The Body as the Sevenfold Means of Self-Representation to the Soul

THE BODY AS THE SEVENFOLD MEANS OF SELF-REPRESENTATION TO THE SOUL.

Sec. X.

The saying of Thomasius⁸ is true, in addition to that of Harless and Hofmann, that Scripture has no intention of giving a physiology of man. For this reason biblical psychology is not a

¹ According as r.oirfio; is conceived of as the entirety of all creation, or (as Gal. iv. 8, Col. ii. 8, 20, Heb. ix. 1) as the entirety of all material existence, man, or even only man's body, may be named microcosm. Both are actually as well as literally scriptural.

8 Dogm. i. 166 (2d ed.).

natural philosophy of the soul of man. But as Scripture considers man not merely under the point of view of redemption, but also under that of creation, and inextricably interweaves its doctrines of salvation with some constant and fundamental considerations of the natural condition of human existence,¹ so it contains, moreover, abundant material in reference to the natural knowledge of the human soul; although this natural knowledge is not its object, but only a means to its purpose of salvation ; and even this material having reference to the nature and the natural life of the soul, falls into the region of the psychological problem. Certainly Scripture is a book just as much human as divine. It speaks of man, when it is not giving announcements that bear the specific character of revelation, in the language of antiquity, and especially of the Hebrew people. But it will be a justifiable endeavour, to compare these its appropriate popular representations with its revealed fundamental doctrines, and to see whether there is manifest an internal consistency between them, and whether the truthfulness required of them is inherent in these representations. How copious is the material of biblical psychology, is shown as a matter of fact, by our not finding ourselves more than midway advanced, after the long course that we have already traversed; and nobody can reproach us with having hitherto anywhere displaced the boundaries between Scripture and natural science. The risk of doing this does not begin until now, when we are undertaking to bring into juxtaposition the declarations of Scripture on the relation of the soul to corporeity. We trust that we may escape this risk. Or have we already incurred it, in proceeding upon the valuable prejudice, that Scripture declares nothing about the relation between soul and body, whereof it needs to be ashamed in the presence of the present physiological knowledge of man?

The most popular biblical figure of the relation of the soul or of the spirit to the body, is the figure of the body as of the

¹ "It is a weak objection," says Ebrard, Dogm. i. 206, "that it is no purpose of Holy Scripture to give instructions in natural history. It is very true. But it supplies first principles in the consideration of nature, "which have a significance of an immediately religious character." And Fabri, in the Evang. K.Z. 1857, col. 1072: "The result consequent on the canon, that we must not expect from Scripture any natural knowledge, will not only be to mislead dogmatic philosophy from the perfect sense of Scripture, but continually to entangle it in unscriptural spiritual views."

house of the inward man. This house is called, with reference to its origin (Gen. ii. 7, comp. Job xxxiii. 6), a house of clay, "iornv3 (Job iv. 19): the body, as fyOaprov awfia, is cajled yew$es cncrjvos (Wisd. ix. 15). In this aKrjvos (or, as Doric poets and the Pythagoreans call the body, aKavos) there is an allusion to the fragility and the final breaking up of the habitation of gross elements. The body, as St Paul more accurately expresses it, is a tent-house, owe/a Tov aio'jvow; (2 Cor. v. 1), in which we are not at home (ivSrjfiovfiev) without at the same time being absolutely strangers (e/cS^yiew): we depart from it at length (eKSrjfiovfiev), and as a shepherd's tent, \tn bnx (Isa. xxxviii. 12), it passes away from us: death is a'iroOean Tov aKrjvwfiaros (2 Pet. i. 13). According to another representation—which likewise refers to the dissolubility of the double condition of the human nature—the body is called the sheath, rin? (J")?), of the spirit (Dan. vii. 15),—a figure which, even apart from the Holy Scripture, was propagated from further Asia as far as Rome.¹ Death is as the drawing forth of a sword from its sheath, (Job xxvii. 8). According to a third figure, the body is the vesture, evSvfia, of the soul (2 Con v. 1), as flesh and skin are the vesture, B^oij, of the body (Job xxx. 18, comp. x. 11). In all three figures² there is only expressed the relation of the temporal association of the soul and the body, and that indeed (which is important) as a relation that is capable of dissolution without the destruction of the soul; but there is not expressed in any way the cause of this mutual relation. Such an expression is given in some degree, when, in carrying out further the figure of the tent, the soul is called the tent-cord, "WJ (Job iv. 21), which holds the tent upright and expanded; or when the life is compared to a web (scil. the life of the soul, since this is the

¹ See Gesenins, Thesaurus, p. 854. The Talmud, b. Sanhedrim, 108, interprets accordingly pT'Kb (Gen. vi. 8). Moreover, the Indian Vedanta says that the soul is in the body as in a sheath (Koslia), or a succession of sheaths, proceeding from within outward (Colebrooke, Misc. Essays, i. 372; and Graul, Bibliotlieca Tamulica, i. 189).

