The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. I, Nos. 1-4, 1867

by Various

EDITORIALS.

ORIGINALITY.

It is natural that in America more than elsewhere, there should be a popular demand for originality. In Europe, each nation has, in the course of centuries, accumulated a stock of its own peculiar creations. America is sneered at for the lack of these. We have not had time as yet to develop spiritual capital on a scale to correspond to our material pretensions. Hence, we, as a people, feel very sensitive on this point, and whenever any new literary enterprise is started, it is met on every hand by inquiries like these: “Is it original, or only an importation of European ideas?” “Why not publish something indigenous?” It grows cynical at the sight of erudition, and vents its spleen with indignation: “Why rifle the graves of centuries? You are no hyena! Does not the spring bring forth its flowers, and every summer its swarms of gnats? Why build a bridge of rotten coffin planks, or wear a wedding garment of mummy wrappage? Why desecrate the Present, by offering it time-stained paper from the shelves of the Past?”

In so far as these inquiries are addressed to our own undertaking, we have a word to offer in self-justification. We have no objection to originality of the right stamp. An originality which cherishes its own little idiosyncrasies we despise. If we must differ from other people, let us differ in having a wide cosmopolitan culture. “All men are alike in possessing defects,” says Goethe; “in excellencies alone, it is, that great differences may be found.”

What philosophic originality may be, we hope to show by the following consideration:

It is the province of Philosophy to dissolve and make clear to itself the entire phenomena of the world. These phenomena consist of two kinds: first, the products of nature, or immediate existence; second, the products of spirit, including what modifications man has wrought upon the former, and his independent creations. These spiritual products may be again subdivided into practical (in which the will predominates)—the institutions of civilization—and theoretical (in which the intellect predominates)—art, religion, science, &c. Not only must Philosophy explain the immediate phenomena of nature—it must also explain the mediate phenomena of spirit. And not only are the institutions of civilization proper objects of study, but still more is this theoretic side that which demands the highest activity of the philosopher.

To examine the thoughts of man—to unravel them and make them clear—must constitute the earliest employment of the speculative thinker; his first business is to comprehend the thought of the world; to dissolve for himself the solutions which have dissolved the world before him. Hence, the prevalent opinion that it is far higher to be an “original investigator” than to be engaged in studying the thoughts of others, leaves out of view the fact that the thoughts of other men are just as much objective phenomena to the individual philosopher as the ground he walks on. They need explanation just as much. If I can explain the thoughts of the profoundest men of the world, and make clear wherein they differed among themselves and from the truth, certainly I am more original than they were. For is not “original” to be used in the sense of primariness, of approximation to the absolute, universal truth? He who varies from the truth must be secondary, and owe his deflections to somewhat alien to his being, and therefore be himself subordinate thereto. Only the Truth makes Free and Original. How many people stand in the way of their own originality! If an absolute Science should be discovered by anybody, we could all become absolutely original by mastering it. So much as I have mastered of science, I have dissolved into me, and have not left it standing alien and opposed to me, but it is now my own.

Our course, then, in the practical endeavor to elevate the tone of American thinking, is plain: we must furnish convenient access to the deepest thinkers of ancient and modern times. To prepare translations and commentary, together with original exposition, is our object. Originality will take care of itself. Once disciplined in Speculative thought, the new growths of our national life will furnish us objects whose comprehension shall constitute original philosophy without parallel. Meanwhile it must be confessed that those who set up this cry for originality are not best employed. Their ideals are commonplace, and their demand is too easily satisfied with the mere whimsical, and they do not readily enough distinguish therefrom the excellent.

CONTENTS OF THE JOURNAL.

Thus far the articles of this journal have given most prominence to art in its various forms. The speculative content of art is more readily seen than that of any other form, for the reason that its sensuous element allows a more genial exposition. The critique of the Second Part of Faust, by Rosencrantz, published in this number, is an eminent example of the effect which the study of Speculative Philosophy has upon the analytical understanding. Is not the professor of logic able to follow the poet, and interpret the products of his creative imagination? The portion of Hegel’s Æsthetics, published in this number, giving, as it does, the historical groundwork of art, furnishes in a genial form an outline of the Philosophy of History. Doubtless the characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon mind make it difficult to see in art what it has for such nations as the Italians and Germans; we have the reflective intellect, and do not readily attain the standpoint of the creative imagination.

STYLE.

In order to secure against ambiguity, it is sometimes necessary to make inelegant repetitions, and, to give to a limiting clause its proper degree of subordination, such devices as parentheses, dashes, etc., have to be used to such a degree as to disfigure the page. Capitals and italics are also used without stint to mark important words. The adjective has frequently to be used substantively, and, if rare, this use is marked by commencing it with a capital.

There are three styles, which correspond to the three grades of intellectual culture. The sensuous stage uses simple, categorical sentences, and relates facts, while the reflective stage uses hypothetical ones, and marks relations between one fact and another; it introduces antithesis. The stage of the Reason uses the disjunctive sentence, and makes an assertion exhaustive, by comprehending in it a multitude of interdependencies and exclusions. Thus it happens that the style of a Hegel is very difficult to master, and cannot be translated adequately into the sensuous style, although many have tried it. A person is very apt to blame the style of a deep thinker when he encounters him for the first time. It requires an “expert swimmer” to follow the discourse, but for no other reason than that the mind has not acquired the strength requisite to grasp in one thought a wide extent of conceptions.

THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.
Vol. I. 1867. No. 3.

THE MONADOLOGY.
[Translated from the French of Leibnitz, by F. H. Hedge.]

1. The Monad, of which we shall here speak, is merely a simple substance entering into those which are compound; simple, that is to say, without parts.

2. And there must be simple substances, since there are compounds; for the compound is only a collection or aggregate of simples.

3. Where there are no parts, neither extension, nor figure, nor divisibility is possible; and these Monads are the veritable Atoms of Nature—in one word, the Elements of things.

4. There is thus no danger of dissolution, and there is no conceivable way in which a simple substance can perish naturally.

5. For the same reason, there is no way in which a simple substance can begin naturally, since it could not be formed by composition.

6. Therefore we may say that the Monads can neither begin nor end in any other way than all at once; that is to say, they cannot begin except by creation, nor end except by annihilation; whereas that which is compounded, begins and ends by parts.

7. There is also no intelligible way in which a Monad can be altered or changed in its interior by any other creature, since it would be impossible to transpose anything in it, or to conceive in it any internal movement—any movement excited, directed, augmented or diminished within, such as may take place in compound bodies, where there is change of parts. The Monads have no windows through which anything can enter or go forth. It would be impossible for any accidents to detach themselves and go forth from the substances, as did formerly the Sensible Species of the Schoolmen. Accordingly, neither substance nor accident can enter a Monad from without.

8. Nevertheless Monads must have qualities—otherwise they would not even be entities; and if simple substances did not differ in their qualities, there would be no means by which we could become aware of the changes of things, since all that is in compound bodies is derived from simple ingredients, and Monads, being without qualities, would be indistinguishable one from another, seeing also they do not differ in quantity. Consequently, a plenum being supposed, each place could in any movement receive only the just equivalent of what it had had before, and one state of things would be indistinguishable from another.

9. Moreover, each Monad must differ from every other, for there are never two beings in nature perfectly alike, and in which it is impossible to find an internal difference, or one founded on some intrinsic denomination.

10. I take it for granted, furthermore, that every created being is subject to change—consequently the created Monad; and likewise that this change is continual in each.

11. It follows, from what we have now said, that the natural changes of Monads proceed from an internal principle, since no external cause can influence the interior.

12. But, besides the principle of change, there must also be a detail of changes, embracing, so to speak, the specification and the variety of the simple substances.

13. This detail must involve multitude in unity or in simplicity: for as all natural changes proceed by degrees, something changes and something remains, and consequently there must be in the simple substance a plurality of affections and relations, although there are no parts.

14. This shifting state, which involves and represents multitude in unity, or in the simple substance, is nothing else than what we call Perception, which must be carefully distinguished from apperception, or consciousness, as will appear in the sequel. Here it is that the Cartesians have especially failed, making no account of those perceptions of which we are not conscious. It is this that has led them to suppose that spirits are the only Monads, and that there are no souls of brutes or other Entelechies. It is owing to this that they have vulgarly confounded protracted torpor with actual death, and have fallen in with the scholastic prejudice, which believes in souls entirely separate. Hence, also, ill affected minds have been confirmed in the opinion that the soul is mortal.

15. The action of the internal principle which causes the change, or the passage from one perception to another, may be called Appetition. It is true, the desire cannot always completely attain to every perception to which it tends, but it always attains to something thereof, and arrives at new perceptions.

16. We experience in ourselves the fact of multitude in the simple substance, when we find that the least thought of which we are conscious includes a variety in its object. Accordingly, all who admit that the soul is a simple substance, are bound to admit this multitude in the Monad, and Mr. Boyle should not have found any difficulty in this admission, as he has done in his dictionary—Art. Rorarius.

17. Besides, it must be confessed that Perception and its consequences are inexplicable by mechanical causes—that is to say, by figures and motions. If we imagine a machine so constructed as to produce thought, sensation, perception, we may conceive it magnified—the same proportions being preserved—to such an extent that one might enter it like a mill. This being supposed, we should find in it on inspection only pieces which impel each other, but nothing which can explain a perception. It is in the simple substance, therefore—not in the compound, or in machinery—that we must look for that phenomenon; and in the simple substance we find nothing else—nothing, that is, but perceptions and their changes. Therein also, and therein only, consist all the internal acts of simple substances.

18. We might give the name of Entelechies to all simple substances or created Monads, inasmuch as there is in them a certain completeness (perfection), (ἔχουσι τὸ ἔντελες). There is a sufficiency (αὐτάρκεια) which makes them the sources of their own internal actions, and, as it were, incorporeal automata.

19. If we choose to give the name of soul to all that has perceptions and desires, in the general sense which I have just indicated, all simple substances or created Monads may be called souls. But as sentiment is something more than simple perception, I am willing that the general name of Monads and Entelechies shall suffice for those simple substances which have nothing but perceptions, and that the term souls shall be confined to those whose perceptions are more distinct, and accompanied by memory.

20. For we experience in ourselves a state in which we remember nothing, and have no distinct perception, as when we are in a swoon or in a profound and dreamless sleep. In this state the soul does not differ sensibly from a simple Monad; but since this state is not permanent, and since the soul delivers herself from it, she is something more.

21. And it does not by any means follow, in that case, that the simple substance is without perception: that, indeed, is impossible, for the reasons given above; for it cannot perish, neither can it subsist without affection of some kind, which is nothing else than its perception. But where there is a great number of minute perceptions, and where nothing is distinct, one is stunned, as when we turn round and round in continual succession in the same direction; whence arises a vertigo, which may cause us to faint, and which prevents us from distinguishing anything. And possibly death may produce this state for a time in animals.

22. And as every present condition of a simple substance is a natural consequence of its antecedent condition, so its present is big with its future.

23. Then, as on awaking from a state of stupor, we become conscious of our perceptions, we must have had perceptions, although unconscious of them, immediately before awaking. For each perception can have no other natural origin but an antecedent perception, as every motion must be derived from one which preceded it.

24. Thus it appears that if there were no distinction—no relief, so to speak—no enhanced flavor in our perceptions, we should continue forever in a state of stupor; and this is the condition of the naked Monad.

25. And so we see that nature has given to animals enhanced perceptions, by the care which she has taken to furnish them with organs which collect many rays of light and many undulations of air, increasing their efficacy by their union. There is something approaching to this in odor, in taste, in touch, and perhaps in a multitude of other senses of which we have no knowledge. I shall presently explain how that which passes in the soul represents that which takes place in the organs.

26. Memory gives to the soul a kind of consecutive action which imitates reason, but must be distinguished from it. We observe that animals, having a perception of something which strikes them, and of which they have previously had a similar perception, expect, through the representation of their memory, the recurrence of that which was associated with it in their previous perception, and incline to the same feelings which they then had. For example, when we show dogs the cane, they remember the pain which it caused them, and whine and run.

27. And the lively imagination, which strikes and excites them, arises from the magnitude or the multitude of their previous perceptions. For often a powerful impression produces suddenly the effect of long habit, or of moderate perceptions often repeated.

28. In men as in brutes, the consecutiveness of their perceptions is due to the principle of memory—like empirics in medicine, who have only practice without theory. And we are mere empirics in three-fourths of our acts. For example, when we expect that the sun will rise to-morrow, we judge so empirically, because it has always risen hitherto. Only the astronomer judges by an act of reason.

29. But the cognition of necessary and eternal truths is that which distinguishes us from mere animals. It is this which gives us Reason and Science, and raises us to the knowledge of ourselves and of God; and it is this in us which we call a reasonable soul or spirit.

30. It is also by the cognition of necessary truths, and by their abstractions, that we rise to acts of reflection, which give us the idea of that which calls itself “I,” and which lead us to consider that this or that is in us. And thus, while thinking of ourselves, we think of Being, of substance, simple or compound, of the immaterial, and of God himself. We conceive that that which in us is limited, is in him without limit. And these reflective acts furnish the principal objects of our reasonings.

31. Our reasonings are founded on two great principles, that of “Contradiction,” by virtue of which we judge that to be false which involves contradiction, and that to be true which is opposed to, or which contradicts the false.

32. And that of the “Sufficient Reason,” by virtue of which we judge that no fact can be real or existent, no statement true, unless there be a sufficient reason why it is thus, and not otherwise, although these reasons very often cannot be known to us.

33. There are also two sorts of truths—those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary, and their opposite is impossible; those of fact are contingent, and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary, we may discover the reason of it by analysis, resolving it into simpler ideas and truths, until we arrive at those which are ultimate.[^[3]]

34. It is thus that mathematicians by analysis reduce speculative theorems and practical canons to definitions, axioms and postulates.

35. And finally, there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms and postulates,—in one word, ultimate principles, which cannot and need not be proved. And these are “Identical Propositions,” of which the opposite contains an express contradiction.

36. But there must also be a sufficient reason for truths contingent, or truths of fact—that is, for the series of things diffused through the universe of creatures—or else the process of resolving into particular reasons might run into a detail without bounds, on account of the immense variety of the things of nature, and of the infinite division of bodies. There is an infinity of figures and of movements, present and past, which enter into the efficient cause of my present writing; and there is an infinity of minute inclinations and dispositions of my soul, present and past, which enter into the final cause of it.

37. And as all this detail only involves other anterior or more detailed contingencies, each one of which again requires a similar analysis in order to account for it, we have made no advance, and the sufficient or final reason must be outside of the series of this detail of contingencies,[^[4]] endless as it may be.

38. And thus the final reason of things must be found in a necessary Substance, in which the detail of changes exists eminently as their source. And this is that which we call God.

39. Now this Substance being a sufficient reason of all this detail, which also is everywhere linked together, there is but one God, and this God suffices.

40. We may also conclude that this supreme Substance, which is Only,[^[5]] Universal, and Necessary—having nothing outside of it which is independent of it, and being a simple series of possible beings—must be incapable of limits, and must contain as much of reality as is possible.

41. Whence it follows that God is perfect, perfection being nothing but the magnitude of positive reality taken exactly, setting aside the limits or bounds in that which is limited. And there, where there are no bounds, that is to say, in God, perfection is absolutely infinite.

42. It follows also that the creatures have their perfections from the influence of God, but they have their imperfections from their proper nature, incapable of existing without bounds; for it is by this that they are distinguished from God.

43. It is true, moreover, that God is not only the source of existences, but also of essences, so far as real, or of that which is real in the possible; because the divine understanding is the region of eternal truths, or of the ideas on which they depend, and without Him there would be nothing real in the possibilities, and not only nothing existing, but also nothing possible.

44. At the same time, if there be a reality in the essences or possibilities, or in the eternal truths, this reality must be founded in something existing and actual, consequently in the existence of the necessary Being, in whom essence includes existence, or with whom it is sufficient to be possible in order to be actual.

45. Thus God alone (or the necessary Being) possesses this privilege, that he must exist if possible; and since nothing can hinder the possibility of that which includes no bounds, no negation, and consequently no contradiction, that alone is sufficient to establish the existence of God a priori. We have likewise proved it by the reality of eternal truths. But we have also just proved it a posteriori by showing that, since contingent beings exist, they can have their ultimate and sufficient reason only in some necessary Being, who contains the reason of his existence in himself.

46. Nevertheless, we must not suppose, with some, that eternal verities, being dependent upon God, are arbitrary, and depend upon his will, as Des Cartes, and afterward M. Poiret, appear to have conceived. This is true only of contingent truths, the principle of which is fitness, or the choice of the best; whereas necessary truths depend solely on His understanding, and are its internal object.

47. Thus God alone is the primitive Unity, or the simple original substance of which all the created or derived Monads are the products; and they are generated, so to speak, by continual fulgurations of the Divinity, from moment to moment, bounded by the receptivity of the creature, of whose existence limitation is an essential condition.

48. In God is Power, which is the source of all; then Knowledge, which contains the detail of Ideas; and, finally, Will, which generates changes or products according to the principle of optimism. And this answers to what, in created Monads, constitutes the subject or the basis, the perceptive and the appetitive faculty. But in God these attributes are absolutely infinite or perfect, and in the created Monads, or in the Entelechies (or perfectihabiis, as Hermolaus Barbarus translates this word), they are only imitations according to the measure of their perfection.

