Fifth Form

“ Hence, it is the tendency of all newer philosophy which understands itself and knows what it wants.
I have not to defend any of the others here; I speak only of my own, of the so-called newest. The standpoint, the method, the whole form of this philosophy, involves statements which may induce the belief that it does not tend towards the result just described, but towards its very opposite, namely: if its peculiar standpoint is lost sight of, and if that which is valid for it is held as valid for everyday life and common sense. ”

“ Let us now proceed to determine the second fundamental form of the manifestation of life—the individual form—by applying the same principle.
I. The contemplation of the one and universal power exists in the individuals as such. The totality of the power, or nature, is contemplated through them as the focus of knowledge; and by each of them, of course, in the same manner, for in regard to the contents of that contemplation they are not individual, but are the one and universal life itself. ”

“ A multitude of forms are to be seen in every nation, not referable to any particular family or variety of the human race. For our present purpose, we must select such only as possess the peculiar form in the most characteristic degree. But as all the requisites of this form are not always developed in a very acute degree in all, we must collect from a multitude of instances, what appears to be the predominating tendency. ”

“ It is owing to assistance of this nature given to us from above that humanity has progressed even to its present position. We are still in the fourth round, which should naturally be devoted to the development of desire and emotion, and yet we are already engaged in the unfolding of the intellect, which is to be the special characteristic of the fifth round. ”

“ To certain types of mind, fixed forms in all these fields have come to be regarded as of intrinsic importance. Love of "good form," the classicist point of view at its best, may develop into sheer pedantry and Pharisaism, an insistence on the fixed form when the intent is changed or forgotten, a regard for the letter rather than the spirit of the law. ”

“ Now, such an individual form can be continued infinitely by the life, but must always be so continued according to the same rule, so that in the new unity-conception C the conception B is already presupposed, the one individual Ego always remaining as the last basis of consciousness. Hence, the one life can either remain in its universality and undeterminedness, or form new individuals, or continue individual series already begun. ”

“ In the Experience belonging to this space a point will form a progressive figure of the first order, a timeless line a progressive figure of the second order, a timeless surface a progressive figure of the third order, and a timeless body a figure of the fourth order. ”

“ But the individual form gives rise to a consciousness of a determined activity, which no longer exists as a merely pure and formal power, but is used up as such, and which must therefore be subtracted from the sum of the original power given in general contemplation ”

“ In the particular manifestations of the Idea, and its mode of working, which we have adduced in our last two lectures, it appears only in the form of Instinct; for we have there described only the Time which precedes the Third Age, which indeed first makes the existence of that Age possible,—and when Time in general has not yet advanced to the manifestation of the Idea in clear consciousness. Let this distinction be henceforth kept in view to prevent misunderstanding. ”

“ Only through blind Instinct, in which the only possible guidance of the Imperative is awanting, does the Power in Intuition remain undetermined; where it is schematized as absolute it becomes infinite; and where it is presented in a determinate form, as a principle, it becomes at least manifold. By the above-mentioned act of Intelligizing, the Power liberates itself from Instinct, to direct itself towards Unity. ”

“ In other words, the Present Age, according to my view of it, stands in that Epoch which in my former lecture I named the third, and which I characterized as the Epoch of Liberation—directly from the external ruling Authority,—indirectly from the power of Reason as Instinct, and generally from Reason in any form; the Age of absolute indifference towards all truth, and of entire and unrestrained licentiousness:—the State of completed Sinfulness. ”

“ Our standard is Reality in the form of self-existence; and this, given plurality and relations, means an individual system. Now we have shown that no perfect system can possibly be finite, because any limitation from the outside infects the inner content with dependence on what is alien. And hence the marks of harmony and expansion are two aspects of one principle. ”

“ For us, let it be here sufficient, conformably to our agreement, to consider this sphere of the first degree as the sphere of such fundamental determinations of our life, but on no account as the sphere of things in and for themselves, a view which we here discard. Be they ever so much the latter, in and for themselves, for us they exist only as determinations of our life, or by our living and experiencing them, and we are content here to speak of them only in relation to us. The content of this sphere is often more specially called reality, fact of consciousness, or experience. ”

“ In the third stage, under the 253 form of mind, qualities he is a living thing, but, with respect to reason, a dead thing. In the fourth stage, under the form of mind, qualities, and reason, he is a living thing. ”

“ The more deeply we perceive, the more striking becomes the evidence that a uniform plan links every form in manifold nature.” ”

“ The presupposition, from which we start, is this: that the final and highest result of consciousness, or that to which all its manifold is related as the condition to the conditioned, or as the wheels, springs, and chains in the watch are related to the hand, is nothing else than clear and complete self-consciousness, as you and I and all of us are conscious of ourselves. I say, you and I and all of us, and thereby exclude, in conformity with a previous remark, all that is purely individual, which cannot enter our system at all according to our presupposition. ”

“ If, on the contrary, I choose a class,—a class being understood to be something chosen by free will, according to the common use of language, if I choose a class, I must first have become subject to Nature before it was possible for me to choose; for to that end different impulses must be awakened within me, different capacities elevated into consciousness ”

“ Why, indeed, he said, when any name will do which expresses the thought of the mind with clearness?
At any rate, we are satisfied, as before, to have four divisions; two for intellect and two for opinion, and to call the first division science, the second understanding, the third belief, and the fourth perception of shadows, opinion being concerned with becoming, and intellect with being; and so to make a proportion:
“As being is to becoming, so is pure intellect to opinion. ”