^s See thereupon Tobler's essay, Haus, Kleid, Leib, in Pfeifer's Germania Vierteljahrsschrift fur Deutsche Alterthumskunde, Jahrg. iv. Pt. ii. (1854, pp. 160-184). That the body is called (Gen. xlix. 6) "fas and (Pi. ciii. 5) ng,

and thus the doxa of the soul, as Juda ben-Bileam supposes (see Abenezra on Gen. I.e.), is not confirmed.

cause of the bodily life), the cutting loose of which from the thrum is death (Job vi. 9, xxvii. 8; Isa. xxxviii. 12). But nowhere is the original connection of the soul and the body more designedly symbolized, although in enigmatic and allegorical form, than in one of the latest canonical books, which is called Ecclesiastes, because Solomon, to wit (Solomon redivivug), is there introduced speaking as the incarnate preaching Wisdom. There (xii. 6) the young man is warned, mindful of his Creator, to rejoice in his youth, "or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden lamp be shattered, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel be broken at the cistern." The first image places before our eyes a lamp hanging down from the tent-covering (Job xxix. 3) by means of a silver cord. The silver cord is without doubt the thread of life, or more accurately the soul, which holds and supports the body in life. By the silver cord being suspended from above, may probably bo intimated that the soul, to which the life of the body is attached, itself depends again upon a higher cause—to wit, on God. It is further plain that the hanging down, dependent n^a, is the body. But that this is called a golden vessel, because it is royally and wonderfully made,¹ seems to me very improbable; for a golden vessel is certainly not shattered when it falls down: moreover, the body could not consistently be said to be of gold, while the soul is represented as of silver.² The body is indeed Ixk£vo? oorpaKivov (2 Cor. iv. 7). Thus also it is here meant; for the writer has in view Zech. iv., where, in the description of the seven-branched candlestick of the vision, *hl is the oil reservoir, which is in the midst of the lamps, and above them; and of the two ejects of this oil reservoir, it is said that they empty out of themselves the oil necessary for the burning of the lamps. But the oil is here called 3njn. It is the golden oil which flows from the two olive branches, which are close to the two ejects, into the wherewith these from the n^3, in the midst of the seven pipes, the seven lamps are supplied.³ Thus

¹ Mich. Baumgarten, in Schleswig-Holstein Gnomon, 3d ed. p. 170.

-' Thus justly observes Hitzig in his explanation of the Preacher, p. 214.

* Hofmann, Weiss, u. Erf. i. 344, understands the gold of the lamp itself taken up in the flow of constant becoming; but the gold in the representation of the prophet comes from the olive trees. It is thus golden oil. Thus also Kdhler, Zachariah, i. 142.

the designation of the body as n^3 is to be understood as 3n?n. But the gold is not the material, but the contents of the vessel: thus, as the soul is represented by silver, it can only imply the spirit, of which ch. v. 7 says that it returns to God who gave it.

When the silver cord of the lamp gives way (pn"P., according to the Keri PTTV, is unchained, or—as certainly Ni. in privative meaning is without ex-ample—when it collapses), the lamp full of gold is shattered, the body becomes irr&fia (Matt. xiv. 12, comp. Num. xiv. 32), and the golden oil and light of the spiritual life, whose reservoir it was, is all lost.¹ Up to this point the interpretation is tolerably certain, but the two other types can only be conjecturally explained. That they are only general personifications of death,² in connection with the preceding very special symbolism, is to me not probable. Perhaps 13 (the bucket or pitcher) is a symbol of the heart, and

(the wheel of the draw-well) is a symbol of the respiratory apparatus.³ For which is here said of T3, is a usual

scriptural word applied to the heart when it has come into the

¹ The spirit—the one spirit—says an Indian didactic poem in Grant, Bibl. Tamulica, p. 185—enlightens the senses, at whose summit is the understanding, as the lamp does a vessel.

