Classic Poem

A chapter of requests and premonitions concerning the perusal or
omission of the chapter that follows.


In the perusal of philosophical works I have been greatly benefited by
a resolve, which, in the antithetic form and with the allowed quaintness
of an adage or maxim, I have been accustomed to word thus: until you
understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his
understanding. This golden rule of mine does, I own, resemble those of
Pythagoras in its obscurity rather than in its depth. If however the
reader will permit me to be my own Hierocles, I trust, that he will
find its meaning fully explained by the following instances. I have
now before me a treatise of a religious fanatic, full of dreams and
supernatural experiences. I see clearly the writer's grounds, and their
hollowness. I have a complete insight into the causes, which through the
medium of his body has acted on his mind; and by application of received
and ascertained laws I can satisfactorily explain to my own reason all
the strange incidents, which the writer records of himself. And this I
can do without suspecting him of any intentional falsehood. As when in
broad day-light a man tracks the steps of a traveller, who had lost his
way in a fog or by a treacherous moonshine, even so, and with the same
tranquil sense of certainty, can I follow the traces of this bewildered
visionary. I understand his ignorance.

On the other hand, I have been re-perusing with the best energies of my
mind the TIMAEUS of Plato. Whatever I comprehend, impresses me with a
reverential sense of the author's genius; but there is a considerable
portion of the work, to which I can attach no consistent meaning.
In other treatises of the same philosopher, intended for the average
comprehensions of men, I have been delighted with the masterly good
sense, with the perspicuity of the language, and the aptness of the
inductions. I recollect likewise, that numerous passages in this author,
which I thoroughly comprehend, were formerly no less unintelligible to
me, than the passages now in question. It would, I am aware, be quite
fashionable to dismiss them at once as Platonic jargon. But this I
cannot do with satisfaction to my own mind, because I have sought in
vain for causes adequate to the solution of the assumed inconsistency.
I have no insight into the possibility of a man so eminently wise, using
words with such half-meanings to himself, as must perforce pass into no
meaning to his readers. When in addition to the motives thus suggested
by my own reason, I bring into distinct remembrance the number and the
series of great men, who, after long and zealous study of these works
had joined in honouring the name of Plato with epithets, that almost
transcend humanity, I feel, that a contemptuous verdict on my part might
argue want of modesty, but would hardly be received by the judicious, as
evidence of superior penetration. Therefore, utterly baffled in all
my attempts to understand the ignorance of Plato, I conclude myself
ignorant of his understanding.

In lieu of the various requests which the anxiety of authorship
addresses to the unknown reader, I advance but this one; that he will
either pass over the following chapter altogether, or read the whole
connectedly. The fairest part of the most beautiful body will appear
deformed and monstrous, if dissevered from its place in the organic
whole. Nay, on delicate subjects, where a seemingly trifling difference
of more or less may constitute a difference in kind, even a faithful
display of the main and supporting ideas, if yet they are separated from
the forms by which they are at once clothed and modified, may perchance
present a skeleton indeed; but a skeleton to alarm and deter. Though I
might find numerous precedents, I shall not desire the reader to strip
his mind of all prejudices, nor to keep all prior systems out of view
during his examination of the present. For in truth, such requests
appear to me not much unlike the advice given to hypochondriacal
patients in Dr. Buchan's domestic medicine; videlicet, to preserve
themselves uniformly tranquil and in good spirits. Till I had discovered
the art of destroying the memory a parte post, without injury to its
future operations, and without detriment to the judgment, I should
suppress the request as premature; and therefore, however much I may
wish to be read with an unprejudiced mind, I do not presume to state it
as a necessary condition.

The extent of my daring is to suggest one criterion, by which it may be
rationally conjectured beforehand, whether or no a reader would lose
his time, and perhaps his temper, in the perusal of this, or any other
treatise constructed on similar principles. But it would be cruelly
misinterpreted, as implying the least disrespect either for the moral
or intellectual qualities of the individuals thereby precluded. The
criterion is this: if a man receives as fundamental facts, and therefore
of course indemonstrable and incapable of further analysis, the general
notions of matter, spirit, soul, body, action, passiveness, time, space,
cause and effect, consciousness, perception, memory and habit; if
he feels his mind completely at rest concerning all these, and is
satisfied, if only he can analyse all other notions into some one or
more of these supposed elements with plausible subordination and apt
arrangement: to such a mind I would as courteously as possible convey
the hint, that for him the chapter was not written.

