V. Письмо четвертое: Свет Истины

You fly over the “flaming wall of the universe” easier and higher than me, my inspired Friend. But still, I write and will write to you - more for my own sake than for your sake. The lamp invariably casts a sheaf of light on the Savior’s Face. It is now a dead autumn night. There was snow under the window. Everything froze, you couldn’t even hear the night beats. I’m the only one hanging around here in my cell, and it seems to me that I’ve been dead for a long time. In these careless and watery lines is my connection with life; if I have not yet completely died, then through a conversation with you, you alone, the quietly blowing Guardian, the very thought of whom cleanses and lifts me up. Can I not sketch out my thoughts to you? After all, I hope that maybe you will hear me to some extent in these letters, and then a stream of quiet reconciliation, purity and faith will flow into me. Faith... In faith itself I unexpectedly found for myself the first hint of what I was looking for. As it happens in February: the washed-up sun smiles with a clear, clear smile; a soft breeze will blow; although spring is a long way off, but... greets the morning of the year through a dream, - it smells like something spring. So it is in prayer. Having made an effort on myself for the sake of love for the Truth, I entered into personal, living communication with the Truth (- I reluctantly add the official one: if only She exists at all -). I renounced myself and thereby violated the lower law of identity, because the bare “I!” ceased to exist. Some kind of strengthening of the Self appeared, but in a new sense. That I, which demanded proof, began to vaguely perceive this proof, began to feel that there would be proof. Just like after an illness, there was some recovery. The invigorating freshness and distant surf of Eternity itself could already be heard; I walked as if in a pre-dawn fog and looked at the vague forms of Truth itself. For some reason, I want to compare my state with how if my body turned into soft wax and milk poured through all my veins: this is exactly what happens after a long prayer with bows. It seems my comparison is funny, but I can’t think of a better one. Love for people was somehow connected with this, and in love I found the initial stage of a long-desired intuition. If there is a God—and for me this was beyond doubt—then He must necessarily be absolute love. But love is not a sign of God. God would not be absolute love if he were love only for another, for the conditional, for the perishable, for the world; after all, then the love of God would be dependent on the existence of the conditional and, therefore, would itself be accidental. God is an absolute being because He is a substantial act of love, an act-substance. God or Truth 83 not only has love, but, first of all, “God is love - ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν” (1 John 4:8, 16), that is, love is the essence of God, His own nature, and not only His inherent providential attitude. In other words, “God is love” (more precisely, “Love”), and not just “Loving,” even if “perfectly.” 84 In this position is the peak of theoretical (“negative”) knowledge and the pass to practical (“positive” 85). Until now, each judgment was accompanied by its inevitable shadow, the condition: “If only there is a God at all.” Now, in the light of intuitive-discursive knowledge, this shadow melts and blurs. But along with it, the opportunity to convince disappears, because the time has come for asceticism. Here we can only outline in general some features of this new path, but only through personal experience can everyone be convinced of the correctness of everything that follows. What for the experiencer is already absolute knowledge, for the theorist appears only as a continuation of probabilism. But the philosopher's experimentum crucis is produced. His hypothetical construction either turned out to be the Truth, and then - a reliable Truth, or - an empty speculation. But, if this construction is false, then there is no Truth at all; in this case, the very statement of falsity cannot be true, etc. The philosopher falls into ἐποχή and is forced to start all over again, suffer, try again and believe, believe forever - believe until agony and until death. Anyone who wants Truth cannot rest on simple nihilism. “Believe in the Truth, hope in the Truth, love the Truth” - this is the voice of the Truth itself, invariably sounding in the soul of the philosopher. And if he had failed in his first attempt at faith, he would have taken it up again with redoubled determination. – However, I am writing all this more as a formal answer to the question “What if..?”, rather than in essence, because experience proves that faith always succeeds. As the Only Book about Abraham says: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6 = Rom. 4:6) - he listened to the mysterious call of the Unknown Truth, “by faith he obeyed the calling to go to the country that he had to receive as an inheritance, and he went, not knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the promised land as in a foreign land” (Heb. 11:8–9). As Abraham, so are other righteous people (see Hebrews 11). “And if they had in their thoughts the fatherland from which they came, they would have time to return; but they strived for the best, that is, for the heavenly; Therefore God was not ashamed of them, calling Himself their God” (Heb. 11:15-16). Here is the experience of history. The righteous selflessly strived for the “Invisible,” that is, the Heaven not given to them, and Heaven accepted them. And the philosopher, striving for Truth, will not return either to the idolatry of blind intuition, or to the self-will of proud discourse; no, he will not give up his desire for But let’s take a closer look at how and why Heaven accepts the philosopher. Whatever we think about the human mind, it is possible for us to affirm in advance that it is a human organ, its living activity, its real power, λόγος. Otherwise, if we recognize it “in itself” and therefore as something unreal - διάνοια - we are inevitably doomed to an equally indisputable and predetermined denial of the reality of knowledge. 87 After all, if reason is not involved in being, then being is not involved in reason, that is, it is illogical. Then illusionism and all kinds of nihilism are inevitable, ending in flabby and pathetic skepticism. The only way out of this swamp of relativity and conditionality is the recognition of reason as participating in being and being as participating in rationality. And if so, then the act of cognition is not only an epistemological, but also an ontological act, not only ideal, but also real. Cognition is the real exit of the knower from himself or, which is the same thing, the real entry of the knower into the knower, the real unity of the knower and the known. 88 This is the basic and characteristic position of all Russian and, in general, Eastern philosophy. We received it earlier in a slightly different and more firm way, directly pointing to the heart and soul of this “going out of oneself”, as an act of faith in the religious, in the Orthodox sense, for the true “coming out” is precisely faith, yet everything else can be dreamy and charming. So, knowledge is not the seizure of a dead object by a predatory epistemological subject, but a living moral communication of individuals, each of whom serves as both an object and a subject for each. In the proper sense, only the personality and only the personality is knowable. In other words, essential cognition, understood as an act of a cognizing subject, and essential truth, understood as a cognizable real object - both of them are one and the same thing in reality, although they differ in the abstract mind. Essential knowledge of the Truth, that is, communion with the Truth itself, is, therefore, a real entry into the depths of the Divine Trinity, and not just an ideal contact with Its external form. Therefore, true knowledge - knowledge of the Truth - is possible only through the transubstantiation of man, through his deification, through the acquisition of love as the Divine essence: whoever is not with God does not know God. In love and only in love is real knowledge of the Truth conceivable. And vice versa, knowledge of the Truth reveals itself as love: he who is with love cannot help but love. It is impossible to say here what is the cause and what is the effect, because both are only sides of the same mysterious fact - the entry of God into me, as a philosophizing subject, and me into God, as objective Truth. Considered within me (according to the mode “I”) “in myself” or, more precisely, “about myself”, this entry is knowledge; “for another” (in the mode “You”) it is love; and, finally, “for me,” as objectified and objective (i.e., considered in the “He” mode), it is beauty. In other words, my knowledge of God, perceived in me by another, is love for the perceiver; objectively contemplated, - by the third, - love for another is beauty. What is truth for the subject of knowledge is love for him for the object, and beauty for the contemplator of knowledge (the subject’s knowledge of the object). “Truth, Goodness and Beauty” - this metaphysical triad is not three different principles, but one. This is one and the same spiritual life, but viewed from different angles. Spiritual life, as emanating from the Self, having its focus in the Self, is Truth. Perceived as the direct action of another, it is Good. Objectively contemplated by the third, as if radiating from outside, is Beauty. Revealed truth is love. Realized love is beauty. My love itself is the action of God in me and me in God; this assistance is the beginning of my communion with life and being Divine, that is, essential love, for the unconditional truth of God reveals itself precisely in love. God, who knows me as his creation; who loves me through the Son as his “image”, as his son; he who rejoices in me in the Holy Spirit, as in his “likeness,” actively knows, loves and rejoices in me, for I have been given to Him. The source of knowledge, love and joy here is God himself. But my knowledge of God, my love for God, my joy in God are passive, because God is only partially given to me and can only be given to the extent of my becoming like God. Assimilation to the love of God is active love for what has already been given to me. Why love specifically, and not knowledge and not joy? Because love is a substantial act that passes from the subject to the object and has its support in the object, while knowledge and joy are directed at the subject and in it is the point of application of their power. God's love passes on to us, but knowledge and contemplative joy remain in Him. That is why the Hypostasis was incarnated not of the Father and not of the Holy Spirit (Paraclitus = Comforter, Bringer of Joy), but of the Son-Word; hypostatic Divine Love, the Heart of the Father, - if we may use the strong phrase of Jacob Bem: The Son of God, according to Jacob Bem, is “the heart in the Father, - das Herz im dem Vater.” 89 In order to avoid puzzling questions, it is necessary to emphasize the ontology of such an understanding of love, which has its historical roots in the ancient, realistic understanding of life. In the new understanding of life, the illusionistic one, the psychological interpretation of love dominates, although not excluded by the first, but too poor in comparison. This understanding seems to originate from Leibniz, and it is clear why. After all, for him, “monads do not have windows or doors,” 90 through which real interaction in love would take place; therefore, doomed to the self-isolation of ontological egoism and purely internal states, they love only illusorily, without losing their temper through love. Thus arises, under the influence of Friedrich Spee, the famous Leibnizian definition of love, so highly valued by him and repeated so many times. 91 According to Leibniz, precisely, love is “rejoicing in the happiness of another, or the happiness of others, considered at the same time as one’s own.” 92 – A similar definition is found in unpublished fragments of Leibniz. Thus, it is found in the Definitio justitiae universalis; then, in the first letter to Arno (1761) it is said that “love is the enjoyment of someone else’s happiness - amorem voluptatem ex felicitate aliena”; in a letter to Arno dated March 23, 1690 we find the same; finally, in the preface of the Codex juris gentium diplomaticus (1693) we read: “Charity is universal favor, and favor is a state of love or appreciation. To love or appreciate means to enjoy the happiness of another, or, what comes down to the same thing, to recognize someone else’s happiness as one’s own. – Caritas est benevolentia universalis, et benevolentia amandi sive diligendi habitus. Amare autem sive diligere est felicitate alterius delectari, vel, quod eodem redit, felicitatem alienam adsciscere in suam,” etc. 93 With minor modifications, Leibniz's definition was repeated several times in subsequent philosophy. – According to Chr. According to Wolf, “love is the disposition of the soul to receive pleasure from the happiness of another. – amor est dispositio animae ad percipiendam voluptatem ex alterius felicitate.” 94 Or again: “the disposition to create significant satisfaction from the happiness of another is love. – Die Bereitschaft aus eines andern Glück ein merkliches Vergnügen zu schöpfen – ist die Liebe.” 95 Mendelssohn 96 defines: “Love is the pride of being satisfied with the happiness of another.” Spinoza’s understanding of love is equally, if not more, illusory: this, however, could have been foreseen ahead of time, knowing that the essence of our soul, according to Spinoza, is in knowledge 97 and that Spinoza calls the soul itself nothing more than mens, which actually means mind, thought. “Love is pleasure, accompanied by the idea of ​​an external cause - Amor est Laetitia concomitante idea causae externae,” he says in “Ethics,” 98 and the psychologism of these words is especially characteristic if we take into account the general ontological coloring of Spinozism. For Leibniz and his followers, as we have seen, love is conditioned by the representation of the happiness of another; for Spinoza, the “idea of ​​an external cause,” that is, the idea of ​​some non-I only accompanies pleasure, as a purely subjective state of the Self. But with both the first and second understanding of love, it is interpreted exclusively psychologically and, therefore, is deprived of its significance as a value. Moreover, it can even be considered undesirable: after all, in fact, if love does not metaphysically lead anyone anywhere, if it does not really connect anyone with anyone, if it is not ontological, but only psychological, then why see in it something more valuable than a simple tickle of the soul? But, being a source of false ideas about the interaction of things, it thereby turns out to be both false and harmful. For psychological understanding, love is the same as lust. Moreover, such a mixture is not at all an accidental and side feature of rationalist philosophy, but a deeply rooted necessary consequence of the most essential principles of such an understanding of life. After all, love is possible for a person, and lust for a thing; The rationalistic understanding of life absolutely does not distinguish, and is not capable of distinguishing between a person and a thing, or, more precisely, it owns only one category, the categories of thingness, and therefore everything that exists, including the person, is reified by it and taken as a thing, as res. Schelling already pointed out this drawback. 99 “The error of Spinoza’s system,” he says, “is not at all in the fact that he places things in God, but in the fact that he speaks about things, that is, in the abstract concept of world beings, in the concept of infinite substance itself, which is also a thing for Spinoza. – Hence the lifelessness of his system, the soullessness of forms, the poverty of concepts and expressions, the inexorable severity of definitions, completely consistent with the abstractness of his way of thinking; from here his mechanical view of nature quite consistently followed.” What, if so, is the opposition between a thing and a person, which underlies the opposition of lust and love! – The fact that a thing is characterized through its external unity, that is, through the unity of the sum of its characteristics, while a person has its essential character in internal unity, that is, in the unity of the activity of self-construction, - in that very self-position of the Self that Fichte speaks of. Consequently, the identity of things is established through the identity of concepts, and the identity of personality - through the unity of self-constructing or self-positing activity. But, further, one can never say of two things in the strict sense of the word that they are “identical”; they are only “similar”, even if “in everything – κατὰ πάντα”, only similar to each other, even if in all respects. Therefore, the identity of things can be generic, generic, by genus (identitas generica, ταυτότης τῷ ἵδει 100), or specific, specific, by type (identitas specifica), in a word - characteristic by one or another number of characteristics, including here the coincidence of a transfinite set of characteristics and even, in the extreme case, by to all characteristics, but still – not numeric, not numerical, not by number (identitas numerica, ταυτότης κατ’ ἀριθμόν). The concept of numerical identity is not applicable to things: a thing can only be “the same” or “not the same,” but never “the same” or “not the same.” On the contrary, about two personalities, essentially speaking, one cannot say that they are “similar,” but only “identical” or “non-identical.” For individuals, as individuals, it is possible either to have a numerical identity, or not at all. True, they sometimes talk about “similarity of personalities,” but this is an inaccurate use of words, since in fact, what is meant here is not the similarity of personalities, but the similarity of certain properties of their psychophysical mechanisms, i.e., we are talking about the fact that, although in personality, but not personality. Personality, understood in the sense of pure personality, is for each I only an ideal - the limit of aspirations and self-construction. But for the love of pure individuals, i.e. such individuals who have completely mastered the mechanism of their organizations - who have spiritualized their body and their soul, for the love of such individuals only pure numeric identity, ὁμοοὐσία, is possible, while for pure things only pure generic similarity, ὁμοιουσία is possible. Personalities are not yet pure, personalities, insofar as they are material, carnal, carnal, insofar as they are capable of “assimilating” lust; and since they are pure and have renounced “thingness,” they are capable of “identifying” love. But what is this thingness of personality? This is her dull self-equality, which gives her the unity of a concept, self-contained in the totality of its characteristics, that is, a concept that is dead and motionless. In other words, this is nothing more than the rationalistic “intelligibility” of the personality, i.e., its subordination to the rational law of identity. On the contrary, the personal character of a person is the living unity of her self-creative activity, a creative emergence from her self-isolation, or, also, it is her inability to fit into any concept, therefore her “incomprehensibility” and, therefore, unacceptable for rationalism. Victory over the law of identity is what lifts the personality above a lifeless thing and what makes it a living center of activity. But it is clear that activity, by its very essence, is incomprehensible to rationalism, for activity is creativity, that is, adding to the given that