Intelligence

«  Dieu vit que la lumière était bonne, et il sépara la lumière d’avec les ténèbres.  » L’acte de la séparation de la lumière d’avec les ténèbres est donc évidemment distinct et physiquement éloigné par un espace de temps de l’acte de sa production ; et ce temps, pendant lequel il plut à Dieu de la considérer pour voir qu’elle était bonne , c’est-à-dire utile à ses desseins ; ce temps, dis-je, appartient encore et doit s’ajouter à celui du chaos qui ne commença à se débrouiller que quand la lumière fut séparée des ténèbres. Voilà donc deux temps, voilà deux espaces de durée que le texte sacré nous force à reconnaître : le premier, entre la création de la matière en général et la production de la lumière ; le second, entre cette production de la lumière et sa séparation d’avec les ténèbres. Ainsi, loin de manquer à Dieu en donnant à la matière plus d’ancienneté qu’au monde tel qu’il est , c’est au contraire le respecter autant qu’il est en nous, en conformant notre intelligence à sa parole. En effet, la lumière qui éclaire nos âmes ne vient-elle pas de Dieu ?

Tout dans le récit de Moïse est mis à la portée de l’intelligence du peuple ; tout y est représenté relativement à l’homme vulgaire, auquel il ne s’agissait pas de démontrer le vrai système du monde, mais qu’il suffisait d’instruire de ce qu’il devait au Créateur, en lui montrant les effets de sa toute-puissance comme autant de bienfaits : les vérités de la nature ne devaient paraître qu’avec le temps, et le souverain Être se les réservait comme le plus sûr moyen de rappeler l’homme à lui, lorsque sa foi, déclinant dans la suite des siècles, serait devenue chancelante ; lorsque éloigné de son origine, il pourrait l’oublier ; lorsque enfin trop accoutumé au spectacle de la nature, il n’en serait plus touché et viendrait à en méconnaître l’auteur. Il était donc nécessaire de raffermir de temps en temps, et même d’agrandir l’idée de Dieu dans l’esprit et dans le cœur de l’homme. Or, chaque découverte produit ce grand effet ; chaque nouveau pas que nous faisons dans la nature nous rapproche du Créateur.

Nous conviendrons que l’espèce humaine ne diffère pas essentiellement des autres espèces par ses facultés corporelles, et qu’à cet égard son sort eût été le même à peu près que celui des autres espèces ; mais pouvons-nous douter que nous ne différions prodigieusement des animaux par le rayon divin qu’il a plu au souverain Être de nous départir ; ne voyons-nous pas que dans l’homme la matière est conduite par l’esprit : il a donc pu modifier les effets de la nature ; il a trouvé le moyen de résister aux intempéries des climats ; il a créé de la chaleur lorsque le froid l’a détruite : la découverte et les usages de l’élément du feu, dus à sa seule intelligence, l’ont rendu plus fort et plus robuste qu’aucun des animaux, et l’ont mis en état de braver les tristes effets du refroidissement. D’autres arts, c’est-à-dire d’autres traits de son intelligence, lui ont fourni des vêtements, des armes, et bientôt il s’est trouvé le maître du domaine de la terre : ces mêmes arts lui ont donné les moyens d’en parcourir toute la surface et de s’habituer partout ; parce qu’avec plus ou moins de précautions tous les climats lui sont devenus pour ainsi dire égaux.

Par son intelligence, les animaux ont été apprivoisés, subjugués, domptés, réduits à lui obéir à jamais ; par ses travaux, les marais ont été desséchés, les fleuves contenus, leurs cataractes effacées, les forêts éclaircies, les landes cultivées ; par sa réflexion, les temps ont été comptés, les espaces mesurés, les mouvements célestes reconnus, combinés, représentés, le ciel et la terre comparés, l’univers agrandi, et le Créateur dignement adoré ; par son art émané de la science, les mers ont été traversées, les montagnes franchies, les peuples rapprochés, un nouveau monde découvert, mille autres terres isolées sont devenues son domaine ; enfin la face entière de la terre porte aujourd’hui l’empreinte de la puissance de l’homme, laquelle, quoique subordonnée à celle de la nature, souvent a fait plus qu’elle, ou du moins l’a si merveilleusement secondée, que c’est à l’aide de nos mains qu’elle s’est développée dans toute son étendue, et qu’elle est arrivée par degrés au point de perfection et de magnificence où nous la voyons aujourd’hui.

Among nations least advanced in civilization, the imagination revels in strange and fantastic creations, and, by its predilection for symbols, alike influences ideas and language. Instead of examining, men are led to conjecture, dogmatize, and interpret supposed facts that have never been observed. The inner world of thought and of feeling does not reflect the image of the external world in its primitive purity. That which in some regions of the earth manifested itself as the rudiments of natural philosophy, only to a small number of persons endowed with superior intelligence, appears in other regions, and among entire races of men, to be the result of mystic tendencies and instinctive intuitions. An intimate communion with nature, and the vivid and deep emotions thus awakened, are likewise the source from which have sprung the first impulses toward the worship and deification of the destroying and preserving forces of the universe. But by degrees, as man, after having passed through the different gradations of intellectual development, arrives at the free enjoyment of the regulating power of reflection, and learns by gradual progress, as it were, to separate the world of ideas from that of sensations, he no longer rests satisfied merely with a vague presentiment of the harmonious unity of natural forces; thought begins to fulfill its noble mission; and observation, aided by reason, endeavors to trace phenomena to the causes from which they spring.

