All erroneous systems, whether of philosophy or religion, lie somewhere between these two extremes of false thought. Every species of theoretical or practical unbelief or erring faith, or even of a scientific superstition, either approximates, on the one hand, to naturalism, whether under the garb of a poetical symbolism, or the scientific form of a dynamical theory, or, on the other, to the absolutism of the reason, with its dead formularies. Every religious and every philosophical error is either a subordinate or a distorted species of one or the other—or, it may be, a mixture—a mean compounded of both. Manifold, however, or, rather, innumerable, are the several changes and combinations into which these two elements of infidelity and an erring faith may, and, indeed, actually do, enter.
Schlegel, The Philosophy of Life, Morrison, tr., p. 221.
This quote is extraordinarily potent. Since reading it the first time, it has recurred in my mind for about the forth time in a week. It's very helpful for me because I tend to be drawn in the naturalistic direction, which seems "natural" but the consequences scare me. And the absolutist seems so rigidly dead in the context of thinking about God... A born teacher you are, Brandon!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
ReplyDeleteSchlegel does seem to be on to something here; I think everyone probably tends a little one direction or another.