which is not yet given, and, consequently, overcoming the law of identity. Rationalism, i.e., the philosophy of concept and reason, the philosophy of things and lifeless immobility - rationalism, thus, is once again entirely connected with the law of identity and can be succinctly characterized as an Omiusian philosophy. This is carnal philosophy. On the contrary, Christian philosophy, that is, the philosophy of idea and reason, the philosophy of personality and creative achievement, is once again based on the possibility of overcoming the law of identity and can be characterized as homoousian philosophy. This is spiritual philosophy. The desire for pure Homiusianism as its limit determines the history of new philosophy in Western Europe; the gravitation towards pure homoousianism makes the peculiar nature of Russian and Orthodox philosophy in general. At the same time, we do not need that either there, in the West, or here, with us, there is no completed Homiusian or Homousian thinking. Yes, we know that the first is generally impossible, except in fiery Gehenna, and the second, except in heaven, in an enlightened and spiritualized humanity. But the tendencies of both philosophies are so definite that classifying them according to their ideal limits is legitimate and convenient. The dominance of Western philosophy explains the suppression and low use of the term “numerical identity”. When they talk about identity, then, more or less decisively, they mean the completeness of similarity - no more - as Destu de Tracy 101 said about it in his time, that is, at the beginning of the 19th century (“identity,” he says, “means perfect and complete similarity; identité veut dire similitude parfait et complète”) and as Palagius definitely said about it now, 102 a namely, that “the “same truth” is that which can be represented (stated) in infinitely many consistent acts of judgment.” – This, or a similar idea, forms the basis of the newest definition of identity in logistics. Here identity is finally and consciously replaced by similarity. The destruction of the idea of ​​numerical identity, as has been said, is especially clearly manifested in modern logic. But it would be too burdensome for readers to go into detail here. In those cases where numerical identity was considered, the attempt to define this term always remained either a simple explanation or an indication that the source of the idea of ​​numerical identity should be sought in the self-identity of consciousness. Thus, Aristotle 103 defines identity descriptively in the words: “ἡ ταυτότης ἑνότης τις ἐστιν ἤ πλειόνων τοῦ εἶναι, Identity is a kind of unity in existence, whether it is a matter of several different beings (beings), or of one single one, which is considered as several. In this way, for example, they say that the only one and the same being is identical with itself, and then they consider this being as if it were two beings instead of one.” On the other hand, already according to Leibniz 104 in self-consciousness the real, and at the same time moral, personal identity becomes known. This idea, although in a greatly modified form, as is known, was further developed by Kant, 105 and through him it formed the basis of the systems of speculative idealism in Fichte and Schelling. Countless times and in the most varied variations, philosophers of various directions have repeated the basic theme that the idea of ​​identity in general is a reflection of the self-identity of the Self (sometimes as a product of reflection, sometimes as a result of unconscious projection and habit), or, in other words, that identity in its proper and primary sense can be seen only in the self-identity of a person, and not in the self-similarity of a thing. Finally, the “elder” 106 of the Marburg school Hermann Cohen 107 again declares that “the self-identity of being is a reflex of the identity of thinking - die Selbigkeit des Seins ist ein Reflex der Identität des Denkens.” The general conclusion from what has been said is clear: the stricter the definition of identity, the more clearly it isolates attribute identity into its object and the more decisively it excludes numeric identity from consideration; yet it deals exclusively with things. On the contrary, when they consider numerical identity, then they can only describe it, explain it, referring to the source of origin of the idea of ​​identity, and at the same time the named source, the named first-identity is found in the depths of a living personality. Naturally, it cannot be otherwise. After all, numerical identity is the deepest and, one might say, the only characteristic of a living personality. To define a numerical identity would mean to define a person. 108 And to define means to give a concept. It is impossible to give the concept of personality, because it differs from a thing in that, in contrast to the latter, which is subject to a concept and therefore “understandable,” it is “incomprehensible,” goes beyond the limits of any concept, is transcendental to any concept. You can only create a symbol of a fundamental characteristic of a person, or an icon, a word, and, without defining it, introduce it formally into the system of other words, and arrange it so that it is subject to general operations on symbols, “as if” it were really a sign of a concept. As for the content of this symbol, it cannot be rational, but only directly experienced in the experience of self-creativity, in the active self-construction of personality, in the identity of spiritual self-consciousness. This is why the term “numeric identity” is only a symbol and not a concept. What is the general conclusion of the entire retreat? – The need for a strict distinction between numeric identity and generic identity and, hence, a strict distinction between love, as a psychological state corresponding to material philosophy, from love, as an ontological act, corresponding to personal philosophy. In other words, Christian love must be most unquestioningly withdrawn from the realm of psychology and transferred to the realm of ontology. And only by taking this requirement into account can the reader understand that everything that has been said about love and everything that remains to be said is not a metaphor, but an exact expression of our true understanding. Man's knowledge of God inevitably reveals itself and reveals itself through active love for creation, as already given to me in direct experience. And manifested love for a creature is contemplated objectively as beauty. Hence - pleasure, joy, consolation of love when contemplating it. That which pleases is called beauty; – love, as an object of contemplation, is beauty. My spiritual life, my life in the Spirit, the “likeness to God” that is taking place in me is beauty, the same beauty of the primordial creation about which it is said: “And God saw everything that was created; and all this was good” (Gen. 1:31). To love the invisible God means to passively open your heart to Him and wait for His active revelation so that the energy of Divine love descends into the heart: “The reason for the love of God is God - causa diligendi Deum Deus est,” says Bernard of Clairvaux; 109 On the contrary, to love the visible creation means to allow the received Divine energy to open, through the one who received it, outside and around the one who received it, just as it acts in the Trinitarian Godhead itself, to let it pass on to another, to a brother. For one's own human efforts, love for one's brother is absolutely impossible. This is a matter of God's power. By loving, we love with God and in God. Only one who knows the Triune God can love with true love. If I have not known God, have not communed with His Being, then I do not love. And back again: if I love, then I have joined God, I know Him; and if I don’t love, then I haven’t joined and I don’t know. Here there is a direct dependence of knowledge and love for the creature. The center of their origin is the abiding of me in God and God in me. “And we know that we know him by this, that we keep his commandments. He who says, “I know Him,” but does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and there is no truth in him; and whoever keeps His word, in him is truly the love of God perfected: by this we know that we are in Him. Whoever says that he abides in Him must do as He did...” (1 John 2:3, 6). But for now this mutual coexistence of God and man is a position of free faith, and not a fact of forced-powerful experience. The Epistles of John are devoted almost exclusively to this dependence. 110 “Let us love one another - ἀλλήλους - because love is from God - ὅτη ἡ ἀγάπη ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐστιν - and everyone who loves is born of God - ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ – and knows – γινώσκει– God; whoever does not love God has not known God - οὐκ ἔγνω τὸν Θεὸν - because - ὅτι - God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). - “Everyone who loves is born of God.” It is not only change, or improvement, or improvement; no, this is, precisely, the procession “from – ἐκ – God”, communion with the Holy One. The lover was reborn or born a second time - into a new life; he became a “child of God - τέκνον Θεοῦ”, acquired a new being and a new nature, was “dead and came to life” for the transition to a new kingdom of reality (this is what the parable of the prodigal son says, Luke 15:32). Let others, people with “petrified hearts,” continue to seem the same, just a person. But in fact, in the invisible depths of his “prodigal” soul, a mysterious transubstantiation took place. Ἐποχή and the agony of absolute skepticism were only the pangs of birth from the narrow and dark womb of carnal life into the vast expanse of endless and all-bright life. The lover has passed from death to life, from the kingdom of this world to the Kingdom of God. He became “a partaker of the divine nature – θείασ κοινωνος φύσεωσ” (2 Peter 1:4). He has appeared in a new world of Truth, in which he can grow and develop; the seed of God abides in him, the seed of divine life (1 John 3:9), the seed of Truth itself and true knowledge. Knowing the Truth, he now understands why such a change happened to him: “We know οἴδαμεν that we have passed from death to life [and, thereby, from the darkness of ignorance to the light of truth] because - ὅτι - we love the brothers; He who does not love his brother remains in death. He who hates his brother does not have eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:14-15). But this is not in a tautological sense, not in the sense that “not having eternal life” is just another verbal expression for “hating” and “not loving,” but in the sense of a metaphysical connection between the two states. “He who does not have eternal life,” that is, who has not entered into the life of the Trinity, cannot love, for love for a brother itself is a kind of manifestation, as if an outflow of Divine power, radiating from a loving God. The usual - moralizing - interpretation makes the verb of the Seer flat and insipid, weakens the metaphysical chain that fetters these two acts - knowledge and love. And in general, I’ll note by the way, the more massive and metaphysically crude and archaic religious concepts are conceived, the deeper the symbolism of their expression and, therefore, the closer we come to a genuine comprehension of religious experience itself. This condensation and condensation of religious concepts characterizes all of our worship, relating to Protestant and sectarian, like old red wine to lukewarm sugar water. – Let me at least remind you of the order of worship before “I Believe” during the Liturgy of the Faithful: The deacon proclaims: “Let us love one another and confess that we are of one mind,” ὁμολογήσωμεν..." 111 - What exactly are confessions? The face responds to this - that is, in essence, the believers in the person of their representatives - picking up and finishing the exclamation of the deacon: “... the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, consubstantial and indivisible - Πατέρα, Υἱόν, καὶ ̀ἅγιον Πνεῦμα Τριάδα ὁμοούσιον, καὶ ἀχώριστον.” Then the priest bows three times and says secretly: “I will love you, O Lord, my strength, the Lord is my strength and my refuge”; if there are several priests, then they, moreover, express their love for each other with a brotherly kiss and mutually testify: “Christ is in our midst.” After this self-gathering in the love of the Church as a whole, it is necessary to separate from everything external, from everything not involved in this love, from the world alien to the church. Therefore, the deacon exclaims: “Doors, doors, let us listen to wisdom - τὰς θύρας, τὰς θύρας ἐν σοφία πρόσχωμεν”; i.e. “Lock the doors so that no stranger comes in: we will listen to wisdom”; Let us note that the Slavic translation of the saying “ἐν σοφία πρόσχωμεν” through “wisdom let us take in” is incorrect, and it is required to translate this phrase through “wisdom we will take in.” 112 Now that everything that is needed for the confession of the Trinity, consubstantial and inseparable, has been prepared, “wisdom” itself follows: the people - ὁ λαὸς, - that is, the very body of the church, sings the “Creed”. But let us remember what the “Symbol of Faith” is. This, both historically and metaphysically, is nothing more than a widespread presentation, an explanatory amplification, a division of the baptismal formula: “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” 113 When pronouncing this formula, we think exactly everything that is contained in the Creed. But, further, what is the baptismal formula? – This, in essence, is nothing more or less than an expression of the dogma of the consubstantiality of the Holy Trinity. Thus, everything preceding “I Believe” turns out to be a preparation for the “attention” of the word “consubstantial, ὁμοούσια.” “One in essence” is “wisdom”. The idea of such an order of worship is clear: mutual love alone is the condition of unity of thought - ὁμο-νοία, - the single thought of those who love each other, in contrast to the external relationship to each other, which gives nothing more than similar thought - ὁμοι-νοία, - on which worldly life is based, - science, society, statehood, etc. And unity of thought provides the ground on which joint confession is possible - ὁμο-λογήσωμεν, - that is, comprehension and recognition of the dogma of the one-existence: ἐν ὁμονοίᾳ, in - or through this unity of thought we touch the mystery of the Triune Divinity. The same idea about the inextricability of the connection between the internal unity of believers and knowledge, and therefore the glorification of God, who is the “Trinity in One,” is also contained in the priestly proclamation at the liturgy: “And grant us with one mouth and one heart to glorify and glorify Your most honorable and magnificent name, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages - καὶ δὸς ἡμῖν ἐν ἑνὶ στόματι, καὶ μιᾷ καρδίᾳ δοξάζειν, καὶ ἀνυμνεῖν τὸ πάντιμον καὶ μεγαλοπρεπές ὄνομὰ σου. 114 The difference is only in the additional moment of glorification of the name of the Triune God, glorification resulting from the confession by believers of this one predicable Name in three names. In the same way, the statement has not a legal-moral, but a metaphysical meaning: “Whoever says that he is in the light [in the truth], but hates his brother, is in darkness [in ignorance]. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no offense in him [i.e. i.e. the darkness of ignorance], but whoever hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:9-11). Light is Truth, 115 and this Truth certainly reveals itself; the type of her transition to another is love, just like the type of transition to another stubborn person who does not want to recognize herself as such darkness-ignorance is hatred. “Whoever does good is from God; but he who does evil has not seen God” (3 John 1:11). The inner light of the soul in itself and its manifestation in the other correspond so precisely to each other that from the vibration of one one can decisively conclude about the other. No love means no truth; There is truth, which means there is inevitably love. “Whoever abides in Him does not sin; whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him” (1 John 3:5). “Whoever is born of God does not commit sin, because His seed - σπέρμα αὐτοῦ - abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are recognized in this way: everyone who does not practice righteousness is not from God, neither does he who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:9-10). Love follows with the same necessity from the knowledge of God, with which the light shines from a lamp and with which the night fragrance flows from the opening cup of a flower: “knowledge is made by love - ή γνῶσις ἀγάπη γίνεται.” 116 Therefore, the mutual love of Christ's disciples is a sign, a sign of their learning, their knowledge, their walk in the truth. Love is its own sign by which a disciple of Christ is recognized: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love - ἀγάπην - one another” (John 13:35). But it would be impossible to make a greater mistake than to identify the spiritual love of the knower of the Truth with altruistic emotions and the desire for the “good of humanity,” which, at best, rely on natural sympathy or abstract ideas. For “love” in the latter, Jewish, sense, everything begins and ends in an empirical matter, the value of a feat is determined by its visible action. But for spiritual love, in the Christian sense, this value is just tinsel. Even moral activity, such as philanthropy, etc., taken by itself, is completely nothing. It is not appearance, not the “skin” of special activities that is desirable, but a gracious life that shimmers in every creative movement of the individual. But “skin,” like “skin,” empirical appearance as such, always admits of counterfeiting. Not a single time dares to deny that “false apostles, deceitful workers disguise themselves as apostles of Christ”; that even “Satan himself disguises himself as an Angel of Light” (2 Cor. 11:13–14). But if everything external can be counterfeited, then even the highest feat and the highest sacrifice - the sacrifice of one’s life - in themselves are nothing: I say people and even angels, - I am ringing copper, And if I have prophecy, and I know all mysteries, and all science, and if I have all faith, And if I all give away my property and if I give up my body, to be burned for me, - So-called “love” outside of God is not love, but only a natural, cosmic phenomenon, just as little subject to Christian unconditional evaluation as the physiological functions of the stomach. And, therefore, it is all the more clear that the words “love” “to love” and their derivatives in their Christian sense are used here, and family, tribal and national habits, selfishness, vanity, lust for power, lust and other “garbage of human feelings”, hiding behind the word love, are ignored. 