Translation: F.W. Robertson,
Introductory Note
"The Education of the Human Race" is the culmination of a bitter
theological controversy which began with the publication by Lessing, in 1774 1778, of a
series of fragments of a work on natural religion by the German deist, Reimarus. This
action brought upon Lessing the wrath of the orthodox German Protestants, led by J. M.
Goeze, and in the battle that followed Lessing did his great work for the liberalizing of
religious thought in Germany. The present treatise is an extraordinarily condensed
statement of the author's attitude towards the fundamental questions of religion, and
gives his view of the signification of the previous religious history of mankind, along
with his faith and hope for the future.
As originally issued, the essay purported to be merely edited by Lessing; but there
is no longer any doubt as to his having been its author. It is an admirable and
characteristic expression of the serious and elevated spirit in which he dealt with
matters that had then, as often, been degraded by the virulence of controversy.
The Education Of The Human Race
That which Education is to the Individual, Revelation is to the Race. Education is
Revelation coming to the Individual Man; and Revelation is Education which has come, and
is yet coming, to the Human Race.Whether it can be of any advantage to the science of
instruction to contemplate Education in this point of view, I will not here inquire; but
in Theology it may unquestionably be of great advantage, and may remove many difficulties,
if Revelation be conceived of as the Educator of Humanity.
Education gives to Man nothing which he might no educe out of himself; it gives him
that which he might educe out of himself, only quicker and more easily. In the same way
too, Revelation gives nothing to the human species, which the human reason left to itself
might not attain; only it has given, and still gives to it, the most important of these
things earlier. And just as in Education, it is not a matter of indifference in what order
the powers of a man are developed, as it cannot impart to a man all at once; so was God
also necessitated to maintain a certain order, and a certain measure in His Revelation.
Even if the first man were furnished at once with a conception of the One God; yet it
was not possible that this conception, imparted, and not gained by thought, should subsist
long in its clearness. As soon as the Human Reason, left to itself, began to elaborate it,
it broke up the one Immeasurable into many Measurables, and gave a note or sign of mark to
every one of these parts. Hence naturally arose polytheism and idolatry. And who can say
how many millions of years human reason would have been bewildered in these errors, even
though in all places and times there were individual men who recognized them as errors,
had it not pleased God to afford it a better direction by means of a new Impulse? But when
He neither could nor would reveal Himself any more to each individual man, He selected an
individual People for His special education; and that exactly the most rude and the most
unruly, in order to begin with it from the very commencement.
This was the Hebrew People, respecting whom we do not in the least know what kind of
Divine Worship they had in Egypt. For so despised a race of slaves was not permitted to
take part in the worship of the Egyptians; and the God of their fathers was entirely
unknown to them. It is possible that the Egyptians had expressly prohibited the Hebrews
from having a God or gods; perhaps they had forced upon them the belief that their
despised race had no God, no gods, that to have a God or gods was the prerogative of the
superior Egyptians only, and this may have been so held in order to have the power of
tyrannising over them with a greater show of fairness. Do Christians even now do much
better with their slaves?
To this rude people God caused Himself to be announced first, simply as "the God
of their fathers," in order to make them acquainted and familiar with the idea of a
God belonging to them also, and to begin with confidence in Him. Through the miracles with
which He led them out of Egypt, and planted them in Canaan, He testified of Himself to
them as a God mightier than any other God. And as He proceeded, demonstrating Himself to
be the Mightiest of all, which only One can be, He gradually accustomed them thus to the
idea of The One. But how far was this conception of The One, below the true transcendental
conception of the One which Reason learnt to derive, so late with certainty, from the
conception of the Infinite One?
Although the best of the people were already more or less approaching the true
conception of the One only, the people as a whole could not for a long time elevate
themselves to it. And this was the sole true reason why they so often abandoned their one
God, and expected to find the One, i.e., as they meant, the Mightiest, in some God or
other, belonging to another people. But of what kind of moral education was a people so
raw, so incapable of abstract thoughts, and so entirely in their childhood capable? Of
none other but such as is adapted to the age of children, an education by rewards and
punishments addressed to the senses. Here too Education and Revelation meet together. As
yet God could give to His people no other religion, no other law than one through
obedience to which they might hope to be happy, or through disobedience to which they must
fear to be unhappy. For as yet their regards went no further than this earth. They knew of
no immortality of the soul; they yearned after no life to come. But now to reveal these
things to one whose reason had as yet so little growth, what would it have been but the
same fault in the Divine Rule as is committed by the schoolmaster, who chooses to hurry
his pupil too rapidly, and boast of his progress, rather than thoroughly to ground him?
