Schillers Philosophical Letters | Page 8

love. There must be a virtue
which even without the belief in immortality, even at the peril of
annihilation, suffices to carry out this sacrifice.
I grant it is ennobling to the human soul to sacrifice present enjoyment
for a future eternal good; it is the noblest degree of egotism; but
egotism and love separate humanity into two very unlike races, whose
limits are never confounded.
Egotism erects its centre in itself; love places it out of itself in the axis
of the universal whole. Love aims at unity, egotism at solitude. Love is
the citizen ruler of a flourishing republic, egotism is a despot in a
devastated creation. Egotism sows for gratitude, love for the ungrateful.
Love gives, egotism lends; and love does this before the throne of
judicial truth, indifferent if for the enjoyment of the following moment,
or with the view to a martyr's crown--indifferent whether the reward is
in this life or in the next.
Think, O Raphael, of a truth that benefits the whole human race to
remote ages; add that this truth condemns its confessor to death; that
this truth can only be proved and believed if he dies. Conceive this man
gifted with the clear all-embracing and illumining eye of genius, with
the flaming torch of enthusiasm, with all the sublime adaptations for
love; let the grand ideal of this great effect be presented to his soul; let
him have only an obscure anticipation of all the happy beings he will
make; let the present and future crowd at the same time into his soul;
and then answer me,--does this man require to be referred to a future
life?
The sum of all these emotions will become confounded with his
personality; will flow together in his personal identity, his I or Ego. The
human race he is thinking of is himself. It is a body, in which his life
swims forgotten like a blood-drop, forgotten, but essential to the
welfare of the economy; and how quickly and readily he will shed it to

secure his health.
GOD.
All perfections in the universe are united in God. God and nature are
two magnitudes which are quite alike. The whole sum of harmonic
activity which exists together in the divine substance, is in nature the
antitype of this substance, united to incalculable degrees, and measures,
and steps. If I may be allowed this expressive imagery, nature is an
infinitely divided God.
Just as in the prism a white ray of light is split up into seven darker
shades of color, so the divine personality or Ego has been broken into
countless susceptible substances. As seven darker shades melt together
in one clear pencil of light, out of the union of all these substances a
divine being would issue. The existing form of nature's fabric is the
optical glass, and all the activities of spirits are only an endless play of
colors of that simple divine ray. If it pleased Omnipotence some day to
break up this prism, the barrier between it and the world would fall
down, all spirits would be absorbed in one infinite spirit, all accords
would flow together in one common harmony, all streams would find
their end in the ocean.
The bodily form of nature came to pass through the attractive force of
the elements. The attraction of spirits, varied and developed infinitely,
would at length lead to the cessation of that separation (or may I
venture the expression) would produce God. An attraction of this kind
is love.
Accordingly, my dear Raphael, love is the ladder by which we climb up
to likeness to God. Unconsciously to ourselves, without laying claim to
it, we aim at this.
Lifeless masses are we, when we hate; Gods, when we cling; in love to
one another, Rejoicing in the gentle bond of love. Upwards this
divinest impulse holdeth sway Through the thousandfold degrees of
creation Of countless spirits who did not create.

Arm-in-arm, higher and still higher, From the savage to the Grecian
seer, Who is linked to the last seraph of the ring, We turn, of one mind,
in the same magic dance, Till measure, and e'en time itself, Sink at
death in the boundless, glowing sea.
Friendless was the great world's blaster; And feeling this, he made the
spirit world Blessed mirrors of his own blessedness! And though the
Highest found no equal, Yet infinitude foams upward unto Him From
the vast basin of creation's realm.
Love is, Raphael, the great secret that can restore the dishonored king
of gold from the flat, unprofitable chalk; that can save the eternal from
the temporal and transient, and the great oracle of duration from the
consuming conflagration of time.
What does all that has been said amount to?
If we perceive excellence, it is ours.