118 True love is a way out of the empirical and a transition into a new reality. Love for another is a reflection of true knowledge on him; and knowledge is the revelation of the Trinitarian Truth itself to the heart, that is, the abiding in the soul of God’s love for man: “if we love one another, then God abides in us, and His love is perfect in us” (1 John 4:12) - we entered with Him not only into an impersonal, providential-cosmic relationship, but also into personal father-son communion. Therefore, “if our heart does not condemn us,” but, of course, for its judgment the heart itself must be at least somewhat cleansed from the bark of filth that has corrupted its surface, and capable of judging the authenticity of love, that is, if we recognize with a chaste consciousness that we really love, “not in word or tongue, but in deed and truth” (1 John 3:18), that we have really received a new essence, have really entered into personal communication with God, then “we have boldness towards God” (1 John 1:21), for the carnal judges everything according to the carnal. After all, “whoever keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him” (1 John 3:24); if we love Him, then “we abide in Him and He in us” (1 John 4:13). We say "love". But, one may ask, what exactly is this spiritual love expressed in? – In overcoming the boundaries of selfhood, in losing oneself, which requires spiritual communication with each other. “If we say that we have fellowship with Him [God], but walk in darkness, then we lie and do not practice the truth; But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” (1 John 4:13). The Absolute Truth is known in love. But the word “love,” as has already been explained, is of course not in the subjective-psychological sense, but in the objective-metaphysical sense. It is not that love for one’s brother itself is the content of Truth, as the Tolstoyans and other similar religious nihilists claim; It’s not that everything is exhausted by this love for his brother. No and no. Love for a brother is a manifestation to another, a transition to another, as if flowing into another that entry into the Divine life, which in the very subject who communicates with God is recognized by him as knowledge of the Truth. The metaphysical nature of love is in the super-logical transformation of the bare self-identity “I = I” and in losing oneself; and this happens when the power of God flows out onto another, through the influence of God’s power in another, breaking the bonds of human finite selfhood. By virtue of this emergence, the I becomes in the other, in the not-I, by this not-I, becomes one-essential to the brother, one-essential (ὁμοούσιος), and not just like-essential (ὁμοιούσιος), which like-being constitutes moralism; i.e. a futile, internally insane attempt at human, extra-divine love. Rising above the logical, meaninglessly empty law of identity and identifying with the beloved brother, the I thereby freely makes itself not-I or, in the language of sacred chants, “empties” itself, “depletes” itself, “defrauds,” “degrades” (cf. Phil. 2:7), 119 i.e., deprives itself of the necessary data and inherent attributes and natural laws of the internal activity according to the law of ontological egoism or identity; for the sake of the norm of someone else’s existence, the I goes out of my own boundary, from the norm of my being and voluntarily submits to a new image, in order to thereby include my I in the I of another being, which is not-I for him. Thus, the impersonal non-I becomes a face, another I, i.e. You. But in this “impoverishment” or “exhaustion” of the Self, in this “emptying” or “kenosis - κένωσις” of oneself, the reverse restoration of the Self occurs in its characteristic norm of being, and this norm of its is no longer just given, but also justified, that is, not just present in a given place and moment, but having universal and eternal significance. In the other, through its humiliation, the image of my being finds its “redemption” from the power of sinful self-affirmation, is freed from the sin of an isolated existence, which the Greek thinkers spoke about, 120 and in the third, as redeemed, it is “glorified,” that is, it is confirmed in its incorruptible value. On the contrary, without humiliation, the I would possess its norm only in potential, but not in act. Love is the “yes” that I say to myself; hatred is a “no” to oneself. Untranslatable, but expressively, R. Hamerling 121 coins this idea in the formula: love is “das lebhafte Sich-selbst-bejahen des Seins - a living “yes” of being to oneself.” Love combines value with givenness, 122 introduces obligation, duty into the elusive givenness; and debt, after all, is what gives longitude to a given thing; without debt she is “ρεῖ”, and with debt she is “μένει”. This love unites two worlds: “the great thing is that there is a mystery here, that the passing face of the earth and the eternal Truth come into contact here together.” 123 The love of the lover, transferring his Self into the Self of the beloved, into You, thereby gives the beloved You the power to recognize the Self of the lover in God and to love him in God. The beloved himself becomes a lover, he himself rises above the law of identity and in God identifies himself with the object of his love. He transfers his Self into the Self of the first through the third, etc. But these mutual self-surrenders, self-exhaustions, self-abasement of lovers seem only to reason to be side by side, going into infinity. Rising above the boundaries of its nature, the Self emerges from temporal-spatial limitation and enters Eternity. There, the entire process of the relationship between lovers is a single act in which an endless series, an endless series of individual moments of love are synthesized. This single, eternal and infinite act is the consubstantiality of the lovers in God, and the Self is one and the same with the other Self and, at the same time, different from it. Each I is a non-I, i.e. You, by virtue of the renunciation of yourself for the sake of another, and - I, by virtue of the renunciation of yourself by the other I for the sake of the first. Instead of separate, disparate, self-obstinate selves, a duality is obtained, a two-united being that has the beginning of its unity in God: “finis amoris, ut duo unum fiant; the limit of love is that the two may be one.” But, moreover, each I, as in a mirror, sees its own image of God in the image of God of the other I. This twoness has love in its essence and, as concretely embodied love, it is beautiful for objective contemplation. If for the first I the starting point of consubstantiality is truth, and for the second, for You, love, then for the third I, He, such a fulcrum will be beauty. In him, beauty arouses love, and love gives knowledge of truth. Enjoying the beauty of the duality, He loves it and through this He knows, affirming each, each I in its hypostatic originality. With this affirmation, the contemplating Self restores the self-identity of the contemplated hypostases: the first Self, as the loving and beloved Self; the second I, as I am beloved and loving, as You. Thus, through giving oneself to the duality, by breaking the shell of one’s self-closedness, the third Self partakes of its consubstantiality in God, and the duality becomes a trinity. But He, this third Self, as one who contemplates the two objectively, is himself the beginning for a new trinity. By the third I, all trinities grow together into a consubstantial whole - into the Church or the Body of Christ, as an objective revelation of the Hypostases of Divine love. Every third I can be the first in the second trinity and the second in the third, so this chain of love, starting from the Absolute Trinity, which by its power, like a magnet holding a fringe of iron filings, holds back everything, extends further and further Love, according to the bl. Augustine, there is “a certain life that combines or strives to combine - vita quaedam copulans vel copulare appetens.” 124 A similar thought is expressed by John Scott Erigena: 125 “Love,” he says, “is a connection or fetters through which all things are united in ineffable friendship and indissoluble unity - Amor est connexio aut vinculum quo omnium rerum universitas ineffabili amicitia insolubilique unitate copulatur.” This is the breath of the Holy Spirit, comforting with the joy of contemplation, omnipresent and filling everything with a good treasure, giving life, and with its presence cleansing the world from all filth. But for awareness, His living-creative activity becomes obvious only with the highest insight of spirituality. This is the scheme of self-justification of individuals. But how exactly does love reveal itself, this centrifugal force of existence emanating from the one who knows the Truth? Without going into details, I will only recall the well-known passage (1 Cor. 13:4–7) from Paul’s “Hymn of Love,” 126 which says it all: However, each of the hypostases of the Trinity, having in itself a spiritual life - knowledge-love-pleasure - in different metaphysical aspects, in accordance with its special position in the Trinity, is also distinguished by a special type of spiritual life, its special structure, a special structure of the entire path to God. This gives a peculiar, one or another, shade to her knowledge, her love and her joy: thus, the love of the first hypostasis is fiery, jealous; the second is meek, sacrificial; and the third – enthusiastic, reverent... It is not intuition or discourse that gives knowledge of the Truth. It arises in the soul from the free revelation of the Trinitarian Truth itself, from the gracious visit of the soul by the Holy Spirit. The beginning of such a visit is a volitional act of faith, absolutely impossible for human selfhood and accomplished through “attraction” by the Father who is in Heaven (John 5:44). But the one who has accomplished the feat of faith does not know by whose power he was accomplished. Only by believing in the Son and receiving in Him the promise of the Holy Spirit does the believer know who the Father is (Luke 10:22) - only in the Son of God does he recognize the Father as the Father, and therefore he himself becomes a son. Through his son he receives the Holy Spirit and then, in the Comforter, he contemplates the indescribable beauty of the essence of God, rejoices with inexplicable awe, seeing inside his heart the “clever light” or “the light of Tabor”; 127 and he himself becomes spiritual and beautiful. So, we hear about this in the troparion of St. Sergius of Radonezh: “The Holy Spirit has entered into you, His action is brightly decorated with him”, that is, the Holy Spirit is directly called the Source and Cause of the bright beauty of the Venerable One. “Intelligent light”, sometimes combined with spiritual “warmth” and “fragrance” - this is the rational intuition we are looking for, intuition that includes a number of its justifications - perfect beauty as a synthesis of absolute concrete reality with absolute rational justification. Smart light is the light of the Trinitarian Godhead Himself, the Divine essence, which is not just given, but is self-given. This is the “light of reason” that shone for the world from the Nativity of the Lord Jesus Christ, as it is sung in the troparion to the Nativity: “Your Nativity, Christ our God, the rise of the world and the light of reason..." This is the “Light of Christ”, which “enlightens everyone.” This is the same “mental light” for the sake of which “the soul will be in the morning for You,” God, as St. The Church is the light of God’s love for which we pray: lead you to the Word of God”, 128 that light in whose vision there is the contemplation of God and therefore the salvation of us, who cannot be outside of God. Doesn't the Orthodox pray: “Save me by Your radiance”? 129 And, seeing the light, doesn’t he calm down: “For I am not one, with you, my Christ, the trisolar light that enlightens the world.” 130 And doesn’t he at morning give praise to the “Father of lights” or, more precisely, “luminaries” 131 (James 1:17), And also, when preparing to give a vacation, doesn’t the priest endlessly say a touching prayer: “Christ, the true light, enlighten and sanctify every person coming into the world, so that the light of your face may be marked upon us, so that in it we will see the unapproachable light...”? “Quiet light of the holy glory, immortal Father, heavenly, blessed Jesus Christ: “When he came to the west of the sun, and saw the evening light, “We sing to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit of God. “Thou art worthy at all times to sing the voices of reverends, O Son of God, give life: Here the connection between all the ideas we are examining is clearly outlined. The Lord Jesus is a meek, quiet light from the holy glory of the immortal, therefore holy, and therefore blessed Heavenly Father. But He, this quiet Sun of the world, rose on earth and then set, again it seemed as if he was not with us. We saw the light of this setting Sun and in it, in the light of this Light, we “saw the light” of the Ever-Essential Trinity. Therefore, we now glorify Her, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit - God; The world glorifies the Son of God, with that trisolar enlightenment of creation giving life to the world, in grateful chants. But these are almost randomly taken from countless others, passages about the light of Tabor. The idea of ​​the light of grace is one of the few basic ideas of the entire divine service, for the divine service was compiled by spirit-bearing people, people who knew the knowledge of grace from experience. Yes, spiritual light... Light, even in sensory contemplation, is predominantly beautiful in itself, intuitively beautiful. Everything else, such as sound, smell, warmth, etc., is beautiful rather through rhythmic division; it is beautiful not in its own, intuitive sense, but in the sense of a certain intellectual satisfaction. Let us also pay attention to the fact that the tone itself, in its absolute height, is almost not even memorized, and the smell or taste is not even reproduced in the imagination. The relative pitch of tones, that is, some unconsciously perceived rational content, is what constitutes the object of musical pleasure: 132 according to Leibniz’s witty expression, the soul, listening to music, “unconsciously practices arithmetic,” 133 i.e., in that activity that has always been considered a model and type of rationality. Light is beautiful, apart from all divisions, apart from form, in itself, and it makes everything visible beautiful. “There is no object so repulsive that intense light would not make it beautiful,” says one almost modern writer. And the stimulus that it gives to the senses, and the inherent property of some kind of infinity, like space and time, gives all matter a cheerful appearance.” 134 Beauty, as a certain phenomenon or revelation of what becomes objective, is essentially connected with light, for everything that appears is precisely light, or, as the Apostle testifies, “everything exposed by light is - τὰ δὲ πάντα ἐλεγχόμενα ὐπὸ τοῦ φωτὸς φανεροῦται" (Eph. 5:13a). And through this it dissolves with the light that reveals it and is itself transformed into light, which the Apostle again teaches in the words: “everything that appears is light - παν γὰρ τὸ φανεροῦμενον φῶς ἐστιν” (Eph. 5 :13b). So, if beauty is precisely appearance, and appearance is light, then, I repeat, beauty is light, and light is beauty. Absolute light is absolutely beautiful - Love itself in its completeness, and it makes every person spiritually beautiful. Crowning the love of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is both the object and the organ of contemplation of the beautiful. That is why asceticism, as an activity aimed at contemplating the ineffable light of the Holy Spirit, was called by the Holy Fathers not science or even moral work, but art, art, and moreover, art and art par excellence, “the art of arts,” “the art of arts.” 135 Theoretical knowledge - φιλοσοφία - is the love of wisdom, love of wisdom; The theoretical, contemplative knowledge given by asceticism is φιλοκαλία, love of beauty, love of beauty. Collections of ascetic works, 136 which have long been called Philocalia, Φιλοκαλία, are not at all the essence of the Philokalia in our, modern sense of the word. “Kindness” here is taken in an ancient, general meaning, meaning beauty rather than moral perfection, 137 and φιλοκαλία means love of beauty. And in fact, asceticism does not create a “good” person, but a beautiful one, and the distinctive feature of holy ascetics is not at all their “kindness”, which happens to carnal people, even very sinful ones, but spiritual beauty, the dazzling beauty of a radiant, luminous personality, in no way accessible to a stout and carnal person. “There is nothing more beautiful than Christ,” the only sinless one.” 138 But, however, let’s not talk about asceticism: after all, entire books are dedicated to describe the ascetic path to the eternal Truth - the only path: in asceticism, as in mathematics, there are no royal paths, for only a purified heart can accept the ineffable light of the Divine and become beautiful. “When a person transgresses a commandment,” says St. Macarius the Great - the devil covered his entire soul with a dark veil. Therefore, grace finally comes and removes all the veil, so that the soul, having already become pure and having perceived its own nature, this blameless and pure creature, always contemplates with pure and pure eyes the glory of the True Light and the True Sun of Truth, shining in the very heart.” 139 “As the visible eye, being pure, always sees the sun; so the mind, having been completely cleansed, always sees the glory of the Light of Christ, and remains with the Lord day and night, just as the body of the Lord, united with the Divine, always coexists with the Holy Spirit. But people do not suddenly reach this measure, and only through labor, sorrow, or great feat...” 140 This purification of oneself or self-correction is required for the gathering of the entire being in the heart, 141 for the internal consolidation around the heart of all the powers of the spirit - mind, will and feeling. “The gathering of the mind in the heart is attention, the gathering of the will is vigilance, the gathering of feelings is sobriety.” 142 This threefold self-assembly leads to “entry into the inner church,” in which one can see the “heavenly church.” The light of Divine knowledge is the property of a purified personality. But the Love of God, illuminating the righteous, radiating from him, perhaps, by the ineffable mercy of God, through the prayers of the Mother of God, for the sake of some special goals, can sometimes be contemplated by other people who have not achieved spirituality: the loneliness of the ascetic is only the path to higher unity. The edges of the self-obstinate Self are undermined and destroyed in the ascetic, and through him an unearthly force flows into the soul of those who come into contact with him. A great ineffable light shines upon him; But does one who has not achieved perfection see in this light everything that can and should be seen in it? - I doubt. This was the case even in the Old Testament: “And it came to pass,” the Holy Writer narrates, “when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, and the two tablets of testimony were in Moses’ hand as he descended from the mountain; Moses did not know that his face began to shine with rays because God spoke to him. “And Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, and behold, his face was shining with rays, and they were afraid to come near him. ….. and when Moses stopped speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. When Moses came in before the Lord to speak with Him, he took off the veil until he came out. “And the children of Israel saw that the face of Moses was shining, and Moses again put the veil over his face until he came out to speak with Him” (Ex. 34:29-35). But what was almost the only exception in the Old Testament, for the personal “friend of God,” became almost the rule in the New. One can cite countless stories about light from holy ascetics. Here, for example, are a few such cases: “There was an Abba named Pamvo, about whom they say that he prayed to God for three years and said: “Do not give me glory on earth.” But God glorified him so much that no one could look at his face because of the shine that he had on his face.” 143 “They said about Abba Pambo that, just as Moses received the image of Adam’s glory when his face became glorified (Ex. 34:29), so Abba Pambo’s face shone like lightning, and he was like a king sitting on his throne. Such was also Abba Silouan and Abba Sisoes" 144 “They talked about Abba Sisoes. Before his death, when his fathers sat near him, his face shone like the sun. And he says to the fathers: “Here comes Abba Anthony.” A little later he says again: “The face of the Prophets has come.” And his face shone even brighter. Then he said: “I see the face of the Apostles.” The light on his face doubled, and he was talking to someone. “Then the elders began to ask him: “Who are you, father, talking to?” He answered: “The Angels have come to take me: but I ask that they leave me for a while to repent.” The elders told him: “You, father, have no need for repentance.” He answered them: “No, I am sure that I have not yet begun to repent.” And everyone knew that he was perfect. Suddenly his face shone again like the sun. Everyone was horrified, and he said to them: “Look, here is the Lord - He says: “Bring to me the chosen vessel of the desert,” and immediately he gave up his spirit and was as bright as lightning. The whole church was filled with fragrance. 