² So Jerome, "Contritio hydriae super fontem et confractio rotas super lacum per metaphoram mortis Bnigmata sunt;" and just so Winzer, who, with many others, in all the three figures only finds the thought, antequam machina corporis destruatur (in Commentationes theol. 1825, i. 1, p. 104).

³ Rich. Mead takes a different view in his Medica Sacra (in the sixth chapter of which this allegorical description is explained of old age): he understands the golden lamp, of the head (distillationes humoris ex capite in nares, fauces et pulmonerri), the urn, of the bladder (Jccdumstillicidium urinse), and the wheel, of the circulation of the blood (cor vi sua defectum concidit). Similarly the interpretation given by Witt in his Swedish work on the soul (Sjalen), from Westerdahl (in his Hehans bevarande, Maintenance of Health, 1768). The latest interpreters of the book of Ecclesiastes have different explanations—Hengstenberg (1859) and H. A. Hahn (1860). According to the former, the pitcher = individual life, the fountain = general life, the wheel = life by reason of the swift movement, the well = the world; according to the latter, the pitcher = the body, the fountain = the spirit, the wheel "to the cistern" = the life turned to the spirit supplying to the body the powers peculiar to it. A plain and sensible interpretation of this allegorical passage is contained in Goschel's work, iiber das Alter., 1832. He finds in ver. 6 the gradually ceasing aspiration, expiration, and inspiration represented («»«s-»oi), i*x»oi}, uaxooij), while he regards the "silver cord of the gold fountain" as the draw-rope.

condition of death, or of nearness to death (Jer. xxiii. 9; Ps. lxix. 21); and Scripture says as well 3<' ^St? (Lam. ii. 19) as C'm ^SB': moreover, the heart can actually be compared to a bucket, in relation to the blood that courses through the body. And if we reflect that the words which come out of the mouth are compared to deep waters (Prov. xviii. 4), and the mouth of the righteous to a well of life (Prov. x. 11),—that to draw air (comp. rn"¹ 1??', Jer. ii. 24, xiv. 6) is spoken of as well as <nrav aepa (Wisd. vii. 3), and that the throat (with the larynx) is called nns")3, from "n|, to draw, as also (Isa. lviii. 1; Ps. cxv. 7, cxlix. 6), in probably similar meaning, from IT1a,—it is not so very unreasonable to find the thought in the third image,—before the breath is stifled, or stopped, as in the second,—before the heart is broken or paralyzed. Still these are only conjectures. For us at present the important point is only this, that the soul, or the life of the soul, is represented as the link which is the condition of the continued union of the body and the spirit.

Proceeding now from the incontestable position which Nemesios¹ very rightly formulates, To o~<u/xa Trjs yfrv^rjs opyavov imap^pv rat? "vfrv^t/wus Svvdfieat awSiaipelrai, we have indeed no direct scriptural statement in our favour, when we further assert that the soul, as in its inclination towards the spirit it reflects the nature of the spirit in seven forms of life, so in its inclination towards the body, and by its means, it sets forth its own nature in seven forms of life. We do not wish to appeal to the fact that the number seven has already been found to be significant in the origination and development of life, by the natural philosophers of antiquity,² among whom, as the Canticles belong to the range of the literature of the Chokma, its author might be referred to, as speaking of a sevenfold corporeal beauty, which is praised (Cant. iv. 1-5) in Shulamith.'¹ We would rather rely upon the fact that the number seven is absolutely, plainly, and confessedly a fundamental number in

¹ De Natura hominis, ch. v.

² According to the view of the Graeco-Roman philosophers and physicians, the capacity of life of the foetus does not begin till the seventh month, and the whole life of man runs in a gradual progression of weeks of years (Hebdomads); v. Sprengel-Roscnbaum, Gesch. der Arzneikunde, i. 427, 465, 488.

* This observation of Hengstenberg and Hahn is just.

the human body: for the head of the full-grown man, or the region of the head that reaches to the middle of the neck, exactly measures the seventh part of the entire length of the hody; and as in the neck of man (also of almost all mammals) there are found seven vertebrae, so seven ribs form the enclosure of his breast.¹ But the point on which we depend is another— to wit, that guidance of Scripture which bids us to understand spirit and soul by the relation of God to His doxa. We proceed from the fact that the soul is the image of the spirit, and makes the body the image of itself. It will be manifest that, from this scriptural assumption, all things which appear in the Scripture as prevailing general representations of the bodily life, articulately work into the whole texture, and mutually explain one another.