But, it will be asked, to what purpose was this education of so rude a people, a people
with whom God had to begin so entirely from the beginning? I reply, in order that in the
process of time He might employ particular members of this nation as the Teachers of other
people. He was bringing up in them the future Teachers of the human race. It was the Jews
who became their teachers, none but Jews; only men out of a people so brought up, could be
their teachers.
For to proceed. When the Child by dint of blows and caresses had grown and was now come
to years of understanding, the Father sent it at once into foreign countries: and here it
recognised at once the Good which in its Father's house it had possessed, and had not been
conscious of.While God guided His chosen people through all the degrees of a child-like
education, the other nations of the earth had gone on by the light of reason. The most
part had remained far behind the chosen people. Only a few had got before them. And this
too, takes place with children, who are allowed to grow up left to themselves: many remain
quite raw, some educate themselves even to an astonishing degree.
But as these more fortunate few prove nothing against the use and necessity of
Education, so the few heathen nations, who even appear to have made a start in the
knowledge of God before the chosen people, prove nothing against a Revelation. The Child
of Education begins with slow yet sure footsteps; it is late in overtaking many a more
happily organised child of nature; but it does overtake it; and thenceforth can never be
distanced by it again. Similarly - Putting aside the doctrine of the Unity of God, which
in a way is found, and in a way is not found, in the books of the Old Testament that the
doctrine of immortality at least is not discoverable in it, is wholly foreign to it, that
all doctrine connected therewith of reward and punishment in a future life, proves just as
little against the Divine origin of these books. Notwithstanding the absence of these
doctrines, the account of miracles and prophecies may be perfectly true. For let us
suppose that these doctrines were not only wanting therein, but even that they were not at
all true; let us suppose that for mankind all was over in this life; would the Being of
God be for this reason less demonstrated? Would God be for this less at liberty, would it
less become Him to take immediate charge of the temporal fortunes of any people out of
this perishable race? The miracles which He performed for the Jews, the prophecies which
He caused to be recorded through them, were surely not for the few mortal Jews, in whose
time they had happened and been recorded: He had His intentions therein in reference to
the whole Jewish people, to the entire Human Race, which, perhaps, is destined to remain
on earth forever, though every individual Jew and every individual man die forever.
Once more, The absence of those doctrines in the writings of the Old Testament proves
nothing against their Divinity. Moses was sent from God even though the sanction of his
law only extended to this life. For why should it extend further? He was surely sent only
to the Israelitish people of that time, and his commission was perfectly adapted to the
knowledge, capacities, yearnings of the then existing Israelitish people, as well as to
the destination of that which belonged to the future. And this is sufficient. So far ought
Warburton to have gone, and no further. But that learned man overdrew his bow. Not content
that the absence of these doctrines was no discredit to the Divine mission of Moses, it
must even be a proof to him of the Divinity of the mission. And if he had only sought this
proof in the adaptation of such a law to such a people! But he betook himself to the
hypothesis of a miraculous system continued in an unbroken line from Moses to Christ,
according to which, God had made every individual Jew exactly happy or unhappy, in the
proportion to his obedience or disobedience to the law deserved. He would have it that
this miraculous system had compensated for the want of those doctrines (of eternal rewards
and punishments, &c.), without which no state can subsist; and that such a
compensation even proved what that want at first sight appeared to negative.