145 “One of the fathers said: someone met Abba Silouan and, seeing that his face and body were as bright as an Angel, he fell on his face. He said at the same time that some other elders also had this gift.” 146 “One brother, having come to the monastery, to the cell of Abba Arseny, looked at the door and saw that the elder was all on fire. This brother was worthy of the vision. When he knocked, the elder came out and, seeing his brother as if in horror, asked him: “How long have you been knocking? Did you see anything here?” The brother told him: “No.” After talking, the elder released him.” 147 Among almost contemporary examples, I take only one excerpt from the story of N.A. Motovilov about his visit to the teacher at the beginning of the winter of 1831. Seraphim of Sarov. 148 Here we will see how smart intuition is embodied in all spheres of concrete reality. The saint explained to Motovilov that the whole goal of Christian achievement is to acquire the Holy Spirit. Motovilov was perplexed how to know that you are in the Holy Spirit. I continue the story with the words of a witness: “Then Fr. Seraphim took me very firmly by the shoulders and said to me: - We are both now, father, in the Spirit of God with you!.. Why don’t you look at me? - I can’t look, father, because lightning is pouring from your eyes. Your face has become brighter than the sun, and my eyes are aching with pain! - Do not be afraid, Your Love of God! and now you yourself have become as bright as I myself. You yourself are now in the fullness of the Spirit of God, otherwise you would not be able to see me like this. And bowing his head to me, he quietly said to me in my ear: - Thank the Lord God for His ineffable mercy towards you. You saw that I didn’t even cross myself, but only mentally prayed to the Lord God in my heart and said within myself: “Lord! deign him to clearly and with his bodily eyes see the descent of Thy Spirit with which Thou dost deign Thy servants when Thou deignest to appear in the light of Thy magnificent glory.” And so, father, the Lord instantly fulfilled the request of the poor Seraphim... How can we not thank Him for this ineffable gift to both of us. This way, father, the Lord God does not always show His mercy to the great hermits. It was the grace of God that deigned to console your contrite heart, like a loving mother, through the intercession of the Mother of God Herself... - Well, father, don’t look me in the eyes? Just look and do not be afraid - the Lord is with us! After these words, I looked into his face, and an even greater reverent horror attacked me. Imagine, in the middle of the sun, in the most brilliant brightness of its midday rays, the face of a person talking to you. You see the movement of his lips, the changing expression of his eyes, hear his voice, feel that someone is holding your shoulders with his hands, but not only do you not see these hands, you do not see either yourself or his figure, but only one dazzling light, stretching far, several fathoms around, and illuminating with its bright brilliance both the snow veil covering the clearing, and the snow pellets showering from above me and the great old man. Is it possible to imagine the situation in which I was then! – How do you feel now? – Fr. asked me. Seraphim. - Extraordinarily good! - I said. - How good is that? What exactly? “I feel such silence and peace in my soul that I cannot express it in any words!” “This is your love for God,” said Father Fr. Seraphim is the world about which the Lord told His disciples: “My peace I give to you, not as the world gives, I give to you. Even though you were from the world naturally, the world loved its own, but just as you were chosen from the world, for this reason the world hates you. Either way, be brave, for Az has conquered the world.” It is to these people, hated by this world, but chosen by the Lord, that the Lord gives the peace that you now feel within yourself... What else do you feel? – Fr. asked me. Seraphim. - Extraordinary sweetness! - I answered. - This is the sweetness about which the Holy Scripture says: “Thy house shall be drunk with the fatness, and with the source of Thy sweetness will I give to drink.” Now this sweetness fills our hearts and spreads through all our veins with indescribable delight. From this sweetness our hearts seem to melt, and we are both filled with such bliss that cannot be expressed in any language... What else do you feel? - Extraordinary joy in all my heart! And Father Fr. Seraphim continued: – When the Spirit of God descends upon a person and overshadows him with the fullness of its influx, then the human soul is filled with indescribable joy, for the Spirit of God brings joy to everything that He touches. This is the same joy about which the Lord speaks in His Gospel: “When a woman gives birth, she has sorrow, for her year is come, but when the child gives birth, she does not remember sorrow for the joy that a man was born into the world: You will be in the world of sorrow, but when I see you, your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” But no matter how comforting this joy that you now feel in your heart is, it is still insignificant in comparison with that about which the Lord Himself, through the mouth of His Apostle, said that that joy “no one has seen, no ear has heard, no good has risen into the heart of man, the hedgehog God has prepared for those who love Him.” - What else do you feel. Your love for God? - Extraordinary warmth! - How, father, warmth? Why, we are sitting in the forest. Now it’s winter outside and there’s snow underfoot, and there’s more than an inch of snow on us, and grain is falling from above... How warm can it be here?! - And the kind that happens in a bathhouse, when they turn on the heater and when a column of steam pours down on it... - And the smell. - he asked me, - the same as from the bathhouse? “No,” I answered, “there is nothing on earth like this fragrance.” When, during my mother’s lifetime, I loved to dance and went to balls and dance evenings, my mother used to sprinkle me with perfume that she bought in the best stores in Kazan, but those perfumes did not emit such a fragrance... And Father Fr. Seraphim, smiling pleasantly, said: “And I myself, father, know this just as much as you do, but I’m asking you on purpose: do you feel it this way?” The absolute truth, Your Love for God! No pleasant earthly fragrance can be compared with the fragrance that we now feel, because we are surrounded by the fragrance of the Holy Spirit of God. What earthly thing can be like Him!.. Notice, Your Love for God, you told me that it’s warm around us, like in a bathhouse, but look, the snow doesn’t melt either on you or on me, and underneath us too. Therefore, this warmth is not in the air, but in ourselves. It is precisely this same warmth about which the Holy Spirit, through the words of prayer, makes us cry out to the Lord: “Warm me with the warmth of Your Holy Spirit!” The hermits and hermits who were warmed by it were not afraid of the winter frost, being dressed, as in warm fur coats, in grace-filled clothing woven from the Holy Spirit. This is how it should actually be, because the grace of God must dwell within us, in our hearts, for the Lord said: “The Kingdom of God is within you.” By the Kingdom of God, the Lord meant the grace of the Holy Spirit. This Kingdom of God is now within us, and the grace of the Holy Spirit shines from the outside and warms us, filling the air around us with a variety of fragrances, delighting our senses with heavenly delight, filling our hearts with unspeakable joy. The story just quoted, almost contemporary to us, and written, moreover, by a skilled person, is full of significant details and life features. In this respect he is immeasurably valuable and, perhaps, almost exceptional. But the very reality of light is evidenced by a countless number of lives and legends about saints, so one must be crazy to decide to reject the reliability of these phenomena of blessed light. They are also confirmed by the fact that the aureole on icons - be it a halo or a halo, or glory in their various and varied forms, 149 - represents precisely this blessed light flowing from the spirit-bearers, that the aureole could neither appear nor remain in icon painting and other fine arts if it were, as is often believed, a simple convention, a conditional attribute of holiness. It is unlikely that such a persistent and widespread phenomenon could arise “without fire”, without expressing any reality underlying it. But the question arises: didn’t contemplation of this same light occur among non-Christian mystics, or at least among the Neoplatonists, for example? 150 After all, it is certain that they also saw some kind of light; there is no doubt that they too were blessed in their knowledge. Yes, we saw it; and were blissful. It is even possible that they saw the light of the Divine. I only say “possibly,” because the vision of inner light can also be “charm,” that is, a phenomenon of purely subjective and psychophysiological significance, sometimes—and perhaps always—not without the complicity of dark forces taking the form of an angel of light. However, if it was so, then this light, which the mystics of all countries and peoples teach about and which is interpreted by them precisely as the light of the heavenly world, the divine light, this divine light for them was only intuition, but not rationality, not evidence, that is, not reasonable, not self-proof intuition. This light gave them a new spiritual reality, but it justified it just as little as ordinary sensory intuition, blindly giving the reality of the sensory world, leaves it unproven, unjustified. The light of the mystics did not allow them ἐποχή, and could not resolve it. Even though they saw, they did not see. You ask why this is so. - Because they did not have the dogma of Trinity, but were only ghosts of the doctrine of Trinity, 151 which did not have its salt in themselves - the super-logical victory of the law of identity. In order to discern in spiritual light its self-evidence, it is necessary to already know in advance the results of the analysis of this light; then before our spiritual eyes the Trinity is synthesized into Unity, we will see the actually given “ὁμοούσιος”. Dogma - which, due to its super-logicality, could not be proclaimed by anyone other than God Himself; which in the mouth of someone other than the Lord would remain a collection of words, is: Wundt’s “apperprising mass,” 152 allowing one to turn the spiritual gaze to what it must be turned to in order to resolve ἐποχή. No human powers of themselves could analyze the Infinite Unit, just as they cannot synthesize It. After all, Synthesized Infinity is absolutely indecomposable into units. And only having the dogma in our consciousness, that is, the analysis communicated by God himself, can we see in the Divine light the implementation of this dogma, That is why the light seen by Plotinus and other mystics - whatever its origin - is as indifferent to the absolute skeptic as sensory light. He only complicated the task of skepticism, pointing to a new kind of blind intuition that does not have its own justification. And in general, you never know who saw something, but did not understand and could not understand its meaning. To see, a hypothesis was needed; but in order to express a hypothesis that clearly contradicts the norms of reason, one had to live in the depths of the Holy Trinity, to be the Son of God, and in order for anyone to believe this hypothesis, one had to have infinite authority, based on selfless love, on immaculate purity, on incomprehensible beauty and on invincible wisdom. Outside of Christ, the hypothesis of the Trinity was impossible - therefore, absolute vision was impossible. This is approximately how Fr. answers the question posed about the light of the Neoplatonists. Serapion Mashkin. “A hypothesis,” he writes in another place, “is the “eye of the mind”, it is the possibility of a phenomenon and, at the same time, the “mass” that appertains it; whoever has this “eye” perceives in experience the reality of a hypothetical possibility, receives knowledge that approaches the comprehension of the necessity of being, which gives certainty.” And if dogma is the “eye of the mind”, then the primary bearer of dogma is the “eye of humanity” - that eye with which humanity looks at the inaccessible light of the ineffable Divine glory. Only now is the inner meaning of the definition given by St. Gregory the Theologian to Athanasius the Great. He, who expressed and defended the dogma of the Trinity, was truly “the Most Holy Eye of the Universe.” 153 By them the universe saw the Truth. The thorny path of smart doing is crowned with the bliss of absolute knowledge. “Feeling the need to return to myself, I entered, guided by You, into my inner world; I could do this, since You became my assistant,” says Blessed. Augustine. “I entered and saw with some eye of my soul, above this very eye of my soul, above my thought, an unchanging light. This was not the ordinary light that almost everyone saw. It was stronger than the light of the sun, but not in the same way as if this light shone many times more clearly and occupied everything with its mass. He was not this, but something else, completely different from all this. And He was above my thoughts - not as soap floats above water or the sky rises above the earth: He was above me, because He created me, and I was below him, because I was created by Him. He who knows the truth knows this light, and he who knows this light knows eternity. Love knows him. Oh, Eternal Truth, True Love and Beloved Eternity! You are my God; I miss you day and night. - And when I first knew You, You took me to Yourself, and I saw that what I saw existed, but I, who saw, did not yet exist. You exclaimed from afar: “I am who I am.” And I heard how they hear in my heart, and there was no longer any doubt left in me: it would be easier for me to doubt my own life than that there is Truth, visible through the examination of creatures.” 154 Glory to You, who showed us the light! Pignus amoris. The guarantee is love. Wed: according to blessed Augustine, “God the Trinity is one, only, great, true, truthful, Truth – est Trinitas Deus unus, solus, magnus, verus, verax, veritas” (Augustinus. De Trinitate, VIII 3 [II]. – S. Augustini Opera omnia, Editio Parisina altera, T. VIII 2, Parisiis, 1837, col. 1322). God, he says, “is that immovable Truth which is rightly called the law of all sciences and the science of the omnipotent Artist – est illa incommutabilis veritas, quae lex omnium artium recte dicitur, et ars omnipotentis artificis” (Augustinus, – De vera religione, 57. – S. Aurelii Augustini Opera, T. I, secunda editio Veneta, Venetiis, 1756, col. 976). According to G. Cohen, God is “the Center of all ideas, the Idea of ​​Truth – Zentrum aller Ideen, die Idee der Wahrheit” (G. Cohen, – System der Philosophie, Bd. II, Ethik des reinen Willens, 1904, S. 417 ff.) We also find the idea of ​​God, as the essential bearer and source of all truth, in the people’s understanding of life. For example, the repertoire of Galician wandering lyre players includes a “warrior song”; it is also sung in the Latin rite in Galicia on the “strangled day” or simply “strangled day” - November 1st of the new style, when all the dead are remembered. This hymn, among other things, says: “We praise the God who eats” “Cyca of the truthful Christ, “What, all heaven and earth are his!..” (Mirop, - “Voyanitskaya Pisnya”, - “Kiev Antiquity”, 1888, December, No. 12, Vol. 23, p. 146), Jesus Christ the truthful, that is, the one in whom truth primarily lives, in whom all truth, Logos, the True Word of God is embodied; Jesus Christ the truthful is the norm and rule and the source of all righteousness. Archbishop Anthony [Khrapovitsky], - Conversation between a Christian and a Mohammedan about the truth of the Holy Trinity (Complete Works, Pochaev, 1906, Vol. 4), pp. 204–214. Archbishop Anthony [Khrapovitsky], - The moral idea of ​​the dogma of the Holy Trinity (id., Kazan, Vol. 2, pp. 5–30 = “Religious and Philosophical Bible,” issue XI, Vyshny-Volochek, 1906). N. F. Fedorov, – Philosophy of the common cause (articles, thoughts and letters, published under the editorship of A. A. Kozhevnikov and N. P. Peterson). Verny, 1906, T. I, pp. 33–37, approx. 5. M. M. Tapeev, - Gospel (“Fundamentals of Christianity”, T, 2, 2nd ed., Sergiev Posad, 1908). N.I. Sagarda, - First Council Epistle of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian. Isagogical-exegetical study. Poltava, 1903. N.I. Sagarda, – Characteristic features in the disclosure and presentation of St. Ap. John of Christian teaching ("Christian Reading", 1904, T. I, No. 6, June). B. M. Melioransky, – About trinity. (Analysis of criticism of L.N. Tolstoy). (Separate reprints from the magazine “Church Voice” for 1907, St. Petersburg, 1907). God, says the bl. Augustine, – “non bonus animus aut bonus angelus, aut bonum coelum; sed bonum bonum." He is “non alio bono bonum, sed bonum omnis boni.” He is “non hoc et illum bonum, sed ipsum bonum” (Blessed Augustine, - On the Trinity VIII. 4 [III] S. Augustini Opera omnia. Editio Parisina altera, Parisiis, 1837. T. VIII 2, col. 1323). I use the terminology and division proposed by Schelling. An idea developed and passionately defended in the book: Vl. [F.] Ern, – Fight for Logos. Philosophical and critical experiments. M., 1911. Ed. "Path". The concept of “losing oneself” of the cognizing subject was persistently dwelled on in Russian literature † book. S. N. Trubetskoy (“Metaphysics of Ancient Greece”, M., 1890. = “Collected Works of Prince S. N. Trubetskoy”, T. 3, M., 1910. N. O. Lossky worked more than others on the concept of “entry” of the object of knowledge into the knowing subject in the book: “The Justification of Intuitionism.” St. Petersburg, 1906 (and also in “Notes of the History and Philology Faculty of the Imperial St. Petersburg University,” Part LXXVIII). For a presentation of the same views, see his book: “Introduction to Philosophy,” Part I. Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge. SPb„ 1911, pp. 231–269. The book by N. O. Lossky caused quite a lively debate, which significantly clarified some puzzling questions. From the articles related to this controversy, we mention: A. Askoldov, – New epistemological theory of N. O. Lossky. (“J.M.N.P.”, n.s., V (1906) No. 10, department 2, pp. 413–441) · A. Askoldov, – On the issue of epistemological intuitionism (“Questions of Philosophy and Psychology” XCVI, pp. 561–570). A. I. Vvedensky, – A new and easy proof of philosophical criticism. St. Petersburg, 1909. H. O. Lossky, – Is the new and easy proof of philosophical criticism sound? (“J.M.N.P.”, 1909, No. 7) [Anticriticism of Vvedensky]. A. I. Vvedensky. – Logic, as part of the theory of knowledge. Ed. 2nd, St. Petersburg. 