Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/151

151

PHILOSOPHY FALSELY SO CALLED.

fixed dominion over them ; for now with the name,
their form, their properties, their habits, in one single
expression, immediately arose before his mind, and now
he could see at a glance their similarity, and their un-
likeness, their usefulness, and their hurtfulness. So we
are first really masters of an idea, when we have found
the proper expression for it. Our thinking is speaking,
either inwardly to ourselves, or for the outward ear.
To become masters of the idea of God, as that philoso-
phy aims to do which seeks to bring down divine
things to the level of man's capacity, we must also
have a language to express him. If we have not this
language — and I think the want of it sufficiently
proved by the hollow, ambiguous, sophistical dialect of
modern philosophy which seems to writhe helplessly
beneath its own sepulchral stone — so we must not ex-
pect from this philosophy any explanation of divine
things."
  "And indeed," sighed Mander, "we are not to ex-
pect it from any quarter, since all explanation must
come to us through language."
  "Through no human language," replied Hold, "but
through the divine speech, through faith.
  "Do you think it is so strange," continued Hold,
"that God, the Invisible, the Eternal, takes a differ-
ent method to reveal himself to us from that through
which we attain to a knowledge of things visible and
temporal ? To these we may speak — to use the word
in the sense of the serpent-charmers — we may grasp
them, hold them, and make ourselves masters of them
by the power of our intellect, whose chief force lies in
words. Shall this faculty, whose development and per-