How well it was that Warburton could by no argument prove or even make likely this
continuous miracle, in which he placed the existence of Israelitish Theocracy! For could
he have done so, in truth, he could then, and not till then, have made the difficulty
really insuperable, to me at least. For that which was meant to prove the Divine character
of the Mission of Moses, would have rendered the matter itself doubtful, which God, it is
true, did not intend then to reveal; but which on the other hand, He certainly would not
render unattainable. I explain myself by that which is a picture of Revelation. A Primer
for children may fairly pass over in silence this or that important piece of knowledge or
art which it expounds, respecting which the Teacher judged, that it is not yet fitted for
the capacities of the children for whom he was writing. But it must contain absolutely
nothing which blocks up the way towards the knowledge which is held back, or misleads the
children from it. Rather far, all the approaches towards it must be carefully left open;
and to lead them away from even one of these approaches, or to cause them to enter it
later than they need, would alone be enough to change the mere imperfection of such a
Primer into an actual fault. In the same way, in the writings of the Old Testament those
primers for the rude Israelitish people, unpractised in thought, the doctrines of the
immortality of the soul, and future recompenses, might be fairly left out: but they were
bound to contain nothing which could have even procrastinated the progress of the people,
for whom they were written, in their way to this grand truth. And to say but a small
thing, what could have more procrastinated it than the promise of such a miraculous
recompense in this life? A promise made by Him who promises nothing that He does not
perform. For although unequal distribution of the goods of this life, Virtue and Vice seem
to be taken too little into consideration, although this unequal distribution does not
exactly afford a strong proof of the immortality of the soul and of a life to come, in
which this difficulty will be reserved hereafter, it is certain that without this
difficulty the human understanding would not for a long time, perhaps never, have arrived
at better or firmer proofs. For what was to impel it to seek for these better proofs? Mere
curiosity?
An Israelite here and there, no doubt, might have extended to every individual member
of the entire commonwealth, those promises and threatenings which belong to it as a whole,
and be firmly persuaded that whosoever should be pious must also be happy, and that
whoever was unhappy must be bearing the penalty of his wrong-doing, which penalty would
forthwith change itself into blessing, as soon as he abandoned his sin. Such a one appears
to have written Job, for the plan of it is entirely in this spirit. But daily experience
could not possibly be permitted to confirm this belief, or else it would have been all
over, for ever, with people who had this experience, so far as all recognition and
reception was concerned of the truth as yet unfamiliar to them. For if the pious were
absolutely happy, and it also of course was a necessary part of his happiness that his
satisfaction should be broken by no uneasy thoughts of death, and that he should die old,
and satisfied with life to the full: how could he yearn after another life? and how could
he reflect upon a thing after which he did not yearn? But if the pious did not reflect
thereupon, who then should reflect? The transgressor? he who felt the punishments of his
misdeeds, and if he cursed this life, must have so gladly renounced that other existence?
Much less would it signify if an Israelite here and there directly and expressly denied
the immortality of the soul and future recompense, on account of the law having no
reference thereto. The denial of an individual, had it even been a Solomon, did not arrest
the progress of the general reason, and was even in itself a proof that the nation had now
come a great step nearer the truth. For individuals only deny what the many are bringing
into consideration; and to bring into consideration that, concerning which no one troubled
himself at all before, is half way to knowledge.
Let us also acknowledge that it is a heroic obedience to obey the laws of God simply
because they are God's laws, and not because He has promised to reward the obedience to
them here and there; to obey them even though there be an entire despair of future
recompense, and uncertainty respecting a temporal one. Must not a people educated in this
heroic obedience towards God have been destined, must they not have been capable beyond
all others of executing Divine purposes of quite a special character? Let the soldier, who
pays blind obedience to his leader, become also convinced of his leader's wisdom, and then
say what that leader may not undertake to achieve with him.
As yet the Jewish people had reverenced in their Jehovah rather the mightiest than the
wisest of all Gods; as yet they had rather feared Him as a Jealous God than loved Him: a
proof this too, that the conception which they had of their eternal One God was not
exactly the right conception which we should have of God. However, now the time was come
that these conceptions of theirs were to be expanded, ennobled, rectified, to accomplish
which God availed Himself of a quite natural means, a better and more correct measure, by
which it got the opportunity of appreciating Him. Instead of, as hitherto, appreciating
Him in contrast with the miserable idols of the small neighboring peoples, with whom they
lived in constant rivalry, they began, in captivity under the wise Persians, to measure
Him against the "Being of all Beings" such as a more disciplined reason
recognized and reverenced. Revelation had guided their reason, and now, all at once,
reason gave clearness to their Revelation.
