Becoming American meant rejecting one of the two worlds. It meant trying to hide the grease stains saturating the paper in which your school lunch of a fried potato and egg sandwich on crusty bread was wrapped, while the rest of your classmates ate ham on white bread with mayonnaise.
Wandering between two worlds,--one dead, The other powerless to be born.
And finally, the two natures which are in the righteous man, for they are the two worlds, and a member and image of Jesus Christ. And thus all the names suit them, righteous, sinners; dead though living, living though dead, elect, reprobate, etc.
God is not so poor in felicities or so niggard in His bounty that He has not wherewithal to furnish forth two worlds.
What man had ever so great renown! The whole Jewish people foretold him before his coming. The Gentile world worships him after his coming. The two worlds, Gentile and Jewish, regard him as their centre.
A thorough study of Human Physiology is, in itself, an education broader and more comprehensive than much that passes under that name. There is no side of the intellect which it does not call into play, no region of human knowledge into which either its roots, or its branches, do not extend; like the Atlantic between the Old and the New Worlds, its waves wash the shores of the two worlds of matter and of mind; its tributary streams flow from both; through its waters, as yet unfurrowed by the keel of any Columbus, lies the road, if such there be, from the one to the other; far away from that North-west Passage of mere speculation, in which so many brave souls have been hopelessly frozen up.
It may be truly said that the founders of the religions of the world have all been bridge-builders. As soon as the existence of a Beyond, of a Heaven above the earth, of Powers above us and beneath us, had been recognised, a great gulf seemed to be fixed between what was called by various names, the earthly and the heavenly, the material and the spiritual, the phenomenal and nomenal, or best of all, the visible and invisible world, and it was the chief object of religion to unite these two worlds again, whether by the arches of hope and fear, or by the iron chains of logical syllogisms.
And so this soul of mine is a compound of two worlds--dust and deity! It touches the boundary line of two hemispheres. It is allied on one side to the divine; on the other, to the beast of the field. Its beginning is from beneath, but its culmination is from above; it is started from the dust of the ground, but it is finished in the breath of God.
And also the two worlds. The creation of a new heaven and a new earth, a new life, a new death, all things double, and the same names remaining.
What is true Christianity if it be not the belief in the true sonship of man, as the Greek philosophers had rightly surmised, but had never seen realised on earth? Here is the point where the two great intellectual currents of the Aryan and Semitic worlds flow together, in that the long-expected Messiah of the Jews was recognised as the _Logos_, the true Son of God, and that He opened or revealed to every man the possibility to become what he had always been, but had never before apprehended, the highest thought, the Word, the Logos, the Son of God.
This cloistered existence which is so austere, so depressing, a few of whose features we have just traced, is not life, for it is not liberty; it is not the tomb, for it is not plenitude; it is the strange place whence one beholds, as from the crest of a lofty mountain, on one side the abyss where we are, on the other, the abyss whither we shall go; it is the narrow and misty frontier separating two worlds, illuminated and obscured by both at the same time, where the ray of life which has become enfeebled is mingled with the vague ray of death; it is the half obscurity of the tomb.
The well-defined spiritual life is not only the highest life, but it is also the most easily lived. The whole cross is more easily carried than the half. It is the man who tries to make the best of both worlds who makes nothing of either. And he who seeks to serve two masters misses the benediction of both. Natural Law, Mortification, p. 199.
Living in the spiritual world . . . is just as simple as living in the natural world; and it is the same kind of simplicity. It is the same kind of simplicity for it is the same kind of world--there are not two kinds of worlds. The conditions of life in the one are the conditions of life in the other. And till these conditions are sensibly grasped, as the conditions of all life, it is impossible that the personal effort after the highest life should be other than a blind struggle carried on in fruitless sorrow and humiliation. Natural Law, Environment, p. 257.