Vir bonus es, doctus, prudens; ast haud tibi spiro.

For these terms do in truth include all the difficulties, which the
human mind can propose for solution. Taking them therefore in mass, and
unexamined, it required only a decent apprenticeship in logic, to draw
forth their contents in all forms and colours, as the professors of
legerdemain at our village fairs pull out ribbon after ribbon from their
mouths. And not more difficult is it to reduce them back again to their
different genera. But though this analysis is highly useful in rendering
our knowledge more distinct, it does not really add to it. It does not
increase, though it gives us a greater mastery over, the wealth which
we before possessed. For forensic purposes, for all the established
professions of society, this is sufficient. But for philosophy in its
highest sense as the science of ultimate truths, and therefore scientia
scientiarum, this mere analysis of terms is preparative only, though as
a preparative discipline indispensable.

Still less dare a favourable perusal be anticipated from the proselytes
of that compendious philosophy, which talking of mind but thinking
of brick and mortar, or other images equally abstracted from body,
contrives a theory of spirit by nicknaming matter, and in a few hours
can qualify its dullest disciples to explain the omne scibile by
reducing all things to impressions, ideas, and sensations.

But it is time to tell the truth; though it requires some courage to
avow it in an age and country, in which disquisitions on all subjects,
not privileged to adopt technical terms or scientific symbols, must be
addressed to the Public. I say then, that it is neither possible nor
necessary for all men, nor for many, to be philosophers. There is a
philosophic (and inasmuch as it is actualized by an effort of freedom,
an artificial) consciousness, which lies beneath or (as it were) behind
the spontaneous consciousness natural to all reflecting beings. As the
elder Romans distinguished their northern provinces into Cis-Alpine and
Trans-Alpine, so may we divide all the objects of human knowledge into
those on this side, and those on the other side of the spontaneous
consciousness; citra et trans conscientiam communem. The latter is
exclusively the domain of pure philosophy, which is therefore properly
entitled transcendental, in order to discriminate it at once, both from
mere reflection and representation on the one hand, and on the other
from those flights of lawless speculation which, abandoned by all
distinct consciousness, because transgressing the bounds and purposes of
our intellectual faculties, are justly condemned, as transcendent.
The first range of hills, that encircles the scanty vale of human life,
is the horizon for the majority of its inhabitants. On its ridges the
common sun is born and departs. From them the stars rise, and touching
them they vanish. By the many, even this range, the natural limit and
bulwark of the vale, is but imperfectly known. Its higher ascents are
too often hidden by mists and clouds from uncultivated swamps, which
few have courage or curiosity to penetrate. To the multitude below these
vapours appear, now as the dark haunts of terrific agents, on which none
may intrude with impunity; and now all aglow, with colours not their
own, they are gazed at as the splendid palaces of happiness and power.
But in all ages there have been a few, who measuring and sounding the
rivers of the vale at the feet of their furthest inaccessible falls have
learned, that the sources must be far higher and far inward; a few, who
even in the level streams have detected elements, which neither the vale
itself nor the surrounding mountains contained or could supply.
How and whence to these thoughts, these strong probabilities, the
ascertaining vision, the intuitive knowledge may finally supervene, can
be learnt only by the fact. I might oppose to the question the words
with which Plotinus supposes Nature to answer a similar difficulty.
"Should any one interrogate her, how she works, if graciously she
vouchsafe to listen and speak, she will reply, it behoves thee not to
disquiet me with interrogatories, but to understand in silence, even as
I am silent, and work without words."

Likewise in the fifth book of the fifth Ennead, speaking of the highest
and intuitive knowledge as distinguished from the discursive, or in the
language of Wordsworth,

"The vision and the faculty divine;"

he says: "it is not lawful to inquire from whence it sprang, as if it
were a thing subject to place and motion, for it neither approached
hither, nor again departs from hence to some other place; but it either
appears to us or it does not appear. So that we ought not to pursue it
with a view of detecting its secret source, but to watch in quiet
till it suddenly shines upon us; preparing ourselves for the blessed
spectacle as the eye waits patiently for the rising sun." They and
they only can acquire the philosophic imagination, the sacred power of
self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the
symbol, that the wings of the air-sylph are forming within the skin
of the caterpillar; those only, who feel in their own spirits the same
instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in
its involucrum for antenna, yet to come. They know and feel, that the
potential works in them, even as the actual works on them! In short, all
the organs of sense are framed for a corresponding world of sense; and
we have it. All the organs of spirit are framed for a correspondent
world of spirit: though the latter organs are not developed in all
alike. But they exist in all, and their first appearance discloses
itself in the moral being. How else could it be, that even worldlings,
not wholly debased, will contemplate the man of simple and disinterested
goodness with contradictory feelings of pity and respect? "Poor man!
he is not made for this world." Oh! herein they utter a prophecy of
universal fulfilment; for man must either rise or sink.