This was the first reciprocal influence which these two (Reason and Revelation)
exercised on one another; and so far is the mutual influence from being unbecoming to the
Author of them both, that without it either of them would have been useless. The child,
sent abroad, saw other children who knew more, who lived more becomingly, and asked
itself, in confusion, "Why do I not know that too? Why do I not live so too? Ought I
not to have been taught and admonished of all this in my father's house?" Thereupon
it again sought out its Primer, which had long been thrown into a corner, in order to
throw off a blame upon the Primer. But behold, it discovers that the blame does not rest
upon the books, that the shame is solely its own, for not having long ago, known this very
thing, and lived in this very way.
Since the Jews, by this time, through the medium of the pure Persian doctrine,
recognized in their Jehovah, not simply the greatest of all national deities, but God; and
since they could, the more readily find Him and indicate Him to others in their sacred
writings, inasmuch as He was really in them; and since they manifested as great an
aversion for sensuous representations, or at all events, were instructed in these
Scriptures, to have an aversion to them as great as the Persians had always felt; what
wonder that they found favor in the eyes of Cyrus, with a Divine Worship which he
recognized as being, no doubt, far below pure Sabeism, but yet far above the rude
idolatries which in its stead had taken possession of the forsaken land of the Jews. Thus
enlightened respecting the treasures which they had possessed, without knowing it, they
returned, and became quite another people, whose first care it was to give permanency to
this illumination amongst themselves. Soon an apostacy and idolatry among them was out of
the question. For it is possible to be faithless to a national deity, but never to God,
after He has once been recognised.
The theologians have tried to explain this complete change in the Jewish people in a
different way; and one, who has well demonstrated the insufficiency of these explanations,
at last was for giving us, as a true account - "the visible fulfillment of the
prophecies which had been spoken and written respecting the Babylonish captivity and the
restoration from it." But even this reason can be only so far the true one, as it
presupposes the, by this time, exalted ideas of God. The Jews must by this time have
recognized that to do miracles, and to predict the future, belonged only to God, both of
which they had ascribed formerly to false idols, by which it came to pass that even
miracles and prophecies had hitherto made so weak an impression upon them. Doubtless, the
Jews were made more acquainted with the doctrine of immortality among the Chaldeans and
Persians. They became more familiar with it too in the schools of the Greek Philosophers
in Egypt. However, as this doctrine was not in the same condition in reference to their
Scriptures that the doctrines of God's Unity and Attributes were - since the former were
entirely overlooked by that sensual people, while the latter would be sought for: - and
since too, for the former, previous exercising was necessary, and as yet there had been
only hints and allusions, the faith in the immortality of the soul could naturally never
be the faith of the entire people. It was and continued to be only the creed of a certain
section of them.
An example of what I mean by "previous exercising" for the doctrine of
immortality, is the Divine threatenings of punishing the misdeeds of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generation. This accustomed the fathers to live in
thought with their remotest posterity, and to feel, as it were, beforehand, the misfortune
which they had brought upon these guiltless ones. By an allusion I mean that which was
intended only to excite curiosity and to occasion questions. As, for instance, the
oft-recurring mode of expression, describing death by "he was gathered to his
fathers." By a "hint" I mean that which already contains any germ, out of
which the, as yet, held back truth allows itself to be developed. Of this character was
the inference of Christ from the naming of God "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob." This hint appears to me to be unquestionably capable of being worked out into
a strong proof. In such previous exercitations, allusions, hints, consists the positive
perfection of a Primer; just as the above-mentioned peculiarity of not throwing
difficulties or hindrances in the way to the suppressed truth constitutes the negative
perfection of such a book. Add to all this the clothing and style.
1. The clothing of abstract truths, which were not entirely to be passed over, in
allegories and instructive single circumstances, which were narrated as actual
occurrences. Of this character are the Creation under the image of growing Day; the Origin
of Evil in the story of the Forbidden Tree; the source of the variety of languages in the
history of the Tower of Babel, &c.
2. The style - sometimes plain and simple, sometimes poetical, throughout full of
tautologies, but of such a kind as practised sagacity, since they sometimes appear to be
saying something else, and yet the same thing; sometimes the same thing over again, and
yet to signify or to be capable of signifying at the bottom, something else:
And then you have all the properties of excellence which belong to a Primer for a
childlike people, as well as for children.