The two are perfectly consistent. Man standing between the celestial and terrestrial worlds is related to both; and resembling neither a flower, which, springing from the dust and returning to it, belongs altogether to the earth, nor a star which, shining far remote from its lower sphere, belongs altogether to the heavens, our hearts may be fitly likened to the rainbow that, rising into heaven but resting on earth, is connected both with the clods of the valley and the clouds of the sky.--_Guthrie._
Theoretically, the philosophy of Plotinus was an attempt to harmonize the principles of the various Greek schools. At the head of his system he placed the transcendent incommunicable one ([Greek: hen amethekton]), whose first-begotten is intellect ([Greek: nous]), from which proceeds soul ([Greek: psychê]), which in turn gives birth to [Greek: physis], the realm of nature. Immediately after the absolute one, Iamblichus introduced a second superexistent unity to stand between it and the many as the producer of intellect, and made the three succeeding moments of the development (intellect, soul and nature) undergo various modifications. He speaks of them as intellectual ([Greek: theoi noeroi]), supramundane ([Greek: hyperkosmioi]), and mundane gods ([Greek: egkosmioi]). The first of these--which Plotinus represented under the three stages of (objective) being ([Greek: on]), (subjective) life ([Greek: zôê]), and (realized) intellect ([Greek: nous])--is distinguished by him into spheres of intelligible gods ([Greek: theoi noêtoi]) and of intellectual gods ([Greek: theoi noeroi]), each subdivided into triads, the latter sphere being the place of ideas, the former of the archetypes of these ideas. Between these two worlds, at once separating and uniting them, some scholars think there was inserted by Iamblichus, as afterwards by Proclus, a third sphere partaking of the nature of both ([Greek: theoi noêtoi kai noeroi]). But this supposition depends on a merely conjectural emendation of the text. We read, however, that "in the intellectual hebdomad he assigned the third rank among the fathers to the Demiurge." The Demiurge, Zeus, or world-creating potency, is thus identified with the perfected [Greek: nous], the intellectual triad being increased to a hebdomad, probably (as Zeller supposes) through the subdivision of its first two members. As in Plotinus [Greek: nous] produced nature by mediation of [Greek: psychê], so here the intelligible gods are followed by a triad of psychic gods. The first of these is incommunicable and supramundane, while the other two seem to be mundane though rational. In the third class, or mundane gods ([Greek: theoi egkosmioi]), there is a still greater wealth of divinities, of various local position, function, and rank. We read of gods, angels, demons and heroes, of twelve heavenly gods whose number is increased to thirty-six or three hundred and sixty, and of seventy-two other gods proceeding from them, of twenty-one chiefs ([Greek: hegemones]) and forty-two nature-gods ([Greek: theoi genesiourgoi]), besides guardian divinities, of particular individuals and nations. The world is thus peopled by a crowd of superhuman beings influencing natural events, possessing and communicating knowledge of the future, and not inaccessible to prayers and offerings. Entry: IAMBLICHUS
No part of Clough's life was wholly given up to poetry, and he probably had not the gift of detachment necessary to produce great literature in the intervals of other occupations. He wrote but little, and even of that little there is a good deal which does not aim at the highest seriousness. He never became a great craftsman. A few of his best lyrics have a strength of melody to match their depth of thought, but much of what he left consists of rich ore too imperfectly fused to make a splendid or permanent possession. Nevertheless, he is rightly regarded, like his friend Matthew Arnold, as one of the most typical English poets of the middle of the 19th century. His critical instincts and strong ethical temper brought him athwart the popular ideals of his day both in conduct and religion. His verse has upon it the melancholy and the perplexity of an age of transition. He is a sceptic who by nature should have been with the believers. He stands between two worlds, watching one crumble behind him, and only able to look forward by the sternest exercise of faith to the reconstruction that lies ahead in the other. On the technical side, Clough's work is interesting to students of metre, owing to the experiments which he made, in the _Bothie_ and elsewhere, with English hexameters and other types of verse formed upon classical models. Entry: CLOUGH
