Puslapio vaizdai
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materialism and spiritualism in all the universe. The PolishSlavonian race, manifesting itself finally, today, as a divine and moral force in Europe, must have an advantage over the Roman race as pursuing mostly materialism, and over the German race as living in speculation."

This general view of the dispositions and tendencies of dif ferent races in Europe may be regarded by the American public as a presumption and an hypothesis difficult to be proved. Trentowski's leading idea, however, is that the two opposites in this dualism are but temporary agents, and ought to work in harmony for their master, and for the third divine world; in which he invites the Slavonian race to become workmen. He believes that this third divine world changes the present system of philosophy, science, and all learning; that it explains a profound Christianity, from a new and most important side, and throws a fertile seed into theology and polity; that it awakes in the Slavonian people their own feelings, and prepares them to triumph over their oppressors; that it puts, finally, the Polish nation, as such, for their chief, by whose lips is expressed a new thought and a word for their salvation; and that every thinker, watching the movements of ideas in Europe, will agree to these assertions.

"Both nation and man," says Trentowski, "are compounded of body, spirit, and the soul; in body, dwells a physical force, that is, an animal force and vegetable health; in spirit, dwells a metaphysical force, that is, thinking, knowledge, science, learning, talent, genius; in the soul, finally, dwells a moral and divine force, that is, strong will, unshaken enterprise, bold action, and readiness to sacrifice, and devotedness, an ardent love of truth, virtue, holiness, liberty, conscience, in a word, character. The soul, this immortal though created deity, is, in us, an arbitrator and mistress; body and spirit are only her temporary laborers, her servants. The soul, as divine power, considers death, not as an enemy, but as a friendly angel, who calls us to our new birth, and leads us into the better, eternal, and true world."

According to this direction of the Polish-Slavonian philosophy, Trentowski sets forth a new principle, as a moral standard, and cries out to the Slavonian race, and especially to his

own nation

"Let us leave to the Roman race utility, this merely good empirical, which the Roman church, and the political powers, infected with her Machiavelish spirit; which the tiara and the present crowns have possessed; and what is noble as a speculation only,

this metaphysical good, let us leave to the German race; - for the Slavonians, and especially for the Poles, God has reserved duty, which is useful as well as noble, and leads to the highest true good alone. The Slavonian, then, and the Pole who will have brought himself to the inward knowledge that he is a created deity, whose totality is God himself, will disdain the animal force, and the diplomatic or rather satanic wisdom of his enemies, and will be united with God, that he may partake of his omnipotence! His divine nature, like that of God himself, is truth, beauty, virtue, holiness, liberty, light, law, and knowledge of himself. He will then permit himself to be crucified for truth, beauty, and virtue, for holiness and liberty. Devotedness and self-sacrifice are his duty. He cannot fear death, because the soul, as immortal deity, cannot die. It is better to expire a hundred times under the knouts of enemies, by the most cruel death, than to degrade his divine nature by the yoke of slavery. The Pole ought to be for his oppressed fatherland, and Slavonia, what Jesus Christ was for all the human race. The Polish-Slavonian people must suffer much, because they have a high mission in the world; that is, to reveal and realize the kingdom of God on earth.”

We can account for the application of these views, by a Pole, to his own country, as possessing a higher civilization and more rich literature than that of the other Slavonians.

Let us hear for a moment Trentowski's ideas with regard to religion and politics:

"Religion and politics," says he, "are two separate and wholly independent inherited possessions of human deity. Religion draws up the soul to heaven, politics attract it to the earth; the first seeks after God, the second after humanity; the one looks to what is there, the other to what is here. Religion aspires after the eternal salvation of individual persons, politics after the present happiness of humanity or that of a certain nation; Religion relies on the love of God, politics on that of our neighbor. Religion leads man from the earth to heaven, and politics desire to draw to him heaven on earth. The end of religion is holiness, that of politics is freedom. Religion and politics are two sisters of divine birth, they stimulate us to virtue and selfsacrificing devotedness; but they cannot be united by violence into one conception, because the one is heavenly and the other earthly. Religion has its end in itself; he, then, who transforms it into a political instrument, degrades it, inexpressibly, and offends his Father in heaven, for it implies making God a human servant, and using the most holy thing for a worldly power, somewhat as money. Such a man is an Asiatic; because in Asia, for instance, in Japan, China, even in the Mohammedan Persia and

Turkey, religion has been eternally made subject to politics. Such a man is a pupil of the Athenian tyrant and sophist Critias, according to whom gods are a political invention, and stand under the order of men wielding the earthly power. Such like the Emperor of Russia — wishes to use religion for an instrument of his despotism, and he can easily become a worshipper of his Mongolish wisdom. Religion is holy; then it is a great sin and offence against God to change it into a political instrument.

a man

"But politics have an end in themselves; he, also, who wishes to change politics into a religious means only, violates the human law, prepares the road for the abominable sway of theocracy and sacerdotal tyranny, and, under the cover of holiness, tramples freedom under foot. Such a man is equally an Asiatic, because, in Thibet, for instance, and all Mongolia, politics are the slave of religion. The popes of the Middle Ages, having thrown politics, or the state, under the feet of religion, transformed themselves, instantly, into the European Dalay-Lama, and prepared their own downfall. Between the pope and the Emperor of Russia is this difference: that the former strives, in all Europe, to make politics a slave of religion, and the latter makes religion a slave of politics. The identifying of religion with politics is in both cases the Asiatic, and the acknowledgment of their mutual independence is the European principle, and eminently that of the American Republic. Church and state are in the same relation to each other as spirit and body, and only such oppositions as spirit and body are able to inter-penetrate each other reciprocally, and create a sound and harmonious unity.

