Friedrich von Schlegel

“ He who weakly shrinks from the struggle, who will offer no resistance, who will endure no labour nor fatigue, can neither fulfil his own vocation, whatever it be, nor contribute aught to the general welfare of mankind.—But since man hath been the prey of discord, two different wills have contended within him for the mastery—a divine and a natural will. Even his freedom is no longer that happy freedom of celestial peace—the freedom of one who hath conquered and triumphed—but a freedom, as we now see it—the freedom of undetermined choice—of arduous, still undecided, struggle. ”

“ Christianity in its primitive influence, was like an electric stroke, which traversed the world with the rapidity of lightning—like a magnetic fluid of life, which united even the most distant members of humanity in one animating pulsation. ”

“ Here, then, in this holy hope, is longing, that marvelous flower of the soul, expanded into its perfect and noblest fruit. If, in judging of the three, man looks to the end to which he is to attain—if, in thought, he places himself at this point of view, then assuredly will love appear the highest and the best; for hope ceases when fulfillment comes in, and sight enters into the place of faith, but love abideth forever. ”

“ I affirm that in man the understanding is not the principal organ for the perception of divine truth—that is to say, the understanding alone. On the understanding alone, indeed, the light may dawn and may even be received—but if the will be not there—if the will pursue a separate and contrary course; that light of higher knowledge is soon obscured, and soon becomes clouded and unsteady; or, if it should still gleam, it is changed into the treacherous meteor of illusion. Without the co-operation of a good will, this light cannot be preserved or maintained in its purity ”

“ For the primitive Christians, death was what the Saviour said of himself, a return, a passing unto the Father, but life was one ceaseless struggle. For him who unto the end fought steadfast in this struggle, the angel of death was divested of his terrors; he was a celestial messenger of peace, that brought to the Christian the bright garland of victory, and the crown of eternal life; in this faith and in these sentiments, did the Saints live, and the martyrs die. And as every human soul is conducted to the realms above by the gentle hand of its divine guardian ”

“ Faith, therefore, is, as it were, the heavenly firmament in the consciousness that divides the streams of spiritual life and of external and internal science that are above it, from those that are under it. If this boundary be taken away, or violently broken through, the light and the darkness are no longer held apart, but mingle together in one confused and orderless mass. The true light grows darker and gradually becomes extinct, while the darkness begins to shine with a false glare and the glimmering twilight of pernicious delusion. ”

“ Has the Sun of Righteousness yet penetrated, and cast its bright beams on all the relations of life, to the very inmost joints of soul and spirit? Can it with perfect truth be said, relatively to the whole human race, “And there is light”—that light, at least, which alone is good, even because it shall remain forever? For those meteoric sparks which flash across the universal night and darkness, from the systems of man’s wisdom, which, crossing and recrossing each other’s path, are soon again extinguished forever ”

“ Often, it may be urged, some unpropitious destiny, some sudden storm of fate, overwhelms and destroys them, stripping the youthful tree of life of all its leafy honors before it has properly put forth its blossoms. This, no doubt, is perfectly true. In most cases, however, the destroying principle does not come from without. Fortune and external circumstances have little to do with it. It lies rather in the inner impetuosity of passion, in self-will, or some other dark shade of character, perverting and bringing jarring discord into the most exalted feelings of the soul. ”

“ Then is nature itself nothing less than the ladder of resurrection, which, step by step, leads upward, or, rather, is carried from the abyss of eternal death up to the apex of light in the heavenly illumination. For, understanding it in this sense, it is impossible to think of nature without remembering at the same time the divine hand which has built this pyramid, and which, along this ladder, brings life out of death. ”

“ It is this, the first of all created things, which, with its pure splendor, lights up in brilliancy whatever in the rest of creation still retains aught of childlike innocence and blessed purity. It is the inner charm, the spiritual flower of nature, the hidden germ of that paradisiacal loveliness which, though veiled in this terrestrial shroud, still gleams forth occasionally. It is even that sacred beauty which fills to the full the true artist’s soul, even though he is never able fully and completely to realize it. ”

“ How often does it show us some mighty edifice of fortune, which, having no firm basis in the deep soil of truth and the divine order, owed its rapid growth and false splendor to some evil influence, falling suddenly in ruins, as if stricken by the invisible breath of a superior power. On such occasions the public feeling recognizes the hand which sets a limit to every temerity in the history of the world—to every extravagance of a false confidence—and appoints it its ultimate term. ”

“ Reason and fancy, too, both in the inner thought and in outward life also, are, on the whole, in hostile conflict with each other. Reason would wish to suppress or at least to dispense altogether with fancy, while fancy, caring, for the most part, but little or nothing for the reason, goes its own way. The will, moreover, unceasingly distracted, is never even at peace with itself, while the reason, standing alone in the endless evolution of its own thought, entangles itself at last in a labyrinth of irreconcilable contradictions. ”

