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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
" The whole of our mental experience , from the earliest excitement of the soul by the first sensation to the ultimate development of its intellectual and moral powers , is expressed by one word , the life or active state of the soul . In the investigation of our interior being :, two errors seem to have been committed in the analysis of the powers of the soul ; either the inquirer has lost sight of the unity , which is implied in its existence , or the soul itself
has been regarded wholly as a thinking being , and from its capacity to form ideas , all its actions have been derived . This is an imperfect view , which makes a right exposition of what is within us impossible , and which Jacobi wished to avoid , when he derived that which is highest in our intellectual life , religious belief , not from the capacity to know , but from the capacity to feel ; or , as it is commonly denominated , the heart . The life of the soul commences with its first feeling , with its first sensation of pain by means of
its connexion with the body , and through it with the external world . Through the impressions thus made the various affections and powers dormant in the soul are excited and developed . Without such excitement it would never awake out of its sleep , and the life or active state of the soul would never exist . Through the body the soul is put in a condition to act upon the external world , and becomes capable of its various manifestations . The body having performed its office is released from its service ; and as was the birth so is the death of the body , the passing of the soul into a new sphere of existence . Through the effects of the external world , high manifestations of the life of the soul are revealed ; but there is a yet higher influence acting upon the soul ; there is a divine influence , that spirit which comes from God , and binds the soul to God ; in other words , God acts immediately upon the soul ; he wakes in it holy stirrings , and the more it follows them , the more it is united with God . Thus the soul is endowed with various capacities : but they require development , and a fit object to
draw them into outward expression . This development and this object are of two kinds , from within and from without ; through the body or by the soul itself ; and they come from God and from the external world . Neither body nor spirit ( in this peculiar use of the term ) are the soul itself , but both are given to her , the body that she may rule it , the spirit that she may obey
it . This distinction accords with the language of the Scriptures , 1 Thess . v . 23 , * And I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved , ' &c Gal . v . 16 , * Walk in the spirit , and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh . ' Ch . vii . 8 , * He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption , but he that soweth to the spirit shall from the spirit reap life everlasting . '"
On Consciousness , " Through the attention , which accompanies sensation , a higher grade of life is soon awakened and manifested , tnat is , conscious existence . The soul is now not merely a being that feels desires and is excited , but also a thinking being , and therefore a being which has in itself the cause of its own actions , ft has an inward eye , by which it can discern itself , and perceive what passes within itself . It brings the various changing feelings arid affections before its own consciousness as ideas , and can now retain them
there . These it is able to unite after the necessary laws of its own consciousness ; it thinks . In this consciousness we discern the soul as an abiding existence , and through it we have the conscious being , myself . With the light of conscious existence the soul comes out of its former darkness , having found the chord which strings all its different states to one
Untitled Article
290 Letters from Germany .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1831, page 290, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2597/page/2/
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