49. The creature is said to act externally, in so far as it possesses perfection, and to suffer from another (creature) so far as it is imperfect. So we ascribe action to the Monad, so far as it has distinct perceptions, and passion, so far as its perceptions are confused.

50. And one creature is more perfect than another, in this: that we find in it that which serves to account a priori for what passes in the other; and it is therefore said to act upon the other.

51. But in simple substances this is merely an ideal influence of one Monad upon another, which can pass into effect only by the intervention of God, inasmuch as in the ideas of God one Monad has a right to demand that God, in regulating the rest from the commencement of things, shall have regard to it; for since a created Monad can have no physical influence on the interior of another, it is only by this means that one can be dependent on another.

52. And hence it is that actions and passions in creatures are mutual; for God, comparing two simple substances, finds reasons in each which oblige him to accommodate the one to the other. Consequently that which is active in one view, is passive in another—active so far as what we clearly discern in it serves to account for that which takes place in another, and passive so far as the reason of that which passes in it is found in that which is clearly discerned in another.

53. Now, as in the ideas of God there is an infinity of possible worlds, and as only one can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for the choice of God, which determines him to one rather than another.

54. And this reason can be no other than fitness, derived from the different degrees of perfection which these worlds contain, each possible world having a claim to exist according to the measure of perfection which it enfolds.

55. And this is the cause of the existence of that Best, which the wisdom of God discerns, which his goodness chooses, and his power effects.

56. And this connection, or this accommodation of all created things to each, and of each to all, implies in each simple substance relations which express all the rest. Each, accordingly, is a living and perpetual mirror of the universe.

57. And as the same city viewed from different sides appears quite different, and is perspectively multiplied, so, in the infinite multitude of simple substances, there are given, as it were, so many different worlds which yet are only the perspectives of a single one, according to the different points of view of each Monad.

58. And this is the way to obtain the greatest possible variety with the greatest possible order—that is to say, the way to obtain the greatest possible perfection.

59. Thus this hypothesis (which I may venture to pronounce demonstrated) is the only one which properly exhibits the greatness of God. And this Mr. Boyle acknowledges, when in his dictionary (Art. Rorarius) he objects to it. He is even disposed to think that I attribute too much to God, that I ascribe to him impossibilities; but he can allege no reason for the impossibility of this universal harmony, by which each substance expresses exactly the perfections of all the rest through its relations with them.

60. We see, moreover, in that which I have just stated, the a priori reasons why things could not be other than they are. God, in ordering the whole, has respect to each part, and specifically to each Monad, whose nature being representative, is by nothing restrained from representing the whole of things, although, it is true, this representation must needs be confused, as it regards the detail of the universe, and can be distinct only in relation to a small part of things, that is, in relation to those which are nearest, or whose relations to any given Monad are greatest. Otherwise each Monad would be a divinity. The Monads are limited, not in the object, but in the mode of their knowledge of the object. They all tend confusedly to the infinite, to the whole; but they are limited and distinguished by the degrees of distinctness in their perceptions.

61. And compounds symbolize in this with simples. For since the world is a plenum, and all matter connected, and as in a plenum every movement has some effect on distant bodies, in proportion to their distance, so that each body is affected not only by those in actual contact with it, and feels in some way all that happens to them, but also through their means is affected by others in contact with those by which it is immediately touched—it follows that this communication extends to any distance. Consequently, each body feels all that passes in the universe, so that he who sees all, may read in each that which passes everywhere else, and even that which has been and shall be, discerning in the present that which is removed in time as well as in space. “Συμπνόιει Πάντα,” says Hippocrates. But each soul can read in itself only that which is distinctly represented in it. It cannot unfold its laws at once, for they reach into the infinite.

62. Thus, though every created Monad represents the entire universe, it represents more distinctly the particular body to which it belongs, and whose Entelechy it is: and as this body expresses the entire universe, through the connection of all matter in a plenum, the soul represents also the entire universe in representing that body which especially belongs to it.

63. The body belonging to a Monad, which is its Entelechy or soul, constitutes, with its Entelechy, what may be termed a living (thing), and, with its soul, what may be called an animal. And the body of a living being, or of an animal, is always organic; for every Monad, being a mirror of the universe, according to its fashion, and the universe being arranged with perfect order, there must be the same order in the representative—that is, in the perceptions of the soul, and consequently of the body according to which the universe is represented in it.

64. Thus each organic living body is a species of divine machine, or a natural automaton, infinitely surpassing all artificial automata. A machine made by human art is not a machine in all its parts. For example, the tooth of a brass wheel has parts or fragments which are not artificial to us; they have nothing which marks the machine in their relation to the use for which the wheel is designed; but natural machines—that is, living bodies—are still machines in their minutest parts, ad infinitum. This makes the difference between nature and art, that is to say, between the Divine art and ours.

65. And the author of nature was able to exercise this divine and infinitely wonderful art, inasmuch as every portion of nature is not only infinitely divisible, as the ancients knew, but is actually subdivided without end—each part into parts, of which each has its own movement. Otherwise, it would be impossible that each portion of matter should express the universe.

66. Whence it appears that there is a world of creatures, of living (things), of animals, of Entelechies, of souls, in the minutest portion of matter.

67. Every particle of matter may be conceived as a garden of plants, or as a pond full of fishes. But each branch of each plant, each member of each animal, each drop of their humors, is in turn another such garden or pond.

68. And although the earth and the air embraced between the plants in the garden, or the water between the fishes of the pond, are not themselves plant or fish, they nevertheless contain such, but mostly too minute for our perception.

69. So there is no uncultured spot, no barrenness, no death in the universe—no chaos, no confusion, except in appearance, as it might seem in a pond at a distance, in which one should see a confused motion and swarming, so to speak, of the fishes of the pond, without distinguishing the fishes themselves.

70. We see, then, that each living body has a governing Entelechy, which in animals is the soul of the animal. But the members of this living body are full of other living bodies—plants, animals—each of which has its Entelechy, or regent soul.

71. We must not, however, suppose—as some who misapprehended my thought have done—that each soul has a mass or portion of matter proper to itself, or forever united to it, and that it consequently possesses other inferior living existences, destined forever to its service. For all bodies are in a perpetual flux, like rivers. Their particles are continually coming and going.

72. Thus the soul does not change its body except by degrees. It is never deprived at once of all its organs. There are often metamorphoses in animals, but never Metempsychosis—no transmigration of souls. Neither are there souls entirely separated (from bodies), nor genii without bodies. God alone is wholly without body.

73. For which reason, also, there is never complete generation nor perfect death—strictly considered—consisting in the separation of the soul. That which we call generation, is development and accretion; and that which we call death, is envelopment and diminution.

74. Philosophers have been much troubled about the origin of forms, of Entelechies, or souls. But at the present day, when, by accurate investigations of plants, insects and animals, they have become aware that the organic bodies of nature are never produced from chaos or from putrefaction, but always from seed, in which undoubtedly there had been a preformation; it has been inferred that not only the organic body existed in that seed before conception, but also a soul in that body—in one word, the animal itself—and that, by the act of conception, this animal is merely disposed to a grand transformation, to become an animal of another species. We even see something approaching this, outside of generation, as when worms become flies, or when caterpillars become butterflies.

75. Those animals, of which some are advanced to a higher grade, by means of conception, may be called spermatic; but those among them which remain in their kind—that is to say, the greater portion—are born, multiply, and are destroyed, like the larger animals, and only a small number of the elect among them, pass to a grander theatre.

76. But this is only half the truth. I have concluded that if the animal does not begin to be in the order of nature, it also does not cease to be in the order of nature, and that not only there is no generation, but no entire destruction—no death, strictly considered. And these a posteriori conclusions, drawn from experience, accord perfectly with my principles deduced a priori, as stated above.

77. Thus we may say, not only that the soul (mirror of an indestructible universe) is indestructible, but also the animal itself, although its machine may often perish in part, and put off or put on organic spoils.

78. These principles have furnished me with a natural explanation of the union, or rather the conformity between the soul and the organized body. The soul follows its proper laws, and the body likewise follows those which are proper to it, and they meet in virtue of the preëstablished harmony which exists between all substances, as representations of one and the same universe.

79. Souls act according to the laws of final causes, by appetitions, means and ends; bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes, or the laws of motion. And the two kingdoms, that of efficient causes and that of final causes, harmonize with each other.

80. Des Cartes perceived that souls communicate no force to bodies, because the quantity of force in matter is always the same. Nevertheless, he believed that souls might change the direction of bodies. But this was because the world was at that time ignorant of the law of nature, which requires the conservation of the same total direction in matter. Had he known this, he would have hit upon my system of preëstablished harmony.

81. According to this system, bodies act as if there were no souls, and souls act as if there were no bodies; and yet both act as though the one influenced the other.

82. As to spirits, or rational souls, although I find that at bottom the same principle which I have stated—namely, that animals and souls begin with the world and end only with the world—holds with regard to all animals and living things, yet there is this peculiarity in rational animals, that although their spermatic animalcules, as such, have only ordinary or sensitive souls, yet as soon as those of them which are elected, so to speak, arrive by the act of conception at human nature, their sensitive souls are elevated to the rank of reason and to the prerogative of spirits.

83. Among other differences which distinguish spirits from ordinary souls, some of which have already been indicated, there is also this: that souls in general are living mirrors, or images of the universe of creatures, but spirits are, furthermore, images of Divinity itself, or of the Author of Nature, capable of cognizing the system of the universe, and of imitating something of it by architectonic experiments, each spirit being, as it were, a little divinity in its own department.

84. Hence spirits are able to enter into a kind of fellowship with God. In their view he is not merely what an inventor is to his machine (as God is in relation to other creatures), but also what a prince is to his subjects, and even what a father is to his children.

85. Whence it is easy to conclude that the assembly of all spirits must constitute the City of God—that is to say, the most perfect state possible, under the most perfect of monarchs.

86. This City of God, this truly universal monarchy, is a moral world within the natural; and it is the most exalted and the most divine among the works of God. It is in this that the glory of God most truly consists, which glory would be wanting if his greatness and his goodness were not recognized and admired by spirits. It is in relation to this Divine City that he possesses, properly speaking, the attribute of goodness, whereas his wisdom and his power are everywhere manifest.

87. As we have established above, a perfect harmony between the two natural kingdoms—the one of efficient causes, the other of final causes—so it behooves us to notice here also a still further harmony between the physical kingdom of nature and the moral kingdom of grace—that is to say, between God considered as the architect of the machine of the universe, and God considered as monarch of the divine City of Spirits.

88. This harmony makes all things conduce to grace by natural methods. This globe, for example, must be destroyed and repaired by natural means, at such seasons as the government of spirits may require, for the chastisement of some and the recompense of others.

89. We may say, furthermore, that God as architect contains entirely God as legislator, and that accordingly sins must carry their punishment with them in the order of nature, by virtue even of the mechanical structure of things, and that good deeds in like manner will bring their recompense, through their connection with bodies, although this cannot, and ought not always to, take place on the spot.

90. Finally, under this perfect government, there will be no good deed without its recompense, and no evil deed without its punishment, and all must redound to the advantage of the good—that is to say, of those who are not malcontents—in this great commonwealth, who confide in Providence after having done their duty, and who worthily love and imitate the Author of all good, pleasing themselves with the contemplation of his perfections, following the nature of pure and genuine Love, which makes us blest in the happiness of the loved. In this spirit, the wise and good labor for that which appears to be conformed to the divine will, presumptive or antecedent, contented the while with all that God brings to pass by his secret will, consequent and decisive,—knowing that if we were sufficiently acquainted with the order of the universe we should find that it surpasses all the wishes of the wisest, and that it could not be made better than it is, not only for all in general, but for ourselves in particular, if we are attached, as is fitting, to the Author of All, not only as the architect and efficient cause of our being, but also as our master and the final cause, who should be the whole aim of our volition, and who alone can make us blest.

A CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS.
[Translated from the German of J. G. Fichte, by A. E. Kroeger.]

[Note.—The following completes Fichte’s Second Introduction to the Science of Knowledge, or his Criticism of Philosophical Systems. In the first division of what follows, Fichte traces out his own transcendental standpoint in the Kantian Philosophy, and next proceeds, in the second division, to connect it with what was printed in our previous number, criticising without mercy the dogmatic standpoint. By the completion of this article, we have given to the readers of our Journal Fichte’s own great Introductions to that Science of Knowledge, which is about to be made accessible to American readers through the publishing house of Messrs. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia. Our readers are, therefore, especially prepared to enter upon a study of Fichte’s wonderful system, for none of these Introductions, as indeed none of Fichte’s works of Science, have ever before been published in the English language. In a subsequent number we shall print Fichte’s “Sun-clear Statement regarding the true nature of the Science of Knowledge,” a masterly exhibition of the treatment of scientific subjects in a popular form. We hope that all who have read, or will read these articles, will also enter upon a study of the great work which they are designed to prepare for; the study is worth the pains.—Editor.]

I.

It is not the habit of the Science of Knowledge, nor of its author, to seek protection under any authority whatever. The person who has first to see whether this doctrine agrees with the doctrine of somebody else before he is willing to be convinced by it, is not one whom this science calculates to convince, because the absolute self-activity and independent faith in himself which this science presupposes, is wanting in him.

It was therefore quite a different motive than a desire to recommend his doctrines, which led the author of the Science of Knowledge to state that his doctrine was in perfect harmony with Kant’s doctrine, and was indeed the very same. In this opinion he has been confirmed by the continued elaboration of his system, which he was compelled to undertake. Nevertheless, all others who pass for students of Kant’s philosophy, and who have spoken on the subject—whether they were friends or opponents of the Science of Knowledge—have unanimously asserted the contrary; and by their advice, even Kant himself, who ought certainly best to understand himself, asserts the contrary. If the author of the Science of Knowledge were disposed towards a certain manner of thinking, this would be welcome news to him. Moreover, since he considers it no disgrace to have misunderstood Kant, and foresees that to have misunderstood him will soon be considered no disgrace by general opinion, he ought surely not to hesitate to assume that disgrace, especially as it would confer upon him the honor of being the first discoverer of a philosophy which will certainly become universal, and be productive of the most beneficial results for mankind.

It is indeed scarcely explicable why friends and opponents of the Science of Knowledge so zealously contradict that assertion of its author, and why they so earnestly request him to prove it, although he never promised to do so, nay, expressly refused, since such a proof would rather belong to a future History of Philosophy than to a present representation of that system. The opponents of the Science of Knowledge in thus calling for a proof, are certainly not impelled by a tender regard for the fame of the author of that Science; and the friends of it might surely leave the subject alone, as I myself have no taste for such an honor, and seek the only honor which I know, in quite a different direction. Do they clamor for this proof in order to escape my charge, that they did not understand the writings of Kant? But such an accusation from the lips of the author of the Science of Knowledge is surely no reproach, since he confesses as loudly as possible, that he also has not understood them, and that only after he had discovered in his own way the Science of Knowledge, did he find a correct and harmonious interpretation of Kant’s writings. Indeed, that charge will soon cease to be a reproach from the lips of anybody. But perhaps this clamor is raised to escape the charge that they did not recognize their own doctrine, so zealously defended by them, when it was placed before them in a different shape from their own. If this is the case, I should like to save them this reproach also, if there were not another interest, which to me appears higher than theirs, and to which their interest shall be sacrificed. The fact is, I do not wish to be considered for one moment more than I am, nor to ascribe to myself a merit which I do not possess.

I shall therefore, in all probability, be compelled to enter upon the proof which they so earnestly demand, and hence improve the opportunity at present offered to me.

The Science of Knowledge starts, as we have just now seen, from an intellectual contemplation, from the absolute self-activity of the Ego.

Now it would seem beyond a doubt, and evident to all the readers of Kant’s writings, that this man has declared himself on no subject more decisively, nay, I might say contemptuously, than in denying this power of an intellectual contemplation. This denial seems so thoroughly rooted in the Kantian System, that, after all the elaboration of his philosophy, which he has undertaken since[^[6]] the appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason, and by means of which, as will be evident to any one, the propositions of that first work have received a far higher clearness and development than they originally possessed;—he yet, in one of his latest works, feels constrained to repeat those assertions with undiminished energy, and to show that the present style of philosophy, which treats all labor and exertion with contempt, as well as a most disastrous fanaticism, have resulted from the phantom of an intellectual contemplation.

Is any further proof needed, that a Philosophy, which is based on the very thing so decidedly rejected by the Kantian System, must be precisely the opposite of that system, and must be moreover the very senseless and disastrous system, of which Kant speaks in that work of his? Perhaps, however, it might be well first to inquire, whether the same word may not express two utterly different conceptions in the two systems. In Kant’s terminology, all contemplation is directed upon a Being (a permanent Remaining); and intellectual contemplation would thus signify in his system the immediate consciousness of a non-sensuous Being, or the immediate consciousness (through pure thinking) of the thing per se; and hence a creation of the thing per se through its conception, in nearly the same manner as the existence of God is demonstrated from the mere conception of God;—those who do so must look upon God’s existence as a mere sequence of their thinking. Now Kant’s system—taking the direction it did take—may have considered it necessary in this manner to keep the thing per se at a respectful distance. But the Science of Knowledge has finished the thing per se in another manner; that Science knows it to be the completest perversion of reason, a purely irrational conception. To that science all being is necessarily sensuous, for it evolves the very conception of Being from the form of sensuousness. That science regards the intellectual contemplation of Kant’s system as a phantasm, which vanishes the moment one attempts to think it, and which indeed is not worth a name at all. The intellectual contemplation, whereof the Science of Knowledge speaks, is not at all directed upon a Being, but upon an Activity; and Kant does not even designate it, (unless you wish to take the expression “Pure apperception” for such a designation). Nevertheless, it can be clearly shown where in Kant’s System it ought to have been mentioned. I hope that the categorical imperative of Kant occurs in consciousness, according to his System. Now what sort of consciousness is this of the categorical imperative? This question Kant never proposed to himself, because he never treated of the basis of all Philosophy. In his Critique of Pure Reason he treated only of theoretical Philosophy, and could therefore not introduce the categorical imperative; in his Critique of Practical Reason, he treated only of practical Philosophy, wherein the question concerning the manner of consciousness could not arise.

