonel Dow translated a history of India from the Persian, and in an accompanying dissertation he gives a translation from the Vedas, and in it there is a description of the creation of the world.

Brima existed from all eternity in the form of immeasurable expansion; when it pleased him to create the world he said, “Rise up, O Brima!” What was first had thus been desire, appetite. He says this to himself. Immediately thereupon a spirit of flames of fire, having four heads and four hands, issued from h s navel. Brima looked around and saw nothing but his own immeasurable image. He journeyed a thousand years in order to attain a knowledge of his expansion and to understand it. This fire again is Brima himself, and he has himself alone for his object as immeasurable. Now Brima, after the journey of a thousand years, knew as little about his expansion as he did before. Sunk in


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 wonderment, he gave up his journeyings and considered what he had seen. The Almighty, who is something different from Brima, had then said to him, “Go, Brima, and create the world; thou canst not understand thyself; make something understandable.” Brima had asked, “How shall I create a world?” The Almighty had answered, “Ask me and power shall be given thee.” Fire had now issued out of Brima, and he had seen the Idea of all things, which hovered before his eyes, and had said, “Let all which I see become real, but how shall I preserve the things so that they do not go to destruction?” Upon this a spirit of blue colour proceeded out of his mouth; this again was Brima himself, Vishnu, Krishna, the maintaining principle, and this he commanded to create all living things, and for their maintenance the vegetable world. Human beings were as yet wanting. Thereupon Brima commanded Vishnu to make mankind. He did this, but the human beings which Vishnu made were idiots with great bellies, without knowledge, like the beasts of the field, without emotions and will, and with sensuous passions only; at this Brima was wroth and destroyed them. He himself now created four persons out of his own breath, and gave them orders to rule over the creatures. But they refused to do anything else than to praise God, because they had nothing of the quality of mutability or destructibility in them, nothing of the temporal qualities of existence. Brima now became angry. His vexation took the form of a swarthy spirit, which came forth from between the eyes. This spirit sat down before Brima with crossed legs and folded arms, and wept, saying, “Who am I, and what is my dwelling-place to be?” Brima replied, “Thou shalt be Rudra, and all nature thy dwelling-place; go and make men.” He did so. These men were more savage than tigers, since they had nothing in them but the destructive quality; they destroyed themselves, for their only emotion was wrath. Thus we


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 see the three gods working separately from one another; what they produce is one-sided only and without truth. Finally, Brima, Vishnu, and Rudra united their forces, and thus created men, ten of them, in fact.

(c.) Worship.

Subjective religion—the comprehension of itself by self-consciousness in relation to its divine world—corresponds with the character of that world itself.

As in this world the Idea has developed itself to such an extent that its fundamental determinations have emerged into prominence though they remain mutually external, and as in like manner the empirical world remains external and unintelligible relatively to them and to itself, and therefore abandoned to the caprice of imagination, consciousness too, although developed in all directions, does not attain to the conception of itself as true subjectivity. The leading place in this sphere is occupied by the pure equality or identity of thought, which at the same time is inherently existing creative Power. This foundation is, however, purely theoretical. It is still the substantiality out of which indeed potentially all proceeds, and in which all is retained, but outside of which all content has assumed independence, and is not, so far as regards its determinate existence and standing, made by means of that unity into an objective and universal content. Merely theoretical, formal thought supports the content when it thus appears as accidentally determined; it can indeed abstract from it, but cannot exalt it to the connected unity of a system, and consequently to a connected existence in accordance with law. Thought, therefore, does not really acquire a practical signification here; that is to say, activity and will do not give the character of universality to its determinations; and though form develops itself potentially, indeed, in accordance with the nature of the Notion, still it does not appear in the character of something posited by the Notion, and does not appear as held within its


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 unity. The activity of the will, therefore, does not arrive at freedom of the will—does not arrive at a content which, being determined through the unity of the Notion, would consequently be rational, objective, and in accordance with right. This unity, on the contrary, remains the merely potentially existent substantial Power existing in seclusion, namely, Brahma, which has let go actuality as mere contingency, and now abandons it entirely to its own wild caprice.

Worship here is first of all a certain attitude of the self-consciousness Brahma, and then afterwards to the rest of the divine world existing outside of him.

I. As regards the first attitude, that towards Brahma, we find that it is specially marked off and peculiar exactly in proportion as it keeps itself isolated from the rest of the concrete, religious, and temporal fulness of life.

1. Brahma is thought, man is a thinking being, thus Brahma has essentially an existence in human self-consciousness. Man, however, is essentially characterised here as a thinking being, or, in other words, thought as such, and in the first place as pure theory has universal existence here, because thought itself as such, as inherently Power, is given a determinate character, and consequently has in it form generally, namely, abstract form, or the character of determinate Being in general.

Man, indeed, is not only a thinking being, but is here essentially thought; he is conscious of himself as pure thought; for it has just been stated that here thought as such comes into existence; here man has the general idea of it within himself. In other words, he is actually self-conscious thought, for thought is implicitly Power, but Power itself is just that infinite negativity, that negativity relating itself to itself, which is actual Being, Being-for-self. But Being-for-self, enclosed within the universality of thought generally, exalted in it to free equality with itself, is the soul of a living creature only,