Schillers Philosophical Letters | Page 5

is only
one appearance in nature--the thinking being. The great compound
called the world is only remarkable to me because it is present to
shadow forth symbolically the manifold expressions of that being. All
in me and out of me is only the hieroglyph of a power which is like to
me. The laws of nature are the cyphers which the thinking mind adds
on to make itself understandable to intelligence--the alphabet by means
of which all spirits communicate with the most perfect Spirit and with
one another. Harmony, truth, order, beauty, excellence, give me joy,

because they transport me into the active state of their author, of their
possessor, because they betray the presence of a rational and feeling
Being, and let me perceive my relationship with that Being. A new
experience in this kingdom of truth: gravitation, the circulation of the
blood, the natural system of Linnaeus, correspond essentially in my
mind to the discovery of an antique dug up at Herculaneum--they are
both only the reflections of one spirit, a renewed acquaintance with a
being like myself. I speak with the Eternal through the instrument of
nature,--through the world's history: I read the soul of the artist in his
Apollo.
If you wish to be convinced, my clear Raphael, look back. Each state of
the human mind has some parable in the physical creation by which it
is shadowed forth; nor is it only artists and poets, but even the most
abstract thinkers that have drawn from this source. Lively activity we
name fire; time is a stream that rolls on, sweeping all before it; eternity
is a circle; a mystery is hid in midnight gloom, and truth dwells in the
sun. Nay, I begin to believe that even the future destiny of the human
race is prefigured in the dark oracular utterances of bodily creation.
Each coming spring, forcing the sprouts of plants out of the earth, gives
me explanations of the awful riddle of death, and contradicts my
anxious fears about an everlasting sleep. The swallow that we find
stiffened in winter, and see waking up to life after; the dead grub
coming to life again as the butterfly and rising into the air,--all these
give excellent pictures of our immortality.
How strange all seems to me now, Raphael! Now all seems peopled
round about me. To me there is no solitude in nature. Wherever I see a
body I anticipate a spirit. Wherever I trace movement I infer thought.
Where no dead lie buried, where no resurrection will be, Omnipotence
speaks to me this through His works, and thus I understand the doctrine
of the omnipresence of God.
IDEA.
All spirits are attracted by perfection. There may be deviations, but
there is no exception to this, for all strive after the condition of the

highest and freest exercise of their powers; all possess the common
instinct of extending their sphere of action; of drawing all, and centring
all in themselves; of appropriating all that is good, all that is
acknowledged as charming and excellent. When the beautiful, the true,
and the excellent are once seen, they are immediately grasped at. A
condition once perceived by us, we enter into it immediately. At the
moment when we think of them, we become possessors of a virtue,
authors of an action, discoverers of a truth, possessors of a happiness.
We ourselves become the object perceived. Let no ambiguous smile
from you, dear Raphael, disconcert me here,--this assumption is the
basis on which I found all that follows, and we must be agreed before I
take courage to complete the structure.
His inner feeling or innate consciousness tells every man almost the
same thing. For example, when we admire an act of magnanimity, of
bravery and wisdom, does not a secret feeling spring up in our heart
that we are capable of doing the same? Does not the rush of blood
coloring our cheeks on hearing narratives of this kind proclaim that our
modesty trembles at the admiration called forth by such acts? that we
are confused at the praise which this ennobling of our nature must call
down upon us? Even our body at such moments agrees with the attitude
of the man, and shows clearly that our soul has passed into the state we
admire. If you were ever present, Raphael, when a great event was
related to a large assembly, did you not see how the relater waited for
the incense of praise, how he devoured it, though it was given to the
hero of his story,--and if you were ever a relater did you not trace how
your heart was subject to this pleasing deception? You have had
examples, my dear Raphael, of how easily I can wrangle with my best
friend respecting the reading