“ If we could conceive an age or country where religion should entirely cease and be forgotten—where not only all positive faith and revelation, but even the universal belief in a Divinity above them, should die away and perish among men—the light of all higher and heaven-directed thoughts and aims should become extinct—that echo of eternity and of eternal love which the inmost feelings of the human soul spontaneously gives back, should be hushed forever—then and there at the self-same moment would all high art be withdrawn and disappear. ”

“ And if ancient art and ancient poetry especially, with their mournful back-glances at the olden majesty long past and gone, come over us with emotions something like those of eventide, when the last parting gleam of the brilliant sun is fast setting behind the distant hills, so in their opposite aspect, as hope, turning its bold, enthusiastic eye toward the future, they may smile upon us as the rosy dawn which runs before the rising sun of truth, and that new time which is to shine and glow in its beams—or as the first beautiful ray of enthusiastic promise. ”

“ When, indeed, in the youthful, not to say childlike spirit, standing on the threshold of expectation, this inward feeling of life or consciousness has not as yet shaped itself into an ardent speculative curiosity, or a grave and melancholy questioning, or when at least, it has not passed through the first stage of thoughtful wondering, then it is as yet too early for the awakening of philosophy—that inward search after truth and meditation on the nature of our existence and consciousness, that self-examination, those half-doubting yearnings after an unknown love. ”

“ Is not the great pulse of the ocean, in its ebb and flow, measured by it, as well as many periods, of the development of life? And is it not, when its operation is too powerful or violently exciting, the cause of a peculiar disease among men? As, therefore, the musical unisons in the melodious songs of birds, both find and wake a concordant echo in the heart of man, so, too, in a larger scale, the blood-soul of man, with its living pulsation and organic sensibility, is most nearly akin to and sympathizes with the earth and the whole earthly frame. ”

“ Whenever, proceeding from the very depths of man’s being, it has become, as it were, a second nature, and having received a higher and diviner consecration, it forms the still and invisible, but ruling soul of life, then is it the best and surest road for attaining to the reconciliation of the otherwise inveterate and deeply-rooted discord between the intellect and the will. By such a love the inmost man may be restored to peace and harmony with itself, and the otherwise distracted consciousness, regaining a full and perfect unity, is enabled to exercise its best and highest energies. ”

“ Now, if we should wish to form an idea of the heavenly state of supreme felicity, such, at least, as in forecasting hope we may suppose it to be, and indeed are justified in so doing, then we may doubtless think of it as such that in it both soul and spirit, sunk in the abyss of eternal love, will rest perfectly satisfied. Or rather, in a living communion of thought and feeling, they will most intimately sympathize in this ineffable majesty, being absorbed in the never-failing stream of the infinite plenitude of divinity. ”

“ And even then, when he most flatters himself with his own ingenuity, this miserable Œdipus of his own destiny is stricken with even more fatal and incurable blindness than the old Theban, and can not discern the abyss of error into which his whole life has been hurrying, and into which it is at last plunged headlong and precipitated. Ever laboring to seize the changing Proteus of its own self, our Ego may, perhaps, often arrive at a rare amazement at the enigma of existence, and also is even seized many a time with a light terror. ”

“ The only fact of the consciousness that really deserves to be so named is its internal dissension. And this discord not only reveals itself in thought between the Me and Not Me, but pervades the whole and all its branches, or parts and forms, its species and spheres, in mind and soul, understanding and will, reason and fancy, which every where manifests itself, and of which the thousandfold material discords of man’s outer life is only the reflection—its natural consequence and further development. ”

“ The external senses, whose meager powers of cognition are but a sorry make-shift for man’s mind, which in its thirst of knowledge would embrace all existence, the Godhead, and the universe, are narrowly restricted to the material world immediately around him. From such slight and unpromising beginnings, science is no doubt occasionally able to evolve many a great and noble truth. And even in the external senses themselves a feeling of art or a clear and pure sense of nature gleams forth at times, like a little spark of purer light. ”

“ It is an all-pervading alternation between the purifying fire of God’s punitive justice and the inheritance of the old evil, which breaks out, now in anarchy, now in despotism—at one time in spiritual deadness and lukewarmness of faith—at another in the pernicious lust of innovation and change. This purifying fire, it must also be clear, while, confining its immediate operation to single nations or to marked and distinct epochs of history, it gives them a new shape and form, invariably gains for itself a wider extension, so as, at last, to embrace the whole world. ”

“ But, on the other hand, the human mind or spirit possesses in its peculiar creative fertility a vast prerogative, which can not—not, at least, in the same degree—be ascribed even to the pure creatures of light. And, in truth, it is on the soul, which is not merely receptive or sentient, but also inwardly productive, lovingly creative, and ever giving new forms and shapes to the old and common, that the creative faculty of invention, so distinctive of man, ultimately rests. At least, it forms the inner foundation and root out of which it springs and rises. ”