The first of the seven forms of life is that of the tb}, or embryo. The soul—which, upon the lowest basis of its spiritresembling nature, is direct will—appears here, at the lowest grade of its nature, manifested as corporeal—as a blind, even still undeveloped agent of the idea that forms the body: spirit, soul, and body are in process of becoming, but "in?? (Ps. cxxxix. 15), i.e. in the dark laboratory of the womb; and, as the spirit is still as undeveloped as the soul, in the dark region of absolute unconsciousness. This original unconsciousness remains even subsequently as the gloomy foundation of man's life—it is the root of life. All the processes of life which are performed in unconsciousness are based in this lowest psychico-corporeal form of life, which enters into the subsequent forms without becoming destroyed by them. The second form of life is that of the nv&_f or of the breathing.² For immediately after separation from the circulation of the placenta, the child

¹ M. Frankel, Trifolium, p. 48, where occurs, moreover, the striking remark, that "in the physical nature of man the number sewn predominates; in the spiritual, on the other hand, three." The anatomical consideration of man in Zeller's Seelenlehre, sees. 13-22, has the same suggestive view.

^s J. P. Lange (Deutsche Zeitschr. 1859, p. 30) finds that here there is a jump into another category; since after the embryo should follow the suckling, the child, etc. But we wish to show how the embryonic beginning itself advances even to the perfect working out of the body as the organ of the soul. The subsequent form of life is developed always on the basis of the preceding, which is modified by it, but carried on with it.

breathes and cries: hitherto the mother has breathed for the child, now it breathes itself. We ought here to be reminded of the now generally known fact, that breathing in its fundamental nature is one and the same chemical process as the heating of an oven—that chemical process, to wit, whose manifestation is fire, and whose result is the warmth of the body and the blood.¹ Thus the second form of life is fier}^r, as the first is dark. Without wishing to substitute for Scripture a knowledge of that bio-chemical process, we still think that we may observe that breathing and burning are regarded in Scripture, especially where it speaks of God's wrath, as very neighbouring ideas, e.g. Job xli. 13, Isa. xxx. 33. We lay a greater stress on the fact that E'W.actually signifies the breathing (Job xli. 13), and that the same words by which the spirit is named, denote also the breath exspired and inspired through nose and mouth: to wit, '""pE'3, Isa. ii. 22, comp. Gen. ii. 7, vii. 22; fB"¹, Job xxvii. 3, Lam. iv. 20, etc., comp. Isa. xi. 4, Ps. xxx. 6, cxxxv. 17; nn nDw, 2 Sam. xxii. 16; so that spirit and air (Job iv. 15), life and wind (Ezek. xxxvii. 5), are nearly related ideas, and breathing out of the soul is associated with dying (Job xi. 20, xxxi. 39; Jer. xv. 9). Whence arises this prevailing mode of representation and expression in Scripture, except from the fact, that really the breathing or the self-sustenance by the element of life which is found in the air, is that form of life wherewith life begins to become self-life, and in a continual succession of ejection and intraction (rm 3'twi, Job ix. 18) to evidence itself outwardly? With the commencement of breathing, the current of the blood of the child, which hitherto has been dependent on that of the mother, becomes independent. We purposely avoid saying the circulation of the blood, for antiqufty was aware that the blood flowed through the body, but did not know that it circulated. With the first drawing breath of the child, the soul is manifested in its third form of life—the form of life of the 01^ or the blood: this also is fiery, for the blood is red, D""tK; and To irvppov is at once the colour of fire and of blood.² The bright red of the blood

¹ The breathing, on the one hand, regulates the animal heat as a process of cooling, perfecting itself in interchange and exchange; on the other hand, it effects the same as a process of fire.