This consciousness is doubtless an immediate, but no sensuous consciousness—hence exactly what I call intellectual contemplation. Now, since we have no classical author in Philosophy, I give it the latter name, with the same right with which Kant gives it to something else, which is a mere nothing; and with the same right I insist that people ought first to become acquainted with the significance of my terminology before proceeding to judge my system.

My most estimable friend, the Rev. Mr. Schulz—to whom I had made known my indefinite idea of building up the whole Science of Philosophy on the pure Ego, long before I had thoroughly digested that idea, and whom I found less opposed to it than any one else—has a remarkable passage on this subject. In his review of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, he says: “The pure, active self-consciousness, in which really every one’s Ego consists, must not be confounded—for the very reason because it can and must teach us in an immediate manner—with the power of contemplation, and must not be made to involve the doctrine that we are in possession of a supersensuous, intellectual power of contemplation. For we call contemplation a representation, which is immediately related to an object. But pure self-consciousness is not representation, but is rather that which first makes a representation to become really a representation. If I say, ‘I represent something to myself,’ it signifies just the same as if I said, ‘I am conscious that I have a representation of this object.’”

According to Mr. Schulz, therefore, a representation is that whereof consciousness is possible. Now Mr. Schulz also speaks of pure self-consciousness. Undoubtedly he knows whereof he speaks, and hence, as philosopher, he most truly has a representation of pure self-consciousness. It was not of this consciousness of the philosopher, however, that Mr. Schulz spoke, but of original consciousness; and hence the significance of his assertion is this: Originally (i. e. in common consciousness without philosophical reflection) mere self-consciousness does not constitute full consciousness, but is merely a necessary compound, which makes full consciousness first possible. But is it not the same with sensuous contemplation? Does sensuous contemplation constitute a consciousness, or is it not rather merely that whereby a representation first becomes a representation? Contemplation without conception is confessedly blind. How, then, can Mr. Schulz call (sensuous) contemplation (excluding from it self-consciousness) representation? From the standpoint of the philosopher, as we have just seen, self-consciousness is equally representation; from the standpoint of original contemplation, sensuous contemplation is equally not representation. Or does the conception constitute a representation? The conception without contemplation is confessedly empty. In truth, self-consciousness, sensuous contemplation, and conception, are, in their isolated separateness, not representations—they are only that through which representations become possible. According to Kant, to Schulz, and to myself, a complete representation contains a threefold: 1st. That whereby the representation relates itself to an object, and becomes the representative of a Something—and this we unanimously call the sensuous contemplation (even if I am myself the object of my representation, it is by virtue of a sensuous contemplation, for then I become to myself a permanent in time); 2d. That through which the representation relates itself to the subject, and becomes my representation; this I also call contemplation (but intellectual contemplation), because it has the same relation to the complete representation which the sensuous contemplation has; but Kant and Schulz do not want it called so; and, 3d. That through which both are united, and only in this union become representation; and this we again unanimously call conception.

But to state it tersely: what is really the Science of Knowledge in two words? It is this: Reason is absolutely self-determined; Reason is only for Reason; but for Reason there is also nothing but Reason. Hence, everything, which Reason is, must be grounded in itself, and out of itself, but not in or out of another—some external other, which it could never grasp without giving up itself. In short, the Science of Knowledge is transcendental idealism. Again, what is the content of the Kantian system in two words? I confess that I cannot conceive it possible how any one can understand even one sentence of Kant, and harmonize it with others, except on the same presupposition which the Science of Knowledge has just asserted. I believe that that presupposition is the everlasting refrain of his system; and I confess that one of the reasons why I refused to prove the agreement of the Science of Knowledge with Kant’s system was this: It appeared to me somewhat too ridiculous and too tedious to show up the forest by pointing out the several trees in it.

I will cite here one chief passage from Kant. He says: “The highest principle of the possibility of all contemplation in relation to the understanding is this: that all the manifold be subject to the conditions of the original unity of apperception.” That is to say, in other words, “That something which is contemplated be also thought, is only possible on condition that the possibility of the original unity of apperception can coexist with it.” Now since, according to Kant, contemplation also is possible only on condition that it be thought and comprehended—otherwise it would remain blind—and since contemplation itself is thus subject to the conditions of the possibility of thinking—it follows that, according to Kant, not only Thinking immediately, but by the mediation of thinking, contemplation also, and hence all consciousness, is subject to the conditions of the original unity of apperception.

Now, what is this condition? It is true, Kant speaks of conditions, but he states only one as a fundamental condition. What is this condition of the original unity of apperception? It is this (see § 16 of the Critique of Pure Reason), “that my representations can be accompanied by the ‘I think’”—the word “I” alone is italicised by Kant, and this is somewhat important; that is to say, I am the thinking in this thinking.

Of what “I” does Kant speak here? Perhaps of the Ego, which his followers quietly heap together by a manifold of representations, in no single one of which it was, but in all of which collectively it now is said to be. Then the words of Kant would signify this: I, who think D, am the same I who thought A, B and C, and it is only through the thinking of my manifold thinking, that I first became I to myself—that is to say, the identical in the manifold? In that case Kant would have been just such a pitiable tattler as these Kantians; for in that case the possibility of all thinking would be conditioned, according to him, by another thinking, and by the thinking of this thinking; and I should like to know how we could ever arrive at a thinking.

But, instead of tracing the consequences of Kant’s statement, I merely intended to cite his own words. He says again: “This representation, ‘I think,’ is an act of spontaneity, i. e. it cannot be considered as belonging to ‘sensuousness’.“ (I add: and hence, also, not to inner sensuousness, to which the above described identity of consciousness most certainly does belong.) Kant continues: “I call it pure apperception, in order to distinguish it from the empirical (just described) apperception, and because it is that self-consciousness, which, in producing the representation ‘I think’—which must accompany all other representations, and is in all consciousness one and the same—can itself be accompanied by no other representation.”

Here the character of pure self-consciousness is surely clearly enough described. It is in all consciousness the same—hence undeterminable by any accident of consciousness; in it the Ego is only determined through itself, and is thus absolutely determined. It is also clear here, that Kant could not have understood this pure apperception to mean the consciousness of our individuality, nor could he have taken the latter for the former; for the consciousness of my individuality, as an I, is necessarily conditioned by, and only possible through, the consciousness of another individuality, a Thou.

Hence we discover in Kant’s writings the conception of the pure Ego exactly as the Science of Knowledge has described it, and completely determined. Again, in what relation does Kant, in the above passage, place this pure Ego to all consciousness? As conditioning the same. Hence, according to Kant, the possibility of all consciousness is conditioned by the possibility of the pure Ego, or by pure self-consciousness, just as the Science of Knowledge holds. In thinking, the conditioning is made the prior of the conditioned—for this is the significance of that relation; and thus it appears that, according to Kant, a systematic deduction of all consciousness, or, which is the same, a System of Philosophy, must proceed from the pure Ego, just as the Science of Knowledge proceeds; and Kant himself has thus suggested the idea of such a Science.

But some one might wish to weaken this argument by the following distinction: It is one thing to condition, and another to determine.

According to Kant, all consciousness is only conditioned by self-consciousness; i. e. the content of that consciousness may have its ground in something else than self-consciousness; provided the results of that grounding do not contradict the conditions of self-consciousness; those results need not proceed from self-consciousness, provided they do not cancel its possibility.

But, according to the Science of Knowledge, all consciousness is determined through self-consciousness; i. e. everything which occurs in consciousness is grounded, given and produced by the conditions of self-consciousness, and a ground of the same in something other than self-consciousness does not exist at all.

Now, to meet this argument, I must show that in the present case the determinateness follows immediately from the conditionedness, and that, therefore, the distinction drawn between both is not valid in this instance. Whosoever says, “All consciousness is conditioned by the possibility of self-consciousness, and as such I now propose to consider it,” knows in this his investigation, nothing more concerning consciousness, and abstracts from everything he may believe, further to know concerning it. He deduces what is required from the asserted principle, and only what he thus has deduced as consciousness is for him consciousness, and everything else is and remains nothing. Thus the derivability from self-consciousness determines for him the extent of that which he holds to be consciousness, because he starts from the presupposition that all consciousness is conditioned by the possibility of self-consciousness.

Now I know very well that Kant has by no means built up such a system; for if he had, the author of the Science of Knowledge would not have undertaken that work, but would have chosen another branch of human knowledge for his field. I know that he has by no means proven his categories to be conditions of self-consciousness; I know that he has simply asserted them so to be; that he has still less deduced time and space, and that which in original consciousness is inseparable from them—the matter which fills time and space—as such conditions; since of these he has not even expressly stated, as he has done in the case of the categories, that they are such conditions. But I believe I know quite as well that Kant has thought such a system; that all his writings and utterances are fragments and results of this system, and that his assertions get meaning and intention only through this presupposition. Whether he did not himself think this system with sufficient clearness and definiteness to enable him to utter it for others; or whether he did, indeed, think it thus clearly and merely did not want so to utter it, as some remarks would seem to indicate, might, it seems to me, be left undecided; at least somebody else must investigate this matter, for I have never asserted anything on this point.[^[7]] But, however such an investigation may result, this merit surely belongs altogether to the great man; that he first of all consciously separated philosophy from external objects, and led that science into the Self. This is the spirit and the inmost soul of all his philosophy, and this also is the spirit and soul of the Science of Knowledge.

I am reminded of a chief distinction which is said to exist between the Science of Knowledge and Kant’s system, and a distinction which but recently has been again insisted upon by a man who is justly supposed to have understood Kant, and who has shown that he also has understood the Science of Knowledge. This man is Reinhold, who, in a late essay, in endeavoring to prove that I have done injustice to myself, and to other successful students of Kant’s writings—in stating what I have just now reiterated and proved, i. e. that Kant’s system and the Science of Knowledge are the same—proceeds to remark: “The ground of our assertion, that there is an external something corresponding to our representations, is most certainly held by the Critique of Pure Reason to be contained in the Ego; but only in so far as empirical knowledge (experience) has taken place in the Ego as a fact; that is to say, the Critique of Pure Reason holds that this empirical knowledge has its ground in the pure Ego only in relation to its transcendental content, which is the form of that knowledge; but in regard to its empirical content, which gives that knowledge objective validity, it is grounded in the Ego through a something which is not the Ego. Now, a scientific form of philosophy was not possible so long as that something, which is not Ego, was looked for outside of the Ego as ground of the objective reality of the transcendental content of the Ego.”

Thus Reinhold. I have not convinced my readers, or demonstrated my proof, until I have met this objection.

The (purely historical) question is this: Has Kant really placed the ground of experience (in its empirical content) in a something different from the Ego?

I know very well that all the Kantians, except Mr. Beck, whose work appeared after the publication of the Science of Knowledge, have really understood Kant to say this. Nay, the last interpreter of Kant, Mr. Schulz, whom Kant himself has endorsed, thus interprets him. How often does Mr. Schulz admit that the objective ground of the appearances is contained in something which is a thing in itself, &c., &c. We have just seen how Reinhold also interprets Kant.

Now it may seem presumptuous for one man to arise and say: “Up to this moment, amongst a number of worthy scholars who have devoted their time and energies to the interpretation of a certain book, not a single one has understood that book otherwise than utterly falsely; they all have discovered in that system the very doctrine which it refutes—dogmatism, instead of transcendental idealism; and I alone understand it rightly.” Yet this presumption might be but seemingly so; for it is to be hoped that other persons will adopt that one man’s views, and that, therefore, he will not always stand alone. There are other reasons why it is not very presumptuous to contradict the whole number of Kantians, but I will not mention them here.

But what is most curious in this matter is this—the discovery that Kant did not intend to speak of a something different from the Ego, is by no means a new one. For ten years everybody could read the most thorough and complete proof of it in Jacobi’s “Idealism and Realism,” and in his “Transcendental Idealism.” In those works, Jacobi has put together the most evident and decisive passages from Kant’s writings on this subject, in Kant’s own words. I do not like to do again what has once been done, and cannot be done better; and I refer my readers with the more pleasure to those works, as they, like all philosophical writings of Jacobi, may be even yet of advantage to them.

A few questions, however, I propose to address to those interpreters of Kant. Tell me, how far does the applicability of the categories extend, according to Kant, particularly of the category of causality? Clearly only to the field of appearances, and hence only to that which is already in us and for us. But in what manner do we then come to accept a something different from the Ego, as the ground of the empirical content of Knowledge? I answer: only by drawing a conclusion from the grounded to the ground; hence by applying the category of causality. Thus, indeed, Kant himself discovers it to be, and hence rejects the assumption of things, &c., &c., outside of us. But his interpreters make him forget for the present instance the validity of categories generally, and make him arrive, by a bold leap, from the world of appearances to the thing per se outside of us. Now, how do these interpreters justify this inconsequence?

Kant evidently speaks of a thing per se. But what is this thing to him? A noumenon, as we can find in many passages of his writings. Reinhold and Schulz also hold it to be a noumenon. Now, what is a noumenon? According to Kant, to Reinhold, and Schulz, a something, which our thinking—by laws to be shown up, and which Kant has shown up—adds to the appearance, and which must so be added in thought;[^[8]] which, therefore, is produced only through our thinking; not, however, through our free, but through a necessary thinking, which is only for our thinking—for us thinking beings.

But what do those interpreters make of this noumenon or thing in itself? The thought of this thing in itself is grounded in sensation, and sensation they again assert to be grounded in the thing in itself. Their globe rests on the great elephant, and the great elephant—rests on the globe. Their thing in itself, which is a mere thought, they say affects the Ego. Have they then forgotten their first speech, and is the thing, per se, which a moment ago was but a mere thought, now turned into something more? Or do they seriously mean to apply to a mere thought, the exclusive predicate of reality, i. e. causality? And such teachings are put forth as the astonishing discoveries of the great genius, who, with his torch, lights up the retrograde philosophical century.

It is but too well known to me that the Kantianism of the Kantians is precisely the just described system—is really this monstrous composition of the most vulgar dogmatism, which allows things per se to make impressions upon us, and of the most decided idealism, which allows all being to be generated only through the thinking of the intelligence, and which knows nothing of any other sort of being. From what I am yet going to say on this subject, I except two men—Reinhold, because with a power of mind and a love of truth which do credit to his heart and head, he has abandoned this system, (which, however, he still holds to be the Kantian system, and I only disagree with him on this purely historical question,) and Schulz, because he has of late been silent on philosophical questions, which leaves it fair to assume that he has begun to doubt his former system.

But concerning the others, it must be acknowledged by all who have still their inner sense sufficiently under control to be able to distinguish between being and thinking and not to mix both together, that a system which thus mixes being and thinking receives but too much honor if it is spoken of seriously. To be sure, very few men may be properly required to overcome the natural tendency towards dogmatism sufficiently to lift themselves up to the free flight of Speculation. What was impossible for a man of overwhelming mental activity like Jacobi, how can it be expected of certain other men, whom I would rather not name? But that these incurable dogmatists should have persuaded themselves that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was food for them; that they had the boldness to conclude—since Kant’s writings had been praised (God may know by what chance!) in some celebrated journal—they might also now follow the fashion and become Kantians; that since then, for years, they, in their intoxication, have be-written many a ream of valuable paper, without ever, in all this time, having come to their senses, or understood but one period of all they have written; that up to the present day, though they have been somewhat rudely shaken, they have not been able to rub the sleep out of their eyes, but rather prefer to beat and kick about them, in the hope of striking some of these unwelcome disturbers of their peace; and that the German public, so desirous of acquiring knowledge, should have bought their blackened paper with avidity, and attempted to suck up the spirit of it—nay, should even, perhaps, have copied and recopied these writings without ever clearly perceiving that there was no sense in them: all this will forever, in the annals of philosophy, remain the disgrace of our century, and our posterity will be able to explain these occurrences of our times only on the presupposition of a mental epidemic, which had taken hold of this age.

But, will these interpreters reply: your argument is, after all—if we abstract from Jacobi’s writings, which, to be sure, are rather hard to swallow, since they quote Kant’s own words—no more than this: it is absurd; hence Kant cannot have meant to say it. Now, if we admit the absurdity, as unfortunately we must, why, then, might not Kant have said these absurdities, just as well as we others, amongst whom there are some, of whom you yourself confess the merits, and to whom you doubtless will not deny all sound understanding?

