§ 22. The Symbolic Basic Formation for Spiritual Stimuli

§ 22. The Symbolic Basic Formation for Spiritual Stimuli.

By "spiritual stimuli" we understand those stimuli which arise, in contradistinction to the bodily, from the spiritual sphere, that is, from the immaterial sphere of the soul in general. The spiritual stimuli that fall under the symbolic representation of the imagination, however, are chiefly those resounding over from waking life, and thus are excitations of thought, of inner feeling, and of the life of ideation in general, appearing with the persisting force of the actual. If the nerve-stimulus adhered to the formation of the body as fixed through matter, and thus become at rest therein, then its symbolism, too, had to move predominantly within the expression of the formation that had become fixed; the spiritual, by contrast, represents in itself the principle that is eternally mobile in itself and unarrestable by matter in its movement, wherefore every spiritual stimulus carries into the imagination the nature of the mobile and the form expressing itself in fluid mobility, whereupon the symbolic designation of the imagination for it must likewise assume the essence and form of the mobile. The moving force of all movement of life in the dream, however, was the imagination, to which the receptivity of the ego attached itself for a unified intensification, and all excitations occurring in the life of the spirit must strike the imaginative ego as their common center; therefore, with every living stimulus of the spiritual sphere, the imaginative ego must symbolize itself, and this occurs in the manner, everywhere remaining the same, of the visibly emerging living person and figure of the dreamer. Upon the imaginative ego struck by the stimulus there necessarily follows the inner excitation, and hence the symbolic movement of the dream-person; but every spiritual stimulus is the mobility of the spiritual in and for itself, and therefore the symbolic movement of the dream-person, too, must represent itself as mobility in and for itself, that is, in accordance with the moving force-nature of the imagination, as an immediately moving mobility, that is, the dream-person steps forth acting immediately upon the show-theater of the dream, and its action bears the visible character of activity. Yet every spiritual stimulus, since the immaterial, mobile essence of the thought-like underlies it, must necessarily also, in the form of the imagination, have the striving to express itself as much as possible through a mobile thing brought near to the immaterial, that is, as little as possible through the image of the sluggish and unwieldy material; hence the imaginative action that enters in for the excitement of the spiritual stimulus can also present itself only in such a manner of visibility as bears as little as possible of the nature of the material in itself. The living spiritual stimulus, however, is the inner movement of life of the spirit upon an inner idea, and thus an inner speaking of the spirit out of itself and its idea; therefore the imaginative action symbolizing it must also express the movement of thought-speech; but the least materialized form through which an inner movement of thought can be made visible is that of speech rendered sensible unto audibility, wherefore the visibly emerging, that is, audibly appearing speaking of the dream-person is the symbolic action itself, and the dream-person must be set immediately speaking upon the show-theater. But if the action of speech is to attain to a full expression of vitality, which the mobile essence of the spiritual stimulus in itself indeed demands, then over against the speaking dream-person a second must also be set, toward which the speech of the former extends and strains, and from which in turn a new impulse springs for the continuing development of the speech; and the imagination symbolizes the idea-object belonging to the living thought-stimulus in the form of a second person, which, according to the distinctness of the idea-object, assumes each its particular form and accordingly impresses upon the speech-action then proceeding each its particular shape. But if the object of the spiritual stimulus was a movement-process immediately fused into one with the inner excitation thereof then proceeding, then the object-person, too, must stand in the most living connection with the speech of the subject-person, and, being placed as the equal of the other, must not only receive speech but itself lead speech and give speech, all the more since the in itself mobile nature of the spiritual stimulus demands the fullest expression for the movement; and since stimulus-excitation and stimulus-object emerge immediately as one, the two-personed conversation, that is, the dialogue, must be set a priori upon the dream-theater, and the one person as well as the other must feel themselves driven to lead the conversation, just as the one person, in speech or bearing, necessarily stands in an even relation to that of the other. Accordingly the symbolic action of the spiritual stimulus expresses itself in general through the living dialogue, and it is the living dialogue that is the symbolic basic form for the representation of spiritual stimuli.

The living character of the dialogue, however, now assumes its own particular kind according to whichever spiritual sphere's stimulus it symbolizes. If the spiritual stimulus is a religious stimulus of feeling, the imagination must first personify the absolute object of feeling, that is, the idea of the deity in the sense of the dream-ego, that is, it must represent, or rather bring down, the unapproachable majesty of the deity into the form of a humanly personal being; but since the divine stands so high above the human, it must also express, even in its humanized form, the sublimity of the divine, and this it does by setting in the place of the divine surpassingly beautiful figures of youths or of women (genii), or winged figures whose pinion aptly declares the height of the divine above the human. But so sublime a personage, since it stands before and over against the simply human personage of the dream-ego, must now, over against the latter in the dialogue, also express the tone of the sublime, the commanding, and the sublimely instructive, while the other, for its part, comports itself in an expression of reverent receiving. Both together, however, form the "revelation-form" of the dialogue.