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The philosophical schools were impressed with similar apprehensions, and had now for fifty years been employed in creating and systematising a new intellectual basis for the received paganism.
For, alas! the doctrinal element has overborne the personal among all Churches and all schools of thought, and in the necessary process of formulating and systematising the riches which are in Jesus, we are all apt to confound the creeds with the Christ, and so to manipulate Christianity until, instead of being the revelation of a Person and a gospel, it has become a system of divinity.
The material of thought, or at least some of the materials of thought, must be given us in the multiformity of our perceptions, through what we call experience from the outer world. On the other hand, the formation of this material into knowledge is the work of the activity of our own minds. Knowledge is the result of the systematising of experience and of reflection upon it.
I said that the intellect must have an excellence of its own, for there was nothing which had not its specific good; that the word "educate" would not be used of intellectual culture, as it is used, had not the intellect had an end of its own; that, had it not such an end, there would be no meaning in calling certain intellectual exercises "liberal," in contrast with "useful," as is commonly done; that the very notion of a philosophical temper implied it, for it threw us back upon research and system as ends in themselves, distinct from effects and works of any kind; that a philosophical scheme of knowledge, or system of sciences, could not, from the nature of the case, issue in any one definite art or pursuit, as its end; and that, on the other hand, the discovery and contemplation of truth, to which research and systematising led, were surely sufficient ends, though nothing beyond them were added, and that they had ever been accounted sufficient by mankind.
I had, therefore, before me in idea, intelligent readers already acquainted with the subject. But my nature, which always impels me to development and systematising, at last worked its way out also in this instance.
But the instinct of confidence is so indestructible that it has hitherto prevented even those professionally concerned from systematising the internal criticism of statements in the same way as the external criticism which deals with the origin of documents has been systematised.
Schnadhorst's capabilities, and as he was bent on solidifying and systematising, or, in other words, "caucusing" the Liberal party in Birmingham, he thought he saw in Mr. Schnadhorst the organising mind and methodical skill that would be eminently useful in carrying out the work. Nor was he wrong. Mr. Schnadhorst proved to be all that was expected of him, and the political world knows the rest.
Owing to the lateness of our material, it is, of course, impossible to decide how old the beliefs may be, but it is likely that the Valhalla idea only took form at the systematising of the mythology in the Viking age.
Men's intellects must work upon the pabulum that is provided for them, and a theology in a systematised form is a necessity for the intellectual and reasonable life of the Christian Church. But there is all the difference between man's inferences from and systematising of the Christian truth and the truth that lies here.
These effusions may be taken for the beginning of the deistical reaction in the eighteenth century. While the truly scientific and progressive spirits were occupied in laborious preparation for adding to human knowledge and systematising it, Rousseau walked with his head in the clouds among gods, beneficent authors of nature, wise dispensers of blessings, and the like.
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