They are only relatively ends in a chain of
motives. B. is the end to A.; but it is itself a mean to C., and in like
manner C. is a mean to D., and so on. Thus words are the means by which
we reduce appearances, or things presented through the senses, to their
several kinds, or 'genera'; that is, we generalize, and thus think and
judge. Hence the understanding, considered specially as an intellective
power, is the source and faculty of words;--and on this account the
understanding is justly defined, both by Archbishop Leighton, and by
Immanuel Kant, the faculty that judges by, or according to, sense.
However, practical or intellectual, it is one and the same
understanding, and the definition, the medial faculty, expresses its
true character in both directions alike. I am urgent on this point,
because on the right conception of the same, namely, that understanding
and sense (to which the sensibility supplies the material of outness,
'materiam objectivam',) constitute the natural mind of man, depends the
comprehension of St. Paul's whole theological system. And this natural
mind, which is named the mind of the flesh, [Greek: phronaema sarkos],
as likewise [Greek: psychikae synesis], the intellectual power of the
living or animal soul, St. Paul everywhere contradistinguishes from the
spirit, that is, the power resulting from the union and co-inherence of
the will and the reason;--and this spirit both the Christian and elder
Jewish Church named, 'sophia', or wisdom.
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