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The Secret of Swedenborg
The Secret of Swedenborg
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Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original hardcover edition for enjoyable reading.
***
The fundamental problem of Philosophy is the problem of creation. Does our existence really infer a divine and infinite being, or does it not? This question addresses itself to us now with special emphasis, inasmuch as speculative minds are beginning zealously to inquire whether creation can really be admitted any longer, save in an accommodated sense of the word; whether men of simple faith have not gone too far in professing to see a hand of power in the universe absolutely distinct from the universe itself. That being can admit either of increase or diminution is philosophically inconceivable, and affronts moreover the truth of the creative infinitude. For if God be infinite, as we necessarily hold him to be in deference to our own finiteness, what shall add to, or take from, the sum of his being? It is indeed obvious that God cannot create or give being to what has being in itself, for this would be contradictory. He can create only what is devoid of being in itself: this is manifest. And yet what is void of being in itself can at best only appear to be. It can be no real, but only a phenomenal existence. Thus the problem of creation is seen to engender many speculative doubts. How reconcile the antagonism of real and phenomenal, of absolute and contingent, of which the problem is so full? By the hypothesis of creation, the creature derives all he is from the creator. But the creature is essentially not the creator, is above all things himself a created being, and therefore the utter and exact opposite of the creator. How then shall the infinite creator give his finite creature projection, endow him with veritable selfhood or identity, and yet experience no compromise of his own individuality? Suffice it to say that what has hitherto called itself Philosophy has had so little power fairly to confront these difficulties, let alone solve them, as to have set Kant upon the notion of placating them afresh by the old recipe of Idealism; that is, by the invention of another or noumenal world, the world of " things-in-themselves." No doubt this was a new pusillanimity on the part of Philosophy, but what better could the philosopher do? He saw plainly enough that things were phenomenal; but as he did not see that this infirmity attached to them wholly on their subjective or constitutional side, while on their objective or creative side they were infinite and absolute, he was bound to lapse into mere idealism or scepticism, unrelieved by aught but the dream of a noumenal background.
<br><br>
We may smile if we please at' the superstitious shifts to which Kant's philosophic scepticism reduced him; but after all, Kant was only the legitimate flower of all the inherited culture of the world, the helpless logical outcome of bewildered ages of philosophy. Philosophy herself had never discriminated the objective or absolute and creative element in knowledge from its subjective or merely contingent and constitutional element. And when Kant essayed to make the discrimination, what wonder that he only succeeded in more hopelessly confounding the two, and so adjourning once more the hope of Philosophy to an indefinite future? But Kant's failure to vindicate the philosophic truth of creation has only exasperated the intellectual discontent of the world with the cosmological data supplied by the old theologies. Everywhere men of far more tender and reverential make even than Kant are being driven to freshness of thought; and thought, though a remorseless solvent, has no reconstructive power over truth. Men's opinions are being silently modified in fact, whether they will or not. The crudities, the extravagances, the contradictions of the old cosmology, now no longer amiable and innocent, but aggressive and overbearing, are compelling inquiry into new channels, are making it no longer possible that the notions which satisfied the fathers shall continue to satisfy the children. A distinctly supernatural creation, once so fondly urged upon our faith, is quite unintelligible to modern culture, because it violates experience or contradicts our observation of nature. Everything we observe in nature implies to our understanding a common or identical substance, being itself a particular or individual form of such substance. If then the objective form of things were an outward or supernatural communication to them, it would no longer be their own form, inasmuch as it would lack all subjective root, all natural basis, and confess itself an imposition. Thus, on the hypothesis of a supernatural creation, every natural object would disclaim a natural genesis; and nature, consequently, as denoting the universal or subjective element in existence, would disappear with the disappearance of her proper forms.
***
The fundamental problem of Philosophy is the problem of creation. Does our existence really infer a divine and infinite being, or does it not? This question addresses itself to us now with special emphasis, inasmuch as speculative minds are beginning zealously to inquire whether creation can really be admitted any longer, save in an accommodated sense of the word; whether men of simple faith have not gone too far in professing to see a hand of power in the universe absolutely distinct from the universe itself. That being can admit either of increase or diminution is philosophically inconceivable, and affronts moreover the truth of the creative infinitude. For if God be infinite, as we necessarily hold him to be in deference to our own finiteness, what shall add to, or take from, the sum of his being? It is indeed obvious that God cannot create or give being to what has being in itself, for this would be contradictory. He can create only what is devoid of being in itself: this is manifest. And yet what is void of being in itself can at best only appear to be. It can be no real, but only a phenomenal existence. Thus the problem of creation is seen to engender many speculative doubts. How reconcile the antagonism of real and phenomenal, of absolute and contingent, of which the problem is so full? By the hypothesis of creation, the creature derives all he is from the creator. But the creature is essentially not the creator, is above all things himself a created being, and therefore the utter and exact opposite of the creator. How then shall the infinite creator give his finite creature projection, endow him with veritable selfhood or identity, and yet experience no compromise of his own individuality? Suffice it to say that what has hitherto called itself Philosophy has had so little power fairly to confront these difficulties, let alone solve them, as to have set Kant upon the notion of placating them afresh by the old recipe of Idealism; that is, by the invention of another or noumenal world, the world of " things-in-themselves." No doubt this was a new pusillanimity on the part of Philosophy, but what better could the philosopher do? He saw plainly enough that things were phenomenal; but as he did not see that this infirmity attached to them wholly on their subjective or constitutional side, while on their objective or creative side they were infinite and absolute, he was bound to lapse into mere idealism or scepticism, unrelieved by aught but the dream of a noumenal background.
<br><br>
We may smile if we please at' the superstitious shifts to which Kant's philosophic scepticism reduced him; but after all, Kant was only the legitimate flower of all the inherited culture of the world, the helpless logical outcome of bewildered ages of philosophy. Philosophy herself had never discriminated the objective or absolute and creative element in knowledge from its subjective or merely contingent and constitutional element. And when Kant essayed to make the discrimination, what wonder that he only succeeded in more hopelessly confounding the two, and so adjourning once more the hope of Philosophy to an indefinite future? But Kant's failure to vindicate the philosophic truth of creation has only exasperated the intellectual discontent of the world with the cosmological data supplied by the old theologies. Everywhere men of far more tender and reverential make even than Kant are being driven to freshness of thought; and thought, though a remorseless solvent, has no reconstructive power over truth. Men's opinions are being silently modified in fact, whether they will or not. The crudities, the extravagances, the contradictions of the old cosmology, now no longer amiable and innocent, but aggressive and overbearing, are compelling inquiry into new channels, are making it no longer possible that the notions which satisfied the fathers shall continue to satisfy the children. A distinctly supernatural creation, once so fondly urged upon our faith, is quite unintelligible to modern culture, because it violates experience or contradicts our observation of nature. Everything we observe in nature implies to our understanding a common or identical substance, being itself a particular or individual form of such substance. If then the objective form of things were an outward or supernatural communication to them, it would no longer be their own form, inasmuch as it would lack all subjective root, all natural basis, and confess itself an imposition. Thus, on the hypothesis of a supernatural creation, every natural object would disclaim a natural genesis; and nature, consequently, as denoting the universal or subjective element in existence, would disappear with the disappearance of her proper forms.
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