1912, pp. 207–214, 252–253, 275–287, 356–358 [re-criticism of Lossky]. L. M. Lopatin, – New theory of knowledge. (“Questions of philosophy and psychology,” book XXXVII, pp. 185–206. H. O. Lossky, - In defense of intuitionism. Regarding the article by A. Askoldov “New epistemological theory” by H. O. Lossky and the article by prof. A. Lopatin “New theory of knowledge.” (“Questions of Philosophy and Psychology,” book XCIII, pp. 449–462). N. [A]. Berdyaev, – Philosophy of Freedom, M., 1911, ch. IV, pp. 97–127. S. I. Povarnin, – On the “intuitionism” of N. O. Lossky, St. Petersburg, 1911. N. Lossky, – Response to S.I. Povarnin on criticism of intuitionism. St. Petersburg, 1911. Etc. The glorious Kiev school of historians of thought, which adhered to Platonism and German idealism, held the same views. This should include the rector of the Kyiv Theological Academy, Archimandrite Innocent Borisov, later Archbishop of Kherson, according to whose view “only faith destroys that impassable abyss that lies between us and the objects of our knowledge, only it breaks that impenetrable curtain that hides the existence of things” (Innocent, Archbishop of Kherson, - Works, ed. Wolf, T. 10, pp.). – His friends, O. M. Novitsky, V. S. Karpov, S. S. Gogotsky, I. M. Skvortsov, Mikhnevich, Avsenev, Amphiteatrov, thought like him. Of the later representatives of the same school, it is necessary to especially mention P. D. Yurkevich and, close to O. Novitsky in spirit, although not from Kiev, M. A. Ostroumov. However, no matter how different the ways of approaching these concepts of “exit” and “entry” are, their final destination is the same. Both metaphors mean the same act of internal unification of the knower with the known. J. Böhme, – Aurora, S. 37 (Schriften, herausgegeb. von U. W. Schiebler, 1831–1847. 2-te Aufl., 1861 ff.) Another 17th-century mystic, John Pordage, expresses himself in the same way. “This Second Number of This Three-Unity can also be called the Heart of God; Formerly It is His central or all-inner birth, the focus and seat of His Love, from where this Love again flows and pours itself into the whole Divine Being, and into everything that can be besides Him” (“Divine and true metaphysics”, part one, book I, chapter V, § 101, p. 113). “There is no means of explaining how a monad can undergo a change in its internal being from any creation, since nothing can be moved in it, and no internal movement can be imagined in it that could be caused, directed, increased or decreased within the monad, as is possible in complex substances where there are changes in the relations between the parts. Monads have no windows at all through which anything could enter or exit - les monades n'ont point de fenêtres, par les quelles quelque chose y puisse entrer ou sortir. Accidents cannot be separated or move outside of substances, as the scholastics once did with sensory species (species sensibiles). So, neither substance nor accident can penetrate the monad from the outside” (G. W. Leibniz. Monadologie, 7 – Opera philosophica, ed. J. E. Erdmann, 1840, p. 705). For evidence, see the book: Louis Couturat, – La Logique de Leibniz d’après des documents inédits, Paris; 1901. Note X, sur la définition de l'amour, pp. 567–573. G. W. Leibniz, – Opera philosophica, ed. J. E. Erdmann, 1840, p. 118; cp. Nouveaux Essais, II, ch. 20. § 4. For exact references, see Couture's book, from which the quotes given in the text are taken. Chr. Wolfius, – Psychologia empirica, 1738, § 633. Chr. Wolf , – Vernünftige Gedanken von dem gesellschaftl. Leben des Menschen, 1721, I, § 449. M. Mendelssohn, – Abhandlung über die Evidenz in dem metaphysischen Wissenschaften, 1764, 2-te Aufl. 1786, I, 2, 48. References [92, 93, 94] – from Rud. Eisler, – Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe 3-te Auflage, Bd. II, Berlin, 1910, S. 712, Art. "Liebe". Spinoza's intellectualism runs through his entire “Ethics” and is especially clearly expressed in the second part of it. “The soul,” says Spinoza, “is a thinking thing, res cogitans” (Ben. de Spinoza, - Ethices. Pars II, Def 3. Benedicti de Spinoza, - Opera quot reperta sunt. Recognoverunt J. Van Vloten et. S. P. N. Land. Vol. I. Hagae Comitum, 1882). Ben. de Spinoza, – Ethices Pars III, VI. – id. Schelling, – Philosophical studies on the essence of human freedom (translated by L. Meerovich). St. Petersburg, published by D. E. Zhukovsky, 1908, p. 19. - In fact, “Ethics” is replete with Spinoza’s favorite word, “thing, res.” He constantly talks about things he hates or things he loves, and even God himself is called “a thinking thing.” It would be useless to provide quotations, since one would have to refer to almost every third page of the Ethics. However, this predilection for the word “thing” cannot be considered only by the literary manner of the philosopher: firstly, such a manner itself expresses a lot, and secondly, Spinoza always spoke in general about “love” and “hatred” for people, objects, states, uniting them under the word “thing”. Terminology introduced by Aristotle (Aristoteles, – Metaphysica, Χ 3, 1054a 32; Χ 8, 1058a 18; VII 11, 1037b 7101). Destutt de Tracy, – Elements d’idéologie. 1803–1815. Part. III, ch. I, p. 160 (I quote from Eisler, – Wörterbuch. Bd. I, S. 543) M. Palágyi, – Die Logik auf dem Scheidewege, 1903, S. 167. (Quoting from Eisler. Wörterbuch. Bd I, S. 44): “Dieselbe Wahrheit ist es –, die sich in unendlich vielen gleichlautenden Urteilsakten dargestellten kann.” Aristotle, – Metaphysics, V (Δ), 9. ( Aristotelis Opera edidit Academia Regia Borussica, Berolini, 1831, volum II., p. 1018a, 7–10. – Die Metaphysik des Aristoteles. Grundtext, Übersetzung und Kommentar von Albert Schwegler. Tübingen, 1847. Bd. I, S. 107). The French translator J. Barthelemy-Saint-Hilaire renders this passage as follows: “Il s’ensuit qu’évidemment l’identité est une sorte d’unité d’existence, soit qu’il s’agisse de plusieurs êtres distincts, soit qu’il s’agisse d’un être unique, qu’on regarde comme plusieurs.” C'est ainsi qu'on dit par exemple qu'un seul et même est identique à lui-même; et alors on conisidère cet être unique comme s’il était deux êtres au lieu d’un” (Métaphysique d’ Aristote traduite en fraçais – par J.Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire. T. II. Paris 1879, p. 135. livre V, chap. IX, § 6). The Russian translators P. Pervov and V. Rozanov’s definition of identity reads like this: “From here it is obvious that identity is a kind of unity of being when there are many [objects] or when [one] is used as many, for example when they say that something is identical to itself, for in this case it is used as two objects” (Aristotle's Metaphysics. Translation from the Greek original and explanations by P. Pervov and V. Rozanov. First edition. Books I-V. St. Petersburg, 1895, p. 160. Book V, IX, 3). Finally, in Schwegler’s German translation we read: “Woraus sich ergibt, dass die Einerleiht eine gewisse Einheit ist, entweder von Mehreres dem Seyn nach, oder von Einem, das man aber als ein Mehreres behandelt, wie wenn man z.” B. sagt, etwas sey mit sich selbst einerlei man behandelt in diesem Fall das Eine als wäre es eine Zweiheit –” (Albert Schwegler, – id. Bd. 2, Tübingen, 1847, Fünftes Buch, cap. 96, § 82). Leibniz, – Nouveaux Essai II, ch. 27 § 9. “All possible phenomena,” says Kant, “belong, as representations, to the whole of possible self-consciousness. But this self-consciousness, as a transcendental representation, necessarily and with a priori certainty possesses numerical identity, since without the mediation of this initial apperception nothing can enter the realm of knowledge. Since this identity must necessarily be included in the synthesis of the entire diversity of phenomena, since they must become empirical knowledge, then the phenomena are subject to a priori conditions with which their synthesis (appregences) must always be consistent. – Alle möglichen Erscheinungen gehören, als Vorstellungen, zu dem ganzen möglichen Selbstbewusstsein. Von diesem aber, als einer transscendentalen Vorstellung, ist die numerische Identität unzertrennlich und a priori gewiss; weil nichts in das Erkenntniss kommen kann, ohne vermittelst dieser ursprünglichen Apperception. Da nun diese Identität unzertrennlich und a priori gewiss, weil nichts in das Erkenntniss kommen kann, ohne vermittelst dieser ursprünglichen Apperception. Da nun diese Identität notwendig in der Synthesis alles Mannigfaltigen der Erscheinungen, sofern sie empirische Erkenntniss werden soll, hinein kommen muss, so sind die Erscheinungen Bedingungen a priori unterworfen, welchen ihre Synthesis (der Apprehension) durchgängig gemäss sein muss" (I. Kant. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Text der Ausgabe 1781 [A]. Elementarlehre. II. Th., 1 Abth., 1. Buch, II Hauptsl. 2 Absch., § 113. – Herausgegeben von K. Kehrbach, Verlag von Ph. Reclam 2-te Aufl., Lpz., § 125. – Based on the translation by N. O. Lossky, St. Petersburg, 1907, p. 93, below the line). – This “identity of my consciousness at different times is only a formal condition of my thoughts and the connection between them, but it does not at all prove the numerical identity of my subject – es ist also die Identität des Bewusstseins meiner selbst in verschiedenen Zeiten nur eine formale Bedingung meiner Gedanken und ihres Zusammenhanges, beweiset aber gar nicht die numerische Identität, meines Subjects" (id., Elementarlehre. II, Th., II Abth., II Buch, I Hauptsch. Ausg. 1781 (A), S. 363. Reclam, S. 308; trans. H. O. Lossky, p. 232, under the line). - “If I want to know through experience the numerical identity of the external object, then I must pay attention to the stable side of the phenomenon, to which, as a subject, everything else relates, as a definition, and notice the identity of this side of the phenomenon while everything else in it changes. But I constitute the object of an internal feeling, and every time is only a form of internal feeling. Consequently, I attribute every consistent determination of my soul to the numerically identical I in every time, that is, to the form of an internal visual representation of me. In view of this, the idea that the soul is a person should not be considered as obtained by inference, but as a completely identical judgment of self-consciousness in time, and this is the reason that it has a priori significance. In fact, the meaning of this proposition boils down, in fact, to the fact that at all times when I am conscious of myself, I am aware of this time as belonging to the unity of my self, and it makes absolutely no difference whether I say that all this time is in me as an individual unity, or that I, with my numerical identity, am in all this time. – Wenn ich die numerische Identität eines äusseren Gegenstandes durch Erfahrung erkennen will, so werde ich auf das Beharrliche derjenigen Erscheinung, worauf, als Subject, sich alles Uebrige als Bestimmung bezieht, acht haben und die Identität von jenem in der Zeit, da dieses wechselt bemerken. Nun aber bin ich ein Gegenstand des innern Sinnes und alle Zeit ist bloss die Form des Sinnern innes. Folglich beziehe ich alle und jede meiner successiven Bestimmungen auf das numerischidentische Selbst in aller Zeit, d. i in der Form der inneren Anschauung meiner Selbst – es ist einerlei, ob ich sage: diese ganze Zeit ist in Mir als individueller Einheit, oder ich bin, mit numerischer Identität, in allerdieser Zeit befindlich” (id., Ausg. 1781 [A], S. 362; Reclam SS. 307–308; trans. Lossky, pp. 231–232, below the line). According to Staudinger, Cohen is “the foreman - der Altmeister - of neo-Kantianism” (R. Staudinger. Cohens Logic d. reinen Erkenntis und d. Logik d. Wahrnehmung. - “Kanstudien”, 1903, VIII, 1). H. Cohen, System der Philosophie. Bd. II, Berlin, 1902. Erste Klasse, 2, S. 78. The idea of ​​the opposition of living creativity in time and mechanical completeness in space or, which is almost the same, the idea of ​​​​the opposition of a thing in personality is the basis of the latest philosophers Henri Bergson and William Stern. But neither in its first edition, nor in the second does the thought have the power to break through, although not mechanical, but also not personal vitalism. The philosophemes we mentioned are nothing more than vitalistic ontologism, and proof of this can be at least one thing: even in the more personalistic of them, in the system of V. Stern, an attempt is made to define personality. This alone is enough to convince us of the impersonality of this philosophy. Why did this happen? “I think it’s because both philosophers, although burdened by the thing-things that are inextricably linked with rationalism, do not dare to openly break with this latter, i.e., in other words, they do not dare to undertake the feat of faith.” Dissatisfied with reason, they still want to somehow sneak out of his kingdom unnoticed and without scandal, pretending that they are continuing his work. The tragic moment is alien to both; Well, you can’t overcome reason with complacency, “in an amicable way.” And so it turns out in fact that Bergson almost does not talk about personality - and this is the most prudent position! – However, here is the definition of personality given by V. Stern: “Personality is a being that, despite the multiplicity of its parts, forms a real, original and self-valuable unity and, as such, despite the multiplicity of its partial functions, carries out a single, purposeful self-activity. – A thing is the contradictory opposite of personality. It is a being that, consisting of many parts, does not have a real, unique and integral unity and, while performing many partial functions, does not carry out any single purposeful initiative. – Eine Person ist ein solche Existierendes, das, trotz der Vielheit der Theile, eine reale, eigenartige und eigenwertige Einheit bildet, und als solche, trotz der Vielheit der Teilfunctionen, eine einheitliche, zielstrebige Selbsttätigkeit vollbringt. – Eine Sache ist das contradictorische Gegenteil zur Person. Sie ist ein solches Existierendes, das, aus vielen Teilen bestehend, keine reale, eigenartige und eigenwertige Einheit bildet, und das, in vielen Teilfunctionen functionierend, keine einheitliche zielstrebige Selbsttätigkeit vollbringt.” (L. William Stern, – Person und Sache. System der philosophischen Weltanschauung. Erster Band: Ableitung und Grundlehre. Lpz. 1909, Einführung, S. 16. – Translation of definitions – according to Frank [see 2 to p. 5], p. 172). – Further, V. Stern (SS. 19–19) contains “clarifications” of these definitions). Bernardi Carevallensis Opera, ed. Mabillon, 1719. De dil. Dei, 1.1. N. N. Sagarda, - First Council Epistle of St. Ap. and Ev. John the Theologian. Poltava, 1903. Εὐχολόγιον. Ἐν Ῥώμῃ, 1754, σ. 75. Further quotations are made from the same Euchologia. See: S. [I]. Sobolevsky, - On the meaning of the words “Let us smell of wisdom.” (“The Wanderer,” 1906, October, part II, pp. 586–588). A. [.] Almazov, - History of the rites of baptism and confirmation. Kazan, 1884, ch. X, pp. 219–240. N. [Ch]. Cheltsov, - Ancient forms of the Creed of the Orthodox Church or the so-called apostolic symbols, St. Petersburg, 1869. However, this equation should not be understood as metaphorical: here is an indication of the mystical ineffable light of Truth, about which see below. Gregory of Nyssa, – On the soul and resurrection. (Migne, – Patrol. ser. gr., T. 46, col. 96, p.) We present it in full, translated by M. D. Muretov Be zealous for the greatest gifts, - And I will show you an even more excellent way. If I speak with tonguesˆPeopleˆAnd (even) Angels, - I am ringing copper, And if I have a prophecy, Insignificance – Iˆ (No benefit to me) And if I all give away my property And if I betray my body, To be burned for me - Love never ceases Although the prophecies will disappear, Languages will cease And knowledge will be abolished When will perfection come? This will “partly” be abolished. Then he abolished his infancy. Now we see through a mirror in a riddle, Then I will know just as I am known. Faith - Hope - Love - But the biggest one is Love: [And be zealous for spiritual (gifts), Above all, prophesy]. (M.D. Muretov, - The New Testament Song of Love compared with Plato’s “Symposium” and the “Song of Songs” (from “Theologian. Herald” for 1903, No. 11 and No. 12 and separate reprints). Much has been written on the topic of the difference between altruism and Christian love, especially by St. oo.; from the new literature I will name almost at random: K. N. Leontiev, - Our New Christians (Collected Works, ed. by V. M. Sablin, M., 1912, T. 8). L. [A.] Tikhomirov, - Altruism and Christian love. Vyshny Volochek, 1905 ((Religious and Philosophical Bible, issue IX). [M. A. Novoselov], – Humanism. Its meaning and significance in the new history of mankind. M., 1912 (id., issue XXVIII). M. [A.] Novoselov, – Psychological justification of Christianity. M., 1912. (id., issue XXVIII) [Doctor of Medicine] A. A. Sokolovsky, – Religion of love and egoism. Part one, M., 1891. Prot. A. M. Ivantsov-Platonov, - Christian teaching about love for humanity in comparison with the extremes of socialist teachings. M., 1884 (separate publication, and in the collection of words and speeches of Archpriest Ivantsov-Platonov, entitled “For Twenty Years of the Priesthood”). On the concept of “humiliation”, in a special theological sense, in relation to Jesus Christ, see: M. [M.] Tareev, – The Humiliation of Our Lord Jesus Christ, M., 1901. IX+192+II pages (the bibliography of the question is also indicated). M. M. Tareev, - The Humiliation of Christ (“Fundamentals of Christianity”, T. I, 2nd ed., Sergiev Posad, 1908, pp. 7–134). The same as the previous one, but in partly simplified, partly supplemented processing. A. Chekanovsky, - Towards an understanding of the doctrine of the self-abasement of our Lord Jesus Christ (presentation and critical analysis of kenotic theories about the face of Jesus Christ.) Kiev, 1910 IV + 220 pp. The idea of the “injustice” of individual existence and of death as a process of returning to primary common existence was expressed in a more or less dismembered form by many Greek philosophers or, more precisely, was implied by almost all of them. Apparently, it was fundamental in that complex ideological whole that reflected and aroused the experiences of the mysteries. It is very likely that this thought is of Eastern origin, although it could be completely autochthonous, for the removal of personal limitations and the intoxicating delight of merging with all of existence, produced by the mysteries, is in itself sufficient to give birth to thoughts about the sinfulness of individual existence and about the bliss, and therefore the primitive holiness, of being outside oneself. This idea is especially clearly expressed by Anaximander. According to Theophrastus, preserved by Simplicius, “Anaximander, son of Praxiades of Miletus, student and follower of Thales, asserts that the infinite is the beginning - ἀρχή - and the material cause - στοιχεῖον - of everything. He was the first to introduce the word “beginning” and suggested that it was not water or any other of the so-called elements, but some other infinite nature from which all the heavens and all the worlds in them are formed. From this beginning all things receive birth and, according to necessity, destruction, for at a certain time they undergo punishment and bear retribution for mutual injustice: this is how he expresses himself, using too poetic turns of phrase - οὖσι, καὶ τἡν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατᾶ τὸ χρεών, διδόναι γὰρ αύτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ Teophrasti physics. opinionum, fr. 2, cited in Simplicii in Aristot. Physic., f. 36–54. – Hermannus Diels, – Berolini 1879, p. However, Theophrastus, in his deep message, is far from right, seeing in the words of Anaximander “too poetic expressions,” although the historian of philosophy who is too ontologizing is hardly right, asserting, on the basis of the study of Egyptian beliefs, that “among the ancient Greek philosophers the words νόμος, δίκη denote prime space” and that “that is why here ἀδικία of things is nothing more than their deviation from primary space and τίσις, retribution, is nothing more than their turning into boundless space" (Op. [M.]