The
fourth antagonist, then, of reason is the lust of the will.
Corollary. Unlike a million of tigers, a million of men is very
different from a million times one man. Each man in a numerous society
is not only coexistent with, but virtually organized into, the multitude
of which he is an integral part. His 'idem' is modified by the 'alter'.
And there arise impulses and objects from this 'synthesis' of the 'alter
et idem', myself and my neighbour. This, again, is strictly analogous to
what takes place in the vital organization of the individual man. The
cerebral system of nerves has its correspondent 'antithesis' in the
abdominal system: but hence arises a 'synthesis' of the two in the
pectoral system as the intermediate, and, like a drawbridge, at once
conductor and boundary. In the latter as objectized by the former arise
the emotions, affections, and in one word, the passions, as
distinguished from the cognitions and appetites. Now the reason has been
shown to be super-individual, generally, and therefore not less so when
the form of an individualization subsists in the 'alter', than when it
is confined to the 'idem'; not less when the emotions have their
conscious or believed object in another, than when their subject is the
individual personal self. For though these emotions, affections,
attachments, and the like, are the prepared ladder by which the lower
nature is taken up into, and made to partake of, the highest room,--as
we are taught to give a feeling of reality to the higher 'per medium
commune' with the lower, and thus gradually to see the reality of the
higher (namely, the objects of reason) and finally to know that the
latter are indeed and pre-eminently real, as if you love your earthly
parents whom you see, by these means you will learn to love your
Heavenly Father who is invisible;--yet this holds good only so far as
the reason is the president, and its objects the ultimate aim; and cases
may arise in which the Christ as the Logos or Redemptive Reason
declares, 'He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of
me'; nay, he that can permit his emotions to rise to an equality with
the universal reason, is in enmity with that reason.
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