But every Primer is only for a certain age. To delay the child, that has outgrown it,
longer in it than it was intended for, is hurtful. For to be able to do this in a way in
any sort profitable, you must insert into it more than there is really in it, and extract
from it more than it can contain. You must look for and make too much of allusions and
hints; squeeze allegories too closely; interpret examples too circumstantially; press too
much upon words. This gives the child a petty, crooked, hair splitting understanding; it
makes him full of mysteries, superstitions; full of contempt for all that is
comprehensible and easy. The very way in which the Rabbis handled their sacred books! The
very character which they thereby imparted to the character of their people! A Better
Instructor must come and tear the exhausted Primer from the child's hands. Christ came!
That portion of the human race which God had willed to comprehend in one Educational
plan, was ripe for the second step of Education. He had, however, only willed to
comprehend on such a plan, one which by language, mode of action, government, and other
natural and political relationships, was already united in itself. That is, this portion
of the human race was come so far in the exercise of its reason, as to need, and to be
able to make use of nobler and worthier motives of moral action than temporal rewards and
punishments, which had hitherto been its guides. The child had become a youth. Sweetmeats
and toys have given place to the budding desire to go as free, as honored, and as happy as
its elder brother. For a long time, already, the best individuals of that portion of the
human race (called above the elder brother) had been accustomed to let themselves be ruled
by the shadow of such nobler motives. The Greek and Roman did everything to live on after
this life, even if it were only in the remembrance of their fellow-citizens. It was time
that another true life to be expected after this should gain an influence over the youth's
actions. And so Christ was the first certain practical Teacher of the immortality of the
soul.
The first certain Teacher. Certain, through the prophecies which were fulfilled in Him;
certain, through the miracles which He achieved; certain, through His own revival after a
death through which He had sealed His doctrine. Whether we can still prove this revival,
these miracles, I put aside, as I leave on one side who the Person of Christ was. All that
may have been at that time of great weight for the reception of His doctrine, but it is
now no longer of the same importance for the recognition of the truth of His doctrine.
The first practical Teacher. For it is one thing to conjecture, to wish, and to believe
the immortality of the soul, as a philosophic speculation: quite another thing to direct
the inner and outer acts by it.And this at least Christ was the first to teach. For
although, already before Him, the belief had been introduced among many nations, that bad
actions have yet to be punished in that life; yet they were only such actions as were
injurious to civil society, and consequently, too, had already had their punishment in
civil society. To enforce an inward purity of heart in reference to another life, was
reserved for Him alone.
His disciples have faithfully propagated these doctrines: and if they had even had no
other merit, than that of having effected a more general publication, among other nations,
of a Truth which Christ had appeared to have destined only for the Jews, yet would they
have even on the account alone, to be reckoned among the Benefactors and Fosterers of the
Human Race. If, however, they transplanted this one great Truth together with other
doctrines, whose truth was less enlightening, whose usefulness was of a less exalted
character, how could it be otherwise. Let us not blame them for this, but rather seriously
examine whether these very commingled doctrines have not become a new impulse of
directions for human reason. At least, it is already clear that the New Testament
Scriptures, in which these doctrines after some time were found preserved, have afforded,
and still afford, the second better Primer for the race of man. For seven hundred years
past they have exercised human reason more than all other books, and enlightened it more,
were it even only through the light which the human reason itself threw into them.
It would have been impossible for any other book to become so generally known among
different nations: and indisputably, the fact that modes of thought so diverse from each
other have been occupied on the same book, has helped on the human reason more than if
every nation had had its own Primer specially for itself. It was also highly necessary
that each people for a period should hold this Book as the ne plus ultra of their
knowledge. For the youth must consider his Primer as the first of all books, that the
impatience to finish this book, may not hurry him on to things for which he has, as yet,
laid no basis.
And one thing is also of the greatest importance even now. Thou abler spirit, who art
fretting and restless over the last page of the Primer, beware! Beware of letting thy
weaker fellow scholars mark what thou perceivest afar, or what thou art beginning to see!