I reply: to be the inventor of a system is one thing, and to be his commentators and successors, another. What, in case of the latter, would not testify to an absolute want of sound sense, might certainly evince it in the former. The ground is this: the latter are not yet possessed of the idea of the whole—for if they were so possessed, there would be no necessity for them to study the system; they are merely to construct it out of the parts which the inventor hands over to them; and all these parts are, in their minds, not fully determined, rounded off, and made smooth, until they are united into a natural whole. Now, this construction of the parts may require some time, and during this time it may occur that these men determine some parts inaccurately, and hence place them in contradiction with the whole, of which they are not yet possessed. The discoverer of the idea of the whole, on the contrary, proceeds from this idea, in which all parts are united, and these parts he separately places before his readers, because only thus can he communicate the whole. The work of the former is a synthetizing of that which they do not yet possess, but are to obtain through the synthesis; the work of the latter is an analyzing of that which he already possesses. It is very possible that the former may not be aware of the contradiction in which the several parts stand to the whole which is to be composed of them, for they may not have got so far yet as to compare them. But it is quite certain that the latter, who proceeded from the composite, must have thought, or believed that he thought, the contradiction which is in the parts of his representation—for he certainly at one time held all the parts together. It is not absurd to think dogmatism now, and in another moment transcendental idealism; for this we all do, and must do, if we wish to philosophize about both systems; but it is absurd to think both systems as one. The interpreters of Kant’s system do not necessarily think it thus as one; but the author of that system must certainly have done so if his system was intended to effect such a union.

Now, I, at least, am utterly incapable of believing such an absurdity on the part of any one who has his senses; how, then, can I believe Kant to have been guilty of it? Unless Kant, therefore, declares expressly in so many words, that he deduces sensation from an impression of the thing, per se, or, to use his own terminology, that sensation must be explained in philosophy, from a transcendental object which exists outside of us, I shall not believe what these interpreters tell us of Kant. But if he does make this declaration, I shall consider the Critique of Pure Reason rather as the result of the most marvellous accident than as the product of a mind.

But, say our opponents, does not Kant state expressly that “The object is given to us,” and “that this is possible because the object affects us as in a certain manner,” and “that there is a power of attaining representations by the manner in which objects affect us, which power is called sensuousness.” Nay, Kant says even this: “How should our knowledge be awakened into exercise if it were not done by objects that touch our senses and partly produce representations themselves, while partly putting our power of understanding into motion, to compare, connect and separate these representations, and thus to form the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge which is called experience.” Well, these are probably all the passages which can be adduced by our opponents. Now, putting merely passages against passages, and words against words, and abstracting altogether from the idea of the whole, which I assume these interpreters never to have had, let me ask first, if these passages could really not be united with Kant’s other frequently repeated statements, viz., that it is folly to speak of an impression produced upon us by an external transcendental object,—how did it happen that these interpreters preferred to sacrifice the many statements, which assert a transcendental idealism, to these few passages, which assert a dogmatism, than vice versa? Doubtless because they did not attempt the study of Kant’s writings with an impartial mind, but had their heads full of that dogmatism—which constitutes their very being—as the only correct system, which they assumed such a sensible man as Kant must necessarily also hold to be the only correct system; and because they thus did not seek to be taught by Kant, but merely to be confirmed by him in their old way of thinking.

But cannot these seemingly opposite statements be united? Kant speaks in these passages of objects. What this word is to signify, we clearly must learn from Kant himself. He says: “It is the understanding which adds the object to the appearance, by connecting the manifold of the appearance in one consciousness. When this is done, we say we know the object, for we have effected a synthetical unity in the manifold of the contemplation, and the conception of this unity is the representation of the object = X. But this X is not the transcendental object (i. e. the thing per se), for of that we know not even so much.”

What, then, is this object? That which the understanding adds to the appearance, a mere thought. Now, the object affects—i. e. something which is a mere thought affects. What does this mean? If I have but a spark of logic, it means simply: it affects in so far as it is; hence it is only thought as affecting. Let us now see what Kant means when he speaks about the “power to obtain representations by the manner in which objects affect us.” Since we only think the affection itself, we doubtless only think likewise that which is common to the affection. Or: if you posit an object with the thought that it has affected you, you think yourself in this case affected; and if you think that this occurs in respect to all the objects of your perception, you think yourself as liable to be affected generally—or, in other words, you ascribe to yourself, through this your thinking, receptivity or sensuousness.

But do we not thus assume, after all, affection to explain knowledge? Let me state the difference in one word: it is true, all our knowledge proceeds from an affection, but not an affection through an object. This is Kant’s doctrine, and that of the Science of Knowledge. As Mr. Beck has overlooked this important point, and as Reinhold does not call sufficient attention to that which makes the positing of a non-Ego possible, I consider it proper to explain the matter in a few words. In doing so I shall use my own terminology, and not Kant’s, because I naturally have my own more at my command.

When I posit myself, I posit myself as a limited; in consequence of the contemplation of my self-positing, I am finite.

This, my limitedness—since it is the condition which makes my self-positing possible—is an original limitedness. Somebody might wish to explain this still further, and either deduce the limitedness of myself as the reflected, from my necessary limitedness as the reflecting; which would result in the statement: I am finite to myself, because I can think only the finite;—or he might explain the limitedness of the reflecting from that of the reflected, which would result in the statement: I can think only the finite, because I am finite. But such an explanation would explain nothing, for I am originally neither the reflecting nor the reflected, but both in their union; which union I cannot think, it is true, because I separate, in thinking, the reflecting from the reflected.

All limitedness is, by its very conception, a determined, and not a general limitedness.

From the possibility of an Ego, we have thus deduced the necessity of a general limitedness of the Ego. But the determinedness of this limitedness cannot be deduced, since it is, as we have seen, that which conditions all Egoness. Here, therefore, all deduction is at an end. This determinedness appears as the absolutely accidental, and furnishes the merely empirical of our knowledge. It is this determinedness, for instance, by virtue of which I am, amongst all possible rational beings, a man, and amongst all men this particular person, &c., &c.

This, my limitation, in its determinedness, manifests itself as a limitation of my practical power (here philosophy is therefore driven from the theoretical to the practical sphere); and the immediate perception of this limitation is a feeling (I prefer to use this word instead of Kant’s “sensation,” for feeling only becomes sensation by being related in thinking to an object); for instance, the feeling of sweet, red, cold, &c.

To forget this original feeling, leads to a bottomless transcendental idealism, and to an incomplete philosophy, which cannot explain the simply sensible predicates of objects. Now, the endeavor to explain this original feeling from the causality of a something, is the dogmatism of the Kantians, which I have just shown up, and which they would like to put on Kant’s shoulders. This, their something, is the everlasting thing per se. All transcendental explanation, on the contrary, stops at the immediate feeling, from the reason just pointed out. It is true, the empirical Ego, which transcendental idealism observes, explains this feeling to itself by the law, “No limitation without a limiting;” and thus, through contemplation of the limiting, produces extended matter, of which it now, as of its ground, predicates the merely subjective sensation of feeling; and it is only by virtue of this synthesis that the Ego makes itself an object. The continued analysis and the continued explanation of its own condition, give to the Ego its own system of a universe; and the observation of the laws of this explanation gives to the philosopher his science. It is here that Kant’s Realism is based, but his Realism is a transcendental idealism.

This whole determinedness, and hence also the total of feelings which it makes possible, is to be regarded as a priori—i. e. absolutely, without any action of our own—determined. It is Kant’s receptivity, and a particular of this receptivity is an affection. Without it, consciousness is unexplainable.

There is no doubt that it is an immediate fact of consciousness—I feel myself thus or thus determined. Now, when the oft-lauded philosophers attempt to explain this feeling, is it not clear that they attempt to append something to it which is not immediately involved in the fact? and how can they do this, except through thinking, and through a thinking according to a category, which category is here that of the real ground? Now, if they have not an immediate contemplation of the thing per se and its relations, what else can they possibly know of this category, but that they are compelled to think according to it? They assert nothing but that they are compelled to add in thought a thing as the ground of this feeling. But this we cheerfully admit in regard to the standpoint which they occupy. Their thing is produced by their thinking; and now it is at the same time to be a thing per se, i. e. not produced by thinking.

I really do not comprehend them; I can neither think this thought, nor think an understanding which does think it; and by this declaration, I hope I have done with them forever.

VII.

Having finished this digression, we now return to our original intention, which was to describe the procedure of the Science of Knowledge, and to justify it against the attacks of certain philosophers. We said, the philosopher observes himself in the act whereby he constructs for himself the conception of himself; and we now add, he also thinks this act of his.

For the philosopher, doubtless, knows whereof he speaks; but a mere contemplation gives no consciousness; only that is known which is conceived and thought. This conception or comprehension of his activity is very well possible for the philosopher, since he is already in possession of experience; for he has a conception of activity in general, and as such, namely, as the opposite of the equally well known conception of Being; and he also has a conception of this particular activity, as that of an intelligence, i. e. as simply an ideal activity, and not the real causality of the practical Ego; and moreover, a conception of the peculiar character of this particular activity as an in itself returning activity, and not an activity directed upon an external object.

But here as well as everywhere it is to be well remembered that the contemplation is and remains the basis of the conception, i. e. of that which is conceived in the conception. We cannot absolutely create or produce by thinking; we can only think that which is immediately contemplated by us. A thinking, which has no contemplation for its basis, which does not embrace a contemplation entertained in the same undivided moment, is an empty thinking, or is really no thinking at all. At the utmost it may be the thinking of a mere sign of the conception, and if this sign is a word, as seems likely, the mere thoughtless utterance of this word. I determine my contemplation by the thinking of an opposite; this and nothing else is the meaning of the expression—I comprehend the contemplation.

Through thinking, the activity, which the philosopher thinks, becomes objective to him, i. e. it floats before him, in so far as he thinks it, as something which checks or limits the freedom (the undeterminedness) of his thinking. This is the true and original significance of objectivity. As certain as I think, I think a determined something; or, in other words, the freedom of my thinking, which might have been directed upon an infinite manifold of objects, is now, when I think, only directed upon that limited sphere of my thinking which the present object fills. It is limited to this sphere. I restrict myself with freedom to this sphere, if I contemplate myself in the doing of it. I am restricted by this sphere, if I contemplate only the object and forget myself, as is universally done on the standpoint of common thinking. What I have just now said is intended to correct the following objections and misunderstandings.

All thinking is necessarily directed upon a being, say some. Now the Ego of the Science of Knowledge is not to have being; hence it is unthinkable, and the whole Science, which is built upon such a contradiction, is null and void.

Let me be permitted to make a preliminary remark concerning the spirit which prompts this objection. When the wise men, who urge it, take the conception of the Ego as determined in the Science of Knowledge, and examine it by the rules of their logic, they doubtless think that conception, for how else could they compare and relate it to something else? If they really could not think it, they would not be able to say a word about it, and it would remain altogether unknown to them. But they have really, as we see, happily achieved the thinking of it, and so must be able to think it. Yet, because according to their traditional and misconceived rules, they ought to have been unable to think it, they would now rather deny the possibility of an act, while doing it, than give up their rule; they would believe an old book rather than their own consciousness. How little can these men be aware of what they really do! How mechanically, and without any inner attention and spirit, must they produce their philosophical specimens! Master Jourdan after all was willing to believe that he had spoken prose all his lifetime, without knowing it, though it did appear rather curious; but these men, if they had been in his place, would have proven in the most beautiful prose that they could not speak prose, since they did not possess the rules of speaking prose, and since the conditions of the possibility of a thing must always precede its reality. Nay, if critical idealism should continue to be a burden to them, it is to be expected that they will next go to Aristotle for advice as to whether they really live, or are already dead and buried. By doubting the possibility of ever becoming conscious of their freedom and Egoness, they are covertly already doubting this very point.

Their objection might therefore be summarily put aside, since it contradicts, and thus annihilates itself. But let us see where the real ground of the misunderstanding may be concealed.

All thinking necessarily proceeds from a being, say they. Now what does this mean? If it is to mean what we have just shown up, namely, that there is in all thinking a thought, an object of the thinking, to which this particular thinking confines itself, and by which it seems to be limited, then their premise must undoubtedly be admitted; and it is not the Science of Knowledge which is going to deny it. This objectivity for the mere thinking does doubtless also belong to the Ego, from which the Science of Knowledge proceeds; or, which means the same, to the act whereby the Ego constructs itself for itself. But it is only through thinking and only for thinking that it has this objectivity; it is merely an ideal being.

If, however, the being, of their above assertion, is to mean not a mere ideal, but a real being, i. e. a something, limiting not only the ideal, but also the actually productive, the practical activity of the Ego—that is to say, a something permanent in time and persistent in space—then that assertion of theirs is unwarranted. If it were correct, no science of philosophy were possible, for the conception of the Ego would be unthinkable; and self-consciousness, nay, even consciousness, would also be impossible. If it were correct, we, it is true, should be compelled to stop philosophizing; but this would be no gain to them, for they would also have to stop refuting us. But do they not themselves repudiate the correctness of their assertion? Do they not think themselves every moment of their life as free and as having causality? Do they not, for instance, think themselves the free, active authors of the very sensible and very original objections, which they bring up from time to time against our system? Now, is then this “themselves” something which checks and limits their causality, or is it not rather the very opposite of the check, namely, the very causality itself? I must refer them to what I have said in § v. on this subject. If such a sort of being were ascribed to the Ego, the Ego would cease to be Ego; it would become a thing, and its conception would be annihilated. It is true that afterwards—not afterwards as a posteriority in time, but afterwards in the series of the dependence of thinking—we also ascribe such a being to the Ego, which, nevertheless, remains and must remain Ego in the original meaning of the word; this being consisting partly of extension and persistency in space, and in this respect it becomes a body, and partly identity and permanency in time, and in this respect it becomes a soul. But it is the business of philosophy to prove, and genetically to explain how the Ego comes to think itself thus, and all this belongs not to that which is presupposed, but to that which is to be deduced. The result, therefore, remains thus: the Ego is originally only an acting; if you but think it as an active, you have already an Empirical, and hence a conception of it, which must first be deduced.[^[9]]

But our opponents claim that they do not make their assertion without all proof; they want to prove it by logic, and, if God is willing, by the logical proposition of contradiction.

If there is anything which clearly shows the lamentable condition of philosophy as a science in these our days, it is that such occurrences can take place. If anybody were to speak about mathematics, natural sciences, or any other science, in a manner which would indicate beyond a doubt his complete ignorance concerning the first principles of such a science, he would be at once sent back to the school from which he ran away too soon. But in philosophy it is not to be thus. If in philosophy a man shows in the same manner his complete ignorance, we are, with many bows and compliments to the sharp-sighted man, to give him publicly that private schooling which he so sadly needs, and without betraying the least smile or gesture of disgust. Have, then, the philosophers in two thousand years made clear not a single proposition which might now be considered as established for that science without further proof? If there is such a proposition, it is certainly that of the distinction of logic, as a purely formal science, from real philosophy or metaphysics. But what is really the true meaning of this terrible logical proposition of contradiction which is to crush at one stroke our whole system? As far as I know, simply this: if a conception is already determined by a certain characteristic, then it must not be determined by another opposite characteristic. But by what characteristic the conception is originally to be characterized, this logical theorem does not say, nor can say, for it presupposes the original determination, and is applicable only in so far as that is presupposed. Concerning the original determination another science will have to decide.

These wise men tell us that it is contradictory not to determine a conception by the predicate of actual being. Yet how can this be contradictory, unless the conception has first been thus determined by the predicate of actual being, and has then had that predicate denied to it? But who authorized them to determine the conception by that predicate? Do not these adepts in logic perceive that they postulate their principle, and turn around in an evident circle? Whether there really be a conception, which is originally—by the laws of the synthetizing, not of the merely analyzing reason—not determined by that predicate of actual being, this they will have to go and learn from contemplation; logic only warns them against afterwards again applying the same predicate to that conception; of course also, in the same respect, in which they have denied the determinability of the conception by that predicate.

But certainly if they have not yet elevated themselves to the consciousness of that contemplation, which is not determined by the predicate of being, (for that they should unconsciously possess that contemplation itself, Reason herself has taken care of,) then all their conceptions, which can be derived only from sensuous contemplation, are very properly determined by the predicate of this actual being. In that case, however, they must not believe that logic has taught them this asserted connection of thinking and being, for their knowledge of it is altogether derived from their unfortunate empirical self. They, standing on the standpoint of knowing no other conceptions than those derived from sensuous contemplation, would, of course, contradict themselves if they were to think one of their conceptions without the predicate of actual being. We, on our part, are also well content to let them retain this rule for themselves, since it is most assuredly universally valid for the whole sphere of their possible thinking; and to let them always carefully keep an eye on this rule, so that they may not violate it. As for ourselves, however, we cannot use this their rule any longer, for we possess a few conceptions more, resting in a sphere over which their rule does not extend, and about which they can speak nothing, since it does not exist for them. Let them, therefore, attend to their own business hereafter, and leave us to attend to ours. Even in so far as we grant them the rule, namely, that every thinking must have an object of thinking; it is by no means a logical rule, but rather one which logic presupposes, and through which logic first becomes possible. To think, is the same as to determine objects; both conceptions are identical; logic furnishes the rules of this determining, and hence presupposes clearly enough the determining generally as a part of consciousness. That all thinking has an object can be shown only in contemplation. Think! and observe in this thinking how you do it, and you will doubtless find that you oppose to your thinking an object of this thinking.

Another objection, somewhat related to the above, is this: If you do not proceed from a being, how can you, without being illogical, deduce a being? You will never be able to get anything else out of what you take in hand than what is already contained in it, unless you proceed dishonestly and use juggler tricks.

