Page:B20442294.djvu/200

172 originates in the soul of man, in which is hidden all totality, which can see everything because it is universal itself: the starry heavens and the moral law are fundamentally one and the same. The universalism of the categorical imperative is the universalism of the universe.

The infinity of the universe is only the "thought-picture " of the infinity of the moral volition.

This was taught, the microcosm in man, by Empedocles that mighty magician. Γαίῃ μὲν γὰρ γαῖαν ὀπώπαμεν, ὕδατι δ' ὕδωρ,

Αἰθέρι δ' αἰθέρα δῖον, ἀτὰρ πυρὶ πῦρ ἀίδηλον,

Στοργὴν δὲ στοργῇ, νεῖκος δέ τε νείκεϊ λυγρῷ. And Plotinus; Οὐ γὰρ ἂν πώποτε εἶδεν

ὀφθαλμὸς ἥλιον ἡλιοειδὴς μὴ γεγενημένος which Goethe imitated in the famous verse: "Wär' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft,

Die Sonne könnt' es nie erblicken;

Läg' nicht in uns des Gottes eig'ne Kraft,

Wie könnt uns Göttliches entzücken?" Man is the only creature, he is the creature in Nature, that has in himself a relation to every thing.

He to whom this relationship brings understanding and the most complete consciousness, not to many things or to few things, but to all things, the man who of his own individuality has thought out everything, is called a genius. He in whom the possibility of this is present, in whom an interest in everything could be aroused, yet who only, of his own accord, concerns himself with a few, we call merely a man.

The theory of Leibnitz, which is seldom rightly understood, that the lower monads are a mirror of the world without being conscious of this capacity of theirs, expresses the same idea. The man of genius lives in a state of complete understanding, an understanding of the whole; the whole world