BRIHASPATI, or BRAHMANASPATI ("god of strength"), a deity of importance in early Hindu mythology. In the Rigveda he is represented as the god of prayer, aiding Indra in his conquest of the cloud-demon, and at times appears to be identified with Agni, god of fire. He is the offspring of Heaven and Earth, the two worlds; is the inspirer of prayer and the guide and protector of the pious. He is pictured as having seven mouths, a hundred wings and horns and is armed with bow and arrows and an axe. He rides in a chariot drawn by red horses. In the later scriptures he is represented as a Rishi or seer. Entry: BRIHASPATI
1. For a generation after the death of Augustus no new original literary force appeared. The later poetry of the Augustan age had ended in trifling dilettantism, for the continuance of which the atmosphere of the court was no longer favourable. The class by which literature was encouraged had become both enervated and terrorized. The most remarkable poetical product of the time is the long-neglected astrological poem of Manilius which was written at the beginning of Tiberius's reign. Its vigour and originality have had scanty justice done to them owing to the difficulty of the subject-matter and the style, and the corruptions which still disfigure its text. Very different has been the fate of the _Fables_ of Phaedrus. This slight work of a Macedonian freedman, destitute of national significance and representative in its morality only of the spirit of cosmopolitan individualism, owes its vogue to its easy Latinity and popular subject-matter. Of the prose writers C. Velleius Paterculus, the historian, and Valerius Maximus, the collector of anecdotes, are the most important. A. Cornelius Celsus composed a series of technical handbooks, one of which, upon medicine, has survived. Its purity of style and the fact that it was long a standard work entitle it to a mention here. The traditional culture was still, however, maintained, and the age was rich in grammarians and rhetoricians. The new profession of the _delator_ must have given a stimulus to oratory. A high ideal of culture, literary as well as practical, was realized in Germanicus, which seems to have been transmitted to his daughter Agrippina, whose patronage of Seneca had important results in the next generation. The reign of Claudius was a time in which antiquarian learning, grammatical studies, and jurisprudence were cultivated, but no important additions were made to literature. A fresh impulse was given to letters on the accession of Nero, and this was partly due to the theatrical and artistic tastes of the young emperor. Four writers of the Neronian age still possess considerable interest,--L. Annaeus Seneca, M. Annaeus Lucanus, A. Persius Flaccus and Petronius Arbiter. The first three represent the spirit of their age by exhibiting the power of the Stoic philosophy as a moral, political and religious force; the last is the most cynical exponent of the depravity of the time. Seneca (c. 5 B.C.-A.D. 65) is less than Persius a pure Stoic, and more of a moralist and pathological observer of man's inner life. He makes the commonplaces of a cosmopolitan philosophy interesting by his abundant illustration drawn from the private and social life of his contemporaries. He has knowledge of the world, the suppleness of a courtier, Spanish vivacity, and the _ingenium amoenum_ attributed to him by Tacitus, the fruit of which is sometimes seen in the "honeyed phrases" mentioned by Petronius--pure aspirations combined with inconsistency of purpose--the inconsistency of one who tries to make the best of two worlds, the ideal inner life and the successful real life in the atmosphere of a most corrupt court. The _Pharsalia_ of Lucan (39-65), with Cato as its hero, is essentially a Stoic manifesto of the opposition. It is written with the force and fervour of extreme youth and with the literary ambition of a race as yet new to the discipline of intellectual culture, and is characterized by rhetorical rather than poetical imagination. The six short _Satires_ of Persius (34-62) are the purest product of Stoicism--a Stoicism that had found in a contemporary, Thrasea, a more rational and practical hero than Cato. But no important writer of antiquity has less literary charm than Persius. In avoiding the literary conceits and fopperies which he satirizes he has recourse to the most unnatural contortions of expression. Of hardly greater length are the seven eclogues of T. Calpurnius Siculus, written at the beginning of the reign of Nero, which are not without grace and facility of diction. Of the works of the time that which from a human point of view is perhaps the most detestable in ancient literature has the most genuine literary quality, the fragment of a prose novel--the _Satyricon_--of Petronius (d. 66). It is most sincere in its representation, least artificial in diction, most penetrating in its satire, most just in its criticism of art and style. Entry: 1
