not constitute the immense difference in the two cases, making, in fact, an impassable chasm between them! If we must have a metaphor, the best that could be used would be the one the author has so happily employed in respect to consciousness, p. 169. Instead of a capacity, or rather, together with a capacity, which is a very good figure in its place, we may say the soul has a light which she sheds upon the opaque content in the sensibility, and which immediately brings form and distinctness out of chaos, -a light through which sensation becomes perception, and phenomena are known as representing things and events in a permanent and enduring nature of things. This light we may metaphorically suppose, either to be of the very essence of the soul itself, or to be generated by a spiritual energy, which, in its own working (above and aside from sense) gives birth to both light and heat, or, in other words, the purely spiritual emotion of interest in knowledge, and the purely intellectual illumination by which it is seen. It was held as a part of the ancient Greek physics, that in seeing, a real light went forth from the eye to meet that which was conveyed, through the diaphanous medium, from the object itself. Whatever modern science may object to this, there was, we believe, a substantial truth, if not in the optical theory itself, at least lying right behind it. We may take it as meaning, that even sense is not pure passivity. The soul sends forth an energy, even in sense-seeing, instinctive it may be, rather than voluntary, yet none the less its own spiritual act. She does something instead of simply receiving. She communicates to the eye a light without which it would be in darkness, and the pictures on the retina, or the brain, would never be read. And then, could we conceive of the eye as a separate existence, this infused light might be regarded as its spiritual principle. Ei yào̟ v ỏ ỏpθαλμὸς ζῶον ψυχὴ ἂν αὐτῷ ἦν ἡ ΟΨΙΣ - “If the eye were an animal," says Aristotle (De Anima, Lib. II. 1. 9), "vision would be its soul." But why not at once call it knowledge, ideas, from the intellectual meaning and tenses of sido1- a meaning which we have reason to regard as being no more metaphorical, and no less real, in the one case than in the other. Why not then call it knowledge (notio), since the moment it finds its object it knows it, and remembers it moreover as cognized by something which had an à priori being. It 1 Some of these, it is well known, signify to see, others to know. idolov (idol) would be from the one class, idea from the other. Both are alike literal-alike metaphorical. 1851.] Knowledge as possessed and exercised. 213 is easy to anticipate the plausible objection, that it can be no knowledge until it become itself an object of consciousness, and thus sees itself seeing, and knows itself knowing, or that there is an absurdity in the conception of a dormant knowledge, in other words, a knowledge unknown, and thoughts unthought. But have we not the same mystery, for we would not dare to style it absurdity, in respect to what we call our acquired knowledge? For, whether inborn or acquired makes no difference here. It is one of the most indubitable facts of our spiritual constitution, that there is a knowledge which we may be said to possess, and yet to have or hold it not,- κεκτῆσθαι áîîà μη 3⁄4yev — according to Plato's well illustrated distinction, in his simile of the aviary, or spiritual pigeon-park, toward the close of the Theaetetus, 197. A. And so also Aristotle (De Anima, Lib. II. c. 1. 5). "It may be spoken of," says he, "in two ways, as knowledge (έniorýμŋ) in itself, and as knowledge in actual spiritual beholding (Ev 79 Dewoɛiv). For in the very being of the soul itself there is a sleeping and an awaking.1 The awaking is analogous to the spiritual beholding; the sleep to the having and yet not energizing” — τῷ ἔχειν καὶ μὴ ἐνεργεῖν. There is to each man a knowledge which is truly his knowledge, belonging to his being as it belongs not to another, and yet it may be truly said he knows it not; he thinks it not. It is as truly asleep within him, as when the whole soul, including the visual as well as the theoretical (rò eoqɛiv) is buried in the profoundest slumber. Take then our acquired knowledge, we say again, and the mystery is not at all diminished. It is rather increased. Notwithstanding our familiarity with the fact, there are some elements in it, which, when we examine them closely, enhance the wonder. How very small a part of that immense store of intuitions, thoughts, feelings, facts, scenes, events, which go to make up the knowledge of one single man, (be he one of the most narrow information,) is at any one hour of his life in actual exercise, that is actually known or thought? How small the ratio of his waking being at any one time, to that far greater part which is sleeping, much of it too, perhaps the most of it, having thus slept for many years. But, where is it? What relation has it to his spiritual constitution? Does it truly enter into his very esse? so that he ever car✩ ries it with him, the past in the present, and is all that he is during every moment that he exists. Twenty years ago a thought was 1 He means, doubtless, aside from the animal sleep which it has from its con fection with the body and the sentient nature. thought, an event was witnessed, a scene was beheld, a feeling was felt. Now it comes up again in my actual waking knowledge; but during all this time it has been unthought, unseen, unimaged, unfelt, and may we not say, as far as this argument is concerned, unknown? Some of it has fallen into so profound a slumber, that it will perhaps never awake until carried into the fixed and changeless state of another existence. But, where is it? We repeat the inquiry; for the question seems to involve some truths of most serious moment. Has it been all this time a non ens? If it has had a true being, can it be conceived of except as in relation to my soul, or (for no other preposition can suit the exigency of the thought) as in my soul, in my spiritual being, as it is not in the spiritual being of any other personality? We say spiritual being, for we do not now argue with that lowest class of materialists who would think that an easy and sufficient explanation of this whole matter could be found in the supposition of ten thousand times ten thousand configurations of a material brain, moved by ten thousand times ten thousand material springs, touched by innumerable associations, themselves all strung together by material ligaments, and among which material configurations, each comes up, when, in the endlessly complicated movements of this machinery its own spring is touched, and the whole structure