It is the essential mark of the true philosopher to rest satisfied with
no imperfect light, as long as the impossibility of attaining a fuller
knowledge has not been demonstrated. That the common consciousness
itself will furnish proofs by its own direction, that it is connected
with master-currents below the surface, I shall merely assume as
a postulate pro tempore. This having been granted, though but in
expectation of the argument, I can safely deduce from it the equal truth
of my former assertion, that philosophy cannot be intelligible to all,
even of the most learned and cultivated classes. A system, the first
principle of which it is to render the mind intuitive of the spiritual
in man (i.e. of that which lies on the other side of our natural
consciousness) must needs have a great obscurity for those, who have
never disciplined and strengthened this ulterior consciousness. It must
in truth be a land of darkness, a perfect Anti-Goshen, for men to whom
the noblest treasures of their own being are reported only through the
imperfect translation of lifeless and sightless motions. Perhaps, in
great part, through words which are but the shadows of notions; even
as the notional understanding itself is but the shadowy abstraction of
living and actual truth. On the IMMEDIATE, which dwells in every man,
and on the original intuition, or absolute affirmation of it, (which
is likewise in every man, but does not in every man rise into
consciousness) all the certainty of our knowledge depends; and this
becomes intelligible to no man by the ministry of mere words from
without. The medium, by which spirits understand each other, is not the
surrounding air; but the freedom which they possess in common, as the
common ethereal element of their being, the tremulous reciprocations
of which propagate themselves even to the inmost of the soul. Where the
spirit of a man is not filled with the consciousness of freedom (were it
only from its restlessness, as of one still struggling in bondage) all
spiritual intercourse is interrupted, not only with others, but even
with himself. No wonder then, that he remains incomprehensible to
himself as well as to others. No wonder, that, in the fearful desert of
his consciousness, he wearies himself out with empty words, to which
no friendly echo answers, either from his own heart, or the heart of a
fellow being; or bewilders himself in the pursuit of notional phantoms,
the mere refractions from unseen and distant truths through the
distorting medium of his own unenlivened and stagnant understanding!
To remain unintelligible to such a mind, exclaims Schelling on a like
occasion, is honour and a good name before God and man.

The history of philosophy (the same writer observes) contains instances
of systems, which for successive generations have remained enigmatic.
Such he deems the system of Leibnitz, whom another writer (rashly I
think, and invidiously) extols as the only philosopher, who was himself
deeply convinced of his own doctrines. As hitherto interpreted, however,
they have not produced the effect, which Leibnitz himself, in a most
instructive passage, describes as the criterion of a true philosophy;
namely, that it would at once explain and collect the fragments of truth
scattered through systems apparently the most incongruous. The truth,
says he, is diffused more widely than is commonly believed; but it
is often painted, yet oftener masked, and is sometimes mutilated and
sometimes, alas! in close alliance with mischievous errors. The deeper,
however, we penetrate into the ground of things, the more truth we
discover in the doctrines of the greater number of the philosophical
sects. The want of substantial reality in the objects of the senses,
according to the sceptics; the harmonies or numbers, the prototypes and
ideas, to which the Pythagoreans and Platonists reduced all things:
the ONE and ALL of Parmenides and Plotinus, without Spinozism; the
necessary connection of things according to the Stoics, reconcilable
with the spontaneity of the other schools; the vital-philosophy of the
Cabalists and Hermetists, who assumed the universality of sensation;
the substantial forms and entelechies of Aristotle and the schoolmen,
together with the mechanical solution of all particular phaenomena
according to Democritus and the recent philosophers--all these we shall
find united in one perspective central point, which shows regularity
and a coincidence of all the parts in the very object, which from every
other point of view must appear confused and distorted. The spirit