Until these weaker fellow scholars are up with thee, rather return once more into this
Primer, and examine whether that which thou takest only for duplicates of the method, for
a blunder in the teaching, is not perhaps something more.
Thou hast seen in the childhood of the human race, respecting the doctrine of God's
unity, that God makes immediate revelations of mere truths of reason, or has permitted and
caused pure truths of reason to be taught, for some time, as truths of immediate
revelation, in order to promulgate them the more rapidly, and ground them the more firmly.
Thou experiencest in the boyhood of the Race the same thing in reference to the doctrine
of the immortality of the soul. It is preached in the better Primer as a Revelation,
instead of taught as a result of human reason. As we by this time can dispense with the
Old Testament, in reference to the doctrine of the unity of God, and as we are by degrees
beginning also to be less dependent on the New Testament, in reference to the immortality
of the soul: might there not in this Book also be other truths of the same sort
prefigured, mirrored, as it were, which we are to marvel at, as revelations, exactly so
long as until the time shall come when reason shall have learned to educe them, out of its
other demonstrated truths and bind them up with them?
For instance, the doctrine of the Trinity. How if this doctrine should at last, after
endless errors, right and left, only bring men on the road to recognise that God cannot
possibly be One in the sense in which finite things are one, that even His unity must be a
transcendental unity, which does not exclude a sort of plurality? Must not God at least
have the most perfect conception of Himself, i.e., a conception in which is found
everything which is in Him? But would everything be found in it which is in Him, if a mere
conception, a mere possibility, were found even of his necessary Reality as well as of His
other qualities? This possibility exhausts the being of His other qualities. Does it that
of His necessary Reality? I think not. Consequently God can either have no perfect
conception of himself at all, or this perfect conception is just as necessarily real,
i.e., actually existent, as He Himself is. Certainly the image of myself in the mirror is
nothing but an empty representation of me, because it only has that of me upon the surface
of which beams of light fall. But now if this image had everything, everything without
exception, which I have myself, would it then still be a mere empty representation, or not
rather a true reduplication of myself? When I believe that I recognise in God a familiar
reduplication, I perhaps do not so much err, as that my language is insufficient for my
ideas: and so much at least for ever incontrovertible, that they who wish to make the idea
thereof popular for comprehension, could scarcely have expressed themselves more
intelligibly and suitably than by giving the name of a Son begotten from Eternity.
And the doctrine of Original Sin. How, if at last everything were to convince us that
man standing on the first and lowest step of his humanity, is not so entirely master of
his actions as to be able to obey moral laws?
And the doctrine of the Son's satisfaction. How, if at last, all compelled us to assume
that God, in spite of that original incapacity of man, chose rather to give him moral
laws, and forgive him all transgressions in consideration of His Son, i.e., in
consideration of the self-existent total of all His own perfections, compared with which,
and in which, all imperfections of the individual disappear, than not to give him those
laws, and then to exclude him from all moral blessedness, which cannot be conceived of
without moral laws.
Speculations On The Mysteries Of Religion - Conclusion
Let it not be objected that speculations of this description upon the mysteries of
religion are forbidden. The word mystery signified, in the first ages of Christianity,
something quite different from what it means now: and the cultivation of revealed truths
into truths of reason, is absolutely necessary, if the human race is to be assisted by
them. When they were revealed they were certainly no truths of reason, but they were
revealed in order to become such. They were like the "that makes - " of the
ciphering master, which he says to the boys, beforehand, in order to direct them thereby
in their reckoning. If the scholars were to be satisfied with the "that makes,"
they would never learn to calculate, and would frustrate the intention with which their
good master gave them a guiding clue in their work. And why should not we too, by the
means of a religion whose historical truth, if you will, looks dubious, be conducted in a
familiar way to closer and better conceptions of the Divine Being, our own nature, our
relation to God, truths at which the human reason would never have arrived of itself?
It is not true that speculations upon these things have ever done harm or become
injurious to the body politic. You must reproach, not the speculations, but the folly and
the tyranny of checking them. You must lay the blame on those who would not permit men
having their own speculations to exercise them. On the contrary, speculations of this
sort, whatever the result, are unquestionably the most fitting exercises of the human
heart, generally, so long as the human heart, generally, is at best only capable of loving
virtue for the sake of its eternal blessed consequences. For in this selfishness of the
human heart, to will to practice the understanding too, only, on that which concerns our
corporal needs, would be to blunt rather than to sharpen it. It absolutely will be
exercised on spiritual objects, if it is to attain its perfect illumination, and bring out
that purity of heart which makes us capable of loving virtue for its own sake alone. Or,
is the human species never to arrive at this highest step of illumination and purity? -
Never?