"If we turn our attention to these three technical words, historism, radicalism, and liberalism, the same confusion of ideas will disappear as soon as we shall have explained them according to the above principle.

"Historism and radicalism," says the Polish philosopher, "are two opposite manifestations; but, acting in harmony, produce a total divine truth of liberalism. Historism with radicalism, as body and spirit, as the past and the future, ought to pervade each other freely and independently, but never struggle, as enemies, for an absolute empire; as they both ought to be friendly servants of liberalism, which is their living master, an image of God.

"The followers of historism proclaim that the state is an institution of God; but they are wrong; because man is a free being, as God himself, and freedom cannot be either absolutism or slavery. If the state were an institution of God, God would be similar to the absolute emperor, whose orders create a social world; and man would be a slave, a being without will, a brute animal. Are, then, such states as ancient Babylon and Persia, mod

ern Japan and Russia, institutions of God? No! they are institutions of man. What the past created, and what, in its time, could be useful and necessary, the same becomes a vile and criminate absolutism, in relation to the present time, which cannot be stopped in its progressive course; and such an institution of God is a tyranny worthy of public disdain. The people who live in the present time have their own free will and natural ability for self-government, self-legislation, or autonomy. Such men of historism as are aiming at their own advantage are egotists and Satans, and their institution of God, speaking properly, is an institution of Satan.

"The followers of radicalism tell the world that the state is the

result of reciprocal agreement and free contract. In the beginning, as they affirm, people lived in a continual war among themselves; when tired, they must have formed an alliance in order to secure their lives and property. Thus, fear for their lives has been father of the state! This explanation would be excellent, were man a brute animal,- for only the brute animals live in a continual war among themselves. But how could the human animals be able to enter into an alliance so far as to establish a state, since, from the beginning of the world down to our days, no species of animals has done it? It is as superficial and partial a doctrine as any one of those now repeated from Hobbes and Rousseau; it shocks my humanity, and cannot be proved, either a priori or a posteriori. Every people, as a nation, has its own language, its own thoughts, feelings, virtues, morals, and customs; a thousand qualities, higher than all political contracts, preceding them, being their substantial foundation, and connecting men by the power of common love, but not common enactment-by heart, not parchment. As inclination to society is general, so ability to create a state is innate to humanity. The human races, spread upon the earth, working out by themselves this natural ability, or what lived and vibrated in them, in potentia changing into in actu, have connected themselves in various states. Whence came the innate ideas of humanity? From the source of all talents, genius, and abilities, that is, from God. God breathed into human nature the power and inclination to form a state. From this point, that is, in the last principle, the state is truly an institution of God. Man himself, however, develops the spark God has gifted him with, and creates his own world, wise or foolish, good or bad, according to the degree of his education, instruction, and enlightenment. Genius and talents, given to us by God, manifest themselves by their own power alone. The same may be understood of the innate ability in man to form a state. Then the state is a product of human nature; it is an institution of God only as possibility, only before manifestation, or in potentia; but it is a human institution, and the result of recipro

cal agreement, and free contract, as reality, or in actu. The doctrine of historism unites here with that of radicalism, creating in harmony a true liberalism."

To explain more fully the fundamental principle of this new system, we proceed farther, in its application to man's faculties and character.

We will show here, as concisely as possible, and that only from recollection, Trentowski's analysis of the faculties and character of the man and woman, in his curious aphorisms about marriage, where he maintains that, though the immortal soul has the same divine nature in both sexes, still, the two temporary phases in them are in inverse ratio and attractive oppositions; that is, man outwardly is real and inwardly ideal, but woman outwardly is ideal and inwardly real. It will suffice, however, for our purpose, to cast a rapid glance at his account of the faculties and character of man.

Since man is compounded of body and spirit, two opposite tendencies serving the third divine power, in order to enkindle in him a spark of God, and to form his character, public attention ought to be turned to the development of physical force, or the muscular system, and to that of the mental faculties; and by this means to form man's character, which is to love truth, virtue, liberty, and duty above all things, as God himself; to be a visible image of God on the earth, and a self-creator, self-governor, in his own domain, in his social organization. But, to develop man's faculties, it is necessary to know them in their natural order and action.

As man is compounded of three principles-body, spirit, and the soul; or physical, ideal, and divine-moral force-so his faculties are divided into three natural classes. Man's character may be analyzed into wisdom, magnanimity, and spontaneous energy; or man's head, heart, and virtue. Wisdom is a sweet water, running, from three sources of our knowledge, into three rivers; empiricism, speculation, and philosophy.

"I. The senses are the first source, and give us impressions, the first knowledge: Sentio, ergo res est, atque res sum. This is an epoch of empiricism. The inward sense, or imagination, changes the sensual impressions into the first ideas, a posteriori. Imagination, retaining these ideas, is memory. These ideas retained in memory, and recalled in thought, at will, are recollections. The union of imagination with memory is understanding. The union

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