. Novitsky, - Gradual development of ancient philosophical teachings in connection with the development of pagan beliefs. Kyiv, 1860. Part II, p. 93, note 81. – Cf. about the religion of the Egyptians, id., Part I, note 5). Anaximander’s general idea is simple, namely: “Untruth is isolation, mutual opposition, separation; truth triumphs in the destruction of everything that is separate, individual things return to their elements. But these latter are absorbed by the boundless, in the depths of which countless worlds are born and destroyed” (Book by S. N. Trubetskoy, - History of Ancient Philosophy. Part one, M., 1906, p. 66. – Wed. T. Gompertz, – Greek thinkers. Per. from the second German ed. E. Gertsyk and D. Zhukovsky, St. Petersburg, 1911, T. I, p. 50), but, like all provisions of the original metaphysics, this thought is a reflection of specific mystical psychology and even, more specifically, Orphic ideas about the soul that arise on the basis of mysteries, and not the construction of an abstract mind. See: Gompertz, – id., ch. 5th: Orphic-Pythagorean doctrine of the soul, p. 108 ff. C. [C.] Glagolev, – Greek religion. Part 1, Beliefs. Sergiev Posad, 1909. Ch. 5th: Orphic theology, pp. 216 ff. Rud. Steiner, Mysteries of Antiquity and Christianity. Translation of the book authorized by the author: Rud. Steiner, – Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache, Lpz., 2 Aufl., 1910. M., 1912. R. Hamerling, – Die Atomistik des Willens, 1891, Bd. II, S. 164 (quoting from: Rud. Eisler. Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe, 3-te Aufl., Berlin, 1910. Bd. 2, S. 713). The idea of ​​complete isolation of values ​​and givens, ought and reality, norms and facts is perhaps the most characteristic of the entire neo-Kantian movement of philosophy, both in the narrow and broad sense of the term neo-Kantianism. F. M. Dostoevsky, - The Brothers Karamazov. “From the conversations and teachings of Elder Zosima” (“Collected Works”, T. 12, p. 337). Bl. Augustine, – On the Trinity VIII, 10. Joh. Scotus Erigena, – De divisione naturae, I, 74 (Migne, – Patrolog. ser. latina, T. 122, col. 519 B). Another definition of love is also given here: “Amor est naturalis motus omnium rerum, quae in motu sunt, finis quietaque statio, ultra quam nullus creaturae progreditur motus” (id.) “The Holy Scripture calls God light. This name, according to ordinary understanding, expresses the following property of God: his purity. But doesn’t it also express the essence of God? Isn’t God really light, and doesn’t His Being have anything similar to light?” (Innocent, Archbishop of Kherson and Tauride. About God in general, as the founder of the moral or heavenly kingdom. Works, ed. M. O. Wolf, St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1877, T. 10, pp. 255–265). – The teaching about God as an ineffable light is contained in almost all mystics; We find it systematically presented by the Englishman John Pordadge, who lived in the 17th century (1625–1698), in his main work: Metaphysica vera et divina, translated into German and Russian under the titles: Pordädschen's göttliche und wahre Metaphysik, úbersetzt von Loth. Vischer, 1725. Divine and true metaphysics, or wondrous and experience-acquired knowledge of invisible and eternal things, revealed through D.I.P. [Moscow, in a secret printing house, around 1784–1786]. 3 volumes, 547+600+639 pages in-quarto. This book was confiscated and, according to Sopikov, is defined as the rarest. This is how John Pordage teaches: “God is Light, (1 John 1:5) therefore His Being has space, depth, height, longitude and breadth. For it is impossible to imagine a Light that would not have space, whose brilliance would not spread around itself, which would not illuminate any place at all, and would not occupy with its clarity. On the contrary, it is not possible to object that God is called Light only in a comparative way, since without any reason it is said that Scripture calls God Light in a comparative way only. Moreover, God has this name all his own; and if we consider His sublimity, the subtlety and clarity of His brilliance, then it is impossible to call this external light, which is called bodily, by this name except in a very inappropriate way: for the Divine is incomprehensibly far superior to it in brilliance and glory; as many testify, who have found out this. – And in this sense, that is, in the consideration of His All-Highest Clarity and Lightness, and His All-subtile Being, it is true that the Spiritual and Divine Light is completely different from the corporeal or external, and is of a special kind. However, both have, in this consideration of light, the same nature and properties; and no one will ever prove otherwise. “However, I would like to hear what they mean by the name Spiritual Light, if they want to show through this nothing other than the sublimity of its brilliance and the subtlety of its essence. For Knowledge alone cannot be called Light in itself. Since then, all devils and condemned people have knowledge of many things, not only the figurative one, which they still have about Divine things, but also essential and experimental knowledge about their Dark World, and about the things in it; which, however, all of them do not have the slightest spark of light. – Therefore, spiritual Light is true and proper light, according to the general concept that all people have about it, that is, clearly shining clarity. And such light, which everyone must recognize as something material and as essential perfection, cannot be denied to God without touching His Glory. All the less, one can doubt that in the Revelation of John it is precisely said about Eternal Life: “And there shall be no night there, and they shall not require a lamp or the light of the sun; until then God the Lord will give light to them” (Rev. 22:5). This can be understood in no other way than about the True Sensitive Light, with which the eyes of the blessed will be illuminated. - It is also indecent if they say that this external light is a corporeal being, if through this they understand such a thing that has nothing in itself except what extends in height, depth, length and breadth, which is in itself without any life, and is completely suffering. – Because Light is Life (John 14:8). Moreover, he acts collectively from his own internal foundation, and from his very own strength. therefore he is Spirit, and not body. And how willingly to respect this conclusion about the Divine Light; So one should recognize external things as correct for so long, until it is proven by solid evidence that this one is a completely different and opposite nature.” Next, some possible objections to this are refuted; but we won't go into details. Then, the author says: “...As God is an infinite Being, so He is also infinite Light and infinite space. – And just like on this day, the external Light surrounds everything, contains everything within itself, and all things live, move and exist in it; so the Divine, night and day [for there is no darkness in God, but continuous (1 John 1:5; Ps. 139:12) day] fills everything, penetrates everything, embraces everything, and in Him we live, move and are. He, in the interior of all things, is the foundation that bears and holds everything; there is nothing that can be hidden from Him. Although He Himself, due to the overwhelming subtlety or subtility of His being, cannot be revealed by the power of creation, He must, in the deepest humility, ask and expect His free-willed and merciful revelation and communication. Holy Scripture, the treasure of Divine Truth, teaches and instills it on almost all its pages. – And this consideration of Light also reveals the weakness of the next objection, when it is said that if Space is ascribed to God, then it follows from there that He can be divided. - For only, if you can, divide this external solar Light into essential parts, and show us a particle that would be separated from the whole: enclose it in glass and keep it for use; then you will have a fair amount of lamp. - If you cannot do this, then admit that the parts that you imagine standing one next to another in Space are only in your imagination, and the divisibility you edify on them is nothing more than the sole work of your mind (merum ens rationis). - Look at the glass, how dense the body is, so that even the most volatile spirits cannot penetrate it, but linger in it; and yet how easily does Light pass through it? and how does the Light always remain completely indivisible in its embrace?” This means that the Divine Light must penetrate all bodies without hindrance. “But you will say, if the light cannot be divided in such a way that one part of it is specially contained, then, nevertheless, It can be excluded from many places, and its entire space is diminished and multiplied; which really means as much as if it were divided. - In my opinion, this cannot be considered equal to division. Moreover, this exception brings with it concentration, or sharpening, and a greater unification of itself. And that this does not contradict the nature of the created spirit, so that it contracts and also expands; not even contrary to the created, as much as it belongs to its second being; The author clearly testifies to this from his much research.” ([I. Pordage], - Divine and true metaphysics, Part one, book I, chapter XII, §§ 1–23, pp. 262–269. and see below). Sunday Canon 6th tone, irmos 5th. Let us note by the way that this veneration of light, expressed so clearly in the hymn “Quiet Light,” is of very ancient origin. At least St. Basil the Great testifies to precisely this hymn in the year 375: “Our fathers chose not to accept the grace of the evening light in silence - χἀριν τοῦ ἑσπερίνου φωτός - but to immediately thank it when it appeared. And we cannot say who is the author of these sayings of luminary thanksgiving; at least the people proclaim the ancient song - "(St. Basil the Great, - On the Holy Spirit, to St. Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium, 29 73. - Migne, - Patrol. ser. gr., T. 32, col. 205 A). But even now, who has not experienced the pacifying grace of the “evening light,” some incomprehensible meekness and other-worldliness of the rays of the setting sun. This well-known feeling is one of the musical themes of F. M. Dostoevsky, and it always appears in him in the form of the rays of the setting sun. Thus, the dying words of Elder Zosima sound like unearthly music: “I bless the sunrise every day, and my heart still sings to it, but I love its sunset more, its long slanting rays, and with them quiet, meek, tender memories, sweet images from my entire long and blessed life -”, etc. The long slanting rays of the setting sun are a symbol of quiet dying, transition to another world. - Sentenced to death, according to Prince. Myshkin, the rays sparkling from the gilded roof of the Cathedral were striking. He stubbornly looked at these rays, could not tear himself away from them, it began to seem to him that these rays were his new nature, that in three minutes he would somehow merge with them. - Prisoner Mikhailov dies in the evening of a clear frosty day; strong, slanting rays of the setting sun pierced the green glass of the hospital prison ward. – Nellie, three days before her death, as if anticipating it, looks longingly at the setting sun. – Lisa in “The Eternal Husband” dies on a beautiful summer evening, along with the sunset. – Raskolnikov thinks about death, looking at the last pink glow of the sunset. – In “The Idiot,” a half-crazed old general talks about the death of his wife on a quiet summer evening, as the sun sets. – In “The Teenager,” Kraft, before shooting himself, mysteriously declares that he loves sunsets. – Alyosha remembered the slanting rays of the setting sun when he had to see his mother beating in hysterics. – Zosima talks about the death of his brother in the evening, clear hour, when the sun was setting. He, like Alyosha, had a picture from his early childhood etched into his memory. Remembering it, he clearly sees how the incense ascends, and from above, through the domes, rays pour into the Church of God, and, rising to them in waves, the incense melts. This sunset ray of the sun is a symbol of our connection with another world. – Makar Ivanovich talks about one merchant who greatly lamented that because of him a little boy threw himself into the river and died; this merchant commissioned the artist to paint a painting reproducing this event. The artist painted a picture and in it sent a ray from the sky towards the boy, “one bright ray.” “I open the eyes of my heart to You, Savior, save me by Your radiance” (1st Antiphon of Matins of the Week, 2nd Tone). – The term illumination, ἔλλαμψις, as well as others similar to it, indicate, without a doubt, the uncreated Tabor Light - the energy of the Triune Divinity and, directly or indirectly, is associated with the teaching on this subject, most clearly and consistently expressed by the Athonite hesychasts. Highly important and instructive debates about the Light of Tabor clarified the foundations of Orthodox epistemology and very significant aspects of ontology. That is why I consider it my duty to indicate, albeit meager, literature on this issue. Here it is: Hegumen Modest, - Saint Gregory Palamas, Metropolitan of Thessaloniki, champion of the Orthodox teaching about the Light of Tabor and the actions of God, Kiev, 1860. Bishop Porfiry Uspensky, – Christian East. Athos. The first trip to the Athos monasteries and monasteries in 1845. Kyiv, 1877. Part I., dep. 1st, pp. 229–262. He, – id., History of Athos. Part III, sec. 1. Kyiv, 1877. § 32, pp. 134–144; teaching of the hesychasts. He, – id., id., Part III, dep. 2I. St. Petersburg, 1892. Publ. Imp. Academician Sciences, ed. P. A. Syrku. Chapter 18, §§ 97–99: the religious and moral state of the Holy Mountain residents; the teaching of the hesychasts; the meaning of Athonite hesychasts, his fate and literature. He, – id., id., Part III, dep. 2II: Justifications for the history of Athos. Nos. 25–50, pp. 682–861: original texts and documents. F. I. Uspensky, - Synodik on the week of Orthodoxy. Odessa, 1890. - Same, - Essays on the history of Byzantine education. St. Petersburg 1892. Bishop Alexy, – Byzantine church mystics of the 14th century. Kazan, 1906 I. Sokolov, - Varlaam and the Varlaamites (“Orthodox Theological Encyclopedia”, edited by A.P. Lopukhin. Petrograd, 1902, vol. 3, columns 149–157). - He is the same - Gregory Akindin (id., 1904, vol. 4, art. 680–682). It's him. – Gregory of Sinai (id., vol. 4, and also see other names). G. Nedetovsky, - Varlaamite heresy (“Proceedings of the Kiev Theological Academy”, 1873, February). P. A. Sirku, - On the history of book correction in Bulgaria in the 14th century. St. Petersburg, 1899. Karl Krumbacher, – Geschichte der byzantinische Litteratur. Munich, 1897. Γρ. Παπαμιχαηλ, – Ὁ ἄγιος Γρηγόριος Παλαμᾶς, Ἐν’ Αλεξανδρίᾳ, 1911. Rec. in "Ëchos d'Orient", 15th an., No. 97, 1912 nov.-déc., pp. 528–531. - He, - Report on Stavr’s book, Νέα Σιών. T. 4 (1896), σ. 565. – He, – Χριστανισμὸς καὶ πνευματισμός, 1912. St. Gregory Palamas, - Orthodox Confession (“Sunday Readings”, 1841, No. 3, pp. 17–21). – The main defenders of the Orthodox teaching about the Light of Tabor were: St. Gregory Palamas, Ecumenical Patriarch Philotheus, Queen Anna, her son King John Palaiologos, John Cantacuzene, who co-reigned with him, and the monk Isidore Vuhiras, later the Ecumenical Patriarch. Opponents of this teaching were: the Calabrian monk Varlaam, the scientist Gregory Akindinus, the ecumenical patriarch John Kalekas and the scientist Grigoras. Their works are collected in the last 11 volumes of the second Greek series of Patrology of Min. St. Simeon the New Theologian. Prayer from the Divine Inquiries of Holy Communion (Prayer for Holy Communion 7th). Regarding the difficult-to-explain saying “ὁ πατὴρ τῶν φώτων” (James 1:17), many exegetes think that here God is called “the source of spiritual light”; This is the opinion of Fromond, Baumgarten, Starke. But Hoffmann realized that the name “τὰ φώτα” can only mean celestial bodies. This last thought is developed and presented in an improved form by Ep. Georgy. “There is nothing strange,” he adds, “that God is called the father of the stars: it is known that a similar expression is used in the Book of Job 38:28: “Who is the father of the rain?” “This understanding is the least artificial and is accepted by the majority of exegetes,” such as Rosenmüller, Wiesinger, Guter, Shegg. (Hieromonk [now Bishop] George [Yaroshevsky], - Cathedral Epistle of St. Apostle James. Experience in historical and exegetical research. Kyiv, 1901, pp. 129–131). “One must believe that in sounds, what is simple has no beauty. However, in beautiful consonance, each sound, even individual, has its own beauty" (Plotinus. Enneads, 1, 6, 1. - Plotini Enneades edidit Riс. Volkmann, Lipsiae, 1883, Vol. I, p. 85. - Based on the translation by Bouillet, T. I, pp. 99-100). “An isolated tone perceived by our ear disappears without a trace for our psyche almost immediately after the cessation of vibrations; we are not able to recognize it, determine its pitch, compare it with an isolated tone that we heard 1/4 hour ago, just as we cannot reproduce it ten minutes later; only extremely rare individuals, gifted with exceptional musical talent, have the ability to approximate an isolated tone, and even they, for such determination, first reproduce the heard tone with their voice - "(A. Bernstein. The world of sounds as an object of perception and thought. "Questions of Philosophy and Psychology", book II (32) 1896, March-April, section II, p. 111) – “Individually indefinable elements of it [the melody] acquire, when combined, new qualities that contribute to their overall assessment; Obviously, the qualification that is absent from a single tone is inherent in the totality of them; and without defining each member, it defines their successive series” (id., p. 112). – Although our ear is capable of perceiving tones with any number of vibrations, their recognition and discrimination is limited to certain ratios. – So, for auditory perception, it is not so much the absolute amount of the number of vibrations of the air environment that is important, but the ratio of the values ​​of the successively changing speed of vibrations. In each series of successive sounds, our perception either singles out only those that relate to each other, like a series of definite relations between certain whole numbers, or artificially and approximately reduces the rest to the same lawful series” (id., p. 116). – “Tones are remembered not by themselves, but in their mutual relations of rapidity of vibration; thought captures not the absolute pitch of each tone, but their sequence, corresponding to the sequence of ratios of certain integers. – An old melody in a new key is recognized unmistakably, due to the fact that its memorable image consisted not of a series of tones of a certain pitch, but of a series of relationships that do not change when keys change. The limits of such identification in memory are not limited by any factors; within the limits of the possible perception of the physical scale from the lowest to the highest tones, passing half-tone from tonality to tonality, changing its timbre to infinity in various instruments, the melody nevertheless remains strictly identical with its memorable image, since it remains mathematically true to itself, i.e., to the sequence of its elements. We remember the melody, although sometimes we cannot determine from which instrument