I reply: Nor do we deduce being in the sense in which you use the word, i. e. as being, per se. What the philosopher takes up is an acting, which acts according to certain laws, and what he establishes is the series of necessary acts of this acting. Amongst these acts there occurs one which to the acting itself appears as a being, and which by laws to be shown up, must so appear to it. The philosopher who observes the acting from a higher standpoint, never ceases to regard it as an acting. A being exists only for the observed Ego, which thinks realistically; but for the philosopher there is acting, and only acting, for he thinks idealistically.

Let me express it on this occasion in all clearness: The essence of transcendental idealism generally, and of the Science of Knowledge particularly, consists in this, that the conception of being is not at all viewed as a first and original conception, but simply as a derived conception; derived from the opposition of activity. Hence it is considered only as a negative conception. The only positive for the idealist is Freedom; being is the mere negative of freedom. Only thus has idealism a firm basis, and is in harmony with itself. But dogmatism, which believed itself safely reposing upon being, as a basis no further to be investigated or grounded, regards this assertion as a stupidity and horror, for it is its annihilation. That wherein the dogmatist, amongst all the inflictions which he has experienced from time to time, still found a hiding place—namely, some original being, though it were but a raw and formless matter—is now utterly destroyed, and he stands naked and defenceless. He has no weapons against this attack except the assurance of his hearty disgust, and his confession, that he does not understand, and positively cannot and will not think, what is required of him. We cheerfully give credence to this statement, and only beg that he will also place faith in our assurance, that we find it not at all difficult to think our system. Nay, if this should be too much for him, we can even abstain from it, and leave him to believe whatever he chooses on this point. That we do not and cannot force him to adopt our system, because its adoption depends upon freedom, has already been often enough admitted.

I say that the dogmatist has nothing left but the assurance of his incapacity, for the idea of intrenching himself behind general logic, and conjuring the shade of the Stagirite, because he knows not how to defend his own body, is altogether new, and will find few imitators even in this universal state of despair; since the least school knowledge of what logic really is, will suffice to make every one reject this protection.

Let no one be deceived by these opponents, if they adopt the language of idealism, and admitting with their lips the correctness of its views, protest that they know well enough that being is only to signify being for us. They are dogmatists. For every one who asserts that all thinking and consciousness must proceed from a being, makes being something primary; and it is this which constitutes dogmatism. By such a confusion of speech they but demonstrate the utter confusion of their conceptions; for what may a being for us mean, which is, nevertheless, to be an original not-derived being? Who, then, are those “we,” for whom alone this being is? Are they intelligences as such? Then the statement “there is something for the intelligence,” signifies, this something is represented by the intelligence; and the statement “it is only for the intelligence,” signifies, it is only represented. Hence the conception of a being, which, from a certain point of view, is to be independent of the representation, must, after all, be derived from the representation, since it is to be, only through it; and these men would, therefore, be more in harmony with the Science of Knowledge than they believed. Or are those “we” themselves things, original things, things in themselves? How, then, can anything be for them; how can they even be for themselves, since the conception of a thing involves merely that it is, but not that the thing is for itself? What may the word for signify to them? Is it, perhaps, but an innocent adornment which they have adopted for the sake of fashion?

VIII.

The Science of Knowledge has said, “It is not possible to abstract from the Ego.” This assertion may be regarded from two points of view—either from the standpoint of common consciousness, and then it means, “We never have another representation than that of ourselves; throughout our whole life, and in all moments of our life, we think only I, I, I, and nothing but I.” Or it may be viewed from the standpoint of the philosopher, and then it will have the following significance: “The Ego must necessarily be added in thought to whatever occurs in consciousness;” or as Kant expresses it, “All my representations must be thought as accompanied by—I think.” What nonsense were it to maintain the first interpretation to be the true one, and what wretchedness to refute it in that interpretation. But in the latter interpretation the assertion of the Science of Knowledge will doubtless be acceptable to every one who is but able to understand it; and if it had only been thus understood before, we should long ago have been rid of the thing per se, for it would have been seen that we are always the Thinking, whatever we may think, and that hence nothing can occur in us which is independent of us, because it all is necessarily related to our thinking.

IX.

“But,” confess other opponents of the Science of Knowledge, “as far as our own persons are concerned, we cannot, under the conception of the Ego, think anything else than our own dear persons as opposed to other persons. Ego (I) signifies my particular person, named, for instance, Caius or Sempronius, as distinguished from other persons not so named. Now, if I should abstract, as the Science of Knowledge requires me to do, from this individual personality, there would be nothing left to me which might be characterized as I; I might just as well call the remainder It.”

Now, what is the real meaning of this objection, so boldly put forth? Does it speak of the original real synthesis of the conception of the individual (their own dear persons and other persons), and do they therefore mean to say, “there is nothing synthetized in this conception but the conception of an object generally—of the It, and of other objects (Its)—from which the first one is distinguished?” Or does that objection fly for protection to the common use of language, and do they therefore mean to say, “In language, the word I (Ego) signifies only individuality?” As far as the first is concerned, every one, who is as yet possessed of his senses, must see that by distinguishing one object from its equals, i. e. from other objects, we arrive only at a determined object, but not at a determined person. The synthesis of the conception of the personality is quite different. The Egoness (the in itself returning activity, the subject-objectivity, or whatever you choose to call it,) is originally opposed to the It, to the mere objectivity; and the positing of these conceptions is absolute, is conditioned by no other positing, is thetical, not synthetical. This conception of the Egoness, which has arisen in our Self, is now transferred to something, which in the first positing was posited as an It, as mere object, and is synthetically united with it; and it is only through this conditional synthesis that there first arises for us a Thou. The conception of Thou arises from the union of the It and the I. The conception of the Ego in this opposition; hence, as conception of the individual, is the synthesis of the I with itself. That which posits itself in the described act, not generally, but as Ego, is I; and that which in the same act is posited as Ego, not through itself, but through me, is Thou. Now it is doubtless possible to abstract from this product of a synthesis, for what we ourselves have synthetized we doubtless can analyze again, and when we so abstract, the remainder will be the general Ego, i. e. the not-object. Taken in this interpretation, the objection would be simply absurd.

But how if our opponents cling to the use of language? Even if it is true that the word “I” has hitherto signified in language only the individual, would this make it necessary that a distinction in the original synthesis is not to be remarked and named, simply because it has never before been noticed? But is it true? Of what use of language do they speak? Of the philosophical language? I have shown already that Kant uses the conception of the pure Ego in the same meaning I attach to it. If he says, “I am the thinking in this thinking,” does he then only oppose himself to other persons, and not rather to all object of thinking generally? Kant says again, “The fundamental principle of the necessary unity of apperception is itself identical, and hence an analytical proposition.” This signifies precisely what I have just stated, i. e. that the Ego arises through no synthesis, the manifold whereof might be further analyzed, but through an absolute thesis. But this Ego is the Egoness generally; for the conception of individuality arises clearly enough through synthesis, as I have just shown; and the fundamental principle of individuality is therefore a synthetical proposition. Reinhold, it is true, speaks of the Ego simply as of the representing; but this does not affect the present case; for when I distinguish myself as the representing from the represented, do I then distinguish myself from other persons, and not rather from all object of representation as such? But take even the case of these same much lauded philosophers, who do not, like Kant and like the Science of Knowledge, presuppose the Ego in advance of the manifold of representation, but rather heap it together, out of that manifold; do they, then, hold their one thinking in the manifold thinking to be only the thinking of the individual, and not rather of the intelligence generally? In one word: is there any philosopher of repute, who before them has ventured to discover that the Ego signifies only the individual, and that if the individuality is abstracted from, only an object in general remains?

Or do they mean ordinary use of language? To prove this use, I am compelled to cite instances from common life. If you call to anybody in the darkness “Who is there?” and he, presupposing that his voice is well-known to you, replies, “It is I,” then it is clear that he speaks of himself as this particular person, and wishes to be understood: “It is I, who am named thus or thus, and it is not any one of all the others, named otherwise;” and he so desires to be understood, because your question, “Who is there?” presupposes already that it is a rational being who is there, and expresses only that you wish to know which particular one amongst all the rational beings it may be.

But if you should, for instance—permit me this example, which I find particularly applicable—sew or cut at the clothing of some person, and should unawares cut the person himself, then he would probably cry out: “Look here, this is I; you are cutting me!” Now, what does he mean to express thereby? Not that he is this particular person, named thus or thus, and none other; for that you know very well; but that that which was cut was not his dead and senseless clothing, but his living and sensitive self, which you did not know before. By this “It is I,” the person does not distinguish himself from other persons, but from things. This distinction occurs continually in life; and we cannot take a step or move our hand without making it.

In short, Egoness and Individuality are very different conceptions, and the synthesis of the latter is clearly to be observed. Through the former conception, we distinguish ourselves from all that is external to us—not merely from all persons that are external to us—and hence we embrace by it not our particular personality, but our general spirituality. It is in this sense that the word is used, both in philosophical and in common language. The above objection testifies, therefore, not only to an unusual want of thought, but also to great ignorance in philosophical literature.

But our opponents insist on their incapability to think the required conception, and we must place faith in their assertions. Not that they lack the general conception of the pure Ego, for if they did, they would be obliged to desist from raising objections, just as a piece of log must desist. But it is the conception of this conception which they lack, and which they cannot attain. They have that conception in themselves, but do not know that they have it. The ground of this their incapability does not lie in any particular weakness of their thinking faculties, but in a weakness of their whole character. Their Ego, in the sense in which they take the word—i. e. their individual person—is the last object of their acting, and hence also the limit of their explicit thinking. It is to them, therefore, the only true substance, and reason is only an accident thereof. Their person does not exist as a particular expression of reason; but reason exists to help their person through the world; and if the person could get along just as well without reason, we might discharge reason from service, and there would be no reason at all. This, indeed, lurks in the whole system of their conceptions, and through all their assertions, and many of them are honest enough not to conceal it. Now, they are quite correct as far as they assert this incapacity in respect to their own persons—they only must not state as objective that which has merely subjective validity. In the Science of Knowledge the relation is exactly reversed: Reason alone is in itself, and individuality is but accidental; reason is the object, and personality the means to realize it; personality is only a particular manner of manifesting reason, and must always more and more lose itself in the universal form of reason. Only reason is eternal; individuality must always die out. And whosoever is not prepared to succumb to this order of things, will also never get at the true understanding of the Science of Knowledge.

X.

This fact that they can never understand the Science of Knowledge unless they first comply with certain conditions, has been told them often enough. They do not want to hear it again, and our frank warning affords them a new opportunity to attack us. Every conviction, they assert, must be capable of being communicated by conceptions—nay, it must even be possible to compel its acknowledgment. They say it is a bad example to assert that our Science exists for only certain privileged spirits, and that others cannot see or understand anything of it.

Let us see, first of all, what the Science of Knowledge does assert on this point. It does not assert that there is an original and inborn distinction between men and men, whereby some are made capable of thinking and learning what the others, by their nature, cannot think or learn. Reason is common to all, and is the same in all rational beings. Whatsoever one rational being possesses as a talent, all others possess also. Nay, we have even in this present article expressly admitted that the conceptions upon which the Science of Knowledge insists, are actually effective in all rational beings; for their efficacy furnishes the ground of a possibility of consciousness. The pure Ego, which they charge is incapable of thinking, lies at the bottom of all their thinking, and occurs in all their thinking, since all thinking is possible only through it. Thus far everything proceeds mechanically. But to get an insight into this asserted necessity—to think again this thinking—does not lie in mechanism, but, on the contrary, requires an elevation, through freedom, to a new sphere, which our immediate existence does not place in our possession. Unless this faculty of freedom has already existence, and has already been practised, the Science of Knowledge can accomplish nothing in a person. It is this power of freedom which furnishes the premises upon which the structure is to rest.

They certainly will not deny that every science and every art presupposes certain primary rudiments, which must first be acquired before we can enter into the science or art. “But,” say they, “if you only require a knowledge of the rudiments, why do you not teach them to us, if we lack them? Why do you not place them before us definitely and systematically? Is it not your own fault if you plunge us at once in medias res, and require the public to understand you before you have communicated the rudiments?” I reply: that is exactly the difficulty! These rudiments cannot be systematically forced upon you—they cannot be taught to you by compulsion! In one word, they are a knowledge which we can get only from ourselves. Everything depends upon this, that by the constant use of freedom, with clear consciousness of this freedom, we should become thoroughly conscious and enamored of this our freedom. Whenever it shall have become the well-matured object of education—from tenderest youth upwards—to develop the inner power of the scholar, but not to give it a direction; to educate man for his own use, and as instrument of his own will, but not as the soulless instrument of others;—then the Science of Knowledge will be universally and easily comprehensible. Culture of the whole man, from earliest youth—this is the only way to spread philosophy. Education must first content itself to be more negative than positive—more a mutual interchange with the scholar than a working upon him; more negative as far as possible—i. e. education must at least propose to itself this negativeness as its object, and must be positive only as a means of being negative. So long as education, whether with or without clear consciousness, proposes to itself the opposite object—labors only for usefulness through others, without considering that the using principle lies also in the individual; so long as education thus eradicates in earliest youth the root of self-activity, and accustoms man not to determine himself but to await a determination through others—so long, talent for philosophy will always remain an extraordinary favor of nature, which cannot be further explained, and which may therefore be called by the indefinite expression of “philosophical genius.”

The chief ground of all the errors of our opponents may perhaps be this, that they have never yet made clear to themselves what proving means, and that hence they have never considered that there is at the bottom of all demonstration something absolutely undemonstrable.

Demonstration effects only a conditioned, mediated certainty; by virtue of it, something is certain if another thing is certain. If any doubt arises as to the certainty of this other, then this certainty must again be appended to the certainty of a third, and so on. Now, is this retrogression carried on ad infinitum, or is there anywhere a final link? I know very well that some are of the former opinion; but these men have never considered that if it were so, they would not even be capable of entertaining the idea of certainty—no, not even of hunting after certainty. For what this may mean: to be certain; they only know by being themselves certain of something; but if everything is certain only on condition, then nothing is certain, and there is even no conditioned certainty. But if there is a final link, regarding which no question can be raised, why it is certain, then, there is an undemonstrable at the base of all demonstration.

They do not appear to have considered what it means: to have proven something to somebody. It means: we have demonstrated to him that a certain other certainty is contained, by virtue of the laws of thinking, which he admits, in a certain first certainty which he assumes or admits, and that he must necessarily assume the first if he assumes the second, as he says he does. Hence all communication of a conviction by proof, presupposes that both parts are at least agreed on something. Now, how could the Science of Knowledge communicate itself to the dogmatist, since they are positively not agreed in a single point, so far as the material of knowledge is concerned, and since thus the common point is wanting from which they might jointly start.[^[10]]

Finally, they seem not to have considered that even where there is such a common point, no one can think into the soul of the other; that each must calculate upon the self-activity of the other, and cannot furnish him the necessary thoughts, but can merely advise how to construct or think those thoughts. The relation between free beings is a reciprocal influence upon each other through freedom, but not a causality through mechanically effective power. And thus the present dispute returns to the chief point of dispute, from which all our differences arise. They presuppose everywhere the relation of causality, because they indeed know no higher relation; and it is upon this that they base their demand: we ought to graft our conviction on their souls without any activity on their own part. But we proceed from freedom, and—which is but fair—presuppose freedom in them. Moreover, in thus presupposing the universal validity of the mechanism of cause and effect, they immediately contradict themselves; what they say and what they do, are in palpable contradiction. For, in presupposing the mechanism of cause and effect, they elevate themselves beyond it; their thinking of the mechanism is not contained in the mechanism itself. The mechanism cannot seize itself, for the simple reason that it is mechanism. Only free consciousness can seize itself. Here, therefore, would be a way to convince them of their error. But the difficulty is that this thought lies utterly beyond the range of their vision, and that they lack the agility of mind to think, when they think an object, not only the object, but also their thinking of the object; wherefore this present remark is utterly incomprehensible to them, and is indeed written only for those who are awake and see.

We reiterate, therefore, our assurance: we will not convince them, because one cannot will an impossibility; and we will not refute their system for them, because we cannot. True, we can refute it easily enough for us; it is very easy to throw it down—the mere breath of a free man destroys it. But we cannot refute it for them. We do not write, speak or teach for them, since there is positively no point from which we could reach them. If we speak of them, it is not for their own sake, but for the sake of others—to warn these against their errors, and persuade these not to listen to their empty and insignificant prattle. Now, they must not consider this, our declaration, as degrading for them. By so doing, they but evince their bad conscience, and publicly degrade themselves amongst us. Besides, they are in the same position in regard to us. They also cannot refute or convince us, or say anything, which could have an effect upon us. This we confess ourselves, and would not be in the least indignant if they said it. What we tell them, we tell them not at all with the evil purpose of causing them anger, but merely to save us and them unnecessary trouble. We should be truly glad if they were thus to accept it.

Moreover, there is nothing degrading in the matter itself. Every one who to-day charges his brother with this incapacity, has once been necessarily in the same condition. For we all are born in it, and it requires time to get beyond it. If our opponents would only not be driven into indignation by our declaration, but would reflect about it, and inquire whether there might not be some truth in it, they might then probably get out of that incapacity. They would at once be our equals, and we could henceforth live in perfect peace together. The fault is not ours, if we occasionally are pretty hard at war with them.