of every other part of the brain at once corresponds thereto. Even such obtuse men, ávτírvnoi avdges, as Plato calls them, such hard-headed materialists as these, who resolve all knowledge into touch and resistance, might be puzzled by the question, What is to prevent, if perhaps one man's brain, amidst these endless convolutions, should get into a material state exactly corresponding to that of an other, (a case by no mean's inconceivable,) what is to prevent that the one should immediately find himself endowed with all the knowl edge, and all the experience of space and time, past and present, of the latter brain? not. But our argument is with those who believe that man has an im material spirituality, whether they regard it as a mere capacity or We ask them to look intently at the difficulty, and then ex plain it. They may reply that they discover none. Some might be ready to ask, What do such inquiries mean? Does the interrogator himself know? There is surely no such difficulty in the case. solution is plain enough even for a "child's book on psychology." The word memory explains it all. This knowledge about which there is vainly supposed to be something so occult, is simply remem bered. When the soul wants to use it, she remembers it by a capaci The 1851.] Closing Remarks. 217 ty, or faculty, she has for that express purpose. Should there be an attempt to go a little further, we are told of the association of ideas. We "recall" it, too, it is said, as though it had flown away to some extra mundane region, and were not somewhere within the domain embraced by the personal we. But this is only a name for the fact; it explains nothing. There is yet the deep "mystery of memory," as St. Augustine somewhere styles it. We may doggedly try to put up with the dogma of Reid, that " memory is an immediate knowledge of the past;"1 but in that word, the past, the difficulty all comes back again; and we ask ourselves How can the past be in the present, unless we carry our whole being with us, and all the knowledge of the past is bound up in the present by those original notions, cognitions, intuitions, ideas, or knowledges, which were born in the soul, which ever abide in it irrespective of all time, out of the combinations of which all other or outward knowledge arises, and into which it may be ultimately analyzed as its constituting elements, without at the same time losing that distinct objective reality which it has obtained through their form-giving power. If we reject, then, as exploded, the doctrine of inborn knowledge, or treat it as a mystery and an absurdity, we have yet, in some respects this deeper "mystery of memory"- the present knowledge of the past, the unknown and yet known, the for-gotten and yet gotten, or as the same is expressed in Plato's Greek, and with nearly the same idiomatic metaphor, the unheld and yet possessed. We have dwelt the longer on this part of the argument, not to supply any deficiency in the author's treatment, but to present in the most familiar way we could, what the nature and plan of his work compelled him to give in a rigid scientific manner. We wish especially to draw attention to it as an important part of his general view, and as furnishing the best position for the proper appreciation of other parts of the work. Of this we can only say, that it increases in interest on every page. Some of the discussions in the latter part of the book are of the profoundest moment. All readers who have suffered the comparatively dry details of statement and definition, in the first part of the volume, to deter them from the close study of the whole, may be assured that they have lost much which possesses not only a philosophical and a scientific, but also a high moral and religious value. 1 Intellectual Powers, Essay III. Chap. I. VOL. VIII. No. 29. ARTICLE XI. NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. I. DR. ROBINSON'S NEW TESTAMENT LEXICONA THE assertion is sometimes hazarded by those who claim to be the guides of public opinion, that there has been but little advance in sacred philology since the days of Calvin; that in his writings we may find the principal expositions of the sacred text which commentators of the present day propound as new discoveries. It is doubtless true that Calvin's Commentaries have much philological merit, and that he furnishes a correct explanation of most of the leading texts on which his system of divinity is founded. Nevertheless, it remains true that great progress has been made in biblical study since this learned and venerable reformer lived. The scholars of the sixteenth century often endeavored to prove their doctrines by irrelevant texts, by passages which yielded only a verbal support, or whose application was doubtful. We have only to look into the writings of President Edwards, two centuries later, to see how much his acute and profound intellect would have been aided by better principles of interpretation. Within the last thirty years, the texts which sustain the orthodox system have been often subjected to a close and scientific examination, and that system now stands on a much surer basis than it ever had before. Some texts have been given up as untenable for the maintenance of a particular doctrine; others have been found impregnable. Besides, it would be absurd to suppose, that the immeasurable advance made in modern times in the knowledge of oriental literature and antiquities, of general grammar, and of the Hebrew and Greek languages in particular, should not have cast important light on the great loci classici, the fundamental proof-texts, to which appeal is made in the last resort. It is a matter of great importance if these passages can be set in a clearer light, and be made to point with a surer aim. But of the rapid, we may say immense, progress which biblical science has made, we need no more convincing proof than the Lexicon now before us will furnish. Again, it is often said, that we are greatly indebted to German writers for our knowledge of antiquities, history, classical criticism, etc., while they have failed to give us much which is valuable towards the better understanding of the doctrines of the Gospel. For Latin and Greek lexicons and grammars we must repair to Freund, Zumpt, Kühner, Buttmann, Thiersch, and Pape, but when we are to expound divine truth, we must not resort to these "earthen cisterns." Yet, in ascertaining the true, spiritual meaning 1 A Greek and English Lexicon of the New Testament, by Edward Robinson, D. D., LL. D., Professor of Biblical Literature in the Union Theological Seminary, New York. A new edition, revised and in great part re-written. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1850. pp. 804, 8vo. |