we received it. –”, etc. (id., pp. 116–117). “Music gives us pleasure, although its beauty consists only in the relationships of numbers and the counting of beats and vibrations of sounding bodies, repeated at certain intervals, a counting that we do not notice and which our soul constantly performs” (Leibniz. Principles of nature and grace based on reason, 17. - G.V. Leibniz. Selected philosophical works. Translation by members of the Psychological Society, edited by V.P. Preobrazhensky. M., 1890, p. 336). Emerson, - Beauty (“Works of Emerson,” Vol. I, p. 24. Ed. “New. Journal. In. Lit.”). – It’s the same with other aesthetic theorists. “Generally speaking, light in the proper amount, as a stimulus to nervous energy sufficiently restored by nutrition and rest, as a normal stimulation of nervous activity, is accompanied by a feeling of pleasure. Prolonged darkness is positively unpleasant. Coming out of a dark cave or rising from a deep mine, we rejoice in daylight. This aversion to darkness seems to be instinctive in us; it is observed not only in people, but also in animals, as indicated by the anxiety and fear they experience during a total eclipse of the sun. A healthy person likes the sensation a little more than usual: we prefer sunny days to cloudy ones, which is probably due to the fact that light produces a healthy stimulation of the whole organism. In general, the amount of light depends on our mood. Therefore, for ceremonial meetings, ceremonial dinners, theatrical performances and balls, bright lighting is required, while the mysterious twilight of churches is more in harmony with the religious mood of the worshipers. – The pleasure delivered by light is elevated due to contrast –” (A.I. Smirnov, – Aesthetics as the science of beauty in nature and art. University readings. Department 2, Kazan, 1900, E, pp. 184–185). “Sometimes one ray of sunshine makes you understand the world better than endless reflections in a dusty office in front of open books” (Guyo, - Art from a Sociological Point of View, XI). We find the idea of ​​the special beauty of light in St. Basil the Great. Here is his reasoning: “And God said: Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3). The first word of God created the nature of light, dispersed darkness, dispelled despondency, cheered up the world, and suddenly gave everything an attractive and pleasant appearance. – Just as those who let oil into the depths produce shine in that place, so the Creator of all things, having spoken His Word, instantly put the grace of light into the world. "Let there be light." And the command became a deed; a nature has arisen, nothing more pleasant to enjoy than which the human mind can imagine. - “And God saw the light as good - καλὸν” (Gen. 1:4). Can we say anything sufficient in praise of the light when it first has the testimony of the Creator about itself: “as good is ὅτι καλὸν”? But if the beauty - τὸ καλὸν - of the body consists in the mutual proportionality of the parts and in external good color, then how does the concept of beauty maintain its place in light, which is by nature simple and homogeneous? Is it because proportionality is attributed to light, not in relation to its own parts, but in relation to its non-painful and pleasant effect on vision? Likewise, gold is beautiful, although it has an attractiveness to the eye and is pleasant not because of the proportionality of its parts - but because of its good color. And the evening star is more beautiful than all the stars, not because the parts of which it consists are corresponding, but because its radiance falls on the eyes painlessly and pleasantly” (St. Basil the Great, - conversations on the Sixth Day, II 7. - Migne, - Patrol. ser. gr., T. 29, coll. 44-48). – We read the same thing in Plotinus. “Does the proportionality of the parts to each other and to the whole, combined with the pleasantness of colors, as everyone says, constitute beauty when it turns to sight? - asks Plotinus. – In this case, the beauty of the body, which generally consists of symmetry and the correct proportionality of their parts, could not be found in anything simple. – Colors that are beautiful, such as sunlight, but which are simple and do not derive their beauty from proportion, are they excluded from the realm of beauty? How is gold beautiful? - we have nothing to talk about the splendor of virtue if we did not contemplate the face of justice and temperance before the splendor in which “the evening star and the morning star” fade” (Plotinus, - Enneads, I, 6, 1,4. - Plotini Enneades edidit Ric. Volkmann, Lipsiae, 1888, vol. I, p. 85 - Les Ennéades de Plotin, traduites par M. N. Bouillet, Paris, 1837, T. I, p. 99). One of the newest researchers characterizes asceticism as “the art of holiness” (Gordon Milburn, - A Study of Modern Anglicanism, London, 1901, pp. 19-23. - Quote from: Vl. [A.] Kozhevnikov. On the meaning of Christian asceticism in the past and in the present. Part one, M., 1910, pp. 14-15, note 27 on p. 91). But this characteristic is not at all new, and among ancient ascetics, for example, John Cassian the Roman, the monks Ignatius and Callistus Xanthopoulos, and others, one often encounters the name of spiritual work as “art” and even “the art of art.” This is not a metaphor, for if all art is the transformation of one or another substance, the investment in it of a new image of a higher order, then what else does spiritual work consist of, if not the transformation of the entire human being? – Thoughts in this direction, apart from, so to speak, the classical works on asceticism collected in the Philokalia, are very clearly and persistently carried out in the books of ascetics of modern times: Candid stories of a wanderer to his spiritual father, ed. 3rd, Kazan, 1884 (author unknown). From the stories of a wanderer about the grace-filled effect of the Jesus Prayer. Sergiev Posad, 1911. - (This book was written as a continuation of the previous one, but whether the author of the previous one actually wrote it is unknown. There are some reasons to think that it belongs to the Optina Elder Hieroschemamonk Ambrose, but this is also not verified). Schemamonk Hilarion, - In the Caucasus Mountains. A conversation between two hermit elders about inner unity with the Lord of our hearts through the prayer of Jesus Christ, or the spiritual activity of modern hermits. 2nd ed., revised and many additional ones. Batalpash. Cube region, 1910. 3rd – Kyiv, 1912. From ancient times there has been a custom of calling collections of ascetic works Philocalia. It is known that already St. Basil the Great, in the 4th century, so titled the catenas from Origen. Among other collections of this kind, the most complete of them should be mentioned - “Φιλοκαλία τῶν ἱερῶν νηπικῶν” - published in 1782 in Venice by John Maurocordatus. There are, under the title “Philokalia”, five-volume philokalia in Russian translation, - Bp. Theophan the Recluse, which went through 4 editions. “The word Philokalia is translated,” says the translator in the Introduction to his translation of this collection of fatherly words, “its Greek name φιλοκαλία, which means: “love of the beautiful,” “sublime,” “good,” (Philokalia in Russian translation, supplemented, 4th ed., T. 1, M., 1905, p. III). Already from this remark it is clear how insufficient and incorrect the interpretation of the word “philokalia” given by the priest is. Grigory Dyachenko (priest Grigory Dyachenko. Complete Church Slavonic Dictionary. M, 1900, p. 148). Here it is, in full: “Philokalia = inclination to do good, love of virtue.” There is no doubt that in the concept of “philokalia”, as in the Greek “φιλοκαλία”, the main point is artistic, aesthetic, but not moral. According to the explanation of Anfim Gazis, ἡ φιλοκαλία means “ἀγάπη πρὸς τὸ καλὸν, ἡ τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ ὡραίου ἤ τιμίου ἀγάπη - love of beauty, or love of the beautiful and beautiful or precious” (Ανθιμου Γάζη. Λεξικον Ελληνικον. Ἐπιστασίᾳ καὶ διορθώσει Σπυρίδωνος Βλαντῆ. Τομος τριτος’ Ἐν Βενετίᾳ, 1816, στ. And according to the explanation of Gen. Stephen (Henricus Stephanus. Thesaurus Graecae Linguae. Post editionem anglicam – tertio ediderunt Carolus Benedictus Hase, Guilielmus Dindorfius et Ludovicus Dindorfius. Parisiis, 1865. Vol. 8, coll. 845–847), φιλοκαλία – “Studium pulchritudinis, quo quis pulcras aut pulcros amat: quo sensu objecta fuit Socrati φιλοκαλία, perinde ac si dictum fuisse παιδεραστία; Studium honestatis, rerum honestatum." From here, according to Gazis, come τὸ φιλοκάλιον, φοκάλιον, φροκάλιον and φροκαλία. A related word, φιλόκαλος, is explained by Gazis as “lover of beauty”, as “loving the beautiful, beautiful, precious and decent” and even as “φιλόκοσμος - lover of jewelry”; at least in Xenophon (Cyropedia, 1.3 3) there is the following explanation: “παῖς ὢν φιλόκαλος ἥδετο τῆ στολῆ; the boy, being a lover of jewelry, rejoiced at the clothes.” Φιλόκαλος can further mean “ambitious”, “virtuous”, “noble”, “courageous”, “generous”, then “decent” in the sense of “secular” and even “dissolute” (Gazis, – id.). However, it is hardly necessary to specifically point out that these meanings are secondary and that they are always based on the fundamental idea of ​​​​a penchant for beauty, for grace. Numerous examples of such word usage φιλοκαλία are collected in the above-mentioned dictionary of Stephen (id.). The verb φιλοκαλέω has approximately the same meanings, namely, according to Gazicy: “φίλος τοῦ καλοῦ εἰμί”, “φιλοτιμέομαι”, “φιλοκοσμέω”, etc. (id.). A according to Stephen (id.) φιλοκαλέω – “Pulchritudinem amo, Honestatis sum studiosus aut rerum honestatum.” In one of his speeches preserved by Thucydides (II40), Pericles testifies that the love of beauty - philocalia, beauty or kindness - along with the love of wisdom - philosophy, wisdom-love or love-wisdom - was the main aspiration of the Athenians. “Φιλοκαλοῦμεν μετ’ εὐτελείας καὶ φιλοσοφοῦμεν ἄνευ μαλακίας,” says Pericles; or, as the German translator of Thucydides Osiander conveys these words of his, “we love the beautiful, but with moderate luxury; We love science, but without becoming relaxed because of it.” These basic and indivisible directions of the ancient soul, philosophy and philocalia, continue, in a transformed form, in Eastern Orthodoxy, even retaining their ancient terms. Philosophy, as is known, began to be called here the divinely thought life of ascetics and the teaching by which it was justified, i.e. dogmatics in general and the dogma of the Trinity in particular; and philokalia - their god-decorating art. Here are a few more examples of the use of φιλοκαλέω, which I borrowed from Stephen’s dictionary: “Φιλοκαλοῦσα καὶ χαίρουσα τῇ ποικιλίᾳ” (Plutarch. Moral., p. 1044 C). - “Τὰ περὶ τὴν ἐχφορὰν βασιλικῶς ἐφιλοκάλησε” (Diodor. 20, 37. - with a touch of condemnation). – “Μάλιστα δὲ πἀντων περὶ παιδοτροφίαν φιλοκαλοῦμεν – Honestatum colimus circa educationem liberorum” (Joseph, p. Apion. 1.12). - “Oἱ νέοι φιλοκαλοῦσι μάλιστα περὶ τὰς ἐνταῦθα εὐωχίας λαμπρυνόμενοι” (Strabo 14, p. 640) - that is, to be generous regarding feasts. “Φιλοκαλοῦσι περὶ τὴν τῶν λόγων ἐμπειρίαν” (Dio Chr., p. 253 D). With the infinitive form φιλοκαλεῖν means “contendo”, “I strive”. Thus, “φιλοκαλῶν Ἐλληνικαῖς φυτείαις διακοσμῆσαι τὰ βασίλεια” (Plutarch. Alex, p. 35) and etc. Further, this verb means “smoothing”, “grinding”, “cleaning”, “sweeping”, “luxuriously decorating”. Examples of such usage have been collected by Stefan. We will cite only two: “φιλοκαλήσας τὰ τετράπυλα μαρμάροις” (Ioann. Mal., p. 232. 20); “φιλοκαλουμένου τοῦ τρούλλου τῆς ἐκκλησίας” (id., 489, 19). – A very characteristic example is given by van Herverden (Henricus van Herverden, – Lexicon Graecum suppletorium et dialecticum, Lugduni Batavorum, 1902, p. 874, φιλοκαλέσαι) from the papyrus of 616: καὶ μεταηοιεῖν καὶ φιλοκαλέσαι (estate) καθ’ ὅν ἄν βουληθείη τρόηον καὶ ? ἄμπελον ἐν αὐταῖς ἀνάξαι καὶ λάκκους ἐνορύξαι (Kenyon, – Late Byzantine Papyri, n. 483, 1); these words can be compared (H. C. Müller, – Arch. f. Papyrusf. I 3, p. 439) with the Latin formula y Cupacius: “Ea lege ut inserendo, plantando, arando, poliendo, colendo, meliorem eum et fructuosiorem faciat etc.” This is exactly what the philokal ascetics did, but not over the estates of the landowners, but over the estates of their individuals. Kindness (τὸ κάλλος, decor, forma, pulchritudo, ἡ καλλονή, species, excellentia, gloria, - beauty, beauty. “Give strength to my kindness” (Ps. 29:8); “beautiful with kindness” (Ps. 44:3), or, according to the translation Psalms of Ambrose Zertis-Kamensky, M., 1878, “the reddest”, according to the translation of Tremelius, Hannoveriae, 1624 (= Berlin, 1878) - “multo pulchrior”, according to the Synod translation - “You are more beautiful”; “the king will desire your kindness (and according to the Synod translation - beauty)” (Ps. 44:12); “kindness (καλλονήν, according to the Synod, trans. - beauty) to Jacob" (Ps. 47:5); "and kindness (according to Tremelius - gloriam, according to the Synod. trans. - glory) of them" (Ps. 77:61)" (Peter Hiltebrandt (Ryazan). Reference and explanatory dictionary for the Psalms. St. Petersburg, 1898, p. 115). Similarly, according to Nevostruev, “Kindness [?!] – (κάλλоς) = attractive appearance, beauty, grace, brilliance, splendor (Gen.49:21; Deut.33:17; Ps.29:8; Prov.6:25, 31:31; Rev.5:16; Sir.3:8, 9:26, 21:22, etc.); inner perfection, kindness, καλλόνη; price, dignity, glory; good nature, goodness, mercy (Sir. 31:97); beauty, decoration (Ps. 46:5); beauty, art (I 24 n. 6. 27 n. 1, 2. M. 10 and 8, 2).” (Priest. Grig. Dyachenko, - Complete Church Slavonic Dictionary, M., 1900, pp. 147–148, for details on the same issue, see Sreznevsky, T. I, see below). But, whatever the secondary meanings of the word Kindness, there is no doubt that initially it means beauty, and this primary meaning is definitely expressed in many facts. So, in the life of Fevronia we read: “do not enable the painter to paint the blooming face of her kindness (ζωγραφεῖν)” (I. I. Sreznevsky, - Materials for a dictionary of the Old Russian language on written monuments. St. Petersburg, 1890, T. I, column 866, with reference to Min. Chet., June). In the anonymous 3rd prayer “for those who are coming to sleep,” to the Most Holy Spirit, among other contritions about daytime sins, the following is mentioned: “or having seen someone else’s kindness, one would have been wounded in the heart by it”; It is obvious that this “kindness” that wounds the heart is beauty, and not moral perfection, for it is impossible to “see” it, and wounding the heart by it is not only not reprehensible, but is downright commendable. There is no doubt that the concept of beauty in the word “kindness” is fundamental: the words associated with it have the same, predominantly aesthetic, and not ethical, bias in their meaning. So “good – καλός, bonus, ἡδύς, suavis, amoenus.., good – καλῶς; good – καλῶς, as for example. in Ps.32:3: “drink well (and according to the Synod. Transl. - “harmoniously”)” (I. Hiltebrandt, - id., p. 115). Therefore, as Nevostruev points out, the word “goodness = pristine beauty (in the week of all holy canons 4 p. 3 up. 2)”, “doer of good, virtuous - καλλοποιός, doing beauty, imparting beauty (Ju. 8 p. 1, 1. P. 26 God. canon 1 p. 1)” (G. Dyachenko, – id., p. 148). In the same way, the word “dobroscribe” means a calligrapher (Sreznevsky, - id., T. I, column. 678, with reference to Georg. Am. 283); “good-living”, “good-hearted”, “kind-hearted”, “good-faced”, “good-singing”, etc., etc. (id. columns 474–684) again have the same meaning of beauty, but not ethical perfection, not goodness. “Kindness” corresponds to the Greek “τὸ καλὸν”; but neither one nor the other word should, however, be understood as a designation of sensually pleasant: this modern concept of material, hedonic beauty was alien to the Greeks, and, as Grote noted, the ancient term “τὸ καλὸν” contains, in addition to the usual modern meaning of “beautiful,” also the meaning of refined, respected, high (A. Ben, - Psychology. Translated from English. V. N. Ivanovsky. M. 1906, T. 2). Ignatius the God-Bearer, - Epistle to the Magnesians, 71 (Funk. Apost. Väter, 2-te Aufl., Tübingen, 1906, S. 88 14–16). – The excerpt in the text is made from memory. Having now consulted the text, I see that the translation made, although most likely, is not necessary. The passage we are discussing reads: “One prayer, one mind, one hope in love, in incomprehensible joy, - that is, Jesus Christ, οὐ ἄμεινον, οὐθέν ἐστίν.” The word ἄμεινον can receive special meanings καλλίτερος, ὠφελιμώτερος, δυνατώτερος, ἐπιτηδειότερος and even replace the missing comparative degree from ἀγαθό, (see Ανθιμος ὁ Γαζης. Λεξικόν Ἑλληνικόν, στ). But, in essence, it does not mean not only “better,” but even “more beautiful,” but has a more vague meaning, “more kind,” “lovelier,” etc. It comes not from *ἀμενιων, but from the theme *ἀμει-νο- (see E. Boisaq, - Dict. étymolog., p. 52); this is the same meaning of the Latin amoenus (A. Walde, - Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2-te Aufl., Heidelberg, 1910, § 36), which means “anmutig, lieblich, gefällig”, which is rooted in it. Therefore, the exact translation of the passage from the Epistle of Ignatius should be as follows: “one joy, that is, Jesus Christ, dearer than whom there is nothing.” It is clear that this concept of ἄμεινον is in any case closer to “more beautiful” than to “kinder”: here we are not talking about morality at all, but about a direct, soul-gratifying impression of Jesus Christ. – This translation of the words of St. Ignatius is also confirmed by the self-testimony of the Lord, who said: “I am the good Shepherd” (John 10:14), where the Church Slavonic word “good” again means beauty, not goodness, which the Lord affirms as the Father’s own property (Matt. 19:16–17 = Luke 18:18–19). If the reference to the Slavic text seems insufficient, then let the reader take the trouble to look at the Greek text, where the same thought appears even more tangible: “Εγὼ εἰμι ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός” (John 10:14) - says the Lord about Himself; “Τί με λέγεις ἀγαθόν; οὐδεὶς ἀγαθὸς εἰ μὴ εἰς ὁ Θεός" (Luke 18:19) or "Τί με ἐρωτᾷς περὶ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ; εἰς ἐστιν ὁ ἀγαθός” (Matthew 9:17) – He affirms about the Father. St. also speaks of God as the original beauty. Dionysius the Areopagite. Having received being from True Beauty, nature in all its parts bears the reflection of this Beauty: ὑποστᾶσα, κατὰ πᾶσαν αὑτής διακόσμησιν τὴν κατ’ εἶδος, ἀπηχήματἀ τινα τῆς νοερᾶς εὐπρεπείας ἔχει, ώς ἔστι τοῦ φωτὸς, τὸ φωτίζειν – ἥλιος γὰρ αἰσθητοὺς ὀφθαλμοὐς φωτίζει, καὶ τῶν χρωμάτων ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι δίδωοι Θεὸς δὲ ψυχὴν καὶ τοῖς ἐκεῖσε καλοῖς ἐπεντρανῖζειν παρέχει" (St. Dionysius the Areopagite, - On the heavenly hierarchy, II - Migne, - Patrol ser.gr., col. 160 A, B). – Cp.. “Those freed from the prison of this life, if it were entirely possible to express compassion with tears for those who suffer, they would sob and cry for those who are still held in the sorrows of this life, because they do not see the premium and immaterial beauties, ὅτι μἡ ὁρῶσι τὰ ὑπερκόσμα τε καὶ ἀῦλα κἀλλη - thrones and principalities, powers and dominions, and armies of angels, and assemblies, and the city on high and the heavenly triumph of those “written” (Heb. 12:23). And the Beauty that surpasses all this - τὸ γὰρ ὑπερκείμενον τούτων κάλλος - which, as the true word of God indicated, “the pure in heart will see” (Matthew 5:8), is more excellent everything, no matter what they hoped for, and above everything, no matter what they imagined fortune-telling” (St. Gregory of Nyssa, - Word to those who mourn for those who have passed away from this present life into eternal life. - Migne, - ser. gr., T. 46, col. 508 A, B. - Creations, M., 1868, part 7, pp. 497-498). So St. The father repeats Plato's myth about the cave. Compare: “All the lust of such a person (i.e., the silent one), all his heartfelt and enthusiastic love, and his entire disposition is directed towards the prenatural beauty of the Divine, the most blessed, which is called by the fathers the highest of the desired objects” (Callistus the Patriarch and his associate Ignatius Xanthopoulos [XIV century], - Instruction for the Silent, 84. - Philokalia, M., 1900, ed. 2-e, T. 5, p. 401). And compare: “He who has approached the limits of dispassion, right about God and the natures of things, creates speculation, and from the beauty of creatures, in proportion to his purity, flowing to the Creator, he receives the light of the Spirit. He has good opinions about everyone, he always thinks well of everyone, he sees everyone as holy and blameless, and he pronounces the right judgment about things divine and human... and in vain the Divine Beauty, he loves to blissfully dwell mentally in the divine places of the blessed glory of God, in indescribable silence and joy, and having changed with all his feelings, like an Angel in a material body immaterially communicates with people" (Rev. Nikita Stifat , – First active chapter of the centurion, 90 – Philokalia, 2nd ed., 1900, T. 5, p. 107). Macarius the Great, – Conversation 173 (Migne, – Patrolog. ser. gr., T. 34, col. 6 25). Wed. pp. 266–271, 534, 539. Memorable tales about the asceticism of saints and... blessed fathers. Per. from Greek. St. Petersburg, 1871, p., 320.1. “The Spirit of God clearly rested on Father Seraphim of Sarov in his conversation about the purpose of Christian life with the Simbirsk landowner and conscientious judge Nikolai Aleksandrovich Motovilov” (from the handwritten memoirs of N. A. Motovilov, Chapter VI.). This manuscript, discovered by S. Nilus, is published in the book: Sergei Nilus, “The Great in the Small.” Ed. 2nd, Tsarskoe Selo, 1905, pp. 197–199. (There is a new edition) About the corolla in its various modifications, its meaning and origin, as well as its images, see: De Waal, – Nimbus (Kraus, – Real. Encyklopädie der christlichen Alterthümer. Freiburg in Breisgau, Bd. 2, §§ 496–499). – Quite a few images of the halo are scattered in Vigouroux, – Dictionnaire de la Bible (for example, see livraison XXXIII. col. 849 Fig. 189, col. 852 Fig. 192). – M. Didron, – Histoire de Dieu. Paris, 1843, pp. 1–146: "De la gloire". Examples of the corolla outside and before Christianity are also indicated. – Especially about the aureole in ancient iconography, see: Johannis Nicolai, – In nomine Jesu Disquisitio de Nimbis Antiquorum, Imaginibus Deorum, Imperatorum olim., et nunc Mariae Capitibus adpictis. Anno 1699. 