IV. All these investigations point clearly to the fact that Gnosticism belongs to the group of mystical religions. We must now proceed to define more exactly the peculiar and distinctive character of the Gnostic system. The basis of the Gnostic religion and world-philosophy lies in a decided Oriental dualism. In sharp contrast are opposed the two worlds of the good and of the evil, the divine world and the material world [Greek: hulê], the worlds of light and of darkness. In many systems there seems to be no attempt to derive the one world from the other. The true Basilides (q.v.), perhaps also Satornil, Marcion and a part of his disciples, Bardesanes and others, were frankly dualists. In the case of other systems, owing to the inexactness of our information, we are unable to decide; the later systems of Mandaeism and Manichaeanism, so closely related to Gnosticism, are also based upon a decided dualism. And even when there is an attempt at reconciliation, it is still quite clear how strong was the original dualism which has to be overcome. Thus the Gnostic systems make great use of the idea of a fall of the Deity himself; by the fall of the Godhead into the world of matter, this matter, previously insensible, is animated into life and activity, and then arise the powers, both partly and wholly hostile, who hold sway over this world. Such figures of fallen divinities, sinking down into the world of matter are those of Sophia (i.e. Ahamoth) among the Gnostics (Ophites) in the narrower sense of the word, the Simoniani (the figure of Helena), the Barbelognostics, and in the system of the _Pistis-Sophia_ or the Primal Man, among the Naasseni and the sect, related to them, as described by Hippolytus.[5] A further weakening of the dualism is indicated when, in the systems of the Valentinian school, the fall of Sophia takes place within the godhead, and Sophia, inflamed with love, plunges into the Bythos, the highest divinity, and when the attempt is thus made genetically to derive the lower world from the sufferings and passions of fallen divinity. Another attempt at reconciliation is set forth in the so-called "system of emanations" in which it is assumed that from the supreme divinity emanated a somewhat lesser world, from this world a second, and so on, until the divine element (of life) became so far weakened and attenuated, that the genesis of a partly, or even wholly, evil world appears both possible and comprehensible. A system of emanations of this kind, in its purest form, is set forth in the expositions coming from the school of Basilides, which are handed down by Irenaeus, while the propositions which are set forth in the _Philosophumena_ of Hippolytus as being doctrines of Basilides represent a still closer approach to a monistic philosophy. Occasionally, too, there is an attempt to establish at any rate a threefold division of the world, and to assume between the worlds of light and darkness a middle world connecting the two; this is clearest among the Sethiani mentioned by Hippolytus (and cf. the Gnostics in Irenaeus i. 30. 1). Quite peculiar in this connexion are the accounts in Books xix. and xx. of the Clementine _Homilies_. After a preliminary examination of all possible different attempts at a solution of the problem of evil, the attempt is here made to represent the devil as an instrument of God. Christ and the devil are the two hands of God, Christ the right hand, and the devil the left, the devil having power over this world-epoch and Christ over the next. The devil here assumes very much the characteristics of the punishing and just God of the Old Testament, and the prospect is even held out of his ultimate pardon. All these efforts at reconciliation show how clearly the problem of evil was realized in these Gnostic and half-Gnostic sects, and how deeply they meditated on the subject; it was not altogether without reason that in the ranks of its opponents Gnosticism was judged to have arisen out of the question, [Greek: pothen to kakon]. Entry: IV