^J V. Hofmann (Weiss, u. Erf. ii. 329) on Apoc. vi. 4: "The horse of

actually passed with the ancients, and not without reason, as the effect of a process of fire.¹ But that the soul, immediately after operating in the breathing, whence it has its name, reveals itself in the blood, is declared by the direct testimony of the Noachian (Gen. ix. 4) and of the Mosaic Thora (Lev. xvii. 11-14, etc.): to pour out the soul is equivalent to to die (Isa. liii. 12; Ps. cxli. 8). This moving of the soul in blood, which is independently the infant's own, begins with the first breathing (not first with the dividing and binding up of the umbilical cord, Ezek. xvi. 4), so closely is linked the third form of life to the second. And not less closely is the fourth form of life to the third—that of the 3^, or heart. In the heart, whose movement presupposes the breathing, and is suspended at once by its cessation, the soul attains for the blood in which it rules, a reservoir (comp. W^, to wither from the heart, Ps. cii. 5): it is the pitcher at the fountain of blood which draws and pours forth: it is the principal vessel of the blood-life, because independent, whereinto it discharges and whence it proceeds, for D"n nitrcin UBD (Prov. iv. 23).² The heart is the centre of the wheel of life (Jas. iii. 6),—a representation which is so prevalent in Scripture, that it speaks even of a 3^, i.e. of a middle of heaven (Deut. iv. 11), of the earth (Matt. xii. 40), of the sea (Ex. xv. 8; Jonah ii. 4), etc., yea, even of an oak-tree (2 Sam. xviii. 14). But if the heart be the centre of the life revolving round itself, as the individuation of this life is fundamentally completed in it, we may scripturally say that the natural light of life, D»nn -rix (Job xxxiii. 30, Ps. lvi. 14, comp. Job iii. 20), proceeds in it on the ground of the preceding forms of life; and we are justified in the conclusion that the form of life of the 2*? will be just as much followed by three, as it has been preceded by three. And this expectation is actually and without any constraint realized. The next which follows on the concentration of the three first forms of life is this, that now

the second rider is fiery red, and points, in contrast to the former, to bloodshed and burning."

¹ See Schubert, Geschichte der Seek, i. 142; comp. Fr. v. Baader, Werhe, xv. 566: "The water of life—the blood—is at once fluid and heat; and it perishes when both of these elements are separated from their concrete condition."

² See Hitzig, in loco (p. 87 of his commentary of the year 1858).

nourished by the blood which reaches all the organs, even tlie nerves, the life of experience and of sensation begins, by means of which the soul comes into relation with its own corporeity, and with the outer world. It is the form of life of the nD, or of the nerves. But as, in the idea of nb (Job xxi. 24), there is no distinction between the marrow of the bones and of the nerves,—and as generally the nerves, as organs of feeling and of sensation, were unknown to antiquity,¹—this name might appear ill chosen. It is not, however, so ill chosen as it appears, for nD is also a name of the brain and of the spinal marrow, which, as is known, are the central portions of the nervous system, although in the sense of antiquity they are not named as such. The brain (Syr. mucho) was probably called in ancient Hebrew nb;² and of this (as is primarily implied in the plural form fiveXoi, Heb. iv. 12: v. Passow) it was the cerebral medulla, with the spinal medulla, whence the ancients attained a glimpse of the nature of the nervous system, and of the causal relation to feeling and perception. This being considered, nb, if we open up the idea still undeveloped in the Old Testament, is no unsuitable and unauthorized denomination of this fifth form of life.³ Primarily there are, on this fifth stage, the organs of the five special senses (nK"i, opav; aKoveiv; ^nvin, 6<Tifipa{veadai: from which in the New Testament only ocyi?7 — 6acf>paa{a; DJfB, yeveadai; t?B'?, CTO, 'tyrfb.afyav, atneadai), which are the means of the receptive relation of the soul corporeally

¹ Herophilos in Alexandria (about 300 years before Christ) is the first in whom there is a dawning perception of the functions of the nerves; vid. Sprenger, I.e. p. 511.

^J It is said in b. Menaclioth, 80, b, of a man without judgment: I fancy that he has no brain in his skull (Y1p"lj53 nb li> pKt?).