Never? - Let me not think this blasphemy, All Merciful! Education has its goal, in the
Race, no less than in the Individual. That which is educated is educated for something.
The flattering prospects which are open to the people, the Honor and Well-being which are
painted to him, what are they more than the means of educating him to become a man, who,
when these prospects of Honor and Well-being have vanished, shall be able to do his Duty?
This is the aim of human education, and should not the Divine education extend as far?
Is that which is successful in the way of Art with the individual, not to be successful in
the way of Nature with the whole? Blasphemy! Blasphemy!! No! It will come! it will
assuredly come! the time of the perfecting, when man, the more convinced his understanding
feels itself of an ever better Future, will nevertheless not be necessitated to borrow
motives of action from his Future; for he will do the Right because it is right, not
because arbitrary rewards are annexed thereto, which formerly were intended simply to fix
and strengthen his unsteady gaze in recognizing the inner, better, rewards of well-doing.
It will assuredly come! the time of a new eternal Gospel, which is promised us in the
Primer of the New Testament itself!
Perhaps even some enthusiasts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had caught a
glimpse of a beam of this new eternal Gospel, and only erred in that they predicted its
outburst at so near to their own time. Perhaps their "Three Ages of the World"
were not so empty a speculation after all, and assuredly they had no contemptible views
when they caught that the New Covenant must become as much antiquated as the old has been.
There remained by them the similarity of the economy of the same God. Ever, to let them
speak my words, ever the self-same plan of the Education of the Race. Only they were
premature. Only they believed that they could make their contemporaries, who had scarcely
outgrown their childhood, without enlightenment, without preparation, men worthy of their
Third Age.
And it was just this which made them enthusiasts. The enthusiast often casts true
glances into the future, but for this future he cannot wait. He wishes this future
accelerated, and accelerated through him. That for which nature takes thousands of years
is to mature itself in the moment of his existence. For what possession has he in it if
that which he recognises as the Best does not become the best in his lifetime? Does he
come back? Does he expect to come back? Marvellous only that this enthusiastic expectation
does not become more the fashion among enthusiasts.
Go thine inscrutable way, Eternal Providence! Only let me not despair in Thee, because
of this inscrutableness. Let me not despair in Thee, even if Thy steps appear to me to be
going back. It is not true that the shortest line is always straight. Thou hast on Thine
Eternal Way so much to carry on together, so much to do! So many aside steps to take! And
what if it were as good as proved that the vast flow wheel which brings mankind nearer to
this perfection is only put in motion by smaller, swifter wheels, each of which
contributes its own individual unit thereto? It is so! The very same Way by which the Race
reaches its perfection, must every individual man - one sooner - another later - have
travelled over. Have travelled over in one and the same life? Can he have been, in one and
the selfsame life, a sensual Jew and a spiritual Christian? Can he in the self-same life
have overtaken both? Surely not that! But why should not every individual man have existed
more than once upon this world? Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the
oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the Schools had
dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once? Why may not even I have already
performed those steps of my perfecting which bring to man only temporal punishments and
rewards? And once more, why not another time all those steps, to perform which the views
of Eternal Rewards so powerfully assist us? Why should I not come back as often as I am
capable of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expertness? Do I bring away so much from once,
that there is nothing to repay the trouble of coming back? Is this a reason against it?
Or, because I forget that I have been here already? Happy is it for me that I do forget.
The recollection of my former condition would permit me to make only a bad use of the
present. And that which even I must forget now, is that necessarily forgotten for ever? Or
is it a reason against the hypothesis that so much time would have been lost to me? Lost -
And how much then should I miss? - Is not a whole Eternity mine?
Source:
Literary and philosophical essays: French, German and Italian. With introductions
and notes. New York, Collier [c1910] The Harvard classics, 32
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© Paul Halsall, August 1998