“ And if any one seeks to turn against my own doctrine the argument which I have stated above, let me at least remind him of one great difference. For me every kind of process between the Many is a state of the Whole in and through which the Many subsist. The process of the Many, and the total being of the Many themselves, are mere aspects of the one Reality which moves and knows itself within them, and apart from which all things and their changes and every knower and every known is all absolutely nothing. ”

“ And, passing from this to conscious life, we are called on still for further uses and fresh applications of our standard. In the will of the individual, or of the community, so far as adequately carried out and expressing itself in outward fact, we have a new claim to harmonious and self-included reality. And we have to consider in each case the consistency, together with the range and area, of the principle, and the degree up to which it has mastered and passed into existence. ”

“ Thus, the Vital Principle is, as it were, a hand, for as a hand is the instrument of instruments, so the mind is the form of forms, and sensation the form of things sensually perceived. ”

“ Equality [1] gives rise to challenging questions which are not altogether easy to answer. Is it a relation? A relation between objects, or between names or signs of objects? In my Begriffsschrift I assumed the latter. The reasons which seem to favour this are the following: a = a and a = b are obviously statements of differing cognitive value; a = a holds a priori and, according to Kant, is to be labeled analytic, while statements of the form a = b often contain very valuable extensions of our knowledge and cannot always be established a priori. ”

“ We have actually deduced fixed nature from an inner and higher principle; the existing power of life is the ground of its existence and its determination. Have we deduced in the same way the system of Egos and their organized bodies? As a fact, we have established it also; and we have, furthermore, added the general deduction that, in this representation of life, its unity, which was broken off in the individuality, is restored. After that we closed with the general reflection that this sum of Egos is infinite in its possibility, but ended and determined in actuality. ”

“ You perceive that this Age is based upon an already present conception,—an innate Common Sense, which pronounces irrevocably upon its whole system of knowledge and belief; and if we could thoroughly analyze this inborn conception or sense, which is thus to it the root of everything else, we should then, undoubtedly, be able to take in the whole system of the beliefs of the Age at a single glance, perceive the inmost spirit beneath all its outward wrappings, and bring it forth to view. ”

“ Whence does this determination or limitation arise as the only genuine, true, and original limitation? Evidently through original thinking itself, and in the following way:
The world, even in its inner character, as a force, and as a resisting force, is to be object of the causality of the one common Ego; and the force or power of this world is to be overcome by the power of that one common life. In this subjugation a certain determined power of life, peculiarly and essentially belonging to it, will, no doubt, make itself visible to universal contemplation. ”

“ I believe in the scheme, in the Project of all things, in the significance of myself and all life, and that my defects and uglinesses and failures, just as much as my powers and successes, are things that are necessary and important and contributory in that scheme, that scheme which passes my understanding—and that no thwarting of my conception, not even the cruelty of nature, now defeats or can defeat my faith, however much it perplexes my mind. ”

“ And so in our own Age, when it has somewhat recovered and composed itself from the manifold errors with which it has been perplexed and harassed, will Inspired Men arise and bring to it that of which it stands in need.
We have finished the task which we proposed to ourselves:—we have delineated, briefly and succinctly as was our purpose, the Characteristics of the Present Age contemplated from those essential principles which belong to all Time. There remains nothing further for us to do but to add a conclusion to the whole. ”

“ Hence to say that the Ego must realize the conception of its causality in an act, is to say that the Ego must move from the region of a Being, which can be annihilated at any moment by the withdrawal of freedom, or the region of conception, into the region of the immediately confined power of imagination, wherein everything assumes a fixed, permanent, and on-itself-reposing Being. ”

“ But what Reason itself is, and in what a Life according to Reason consists, and what are the relations which are ordered by Reason in a life so governed by it;—these things have been indeed indicated in many ways, but not yet anywhere placed in a clear light. In our last lecture, however, we said—‘Reason embraces only the One Life, which manifests itself as the Life of the Race. ”

“ You may urge that thought, after all, is inconsistent, because appearance is not got rid of but merely shelved. That is another question which will engage us in a future chapter, and here may be dismissed. For in any case thinking means the acceptance of a certain standard, and that standard, in any case, is an assumption as to the character of reality. ”

“ Since for us the Absolute is a whole, the sense of immediate reality, we must suppose, may certainly qualify it. And, again, I find no difficulty when we pass to the special meaning of “this.” With every presentation, with each chance mixture of psychical elements, we have the feeling of one particular datum. We have the felt existence of a peculiar sensible whole. And here we find beyond question a positive content, and a fresh element which has to be included within our Absolute. ”

“ Since of everything that is upon the earth the Fivefold God is the Majesty, the Radiance [?] , the Likeness, the Body, the Soul, the Strength, the Light, the Foundation and the Root. O my God, if in our sin we have unwittingly offended against or caused grief to the Fivefold God by an evil and wicked mind. If we have allowed our fourteen members to gain domination over us. If by taking animated beings with our ten snake-headed fingers and our thirty-two teeth, we have fed upon them and have thus angered and grieved the Gods [?] ”

“ But all Actual Knowledge brings with it, by its formal nature, its schematized apposition;—although I now know of the Schema of God, yet I am not yet immediately this Schema, but I am only a Schema of the Schema. The required Being is not yet realized.
I shall be. Who is this I? Evidently that which is,—the Ego given in Intuition,—the Individual. This shall be.
What does its Being signify? It is given as a Principle in the World of Sense. Blind Instinct is indeed annihilated, and in its place there now stands the clearly perceived Shall. ”