³ More suitable than OTi (Gen. xxxii. 33; Job x. 11; Ezck. xxxvii. 6, 8), which, without distinction (as »tvpx, ritonrt;, To'ko/, aiwfaafiot, in the older medical language of the Greeks; vid. Harless, Gesch. der Him und Nervenlehre in AUerthum. i. 23-30), denotes muscular fibres, ligaments of the joints, and generally every elastic and tense fibre in union with the body (from T3 = UK, "lj5j(), and thus excludes that which we now call nerves. Hupfeld, JWms, i. 99, and Rodiger in the Thes., translate Prov. iii. 8, "It shall be healing to thy nerves" (nent's luin); but this would not be understood in the present current meaning, -|°t? (from Tit?, strong) means the Binews, and especially the umbilical cord, and then generally the navel.

manifested to the outer world; the organs of the Cuasijak, or the aladrjT^pia (Heb. v. 14; comp. Jer. iv. 19, LXX.), for which, biblical Hebrew had not as yet any generic name,¹ among them chiefly sight, which in the Holy Scripture is the most general and comprehensive characterization of psychicocorporeal feeling and perception: so that, e.g., it says, I have seen the heat, instead of feeling it (Isa. xliv. 16); and speaks of seeing that which was spoken, or generally audible, instead of hearing it (Jer. xxxiii. 24; Mark v. 38); of seeing life instead of enjoying it (O^n nx"i, Eccles. ix. 9; comp. wmsadai ferjv, John iii. 36); and seeing death or corruption, instead of suffering them (nia ntn, Ps. lxxxix. 49; ISeiv ddvarov or Siaj>dopdv, Luke ii. 26, Acts ii. 27, and elsewhere; dewpeiv ddvarov, John viii. 51; comp. yeveadai davdrov, Matt. xvi. 28, and elsewhere, = rabb. nniD Dj?B). Every perception, whether it be effected by means of the organs of sense or not (as the prophetic perception and seeing), from the most spiritual apprehension to the mere passivity that loses itself in unconsciousness, is comprehended in and named by Scripture, as seeing. We are certainly not wrong, if we gather in this usus loquendi an assistance towards the naming of that common perception, which is wanting in the biblical as generally in human language, which perception lies at the base of all feeling and of every experience, which especially affects the organs of sensation. The Scripture calls this common perception (sensus communis or sensoriuni)? in default of another word, a seeing; and as it endeavours to reduce the multiplicity of the sensual perceptions and sensual organs to a unity, in which all their radii combine, and whence

¹ The post-biblical Hebrew names it CE^D, according to the Aramaic K'E'n (comp. Isa. xxxiii. 11, LXX. and Grdt.), to perceive.

² " Est addita Bensibus exterioribus," says Melancthon in his Liber de Anima, "alia superior facultas magis miranda, quam simplex adprehensio sensuum exteriorum." This superior facultas is just the sensus communis, which the ancients comprehended with the compositio objectorum, scil. ratiocinatio and the mernoria, under the name of the three sensus interiore,*, manifestly confounding heterogeneous things. Comp. K. Fortlage, System ikr Psychologie, i. 18, where it is rightly observed, that Locke indeed established the analysis of the inner sense, but did not first introduce the expression into science; which expression was already known to Albertus Magnus and his predecessors. The Arabians compare this common perception to a membrane stretched like a sounding-board under the five external senses.

they proceed, it is manifest that, in speaking of the ears of man as of an ear,¹ and still more frequently of the eyes of man as of an eye (e.g. Ps. xxxi. 9; Lam. iii. 48-51, etc.), it does so in order to indicate the sense of all the senses. And this is just the fifth form of life of the soul manifesting itself corporeally, that it proves this common perception, whose organ, as we know, is the nervous system in the multiplicity of external perceptions, and thus first of all comes into a receptive relation to the outer world. To this stage of the sensual and nervous life the outer world, and chiefly its own corporeity, becomes for the soul luminous; for nto and 1iK (comp. Matt. vi. 23) are correlatives. To this receptive fifth form of life is allied the productive sixth. In proportion as the soul thus shows itself capable of receiving and of acting upon the influences of the external world made clear,—which occurs at the latest in the domain of the sense of hearing,²—there is developed also, under the co-agency of the blood, the action upon the external world effected by the influence of the nerves upon the muscles, and especially speech effected by the muscles of inspiration, and the larynx, and the cavity of the mouth, including the tongue, the work of the understanding, the externalization of the Nous or Logos. This form of life might be called that of the !£, if it were proved that 1|J as Tow? (rovaia) unites in itself the meanings of sinew or muscle, and sound or voice.³ It corresponds to the second form of life, as the fifth to the third. The fifth corresponds to the third, for the blood is concerned in the formative process of the nervous germs of the embryo: it nourishes the nerves, and maintains and stimulates their activity. Moreover, there are generally in man no two factors

i Thus always in the expressions jtit rbi, nnS, Tj7H, in which D'3tK is never used.

