Every phenomenon of nature was a word, - the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas.
Interpretation
Nature embodies deeper meanings and connections beyond mere appearances.
This quote by Johann Georg Hamann suggests that all elements of nature are not just physical phenomena but also represent profound symbols of the divine and interconnectedness. It emphasizes the idea that the natural world is filled with mysteries that point to a greater spiritual reality, fostering a sense of unity and participation in divine energies and ideas.
In practice
In a speech about environmental protection, one could quote this to emphasize the spiritual significance of nature.
Being, belief and reason are pure relations, which cannot be dealt with absolutely, and are not things but pure scholastic concepts, signs for understanding, not for worshipping, aids to awaken our attention, not to fetter it.
The weakness of ourselves and of our reason makes us see flaws in beauties by making us consider everything piece by piece.
Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it.
The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone.
Everything is vain and tortures the spirit instead of calming and satisfying it.
Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.
Is it true, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer the most? That the strongest wander furthest and most hopelessly are lost? That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain? That the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain?
Oh for a single hour of that Dundee Who on that day the word of onset gave!
If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is a hallucinating idiot...for he sees what no one else does: things that, to everyone else, are not there.
The answer is, of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved.
And dead an epoch of our existence, which in a world destined to humiliate us was moral light and resistance.
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