In the place of inspiration, or prophetic understanding,
which carries the implications of a transcendent source of truth and
goodness, we have a sharply limited, subjective wisdom and insight.
The "thus saith the Lord" of the Hebrew prophet means nothing here.
The humanist is, of course, confronted with the eternal question of
origins, of the thing-in-itself, the question whose insistence makes
the continuing worth of the absolutist speculations. He begs the
question by answering it with an assertion, not an explanation. He
meets it by an exaltation of human genius. Genius explains all sublime
achievements and genius is, so to speak, its own _fons et origo_. Thus
Diderot says: "Genius is the higher activity of the soul." "Genius,"
remarks Rousseau in a letter, "makes knowledge unnecessary." And
Kant defines genius as "the talent to discover that which cannot be
taught or learned."[8] This appears to be more of an evasion than
a definition! But the intent here is to refer all that seems to
transcend mundane categories, man's highest, his widest, his sublimest
intuitions and achievements, back to himself; he is his own source of
light and power.
[Footnote 8: _Anthropologie_, para. 87 c.]
Such an anthropocentric view of life and destiny in exalting man,
of course, thereby liberated him, not merely from ecclesiastical
domination, but also from those illusive fears and questionings, those
remote and imaginative estimates of his own intended worth and those
consequent exacting demands upon himself which are a part of the
religious interpretation of life.
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