* Kussmaul, Unters. iiber das Seeknlehre des neugebornen Menschen (1859), p. 27: "There may not be an absolute defect of the sense of hearing in the newly born child; but of all the senses, hearing slumbers the most deeply."

³ In Ps. xix. 5, the LXX. translates Dip by $6iyyo;, Symm. by ?_Xo_f, Jerome by sonus; but perhaps it is to be explained by Jer. xxxi. 89, and other passages. Moreover, whether ipip (Isa. xviii.) means muscular, strong, is uncertain; but it is acknowledged that the Semitic designations of strength recur most to the fundamental meaning of tension and elasticity of the muscles.

of his bodily life which stand in such close reciprocity as do blood and nerves. The sixth form of life, moreover, corresponds to the second: for, on the one hand, the breathing— standing in the closest causal connection with the blood, in so far as it is instrumentally effected—is the first setting at work of the muscles of the child, proceeding in contraction and expansion; on the other hand, the in- and ex-spiratory stream of air—without which no vibration of the ligaments of the glottis and no breathing murmurs are possible—is the inevitably necessary means to the origination of all sound of speech. The progression of this sixth form of life, compared with the others, is plain. In the fifth, the soul attains for the corporeity an external mirror, receiving the impressions of the outer world, just as itself is the internal mirror of these impressions to the spirit; but in this sixth form it makes the corporeity a means of influencing the outer world in word and deed. In speech, the nature of man, united in multiplicity, comes to the most spiritualized material manifestation. The air (nn, irvevfia), by which man is placed in the closest reciprocity to the whole life of nature (it is indeed his pabulum vitce), becomes in speech the material (comp. Ps. xxxiii. 6 with cxxxv. 17) in which the reasonable spirit (nn) portrays the substance of its thought (therefore in Aramaic called TM"i, speech-spirit, i.e.

thought-spirit); but this occurs through the mediation of the soul, which, in conformity with its twofold aspect, on the one side receives and prismatically refracts the thoughts of the spirit; on the other side, blends the sounds that have become distinguishable in it, with the distinction of the sounds formed out of the air (i>ip), and thus begets language ("ia"!p Deut. iv. 33, etc.; 0^ h\p, Deut. i. 34, v. 25, etc.; j$D ^P, Job xxxiii. 8; tf>wvrj prjfidrwv, Heb. xii. 19).¹ For thus the individual impulses of the origination of speech may be thought of as distinct from one another. The things of the outer world are first formed in the perceptions of man, e.g., upon the retina of the eye, and thence become representative pictures which the soul offers to the spirit: the spirit receives them into its self-consciousness, makes them, as thoughts, its own property,

¹ Otherwise language is called by metonymy or DSE', ."X£o-o-x, the mouth, as the organ of speech is called, Cant. iv. 8,1a"1D.

and gives to these thoughts in the soul the sounding elementary form of speech of the inner word, and then, by means of the power that it exercises, by means of the soul, over the organs of speech, places this inner word in a condition of sensible perceptible external realization. Human speech, therefore, is the creation of the spirit by the mediation of the soul.¹ We find ourselves here on the outermost light side of the corporeal self-manifestation of the soul; for all that becomes manifest, says the apostle, Eph. v. 13, is light. But in speech the spirit becomes manifest: it comes by way of the soul to light-like manifestation. As then, moreover, cf>dvai with (/>ao? (i£&>?) goes back to the like-sounding root $A (Sanskr. bhd bhdsh),¹ and generally between seeing and hearing, light and sound, colourscale and tone-scale there subsist noticeable connections which are referred to in the Old Testament language,³—this corporeal self-manifestation of the soul pressing out from darkness to light is completed in the seventh form of life. We call it the form of life of the "itW (Judg. viii. 18; 1 Sam. xxviii. 14), or of the irpoaunrov T/}? yeveaew<; (Jas. i. 23), as the third is

¹ When H. Steinthal (Grammatilc, Logik, und Psychologie, 1855) says that the formation of language is the effort of the soul to transform itself into spirit, this is, if rightly understood, not untrue, for the soul in the formation of speech serves the advancing ideal self-realization of the spirit, which is the alpha and omega of human development.

