Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 121

Chap.

THE SPIEITUAL SCIENCES

§ 42.

I]

If the

empiricism of symbolism

is

97

of very limited service

more general expressions of the equally unhelpful. The method of tracing the

to us, the empiricism of the

psychic

life is

expressions of the intellectual, ethic, social, juridic, esthetic and religious life among the different nations through the is justifiable, and it must be granted that the and the similar process of these phenomena among

course of time similarity

different nations warrant certain conclusions concerning the

but by itself this historiccomparative study offers no sufficiently scientific knowledge character of these life-utterances

;

Because you know that water descends upon the mountains mostly in the form of snow that there it forms glaciers that these glaciers melt and of the psychical life itself.

;

;

;

first as foaming torrents, and then as a navigable stream, the Avater puslies forward to the ocean, your scien-

that

knowledge

tific

of

water

is

And

not yet complete.

really

study of the moral, social and religious life of the nations teaches us not much more. Hence though we would not question for a single moment the relathis historic -comparative

tive right and usefulness of these studies, we emphatically deny that these studies constitute the real prosecution of the

spiritual sciences.

not

know

You may

excel in

the least thing about your

all

own

these studies, and

soul,

which subject-

And

ively forms the centre of all psychic investigation.

what

is

more

unknown

serious

still,

in this

way you run

a great risk

to yourself, falsifying the object of

your sciApply, for instance, this method to the science of law, and you must form the conclusion that existing law only is law. Since this existing law of,

ence,

if

not of denaturalizing

it.

constantly modifies itself according to the ideas of law that are commonl}^ accepted, all antithesis between laAvful

and unlawful becomes at last a floating conception, and law degenerates into an official stipulation of the temporarily predominating ideas concerning mutual relationships. Thus you deprive law of its eternal principles you falsify the sense of law, which by nature still speaks in us and your so-called study of law degenerates into a study of certain phenomena, which you mark with the stamp of ;

;

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