139 pp. – L. Stephanie, – Halo and radiant crown in works of ancient art. St. Petersburg, 1863. (Appendix to volume IV of the Notes of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, No. 1). With drawings. About the origin of the corolla, as undoubtedly denoting light, only two assumptions are possible, abstractly speaking: either it is an image of an external, physical light, or a mysterious, “internal”, mental or spiritual one, depending on the grace or lack of grace of the person seeing or emitting this light. In the first case, one would have to consider the aureole as an attribute of solar or even astral deities; in the second, for the graphic stylization of actual perceptions. Otherwise, if the aureole is only a decoration or only an attribute, it would be absolutely incomprehensible why exactly a decoration or attribute, so strange, appeared in iconography. But it turns out that the corolla is characteristic of not only solar, lunar or star gods, but also of all deities. Consequently, it expresses not external, not physical light, but “internal” light. This is what the researcher says, after a careful study of images with a corolla, about their prevalence: “After all that has been said, it remains undoubted that, from the most ancient times to the most recent, the essential property of any divine body was considered to be that it was surrounded by an unnatural, dazzling brilliance; therefore this brilliance could in no way be the exclusive attribute of any special class of deities. After all this, how could artists, even for a moment, represent the essential property of deity in general, contrary to the popular idea, as the exclusive property of the star deities? They never did this: this is clear from the fact that from the time they began to designate by means of a halo, a radiant crown and a radiant circle, the light surrounding the gods, they did this when depicting both stellar and non-star deities. Thus, exegesis should not see in these attributes anything other than an indication of the radiance inherent in the divine nature in general; if, in addition, the special property of the depicted deity forces us to give special weight to this radiance, then, of course, exegesis should not lose sight of this circumstance... In the halo and radiant crown of the depicted deity, one cannot in any way see an indication of his relationship to the heavenly body, even if its original meaning was stellar, but at the time to which the work of art belongs, it has already disappeared in the popular imagination, or, if the stellar meaning the deity depicted was given at a later time as a result of some philosophical or mythological considerations, and the monument itself apparently arose from a different circle of ideas ...” (L. Stefani, id., pp. 12–13). – We will not further substantiate the expressed view that a halo in general is not a conventional icon, but a symbol, a genuine image of the actual phenomena of the spiritual world or, in other cases, the astral world. This would be inappropriate here, especially since we can refer to a four-volume study of mystical phenomena (especially see Vol. 2): J. Görres, - Die christliche Mystik. Regensburg, 1837. Bd. 2, §§ 308–396). - But, perhaps, it will not be superfluous to note that, in addition to the general idea of ​​a halo, even the various features in its depiction are deeply realistic: halos of different types depict a mystical or grace-filled phenomenon - that is, a mystical phenomenon transubstantiated by grace - as accurately as figurativeness is inherent in painting in general. Having thought about what a halo is, it is easy to be convinced that it can only be depicted as it is depicted. In fact, a golden disk near the head or an oval near the entire body is the most accurate pictorial representation of a continuous, homogeneous spherical or ellipsoidal mass of light, and this mass of light cannot be depicted otherwise, neither in color nor in shape. A halo with a gradual weakening towards the head is an image of a sphere of light located at some distance from the head. An annular halo is an image of a thin spherical layer. The Catholic halo, in the form of an ellipse above the head, although the least accurate, is an image of a crown of light above the head, a crown similar to the aurora borealis. A halo of radial stripes are rays of light emitted in all directions from the head or the whole body. The combination of two halos into one, above the faces of the Most Pure One and the Child, is an excellent image of the merging of two spheres of light, full or continuous. The concentric wave-like surroundings of Christ are waves constantly emanating from Him into space, following one after another. Etc., etc. In a word, each halo is an image, not a diagram, a symbol, not an allegory, and it would be impossible to depict it otherwise, for it is clear that, projected onto the face itself, these light phenomena are almost invisible and therefore indescribable, but at the edges they are visible much more clearly and, therefore, appear to us not in perspective, but in section. The best edition of Plotinus' Enneads is by Volkmann: Plotini Enneades praemisso Porphyrii De vita Plotini deque ordine librorum eius libello edidit Ricardus Volkmann. Lipsiae, T. I, 1883; T. II, 1884. Complete translation - French (M. N. Bouillet) and Latin (M. Ficinus, F. Creuzer). Selected treatises are available in translation in Russian (Malevansky), German (F. Creuzer, J. G. v. Engelhardt, H. F. Müller, Kiefer), English (T. Taylor, T. M. Johnson), Italian (A. M. Salvini). Let us note by the way that “Selected Treatises of Plotinus” translated by prof. Malevansky were published in “Faith and Reason” for 1898, 1899, 1900, in the philosophical department. Paganism cannot be considered as a phenomenon that has no relation to the true faith. It is not indifferent; it is not outside-religious and not outside-spiritually, but false-religious and false-spiritual. It is a distortion, perversion, corruption of the true faith inherent in humanity from the beginning, and, at the same time, a painful attempt to get out of spiritual turmoil, so to speak, “spiritual floundering.” Paganism is a beauty. But just as every distorted image is still a reflection of the original, corresponding to its original in every, even private, even the smallest feature, so paganism, even in the thinnest lines of its outline, is a distorted reflection of the true faith. The carnal, sinful and unclean mind, like a distorting mirror, distorted spiritual reality; but, with all this, knowing from the Word of God and the writings of the fathers about the spiritual world, the researcher can be convinced that each of the sides of the true faith exists, although almost unrecognizably meaningless, in paganism. While preserving approximately the appearance of the true faith, at least reaching almost closely to this external appearance with the thoughts of its best representatives, paganism puts carnal content there. Pagan beliefs are, in the language of mineralogy, a “pseudomorphosis” of truth. “And not only the flight of individual philosophies,” says the Catholic apologist of Christianity, Jesuit M. Moravian, “not only the original religions of mankind, ... but even that base polytheism into which most peoples later fell, stands in this kind of relationship to Christianity. Even the very idea of ​​multiplying the number of gods seems to stem from the difficulty of comprehending God as a solitary, barren being. It is as if there was a dull presentiment of the Mystery of the Divine Trinity, which was to be proclaimed by Christianity and to resolve this difficulty. Anthropomorphism, theophany on earth, all this is an expression of longing and a prayer of humanity for God to come closer, to condescend to it, in other words, a thirst for the incarnation of the Word. The veneration of the dead, with all its superstition and absurdity, still contains a sublime principle, and it, too, is a fragment of our wondrous dogma about the afterlife. Even bloody, even human sacrifices show that humanity, in a dull feeling or vague memory of the original traditions, suspected its fall and the need for redemption” (Religious and Philosophical Evenings. Evenings I-IV). Publication of the “Religious and Philosophical Library”. Sergiev Posad, 1911, pp. 81–82. Generally see pp. 66–88. "Fourth evening. Christianity among other religions." There is also a 2nd ed., M., 1912. - The book cited is the first issue of a whole series of apologetic dialogues and is composed of the first five dialogues included in the work: M. Morawski, - Die Abende am Leman. – There is also a complete translation of this book, but done in unbearably broken Russian, namely: “Evenings over Leman”. Works by M. Morawski, prof. Jagiellonian University. From 2nd ed. translated by B. Gord. Leipzig-Krakow, 1889, pp. 102–138 "Conversation Four". So, even the most holy dogma of the Most Holy Trinity was refracted in the pagan consciousness - into the ideas of “combined” (plurality of hypostases) and “sequential” (self-substantiation of the Absolute by an infinite series of acts) polytheism. Moreover, the most triple number of hypostases left their mark in the form of divine triads. But, despite all the external similarity of these triads with the Trinity, we absolutely do not find in them exactly what makes the doctrine of the Trinity a dogma - we absolutely do not find in them any sign of spiritual, super-rational content. It is worth at least a quick glance at these pagan triads to be convinced that, even if they were driven by the search for the Triune Living God, still in them, except for the number “3”, there is nothing from the Trinity Consubstantial and Indivisible. And this has to be stated, even leaving aside the possibility of a purely historical, random combination of gods into triads. After this, there is nothing to be surprised that perhaps only some Haeckel, classifying religions according to the number of recognized gods (see. “World Riddles”) recognizes the possibility of equating the idea of ​​the Triune God with pagan triads. – In his scholastically dissected and subdivided book, Raoul de la Grasserie (Des religions comparées au point de vue sociologique, Paris 1899, p. 205) distinguishes three types of “religious communities”, namely: “1° la société particulière entre dieux ou interdivine; 20 celle entre les diverses parties de l’esprit humain ou intrahumaine et 3° celle entre les diverses fractions de la divinité ou intràdivine”; he further points out that triads belong specifically to the “société interdivine” type and gives a whole series of such triads, built simultaneously according to the scheme of the family and aspects of the sun, i.e., consisting of: I, God the Father, the sun, living or already dead; II, the mother goddess, who represents the sky, space or the dead sun, and is usually at once the wife and mother of the first; III, the son-god, the young god of the rising sun. He gives several examples of such a triad: 10 in Thebes: Ammon or Ammon-Ra, the rising sun, called Tum when it becomes setting, - Maut, his consort the sky goddess, Khon, the rising sun and ruler of the moon; 2° in Abydos: Osiris, Isis, his wife and sister, Horus - their son, - with the same meaning; 3° in Memphis: Phtha, the night sun and god of the dead, Sekket - his wife, the lioness-headed goddess personifying sunlight, or Bast, the cat-headed goddess, and Nofra-tum or In-hotep, their son, the rising sun; 4 0 in Konosso: Mentu, Sati and Khem; 5° in Esneh: Nun, Nebuont and Ghika. – Further, de la Grassrie indicates anomalous triads, composed of a god and two goddesses: 6° Ra with Nekheb, the goddess of the South, and Uaj, the goddess of the North; 7° Osiris or Horus with Isis and Nephthys; 8° Nun with Sati and Anonke, the hemispheres of the North and South. Leaving the above list to the scientific responsibility of de la Grassrie, both in the sense of accuracy and interpretation of the gods, and in the sense of completeness, we will only note that despite all his external and leveling method of studying religion and the underlying, if not directly hostile, then at least deeply indifferent attitude towards Christianity, and even towards any religion, despite his amazing insensitivity to concrete religious life and its peculiarities, de la Grassrie points out (id., p. 220), that although the fusion of gods produces triads, “however, this results in not one single god in three persons, as among Christians, but three gods bound together by an agreement - solidarisés - and distributing among themselves the functions of the highest deities. This, therefore, is not yet a trinity - trinité - strictly speaking, but rather a triad - triade - if by trinity we mean internal triplicity - triplicité - and by triad - external triplicity, as for example in Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. – This external character of the pagan triads found suitable expression in numerous plastic and graphic monuments of the ancient world. For a collection of numerous images of this kind, see the book: Nikolai Iv. Trinity, - Trinity of the Divine, Historical and archaeological research on monuments of the general history of art. Reported at the XI All-Russian Archaeologist. Congress in Chernigov. Ed. 2nd, rev. and additional, with 65 fig. Tula, 1909. – On the significant difference in the Christian teaching about the Holy One. For the Trinity and pagan and on the basis of paganism philosophical teachings about triad gods, see: S. S. Glagolev, - Supernatural revelation and natural knowledge of God. Kharkov. 1900. Page 331–336. – His – Essays on the history of religions. Part 1. Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, 1902. Pp. 35–36, approx. 1: objections to Zimmern's views on the Chaldean deities, set out by him in the pamphlet Vater, Sohn und Fürsprecher, Lpz., 1896; pp. 42–49: triads of great Chaldean gods; pp. 103–106: Egyptian triads and enneads. – Alexey [Iv.] Vvedensky, – Religious consciousness of paganism. Essay on the philosophical history of natural religions. T. I, M., 1902, p. 698–702: "Trimutri". The author of this study, having pointed out the outwardly eclectic and mechanical way in which the idea of ​​the Hindu Trimutri was formed, then decisively insists on the following two theses: “First, in the Hindu Trimutri, in radical and fundamental contrast to the Christian Holy Trinity, the difference of the three deities is not real, but purely nominal, ... The Trimutri is nothing more than a double ghost, a double deception and a double lie of the naive consciousness (p. 700). Secondly, in the Hindu Trimutri the relations between individual deities do not represent any, even the most distant, hint of the relations between the persons of the Holy Trinity according to Christian teaching, that is, the relations of fatherland, sonship and descent” (p. 752). “Herrschende Apperzeptionsmasse”, i.e. “dominant appercipient masses”, V. Jerusalem “calls the apperceptible groups of representations that are most easily evoked.” (W. Jerusalem, - Lehrbuch der Psychologie, 1903, 3-te Aufl, S. 87). It is in this sense that Archimandrite. Serapion Mashkin calls the formula of dogma, as the most easily achievable representation for the apperception of spiritual Truth, “appercipient mass.” But it is impossible not to mention that the term “appercipient” or “apperceptive mass” is also used in another, very expanded sense, namely to designate the entire set of phenomena and processes directly related to the organization that contribute to religious experience and one way or another determine its character. “The totality of side effects, painful or normal, in connection with which religious phenomena should be studied for a more perfect understanding of them, constitutes what in pedagogical language is designated by the term “apperceptive mass” (William James. The Variety of Religious Experience. Translated from English by V. G. Malakhieva-Mirovich and M. V. Shik. Edited by S. V. Lurie. M., 1910, lecture I, pp. 21–22 and see note. translation on page 22). – In our book, the term “appercipient mass” is used in the first, narrower meaning and, therefore, is almost synonymous with Kant’s term “scheme”. Dogmas, the Cross, the Name of Jesus and the Sign of the Cross are precisely the diagrams of the human spirit, in which the highest reality is revealed and, as our hearts are purified, the schematic nature of these symbols becomes more and more condensed into a realistic one. Therefore, the sinful mind strives for the lower limit of these symbols, - for pure and illusory phenomenality, and the spiritual mind - for the upper limit, for the unconditional and all-real noumenality. Through these schemes, depending on our internal structure, we see either Nihil Absolutum or Ens Realissimum. In the interval, in accordance with the stage of spiritual ascent, the entire path a realibus ad realiora is located. But the path to this ladder opens only through a “scheme”. “Τὸν ἀγιώτατον τῆς οἰκουμένης ὀφθαλμὸν” (St. Gregory the Theologian, - Homily 25, in praise of the philosopher Iron, 11. - Migne, - Patrol. ser. gr., T. 35, col. 1213 A). Bl. Augustine. Confession, VII, 10 (Migne, – Patr. ser. lat, T. 32).