Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 92

68

§ 39.

ORGANIC RELATION

[Div. II

and onr juitu:^, between that object and our conscious nessy and between that object and our world of thought. The first also lies pregnantly expressed in viewing man object

as a microcosm.

human

to the

The human

soul stands in organic relation

body, and that body stands in every

way

organically related to the several kingdoms of nature round

Chemically analyzed, the elements of our body appear to be the same as those of the world which surround Vegetable life finds its analogies in our body. And as us. concerns the body, we are not merely organically allied to the animal world, but an entire world of animalcula crowd in about us.

ways and feed upon our bodies. The which are at work about us are likewise at magnetic powers work within us. Our lungs are organically adapted to our Indeed, atmosphere, our ear to sound, and our eye to light. wherever a thing presents itself to us as an object of science,

upon us

in all sorts of

even when for a moment we exclude the spiritual, it stands in organic relation to our body, and through our body to our soul.

And

as far as the spiritual objects are concerned, i.e.

the religious, ethic, intellectual and aesthetic

life, it

would

be utterly impossible for us to obtain any scientific knowlorganic relation were wanting between The undeniable fact and our own soul. these spheres that a blind person can form no idea for himself of the visible beautiful, and the deaf no idea of music, does by no means Suppose that a Raphael had militate against this position. been afflicted in his youth with blindness, or a Bach with deafness, this Avould have made us poorer by so much as one corypha3US among the artists of the pencil and one virtuoso

edge of these,

if all

of life

among

the artists of sound; but the disposition of his genius world of the beautiful would have been no whit less The normal sense merely either in Raphael or in Bach. would have been wanting with them, to develop this disposition of genius. For the organic relation in which our soul

to the

stands to these several spheres of spiritual

life

does not lie

exclusively in the organ of sense, but in the organization of our spiritual ego.

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