⁵ I say intentionally like-sounding, not " like;" for although the view that in the root bhd the ideas of lighting and speaking lie side by side, has authorities such as Wilson and A. W. v. Schlegel on its side, I still always entertain the scruples expressed in my Jesurun, p. 142. But the word IDS has in no case anything to do with the light (see Gesenius, Thes.

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p. 119) : it has the fundamental meaning of bringing aloft, sounding aloft. What a pity it did not please Bahr, in his Symbolik, i. 445, to prove the position that he there expresses, that " nearly in all the ancient languages light and word, to lighten and to speak, are kindred ideas."

³ See thereupon, Neue Beitriige zu dem Geist in der Natur of Oersted (Leipz. 1851), p. 87. In jjfl, the meanings, to be clear, and to sound, coincide; in prrj, the meanings to glitter, and to cry out; in "iVPIi the meanings to be bright green, and to crash; in "nn, the meanings to shout, ("in, TPn) and to glisten (Tin). In the Greek there belong to this category, Xiyv; (e.g. in nthttxtv TiiyvQtyyiti;), and the expressions Zfivoi $'Kiyortxi (Bacchyl. xiii. 12, Bergk), irxtdn hifixti (Soph. (Ed. Tyr. 182), t'Axfixpt Qxux (ibid. 468), 'mAa-ron (Philoct. 216), and more of a similar kind.

that of the Too^o? Tt)? yeveaeoi<;. In this seventh, the preceding forms of life come to a united blending; and the psychicalcorporeal individuality, which in the first form of life was only constituted as a germ, becomes here a completed stamped psychico-corporeal or natural determination (temper or disposition). Temperament and character, physiognomy,¹ and the entire bodily habitus,—inclusive of the formation of the cranium, as the psychically effected expression of the spirit,— are here realized in manifestation. As in the seventh form the 'doxa becomes God's perfected fiopif>tj, and the soul becomes the spirit's perfected fiop<prj, so in this seventh form the body becomes the perfected fiopif>rj (lSia, Matt. xxviii. 3) of the soul; and as the spirit attains from the revolving thought to the word, and from the word to the profound internal voiceless memory which fulfils itself on the basis of the spirit (vvevfi a Tov voo<;), and to contemplation that cannot be expressed, so the bodily life culminates in physiognomy,—that pervading combination of all the impulses of the nature of man, that speaks without words. And, which is not less deserving of consideration in all three regions, that of the spirit, of the soul, and of the body, the end (Pneuma, the concentration of all the powers of the soul, physiognomy) is associated with the beginning (will as impulse, intention, embryo).²

These are the seven forms or stages of the corporeal selfrepresentation of the soul. They do not follow one another in sections of time, and the growth of one is generally not sharply cut off from that of another. It is a sevenfold process, in which the coming into being of the first is at the same time the coming into being of the last, and all mutually acting, are comprehended in one another; but still so that every individual of the seven in every involution maintains its own peculiar nature.³

¹ The most admirable thing that has lately been written on this subject occurs in Mehring's Seelenlehre, of which the third part treats of the forming soul, or of the self-expression. In Scripture, physiognomy is characterized as the expression of the countenance, giving the heart to be known, Isa. iii. 9, DVj3 man, especially agnitio vultus h.e. id quo se agnoscendum dat (comp. To clio; rov vpoauirov, Luke ix. 29).

⁸ Thus GoeoheL, Der Mensch diesseits und jenseits, p. 41.

* 'E,itoi loxtu, says Hippocrates, de locis in homine, ii. p. 101, dpxv fts» avt, oili fitx thxi Tov oufixro;, aiXXct xirtx ifiitu; dpxM Kdti Tttit« rtiifvrv' Kvkkiv '/xn */px$i»7di xPK% obx tiptits.

Moreover, let us guard ourselves against misunderstanding, as though we had fallen into the self-deception of supposing that such a septenary of psychico-corporeal forms of life is directly taught in Scripture.¹ We say only that Scripture offers us fundamental views of the relation of the soul to the spirit, and of the body to the soul, from which its scattered declarations on the psychico-corporeal life arrange themselves into such a combined form as corresponds to the physiological result,—a form which, in order to be recognised in its internal necessity, is to be considered in its all-sided associations.

Having now seen how the soul presents its sevenfold nature corporeally, the relation of the soul to the blood, upon which direct and richly suggestive statements of Scripture occur, still attracts to itself our special attention.