[Footnote] *Carus, 'Von den Urtheilen des Knochen und Schalen Gerustes', 1828 6. The series of organic types becomes extended or perfected in proportion as hitherto unknown regions are laid open to our view by the labors and researches of travelers and observers; as living organisms are compared with those which have disappeared in the great revolutions of our planet; and as microscopes are made more perfect, and are more extensively and efficiently employed. In the midst of this immense variety, and this periodic transformation of animal and vegetable productions, we see incessantly revealed the primordial mystery of all organic development, that same great problem of 'metamorphosis' which Göthe has treated with more than common sagacity, and to the solution of which man is urged by his desire of reducing vital forms to the smallest number of fundamental types. As men contemplate the riches of nature, and see the mass of observations incessantly increasing before them, they become impressed with the intimate conviction that the surface and the interior of the earth, the depths of the ocean, and the regions of air will still, when thousands and thousands of years have passed away, open to the scientific observer untrodden paths of discovery. The regret of Alexander can not be applied to the progress of observation and intelligence.*

External nature may be opposed to the intellectual world, as if the latter were not comprised within the limits of the former, or nature may be opposed to art when the latter is defined as a manifestation of the intellectual power of man; but these contrasts, which we find reflected in the most cultivated languages, must not lead us to separate the sphere of nature from that of mind, since such a separation would reduce the physical science of the world to a mere aggregation of empirical specialities. Science does not present itself to man until mind conquers matter in striving to subject the result of experimental investigation to rational combinations. Science is the labor of mind applied to nature, but the external world has no real existence for us beyond the image reflected within ourselves through the medium of the senses. As intelligence and forms of speech, thought and its verbal symbols, are united by secret and indissoluble links, so does the external world blend almost unconsciously to ourselves with our ideas and feelings. "External phenomena," says Hegel, in his 'Philosophy of History', "are in some degree translated in our inner representations." The objective world, conceived and reflected within us by thought, is subjected to the eternal and necessary conditions of our intellectual being. The activity of the mind exercises itself on the elements furnished to it by the perceptions of the senses. Thus, in the p 77 early ages of mankind, there manifests itself in the simple intuition of natural facts, and in the efforts made to comprehend them, the germ of the philosophy of nature. These ideal tendencies vary, and are more or less powerful, according to the individual characteristics and moral dispositions of nations, and to the degrees of their mental culture, whether attained amid scenes of nature that excite or chill the imagination.

I do not want of course to insist against your will, against the habits of your intelligence, upon the application of this typicality of John the Baptist to the function of Democracy. But I will insist that they who regard John and his water "baptism, or doctrine of repentance from evil-doing, as a suitable forerunner to Jesus, and his baptism of the Holy Ghost, or doctrine of God's living pre- sence and power in every man saint and sinner alike, can not reasonably demur at my assigning to the purely disorganizing agencies of Democracy so beneficent an influence upon human destiny. As Jesus needed no other preparation for his reception than the repentance which John preached, or the ceasing to do evil, so the fullest evolution of human destiny, the utmost blessedness the heart of man can desire, needs for its realization nothing more than that very work which Democracy is now per- forming, namely, the undoing of old and restrictive legislation, the breaking up the foundations of an- cient privilege, the removing of every obstacle to the exact public equality of man with man.

feet or infinite life. When you investigate or compare with your intelligence a flower, a horse^ an eagle, or any fact whatever of nature, you per- ceive that it is not self-centred, that its end or object does not lie within itself, that it is therefore destitute of any inward selfhood or individuality, and confesses itself a merely relative existence, contingent upon the coexistence of other things. You will perceive that the flower, the horse, or whatsoever the thing may be, has no deeper life than that of its nature, is an unmixed subject of its nature, and has no inward or ideal selfhood ca- pable of restraining and controlling its natural one. It is this superficiality of nature, this destitution of an inward individuality, characterizing all her offspring, which places them at an infinite remove from man, and forbids us accordingly to conceive of them as adequate forms or subjects of the supreme life. The only adequate form or subject of that life is the human, because its goodness being self-involved, that is, proceeding from a self- hood within and superior to the natural one, is absolute and unconditioned upon circumstances. It is this distinction or supremacy of the human form, which justifies us in saying that the highest goodness and wisdom are not conceivable in any other form. In short it is the inseparable alliance between the human form and the highest con- ceivable goodness which constrains us always to

PERSONAL HOMAGE tippers, though their talk be only of the dreariest millinery and mud of things, are yet more lumi- nous than evangelists and apostles. No doubt all spiritual truth falls at last into the historic plane, in order that it may become cognizable in that disguise to unspiritual or natural eyes. And the Divine creation, redemption, and providence, obey of course this universal law. But how base must we deem the intelligence, which insists upon view- ing the spiritual truth as identical with its historic ultimation ! How base, in other words, must we consider that spiritual state which regards a Divine operation as observing strictly personal limits , or shutting itself up to the experience of an individual bosom . Thus I have often been checked, in speak- ing of the Incarnation as a scientific verity, by the suggestion that “ the Incarnation took place only in the Christ, and could be true therefore only of his experience.”