From all this it also appears, which I consider expedient to remark here, that a philosophy, in order to be a science, need not be universally valid, as some philosophers seem to assume. These philosophers demand the impossible. What does it mean: a philosophy is really universally valid? Who, then, are all these for whom it is to be valid? I suppose not to every one who has a human face, for then it would also have to be valid for children and for the common man, for whom thinking is never object, but always the means for his real purpose. Universally valid, then, for the philosophers? But who, then, are the philosophers? I hope not all those who have received the degree of doctor from some philosophical faculty, or who have printed something which they call philosophical, or who, perhaps, are themselves members of some philosophical faculty? Indeed, how shall we even have a fixed conception of the philosopher, unless we have first a fixed conception of philosophy—i. e. unless we first possess that fixed philosophy? It is quite certain that all those who believe themselves possessed of philosophy, as a science, will deny to all those who do not recognize their philosophy the name of philosopher, and hence will make the acknowledgment of their philosophy the criterion of a philosopher. This they must do, if they will proceed logically, for there is only one philosophy. The author of the Science of Knowledge, for instance, has long ago stated that he is of this opinion in regard to his system—not in so far as it is an individual representation of that system, but in so far as it is a system of transcendental idealism—and he hesitates not a moment to repeat this assertion. But does not this lead us into an evident circle? Every one will then say, “My philosophy is universally valid for all philosophers;” and will say so with full right if he only be himself convinced, though no other mortal being should accept his doctrine; “for,” he will add, “he who does not recognize it as valid is no philosopher.”

Concerning this point, I hold the following: If there be but one man who is fully and at all times equally convinced of his philosophy, who is in complete harmony with himself in this his philosophy, whose free judgment in philosophizing agrees perfectly with the judgment daily life forces upon him, then in this one man philosophy has fulfilled its purpose and completed its circle; for it has put him down again at the very same point from which he started with all mankind; and henceforth philosophy as a science really exists, though no other man else should comprehend and accept it; nay, though that one man might not even know how to teach it to others.

Let no one here offer the trivial objection that all systematic authors have ever been convinced of the truth of their systems. For this assertion is utterly false, and is grounded only in this, that few know what conviction really is. This can only be experienced by having the fullness of conviction in one’s self. Those authors were only convinced of one or the other point in their system, which perhaps was not even clearly conscious to themselves, but not of the whole of their system—they were convinced only in certain moods. This is no conviction. Conviction is that which depends on no time and no change of condition; which is not accidental to the soul, but which is the soul itself. One can be convinced only of the unchangeably and eternally True: to be convinced of error is impossible. But of such true convictions very few examples may probably exist in the history of philosophy; perhaps but one; perhaps not even this one. I do not speak of the ancients. It is even doubtful whether they ever proposed to themselves the great problem of philosophy. But let me speak of modern authors. Spinoza could not be convinced; he could only think, not put faith in his philosophy; for it was in direct contradiction with his necessary conviction in daily life, by virtue of which he was forced to consider himself free and self-determined. He could be convinced of it only in so far as it contained truth, or as it contained a part of philosophy as a science. He was clearly convinced that mere objective reasoning would necessarily lead to his system; for in that he was correct; but it never occurred to him that in thinking he ought to reflect upon his own thinking, and in that he was wrong, and thus made his speculation contradictory to his life. Kant might have been convinced; but, if I understand him correctly, he was not convinced when he wrote his Critique. He speaks of a deception, which always recurs, although we know that it is a deception. Whence did Kant learn, as he was the first who discovered this pretended deception, that it always recurs, and in whom could he have made the experience that it did so recur? Only in himself. But to know that one deceives one’s self, and still to deceive one’s self is not the condition of conviction and harmony within—it is the symptom of a dangerous inner disharmony. My experience is that no deception recurs, for reason contains no deception. Moreover, of what deception does Kant speak? Clearly of the belief that things per se exist externally and independent of us. But who entertains this belief? Not common consciousness, surely, for common consciousness only speaks of itself, and can therefore say nothing but that things exist for it (i. e. for us, on this standpoint of common consciousness); and that certainly is no deception, for it is our own truth. Common consciousness knows nothing of a thing per se, for the very reason that it is common consciousness, which surely never goes beyond itself. It is a false philosophy which first makes common consciousness assert such a conception, whilst only that false philosophy discovered it in its own sphere. Hence this so-called deception—which is easily got rid of, and which true philosophy roots out utterly—that false philosophy has itself produced, and as soon as you get your philosophy perfected, the scales will fall from your eyes, and the deception will never recur. You will, in all your life thereafter, never believe to know more than that you are finite, and finite in this determined manner, which you must explain to yourself, by the existence of such a determined world; and you will no more think of breaking through this limit than of ceasing to be yourself. Leibnitz, also, may have been convinced, for, properly understood—and why should he not have properly understood himself?—he is right. Nay, more—if highest ease and freedom of mind may suggest conviction; if the ingenuity to fit one’s philosophy into all forms, and apply it to all parts of human knowledge—the power to scatter all doubts as soon as they appear, and the manner of using one’s philosophy more as an instrument than as an object, may testify of perfect clearness; and if self-reliance, cheerfulness and high courage in life may be signs of inner harmony, then Leibnitz was perhaps convinced, and the only example of conviction in the history of philosophy.

XI.

In conclusion, I wish to refer in a few words to a very curious misapprehension. It is that of mistaking the Ego, as intellectual contemplation, from which the Science of Knowledge proceeds, for the Ego, as idea, with which it concludes. In the Ego, as intellectual contemplation, we have only the form of the Egoness, the in itself returning activity, sufficiently described above. The Ego in this form is only for the philosopher, and by seizing it thus, you enter philosophy. The Ego, as idea, on the contrary, is for the Ego itself, which the philosopher considers. He does not establish the latter Ego as his own, but as the idea of the natural but perfectly cultured man; just as a real being does not exist for the philosopher, but merely for the Ego he observes.

The Ego as idea is the rational being—firstly, in so far as it completely represents in itself the universal reason, or as it is altogether rational and only rational, and hence it must also have ceased to be individual, which it was only through sensuous limitation; and secondly, in so far as this rational being has also realized reason in the eternal world, which, therefore, remains constantly posited in this idea. The world remains in this idea as world generally, as substratum with these determined mechanical and organic laws; but all these laws are perfectly suited to represent the final object of reason. The idea of the Ego and the Ego of the intellectual contemplation have only this in common, that in neither of them the thought of the individual enters; not in the latter, because the Egoness has not yet been determined as individuality; and not in the former, because the determination of individuality has vanished through universal culture. But both are opposites in this, that the Ego of the contemplation contains only the form of the Ego, and pays no regard to an actual material of the same, which is only thinkable by its thinking of a world; while in the Ego of the Idea the complete material of the Egoness is thought. From the first conception all philosophy proceeds, and it is its fundamental conception; to the latter it does not return, but only determines this idea in the practical part as highest and ultimate object of reason. The first is, as we have said, original contemplation, and becomes a conception in the sufficiently described manner; the latter is only idea, it cannot be thought determinately and will never be actual, but will always more and more approximate to the actuality.

XII.

These are, I believe, all the misunderstandings which are to be taken into consideration, and to correct which a clear explanation may hope somewhat to aid. Other modes of working against the new system cannot and need not be met by me.

If a system, for instance, the beginning and end, nay, the whole essence of which, is that individuality be theoretically forgotten and practically denied, is denounced as egotism, and by men who, for the very reason because they are covertly theoretical egotists and overtly practical egotists, cannot elevate themselves into an insight into this system; if a conclusion is drawn from the system that its author has an evil heart, and if again from this evil-heartedness of the author the conclusion is drawn that the system is false; then arguments are of no avail; for those who make these assertions know very well that they are not true, and they have quite different reasons for uttering them than because they believed them. The system bothers them little enough; but the author may, perhaps, have stated on other occasions things which do not please them, and may, perhaps—God knows, how or where!—be in their way. Now such persons are perfectly in conformity with their mode of thinking, and it would be an idle undertaking to attempt to rid them of their nature. But if thousands and thousands who know not a word of the Science of Knowledge, nor have occasion to know a word of it, who are neither Jews nor Pagans, neither aristocrats nor democrats, neither Kantians of the old or of the modern school, or of any school, and who even are not originals—who might have a grudge against the author of the Science of Knowledge, because he took away from them the original ideas which they have just prepared for the public—if such men hastily take hold of these charges, and repeat and repeat them again without any apparent interest, other than that they might appear well instructed regarding the secrets of the latest literature; then it may, indeed, be hoped that for their own sakes they will take our prayer into consideration, and reflect upon what they wish to say before they say it.

INTRODUCTION TO IDEALISM.
[From the German of Schelling. Translated by Tom Davidson.]

I.—IDEA OF TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY.

1. All knowing is based upon the agreement of an objective with a subjective. For we know only the true, and truth is universally held to be the agreement of representations with their objects.

2. The sum of all that is purely objective in our knowledge we may call Nature; while the sum of all that is subjective may be designated the Ego, or Intelligence. These two concepts are mutually opposed. Intelligence is originally conceived as that which solely represents—Nature as that which is merely capable of representation; the former as the conscious—the latter as the unconscious. There is, moreover, necessary in all knowledge a mutual agreement of the two—the conscious and the unconscious per se. The problem is to explain this agreement.

3. In knowledge itself, in my knowing, objective and subjective are so united that it is impossible to say to which of the two the priority belongs. There is here no first and no second—the two are contemporaneous and one. In my efforts to explain this identity, I must first have it undone. In order to explain it, inasmuch as nothing else is given me as a principle of explanation beyond these two factors of knowledge, I must of necessity place the one before the other—set out from the one in order from it to arrive at the other. From which of the two I am to set out is not determined by the problem.

4. There are, therefore, only two cases possible:

A. Either the objective is made the first, and the question comes to be how a subjective agreeing with it is superinduced.

The idea of the subjective is not contained in the idea of the objective; they rather mutually exclude each other. The subjective, therefore, must be superinduced upon the objective. It forms no part of the conception of Nature that there should be something intelligent to represent it. Nature, to all appearance, would exist even were there nothing to represent it. The problem may therefore likewise be expressed thus: How is the Intelligent superinduced upon Nature? or, How comes Nature to be represented?

The problem assumes Nature, or the objective, as first. It is, therefore, manifestly, a problem of natural science, which does the same. That natural science really, and without knowing it, approximates, at least, to the solution of this problem can be shown here only briefly.

If all knowledge has, as it were, two poles, which mutually suppose and demand each other, they must reciprocally be objects of search in all sciences. There must, therefore, of necessity, be two fundamental sciences; and it must be impossible to set out from the one pole without being driven to the other. The necessary tendency of all natural science, therefore, is to pass from Nature to the intelligent. This, and this alone, lies at the bottom of the effort to bring theory into natural phenomena. The final perfection of natural science would be the complete mentalization of all the laws of Nature into laws of thought. The phenomena, that is, the material, must vanish entirely, and leave only the laws—that is, the formal. Hence it is that the more the accordance with law is manifested in Nature itself, the more the wrappage disappears—the phenomena themselves become more mental, and at last entirely cease. Optical phenomena are nothing more than a geometry whose lines are drawn through the light; and even this light itself is of doubtful materiality. In the phenomena of magnetism all trace of matter has already disappeared, and of those of gravitation; which even physical philosophers believed could be attributed only to direct spiritual influence, there remains nothing but the law, whose action on a large scale is the mechanism of the heavenly motions. The complete theory of Nature would be that whereby the whole of Nature should be resolved into an intelligence. The dead and unconscious products of Nature are only unsuccessful attempts of Nature to reflect itself, and dead Nature, so-called, is merely an unripe Intelligence; hence in its phenomena the intelligent character peers through, though yet unconsciously. Its highest aim, namely, that of becoming completely self-objective, Nature reaches only in its highest and last reflection, which is nothing else than man, or, more generally, what we call reason, by means of which Nature turns completely back upon itself, and by which is manifested that Nature is originally identical with what in us is known as intelligent and conscious.

This may perhaps suffice to prove that natural science has a necessary tendency to render Nature intelligent. By this very tendency it is that it becomes natural philosophy, which is one of the two necessary fundamental sciences of philosophy.

B. Or the subjective is made the first, and the problem is, how an objective is superinduced agreeing with it.

If all knowledge is based upon the agreement of these two, then the task of explaining this agreement is plainly the highest for all knowledge; and if, as is generally admitted, philosophy is the highest and loftiest of all sciences, it is certainly the main task of philosophy.

But the problem demands only the explanation of that agreement generally, and leaves it entirely undecided where the explanation shall begin, what it shall make its first, and what its second. Moreover, as the two opposites are mutually necessary to each other, the result of the operation must be the same, from whichever point it sets out.

To make the objective the first, and derive the subjective from it, is, as has just been shown, the task of natural philosophy.

If, therefore, there is a transcendental philosophy, the only course that remains for it is the opposite one, namely: to set out from the subjective as the first and the absolute, and deduce the origin of the objective from it.

Into these two possible directions of philosophy, therefore, natural and transcendental philosophy have separated themselves; and if all philosophy must have for its aim to make either an Intelligence out of Nature or a Nature out of Intelligence, then transcendental philosophy, to which the latter task belongs, is the other necessary fundamental science of philosophy.

II.—COROLLARIES.

In the foregoing we have not only deduced the idea of transcendental philosophy, but have also afforded the reader a glance into the whole system of philosophy, composed, as has been shown, of two principal sciences, which, though opposed in principle and direction, are counter-parts and complements of each other. Not the whole system of philosophy, but only one of the principal sciences of it, is to be here discussed, and, in the first place, to be more clearly characterized in accordance with the idea already deduced.

1. If, for transcendental philosophy, the subjective is the starting point, the only ground of all reality, and the sole principle of explanation for everything else, it necessarily begins with universal doubt regarding the reality of the objective.

As the natural philosopher, wholly intent upon the objective, seeks, above all things, to exclude every admixture of the subjective from his knowledge, so, on the other hand, the transcendental philosopher seeks nothing so much as the entire exclusion of the objective from the purely subjective principle of knowledge. The instrument of separation is absolute scepticism—not that half-scepticism which is directed merely against the vulgar prejudices of mankind and never sees the foundation—but a thorough-going scepticism, which aims not at individual prejudices, but at the fundamental prejudice, with which all others must stand or fall. For over and above the artificial and conventional prejudices of man, there are others of far deeper origin, which have been placed in him, not by art or education, but by Nature itself, and which pass with all other men, except the philosopher, as the principles of knowledge, and with the mere self-thinker as the test of all truth.

The one fundamental prejudice to which all others are reducible, is this: that there are things outside of us; an opinion which, while it rests neither on proofs nor on conclusions (for there is not a single irrefragable proof of it), and yet cannot be uprooted by any opposite proof (naturam furcâ expellas, tamen usque redibit), lays claim to immediate certainty; whereas, inasmuch as it refers to something quite different from us—yea, opposed to us—and of which there is no evidence how it can come into immediate consciousness, it must be regarded as nothing more than a prejudice—a natural and original one, to be sure, but nevertheless a prejudice.

The contradiction lying in the fact that a conclusion which in its nature cannot be immediately certain, is, nevertheless, blindly and without grounds, accepted as such, cannot be solved by transcendental philosophy, except on the assumption that this conclusion is implicitly, and in a manner hitherto not manifest, not founded upon, but identical, and one and the same with an affirmation which is immediately certain; and to demonstrate this identity will really be the task of transcendental philosophy.

2. Now, even for the ordinary use of reason, there is nothing immediately certain except the affirmation I am, which, as it loses all meaning outside of immediate consciousness, is the most individual of all truths, and the absolute prejudice, which must be assumed if anything else is to be made certain. The affirmation There are things outside of us, will therefore be certain for the transcendental philosopher, only through its identity with the affirmation I am, and its certainty will be only equal to the certainty of the affirmation from which it derives it.

According to this view, transcendental knowledge would be distinguished from ordinary knowledge in two particulars.

First—That for it the certainty of the existence of external objects is a mere prejudice, which it oversteps, in order to find the grounds of it. (It can never be the business of the transcendental philosopher to prove the existence of things in themselves, but only to show that it is a natural and necessary prejudice to assume external objects as real.)

Second—That the two affirmations, I am and There are things outside of me, which in the ordinary consciousness run together, are, in the former, separated and the one placed before the other, with a view to demonstrate as a fact their identity, and that immediate connection which in the other is only felt. By the act of this separation, when it is complete, the philosopher transports himself to the transcendental point of view, which is by no means a natural, but an artificial one.

3. If, for the transcendental philosopher, the subjective alone has original reality, he will also make the subjective alone in knowledge directly his object; the objective will only become an object indirectly to him, and, whereas, in ordinary knowledge, knowledge itself—the act of knowing—vanishes in the object, in transcendental knowledge, on the contrary, the object, as such, will vanish in the act of knowing. Transcendental knowledge is a knowledge of knowing, in so far as it is purely subjective.

Thus, for example, in intuition, it is only the objective that reaches the ordinary consciousness; the act of intuition itself is lost in the object; whereas the transcendental mode of intuition rather gets only a glimpse of the object of intuition through the act. Ordinary thought, therefore, is a mechanism in which ideas prevail, without, however, being distinguished as ideas; whereas transcendental thought interrupts this mechanism, and in becoming conscious of the idea as an act, rises to the idea of the idea. In ordinary action, the acting itself is forgotten in the object of the action; philosophizing is also an action, but not an action only. It is likewise a continued self-intuition in this action.

