Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/314

Rh harmony of all the powers. This is simply absence of proof.” Yes; but if proof is what we want, and if every single power sends us beyond itself for the interpretation of the meaning of the whole, we cannot hope to grasp that meaning so long as we avoid studying the world in its eternal aspect. The powers themselves make and unmake. We understand them not. They remind us of the night-scene of Faust: —


 * Faust. Was weben die dort um den Rabenstein?
 * Mephistopheles. Weiss nicht was sie kochen uud schaffen.
 * Faust. Schweben auf, schweben ab, neigen sich, beugen sich.
 * Mephistopheles. Eine Hexenkunst.
 * Faust. Sie streuen und weihen.
 * Mephistopheles. Vorbei! Vorbei!

And if we will hear the wisdom of Mephistopheles about all this, he has elsewhere given his view, which, as an opinion about the world of powers by one of the more authoritative powers in it, is worthy of as much respect as any other suggestion from an equally limited being: —


 * “Was soll uns dann das ewige Schaffen!
 * Gescbaffenes zu nichts hinwegzuraffen!
 * ‘Da ist’s vorbei!’ Was ist daran zu lesen?
 * Es ist so gut als wär’es nicht gewesen.
 * Und treibt sich doch im Kreis, als wenn es wäre.
 * Ich liebte mir dafür das Ewig-Leere.”

And possibly it would be hard for us to be sure of much more meaning in this world of powers as such, than Mephistopheles has found.

For us, we turn, not with despair, but with hope, elsewhere. We go to seek the Eternal, not in experience, but in the thought that thinks experience.