In another age, and thinking according to another system, Schiller, so far from holding thus cheap the kingdom of play and show, regarded his sovereignty over that kingdom as the noblest prerogative of man. Schiller wrote his famous _Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man_ in order to throw into popular currency, and at the same time to modify and follow up in a particular direction, certain metaphysical doctrines which had lately been launched upon the schools by Kant. The spirit of man, said Schiller after Kant, is placed between two worlds, the physical world or world of sense, and the moral world or world of will. Both of these are worlds of constraint or necessity. In the sensible world, the spirit of man submits to constraint from without; in the moral world, it imposes constraint from within. So far as man yields to the importunities of sense, in so far he is bound and passive, the subject of outward shocks and victim of irrational forces. So far as he asserts himself by the exercise of will, imposing upon sense and outward things the dominion of the moral law within him, in so far he is free and active, the rational lord of nature and not her slave. Corresponding to these two worlds, he has within him two conflicting impulses or impulsions of his nature, the one driving him towards one way of living, the other towards another. The one, or sense-impulsion (_Stofftrieb_), Schiller thinks of as that which enslaves the spirit of man as the victim of matter, the other or moral impulsion (_Formtrieb_) as that which enthrones it as the dictator of form. Between the two the conflict at first seems inveterate. The kingdom of brute nature and sense, the sphere of man's subjection and passivity, wages war against the kingdom of will and moral law, the sphere of his activity and control, and every conquest of the one is an encroachment upon the other. Is there, then, no hope of truce between the two kingdoms, no ground where the two contending impulses can be reconciled? Nay, the answer comes, there is such a hope; such a neutral territory there exists. Between the passive kingdom of matter and sense, where man is compelled blindly to feel and be, and the active kingdom of law and reason, where he is compelled sternly to will and act, there is a kingdom where both sense and will may have their way, and where man may give the rein to all his powers. But this middle kingdom does not lie in the sphere of practical life and conduct. It lies in the sphere of those activities which neither subserve any necessity of nature nor fulfil any moral duty. Towards activities of this kind we are driven by a third impulsion of our nature not less essential to it than the other two, the impulsion, as Schiller calls it, of Play (_Spieltrieb_). Relatively to real life and conduct, play is a kind of harmless show; it is that which we are free to do or leave undone as we please, and which lies alike outside the sphere of needs and duties. In play we may do as we like, and no mischief will come of it. In this sphere man may put forth all his powers without risk of conflict, and may invent activities which will give a complete ideal satisfaction to the contending faculties of sense and will at once, to the impulses which bid him feel and enjoy the shocks of physical and outward things, and the impulse which bids him master such things, control and regulate them. In play you may impose upon Matter what Form you choose, and the two will not interfere with one another or clash. The kingdom of Matter and the kingdom of Form thus harmonized, thus reconciled by the activities of play and show, will in other words be the kingdom of the Beautiful. Follow the impulsion of play, and to the beautiful you will find your road; the activities you will find yourself putting forth will be the activities of aesthetic creation--you will have discovered or invented the fine arts. "Midway"--these are Schiller's own words--"midway between the formidable kingdom of natural forces and the hallowed kingdom of moral laws, the impulse of aesthetic creation builds up a third kingdom unperceived, the gladsome kingdom of play and show, wherein it emancipates man from all compulsion alike of physical and of moral forces." Schiller, the poet and enthusiast, thus making his own application of the Kantian metaphysics, goes on to set forth how the fine arts, or activities of play and show, are for him the typical, the ideal activities of the race, since in them alone is it possible for man to put forth his whole, that is his ideal self. "Only when he plays is man really and truly man." "Man ought only to play with the beautiful, and he ought to play with the beautiful only." "Education in taste and beauty has for its object to train up in the utmost attainable harmony the whole sum of the powers both of sense and spirit." And the rest of Schiller's argument is addressed to show how the activities of artistic creation, once invented, react upon other departments of human life, how the exercise of the play impulse prepares men for an existence in which the inevitable collision of the two other impulses shall be softened or averted more and more. That harmony of the powers which clash so violently in man's primitive nature, having first been found possible in the sphere of the fine arts, reflects itself, in his judgment, upon the whole composition of man, and attunes him, as an aesthetic being, into new capabilities for the conduct of his social existence. Entry: I