The nature of the transcendental mode of thought consists, therefore, generally in this: that, in it, that which in all other thinking, knowing, or acting escapes the consciousness, and is absolutely non-objective, is brought into consciousness, and becomes objective; in short, it consists in a continuous act of becoming an object to itself on the part of the subjective.

The transcendental art will therefore consist in a readiness to maintain one’s self continuously in this duplicity of thinking and acting.

III.—PRELIMINARY ARRANGEMENT OF TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY.

This arrangement is preliminary, inasmuch as the principles of arrangement can be arrived at only in the science itself.

We return to the idea of science.

Transcendental philosophy has to explain how knowledge is possible at all, supposing that the subjective in it is assumed as the chief or first element.

It is not, therefore, any single part, or any particular object of knowledge, but knowledge itself, and knowledge generally, that it takes for its object.

Now all knowledge is reducible to certain original convictions or original fore-judgments; these different convictions transcendental philosophy must reduce to one original conviction; this one, from which all others are derived, is expressed in the first principle of this philosophy, and the task of finding such is no other than that of finding the absolutely certain, by which all other certainty is arrived at.

The arrangement of transcendental philosophy itself is determined by those original convictions, whose validity it asserts. Those convictions must, in the first place, be sought in the common understanding. If, therefore, we fall back upon the standpoint of the ordinary view, we find the following convictions deeply engraven in the human understanding:

A. That there not only exists outside of us a world of things independent of us, but also that our representations agree with them in such a manner that there is nothing else in the things beyond what they present to us. The necessity which prevails in our objective representations is explained by saying that the things are unalterably determined, and that, by this determination of the things, our ideas are also indirectly determined. By this first and most original conviction, the first problem of the philosophy is determined, viz.: to explain how representations can absolutely agree with objects existing altogether independently of them. Since it is upon the assumption that things are exactly as we represent them—that we certainly, therefore, know things as they are in themselves—that the possibility of all experience rests, (for what would experience be, and where would physics, for example, wander to, but for the supposition of the absolute identity of being and seeming?) the solution of this problem is identical with theoretical philosophy, which has to examine the possibility of experience.

B. The second equally original conviction is, that ideas which spring up in us freely and without necessity are capable of passing from the world of thought into the real world, and of arriving at objective reality.

This conviction stands in opposition to the first. According to the first, it is assumed that objects are unalterably determined, and our ideas by them; according to the other, that objects are alterable, and that, too, by the causality of ideas in us. According to the first, there takes place a transition from the real world into the world of ideas, or a determining of ideas by something objective; according to the second, a transition from the world of ideas into the real world, or a determining of the objective by a (freely produced) idea in us.

By this second conviction, a second problem is determined, viz.: how, by something merely thought, an objective is alterable, so as completely to correspond with that something thought.

Since upon this assumption the possibility of all free action rests, the solution of this problem is practical philosophy.

C. But with these two problems we find ourselves involved in a contradiction. According to B, there is demanded the dominion of thought (the ideal) over the world of sense; but how is this conceivable, if (according to A) the idea, in its origin, is already only the slave of the objective? On the other hand, if the real world is something quite independent of us, and in accordance with which, as their pattern, our ideas must shape themselves (by A), then it is inconceivable how the real world, on the other hand, can shape itself after ideas in us (by B). In a word, in the theoretical certainty we lose the practical; in the practical we lose the theoretical. It is impossible that there should be at once truth in our knowledge and reality in our volition.

This contradiction must be solved, if there is to be a philosophy at all; and the solution of this problem, or the answering of the question: How can ideas be conceived as shaping themselves according to objects, and at the same time objects as shaping themselves to ideas?—is not the first, but the highest, task of transcendental philosophy.

It is not difficult to see that this problem is not to be solved either in theoretical or in practical philosophy, but in a higher one, which is the connecting link between the two, neither theoretical nor practical, but both at once.

How at once the objective world conforms itself to ideas in us, and ideas in us conform themselves to the objective world, it is impossible to conceive, unless there exists, between the two worlds—the ideal and the real—a preëstablished harmony. But this preëstablished harmony itself is not conceivable, unless the activity, whereby the objective world is produced, is originally identical with that which displays itself in volition, and vice versa.

Now it is undoubtedly a productive activity that displays itself in volition; all free action is productive and productive only with consciousness. If, then, we suppose, since the two activities are one only in their principle, that the same activity which is productive with consciousness in free action, is productive without consciousness in the production of the world, this preëstablished harmony is a reality, and the contradiction is solved.

If we suppose that all this is really the case, then that original identity of the activity, which is busy in the production of the world, with that which displays itself in volition, will exhibit itself in the productions of the former, and these will necessarily appear as the productions of an activity at once conscious and unconscious.

Nature, as a whole, no less than in its different productions, will, of necessity, appear as a work produced with consciousness, and, at the same time, as a production of the blindest mechanism. It is the result of purpose, without being demonstrable as such. The philosophy of the aims of Nature, or teleology, is therefore the required point of union between theoretical and practical philosophy.

D. Hitherto, we have postulated only in general terms the identity of the unconscious activity, which has produced Nature, and the conscious activity, which exhibits itself in volition, without having decided where the principle of this activity lies—whether in Nature or in us.

Now, the system of knowledge can be regarded as complete only when it reverts to its principle. Transcendental philosophy, therefore, could be complete only when that identity—the highest solution of its whole problem—could be demonstrated in its principle, the Ego.

It is therefore postulated that, in the subjective—in the consciousness itself—that activity, at once conscious and unconscious, can be shown.

Such an activity can be no other than the æsthetic, and every work of art can be conceived only as the product of such. The ideal work of art and the real world of objects are therefore products of one and the same activity; the meeting of the two (the conscious and the unconscious) without consciousness, gives the real—with consciousness, the æsthetic world.

The objective world is only the primal, still unconscious, poetry of the mind; the universal organum of philosophy, the key-stone of its whole arch, is the philosophy of art.

IV.—ORGAN OF TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY.

1. The only immediate object of transcendental consideration is the subjective (II.); the only organ for philosophizing in this manner is the inner sense, and its object is such that, unlike that of mathematics, it can never become the object of external intuition. The object of mathematics, to be sure, exists as little outside of knowledge, as that of philosophy. The whole existence of mathematics rests on intuition; it exists, therefore, only in intuition; and this intuition itself is an external one. In addition to this, the mathematician never has to deal immediately with the intuition—the construction itself—but only with the thing constructed, which, of course, can be exhibited outwardly; whereas the philosopher looks only at the act of construction itself, which is purely an internal one.

2. Moreover, the objects of the transcendental philosopher have no existence, except in so far as they are freely produced. Nothing can compel to this production, any more than the external describing of a figure can compel one to regard it internally. Just as the existence of a mathematical figure rests on the outer sense, so the whole reality of a philosophical idea rests upon the inner sense. The whole object of this philosophy is no other than the action of Intelligence according to fixed laws. This action can be conceived only by means of a peculiar, direct, inner intuition, and this again is possible only by production. But this is not enough. In philosophizing, one is not only the object considered, but always at the same time the subject considering. To the understanding of philosophy, therefore, there are two conditions indispensable: first, that the philosopher shall be engaged in a continuous internal activity, in a continuous production of those primal actions of the intelligence; second, that he shall be engaged in continuous reflection upon the productive action;—in a word, that he shall be at once the contemplated (producing) and the contemplating.

3. By this continuous duplicity of production and intuition, that must become an object which is otherwise reflected by nothing. It cannot be shown here, but will be shown in the sequel, that this becoming-reflected on the part of the absolutely unconscious and non-objective, is possible only by an æsthetic act of the imagination. Meanwhile, so much is plain from what has already been proved, that all philosophy is productive. Philosophy, therefore, no less than art, rests upon the productive faculty, and the difference between the two, upon the different direction of the productive power. For whereas production in art is directed outward, in order to reflect the unconscious by products, philosophical production is directed immediately inward, in order to reflect it in intellectual intuition. The real sense by which this kind of philosophy must be grasped, is therefore the æsthetic sense, and hence it is that the philosophy of art is the true organum of philosophy (III.)

Out of the vulgar reality there are only two means of exit—poetry, which transports us into an ideal world, and philosophy, which makes the real world vanish before us. It is not plain why the sense for philosophy should be more generally diffused than that for poetry, especially among that class of men, who, whether by memory-work (nothing destroys more directly the productive) or by dead speculation (ruinous to all imaginative power), have completely lost the æsthetic organ.

4. It is unnecessary to occupy time with common-places about the sense of truth, and about utter unconcern in regard to results, although it might be asked, what other conviction can yet be sacred to him who lays hands upon the most certain of all—that there are things outside of us? We may rather take one glance more at the so-called claims of the common understanding.

The common understanding in matters of philosophy has no claims whatsoever, except those which every object of examination has, viz., to be completely explained.

It is not, therefore, any part of our business to prove that what it considers true, is true, but only to exhibit the unavoidable character of its illusions. This implies that the objective world belongs only to the necessary limitations which render self-consciousness (which is I) possible; it is enough for the common understanding, if from this view again the necessity of its view is derived.

For this purpose it is necessary, not only that the inner works of the mental activity should be laid open, and the mechanism of necessary ideas revealed, but also that it should be shown by what peculiarity of our nature it is, that what has reality only in our intuition, is reflected to us as something existing outside of us.

As natural science produces idealism out of realism, by mentalizing the laws of Nature into laws of intelligence, or super-inducing the formal upon the material (I.), so transcendental philosophy produces realism out of idealism, by materializing the laws of Nature, or introducing the material into the formal.

GENESIS.
By A. Bronson Alcott.

“God is the constant and immutable Good; the world is Good in a state of becoming, and the human soul is that in and by which the Good in the world is consummated.”—Plato.

I.—VESTIGES.

Behmen, the subtilest thinker on Genesis since Plato, conceives that Nature fell from its original oneness by fault of Lucifer before man rose physically from its ruins; and moreover, that his present existence, being the struggle to recover from Nature’s lapse, is embarrassed with double difficulties by deflection from rectitude on his part. We think it needs no Lucifer other than mankind collectively conspiring, to account for Nature’s mishaps, or Man’s. Since, assuming man to be Nature’s ancestor, and Nature man’s ruins rather, himself is the impediment he seeks to remove; and, moreover, conceiving Nature as corresponding in large—or macrocosmically—to his intents, for whatsoever embarrassments he finds therein, himself, and none other, takes the blame. Eldest of creatures, and progenitor of all below him, personally one and imperishable in essence, it follows that if debased forms appear in Nature, it must be consequent on Man’s degeneracy prior to their genesis. And it is only as he lapses out of his integrity, by debasing his essence, that he impairs his original likeness, and drags it into the prone shapes of the animal kingdom—these being the effigies and vestiges of his individualized and shattered personality. Behold these upstarts of his loins, everywhere the mimics jeering at him saucily, or gaily parodying their fallen lord.

“Most happy he who hath fit place assigned

To his beasts, and disaforestered his mind;

Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and every beast,

And is not ape himself to all the rest.”[^[11]]

It is man alone who conceives and brings forth the beast in him, that swerves and dies; perversion of will by mis-choice being the fate that precipitates him into serpentine form, clothed in duplicity, cleft into sex,

“Parts of that Part which once was all.”

It is but one and the same soul in him, entertaining a dialogue with himself, that is symbolized in The Serpent, Adam, and the Woman; nor need there be fabulous “Paradises Lost or Regained,” for setting in relief this serpent symbol of temptation, this Lord or Lucifer in our spiritual Eden:

“First state of human kind,

Which one remains while man doth find

Joy in his partner’s company;

When two, alas! adulterate joined,

The serpent made the three.”

II.—THE DEUCE.

“I inquired what iniquity was, and found it to be no substance, but perversion of the Will from the Supreme One towards lower things.”—St. Augustine.

Better is he who is above temptation than he who, being tempted, overcomes; since the latter but suppresses the evil inclination in his breast, which the former has not. Whoever is tempted has so far sinned as to entertain the tempting lust stirring within him, and betraying his lapse from singleness or holiness. The virtuous choose, and are virtuous by choice; while the holy, being one, are above all need of deliberating, their volitions answering spontaneously to their desires. It is the cleft personality, or other within, that confronts and seduces the Will; the Adversary and Deuce we become individually, and thus impersonate in the Snake.[^[12]]

III.—SERPENT SYMBOL.

One were an Œdipus to expound this serpent mythology; yet failing this, were to miss finding the keys to the mysteries of Genesis, and Nature were the chaos and abyss; since hereby the one rejoins man’s parted personality, and recreates lost mankind. Coeval with flesh, the symbol appears wherever traces of civilization exist, a remnant of it in the ancient Phallus worship having come to us disguised in our May-day dance. Nor was it confined to carnal knowledge merely. The serpent symbolized divine wisdom, also; and it was under this acceptation that it became associated with those “traditionary teachers of mankind whose genial wisdom entitled them to divine honors.” An early Christian sect, called Ophites, worshipped it as the personation of natural knowledge. So the injunction, “Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves,” becomes the more significant when we learn that seraph in the original means a serpent; cherub, a dove; these again symbolizing facts in osteological science as connected with the latest theories of the invertebrated cranium accepted by eminent naturalists, and so substantiating the symbol in nature; this being ophiomorphous, a series of spires, crowned, winged, webbed, finned, footed in structure, set erect, prone, trailing, as charged with life in higher potency or lower; man, supreme in personal uprightness, and holding the sceptre of dominion as he maintains his inborn rectitude, or losing his prerogative as he lapses from his integrity, thus debasing his form and parcelling his gifts away in the prone shapes distributed throughout Nature’s kingdoms; or, again, aspiring for lost supremacy, he uplifts and crowns his fallen form with forehead, countenance, speech, thereby liberating the genius from the slime of its prone periods, and restoring it to rectitude, religion, science, fellowship, the ideal arts.[^[13]]

“Unless above himself he can

Erect himself, how poor a thing is man.”

IV.—EMBRYONS.

“The form is in the archetype before it appears in the work, in the divine mind before it exists in the creature.”—Leibnitz.

As the male impregnates the female, so mind charges matter with form and fecundity; the spermatic world being life in transmission and body in embryo. So the egg is a genesis and seminary of forms, (the kingdoms of animated nature sleeping coiled in its yolk) and awaits the quickening magnetism that ushers them into light. Herein the human embryon unfolds in series the lineaments of all forms in the living hierarchy, to be fixed at last in its microcosm, unreeling therefrom its faculties into filamental organs, spinning so minutely the threads, “that were it physically possible to dissolve away all other members of the body, there would still remain the full and perfect figure of a man. And it is this perfect cerebro-spinal axis, this statue-like tissue of filaments, that, physically speaking, is the man.“ The mind above contains him spiritually, and reveals him physically to himself and his kind. Every creature assists in its own formation, souls being essentially creative and craving form.

“For the creature delights in the image of the Creator; and the soul of man will in a manner clasp God to herself. Having nothing mortal, she is wholly inebriated from God; for she glories in the harmony under which the human body exists.”[^[14]]

V.—PROMETHEUS.

“Imago Dei in animo; mundi, in corpore.”

Man is a soul, informed by divine ideas, and bodying forth their image. His mind is the unit and measure of things visible and invisible. In him stir the creatures potentially, and through his personal volitions are conceived and brought forth in matter whatsoever he sees, touches, and treads under foot. The planet he spins.

He omnipresent is,

All round himself he lies,

Osiris spread abroad;

Upstaring in all eyes.

Nature his globed thought,

Without him she were not,

Cosmos from chaos were not spoken,

And God bereft of visible token.

A theosmeter—an instrument of instruments—he gathers in himself all forces, partakes in his plenitude of omniscience, being spirit’s acme, and culmination in nature. A quickening spirit and mediator between mind and matter, he conspires with all souls, with the Soul of souls, in generating the substance in which he immerses his form, and wherein he embosoms his essence. Not elemental, but fundamental, essential, he generates elements and forces, expiring while consuming, and perpetually replenishing his waste; the final conflagration a current fact of his existence. Does the assertion seem incredible, absurd? But science, grown luminous and transcendent, boldly declares that life to the senses is ablaze, refeeding steadily its flame from the atmosphere it kindles into life, its embers the spent remains from which rises perpetually the new-born Phœnix into regions where flame is lost in itself, and light its resolvent emblem.[^[15]]

“Thee, Eye of Heaven, the great soul envies not,

By thy male force is all we have, begot.”

VI.—IDEAL METHOD.

“It has ever been the misfortune of the mere materialist, in his mania for matter on the one hand and dread of ideas on the other, to invert nature’s order, and thus hang the world’s picture as a man with his heels upwards.”—Cudworth.

This inverse order of thought conducts of necessity to conclusions as derogatory to himself as to Nature’s author. Assuming matter as his basis of investigation, force as father of thought, he confounds faculties with organs, life with brute substance, and must needs pile his atom atop of atom, cement cell on cell, in constructing his column, sconce mounting sconce aspiringly as it rises, till his shaft of gifts crown itself surreptitiously with the ape’s glorified effigy, as Nature’s frontispiece and head. Life’s atomy with life omitted altogether, man wanting. Not thus reads the ideal naturalist the Book of lives. But opening at spirit, and thence proceeding to ideas and finding their types in matter, life unfolds itself naturally in organs, faculties begetting forces, mind moulding things substantially, its connections and inter-dependencies appear in series and degrees as he traces the leaves, thought the key to originals, man the connexus, archetype, and classifier of things; he, straightway, leading forth abreast of himself the animated creation from the chaos,—the primeval Adam naming his mates, himself their ancestor, contemporary and survivor.

VII.—DIALOGIC.

If the age of iron and brass be hard upon us, fast welding its fetters and chains about our foreheads and limbs, here, too, is the Promethean fire of thought to liberate letters, science, art, philosophy, using the new agencies let loose by the Dædalus of mechanic invention and discovery, in the service of the soul, as of the senses. Having recovered the omnipresence in nature, graded space, tunnelled the abyss, joined ocean and land by living wires, stolen the chemistry of atom and solar ray, made light our painter, the lightning our runner, thought is pushing its inquiries into the unexplored regions of man’s personality, for whose survey and service every modern instrument lends the outlay and means—facilities ample and unprecedented—new instruments for the new discoverers. Using no longer contentedly the eyes of a toiling circuitous logic, the genius takes the track of the creative thought, intuitively, cosmically, ontologically. A subtler analysis is finely disseminated, a broader synthesis accurately generalized from the materials accumulated on the mind during the centuries, the globe’s contents being gathered in from all quarters: the book of creation, newly illustrated and posted to date. The new Calculus is ours: an organon alike serviceable to naturalist and metaphysician: a Dialogic for resolving things into thoughts, matter into mind, power into personality, man into God, many into one; soul in souls seen as the creative controlling spirit, pulsating in all bodies, inspiring, animating, organizing, immanent in the atoms, circulating at centre and circumference, willing in all wills, personally embosoming all persons an unbroken synthesis of Being.

ANALYSIS OF HEGEL’S ÆSTHETICS.
Translated from the French of Ch. Benard, by J. A. Martling.

Part III.
System of the Particular Arts.

Under the head of “System of the Particular Arts,” Hegel sets forth, in this third part, the theory of each of the arts—Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music and Poetry.

Before proceeding to the division of the arts, he glances at the different styles which distinguish the different epochs of their development. He reduces them to three styles: the simple or severe, the ideal or beautiful, and the graceful.

1. At first the simple and natural style presents itself to us, but it is not the truly natural or true simplicity. That supposes a previous perfection. Primitive simplicity is gross, confused, rigid, inanimate. Art in its infancy is heavy and trifling, destitute of life and liberty, without expression, or with an exaggerated vivacity. Still harsh and rude in its commencements, it becomes by degrees master of form, and learns to unite it intimately with content. It arrives thus at a severe beauty. This style is the Beautiful in its lofty simplicity. It is restricted to reproducing a subject with its essential traits. Disdaining grace and ornament, it contents itself with the general and grand expression which springs from the subject, without the artist’s exhibiting himself and revealing his personality in it.

2. Next in order comes the beautiful style, the ideal and pure style, which holds the mean between simple expression and a marked tendency to the graceful. Its character is vitality, combined with a calm and beautiful grandeur. Grace is not wanting, but there is rather a natural carelessness, a simple complacency, than the desire to please—a beauty indifferent to the exterior charms which blossom of themselves upon the surface. Such is the ideal of the beautiful style—the style of Phidias and Homer. It is the culminating point of art.

3. But this movement is short. The ideal style passes quickly to the graceful, to the agreeable. Here appears an aim different from that of the realization of the beautiful, which pure art ought to propose to itself, to wit: the intention of pleasing, of producing an impression on the soul. Hence arise works of a style elaborate with art, and a certain seeking for external embellishments. The subject is no more the principal thing. The attention of the artist is distracted by ornaments and accessories—by the decorations, the trimmings, the simpering airs, the attitudes and graceful postures, or the vivid colors and the attractive forms, the luxury of ornaments and draperies, the learned making of verse. But the general effect remains without grandeur and without nobleness. Beautiful proportions and grand masses give place to moderate dimensions, or are masked with ornaments. The graceful style begets the style for effect, which is an exaggeration of it. The art then becomes altogether conspicuous; it calls the attention of the spectator by everything that can strike the senses. The artist surrenders to it his personal ends and his design. In this species of tête-à-tête with the public, there is betrayed through all, the desire of exhibiting his wit, of attracting admiration for his ability, his skill, his power of execution. This art—without naturalness, full of coquetry, of artifice and affectation, the opposite of the severe style which yields nothing to the public—is the style of the epochs of decadence. Frequently it has recourse to a last artifice, to the affectation of profundity and of simplicity, which is then only obscurity, a mysterious profundity which conceals an absence of ideas and a real impotence. This air of mystery, which parades itself, is in its turn, hardly better than coquetry; the principle is the same—the desire of producing an effect.

The author then passes to the Division of the Arts. The common method classes them according to their means of representation, and the senses to which they are addressed. Two senses only are affected by the perception of the beautiful: sight, which perceives forms and colors, and hearing, which perceives sounds. Hence the division into arts of design and musical art. Poetry, which employs speech, and addresses itself to the imagination, forms a domain apart. Without discarding this division, Hegel combines it with another more philosophical principle of classification, and one which is taken no longer from the external means of art, but from their internal relation to the very content of the ideas which it is to represent.

Art has for object the representation of the ideal. The arts ought then to be classed according to the measure in which they are more or less capable of expressing it. This gradation will have at the same time the advantage of corresponding to historic progress, and to the fundamental forms of art previously studied.

According to this principle, the arts marshal themselves, and succeed one another, to form a regular and complete system, thus:

1. First Architecture presents itself. This art, in fact, is incapable of representing an idea otherwise than in a vague, indeterminate manner. It fashions the masses of inorganic nature, according to the laws of matter and geometrical proportions; it disposes them with regularity and symmetry in such a manner as to offer to the eyes an image which is a simple reflex of the spirit, a dumb symbol of the thought. Architecture is at the same time appropriated to ends which are foreign to it: it is destined to furnish a dwelling for man and a temple for Divinity; it must shelter under its roof, in its enclosure, the other arts, and, in particular, sculpture and painting.

For these reasons architecture should, historically and logically, be placed first in the series of the arts.

2. In a higher rank is Sculpture, which already exhibits spirit under certain determinate traits. Its object, in fact, is spirit individualized, revealed by the human form and its living organism. Under this visible appearance, by the features of the countenance, and the proportions of the body, it expresses ideal beauty, divine calmness, serenity—in a word, the classic ideal.

3. Although retained in the world of visible forms, Painting offers a higher degree of spirituality. To form, it adds the different phases of visible appearance, the illusions of perspective, color, light and shades, and thereby it becomes capable, not only of reproducing the various pictures of nature, but also of expressing upon canvas the most profound sentiments of the human soul, and all the scenes of ethical life.

4. But, as an expression of sentiment, Music still surpasses painting. What it expresses is the soul itself, in its most intimate and profound relations; and this by a sensuous phenomenon, equally invisible, instantaneous, intangible—sound—sonorous vibrations, which resound in the abysses of the soul, and agitate it throughout.

5. All these arts culminate in Poetry, which includes them and surpasses them, and whose superiority is due to its mode of expression—speech. It alone is capable of expressing all ideas, all sentiments, all passions, the highest conceptions of the intelligence, and the most fugitive impressions of the soul. To it alone is given to represent an action in its complete development and in all its phases. It is the universal art—its domain is unlimited. Hence it is divided into many species, of which the principal are epic, lyric and dramatic poetry.

These five arts form the complete and organized system of the arts. Others, such as the art of gardening, dancing, engraving, etc., are only accessories, and more or less connected with the preceding. They have not the right to occupy a distinct place in a general theory; they would only introduce confusion, and disfigure the fundamental type which is peculiar to each of them.

Such is the division adopted by Hegel. He combines it, at the same time, with his general division of the forms of the historic development of art. Thus architecture appears to him to correspond more particularly to the symbolic type; sculpture is the classic art, par excellence; painting and music fill the category of the romantic arts. Poetry, as art universal, belongs to all epochs.

I. Architecture.—In the study of architecture, Hegel follows a purely historic method. He limits himself to describing and characterizing its principal forms in the different epochs of history. This art, in fact, lends itself to an abstract theory less than the others. There are here few principles to establish; and when we depart from generalities, we enter into the domain of mathematical laws, or into the technical applications, foreign to pure science. It remains, then, only to determine the sense and the character of its monuments, in their relation to the spirit of the people, and the epochs to which they belong. It is to this point of view that the author has devoted himself. The division which he adopts on this subject, and the manner in which he explains it, are as follows:

The object of architecture, independent of the positive design and the use to which its monuments are appropriated, is to express a general thought, by forms borrowed from inorganic nature, by masses fashioned and disposed according to the laws of geometry and mechanics. But whatever may be the ideas and the impressions which the appearance of an edifice produces, it never furnishes other than an obscure and enigmatic emblem. The thought is vaguely represented by those material forms which spirit itself does not animate.

If such is the nature of this art, it follows that, essentially symbolic, it must predominate in that first epoch of history which is distinguished by the symbolic character of its monuments. It must show itself there freer, more independent of practical utility, not subordinated to a foreign end. Its essential object ought to be to express ideas, to present emblems, to symbolize the beliefs of those peoples, incapable as they are of otherwise expressing them. It is the proper language of such an epoch—a language enigmatic and mysterious; it indicates the effort of the imagination to represent ideas, still vague. Its monuments are problems proposed to future ages, and which as yet are but imperfectly comprehended.

Such is the character of oriental architecture. There the end is valueless or accessory; the symbolic expression is the principal object. Architecture is independent, and sculpture is confounded with it.

The monuments of Greek and Roman architecture present a wholly different character. Here, the aim of utility appears clearly distinct from expression. The purpose, the design of the monument comes out in an evident manner. It is a dwelling, a shelter, a temple, etc.

Sculpture, for its part, is detached from architecture, and assigns its end to it. The image of the god, enclosed in the temple, is the principal object. The temple is only a shelter, an external attendant. Its forms are regulated according to the laws of numbers, and the proportions of a learned eurythmy; but its true ornaments are furnished to it by sculpture. Architecture ceases then to be independent and symbolic; it becomes dependent, subordinated to a positive end.

As to Christian architecture or that of the Middle Ages, it presents the union of the two preceding characteristics. It is at once devoted to a useful end, and eminently expressive or symbolic—dependent and independent. The temple is the house of God; it is devoted to the uses and ceremonies of worship, and shows throughout its design in its forms; but at the same time these symbolize admirably the Christian idea.

Thus the symbolic, classic and romantic forms, borrowed from history, and which mark the whole development of art, serve for the division and classification of the forms of architecture. This being especially the art which is exercised in the domain of matter, the essential point to be distinguished is whether the monument which is addressed to the eyes includes in itself its own meaning, or whether it is considered as a means to a foreign end, or finally whether, although in the service of a foreign end, it preserves its independence.

The basis of the division being thus placed, Hegel justifies it by describing the characters of the monuments belonging to these three epochs. All this descriptive part can not be analyzed: we are obliged to limit ourselves to securing a comprehension of the general features, and to noting the most remarkable points.

(a) Since the distinctive characteristic of symbolic architecture is the expression of a general thought, without other end than the representation of it, the interest in its monuments is less in their positive design than in the religious conceptions of the people, who, not having other means of expression, have embodied their thought, still vague and confused, in these gigantic masses and these colossal images. Entire nations know not how otherwise to express their religious beliefs. Hence the symbolic character of the structures of the Babylonians, the Indians and the Egyptians, of those works which absorbed the life of those peoples, and whose meaning we seek to explain to ourselves.

It is difficult to follow a regular order in the absence of chronology, when we review the multiplicity of ideas and forms which these monuments and these symbols present. Hegel thinks, nevertheless, that he is able to establish the following gradations:

In the first rank are the simplest monuments, such as seem only designed to serve as a bond of union to entire nations, or to different nations. Such gigantic structures as the tower of Belus or Babylon, upon the shores of the Euphrates, present the image of the union of the peoples before their dispersion. Community of toil and effort is the aim and the very idea of the work; it is the common work of their united efforts, the symbol of the dissolution of the primitive family and of the formation of a vaster society.

In a rank more elevated, appear the monuments of a more determined character, where is noticeable a mingling of architecture and sculpture, although they belong to the former. Such are those symbols which, in the East, represent the generative force of nature; the phallus and the lingam scattered in so great numbers throughout Phrygia and Syria, and of which India is the principal seat; in Egypt, the obelisks, which derive their symbolic significance from the rays of the sun; the Memnons, colossal statues which also represent the sun and his beneficent influence upon nature; the sphinxes, which one finds in Egypt in prodigious numbers and of astonishing size, ranged in rows in the form of avenues. These monuments, of an imposing sculpture, are grouped in masses, surrounded by walls so as to form buildings.

They present, in a striking manner, the twofold character indicated above: free from all positive design, they are, above all, symbols; afterward, sculpture is confounded with architecture. They are structures without roof, without doors, without aisles, frequently forests of colums where the eye loses itself. The eye passes over objects which are there for their own sake, designed only to strike the imagination by their colossal aspect and their enigmatic sense, not to serve as a dwelling for a god, and as a place of assemblage for his worshippers. Their order and their disposition alone preserve for them an architectural character. You walk on into the midst of those human works, mute symbols which remind you of divine things; your eyes are everywhere struck with the aspect of those forms and those extraordinary figures, of those walls besprinkled with hieroglyphics, books of stone, as it were, leaves of a mysterious book. Everything there is symbolically determined—the proportions, the distances, the number of columns, etc. The Egyptians, in particular, consecrated their lives to constructing and building these monuments, by instinct, as a swarm of bees builds its hive. This was the whole life of the people. It placed there all its thought, for it could no otherwise express it.

Nevertheless, that architecture, in one point, by its chambers and its halls, its tombs, begins to approach the following class, which exhibits a more positive design, and of which the type is a house.

A third rank marks the transition of symbolic to classic architecture. Architecture already presents a character of utility, of conformity to an end. The monument has a precise design; it serves for a particular use taken aside from the symbolic sense. It is a temple or a tomb. Such, in the first place, is the subterranean architecture of the Indians, those vast excavations which are also temples, species of subterranean cathedrals, the caverns of Mithra, likewise filled with symbolic sculpture. But this transition is better characterized by the double architecture, (subterranean and above ground) of the Egyptians, which is connected with their worship of the dead. An individual being, who has his significance and his proper value; the dead one, distinct from his habitation which serves him only for covering and shelter, resides in the interior. The most ancient of these tombs are the pyramids, species of crystals, envelopes of stone which enclose a kernel, an invisible being, and which serve for the preservation of the bodies. In this concealed dead one, resides the significance of the monument which is subordinate to him.

Here, then, Architecture ceases to be independent. It divides itself into two elements—the end and the means; it is the means, and it is subservient to an end. Further, sculpture separates itself from it, and obtains a distinct office—that of shaping the image within, and its accessories. Here appears clearly the special design of architecture, conformity to an end; also it assumes inorganic and geometric forms, the abstract, mathematical form, which befits it in particular. The pyramid already exhibits the design of a house, the rectangular form.

(b) Classic architecture has a two-fold point of departure—symbolic architecture and necessity. The adaptation of parts to an end, in symbolic architecture, is accessory. In the house, on the contrary, all is controlled, from the first, by actual necessity and convenience. Now classic architecture proceeds both from the one and from the other principle, from necessity and from art, from the useful and from the beautiful, which it combines in the most perfect manner. Necessity produces regular forms, right angles, plane surfaces. But the end is not simply the satisfaction of a physical necessity; there is also an idea, a religious representation, a sacred image, which it has to shelter and surround, a worship, a religious ceremonial. The temple ought then, like the temple fashioned by sculpture, to spring from the creative imagination of the artist. There is necessary a dwelling for the god, fashioned by art and according to its laws.

Thus, while falling under the law of conformity to an end, and ceasing to be independent, architecture escapes from the useful and submits to the law of the beautiful; or rather, the beautiful and useful meet and combine themselves in the happiest manner. Symmetry, eurythmy, organic forms the most graceful, the most rich, and the most varied, join themselves as ornaments to the architectural forms. The two points of view are united without being confounded, and form an harmonious whole; there will be, at the same time, a useful, convenient and beautiful architecture.

What best marks the transition to Greek architecture, is the appearance of the column, which is its type. The column is a support. Therein is its useful and mechanical design; it fulfils that design in the most simple and perfect manner, because with it the power of support is reduced to its minimum of material means. From another side, in order to be adapted to its end and to beauty, it must give up its natural and primitive form. The beautiful column comes from a form borrowed from nature; but carved, shaped, it takes a regular and geometric configuration. In Egypt, human figures serve as columns; here they are replaced by caryatides. But the natural, primitive form is the tree, the trunk, the flexible stock, which bears its crown. Such, too, appears the Egyptian column; columns are seen rising from the vegetable kingdom in the stalks of the lotus and other trees; the base resembles an onion. The leaf shoots from the root, like that of a reed, and the capital presents the appearance of a flower. The mathematical and regular form is absent. In the Greek column, on the contrary, all is fashioned according to the mathematical laws of regularity and proportion. The beautiful column springs from a form borrowed from nature, but fashioned according to the artistic sense.

Thus the characteristic of classic architecture, as of architecture in general, is the union of beauty and utility. Its beauty consists in its regularity, and although it serves a foreign end, it constitutes a whole perfect in itself; it permits its essential aim to look forth in all its parts, and through the harmony of its relations, it transforms the useful into the beautiful.

The character of classic architecture being subordination to an end, it is that end which, without detriment to beauty, gives to the entire edifice its proper signification, and which becomes thus the principal regulator of all its parts; as it impresses itself on the whole, and determines its fundamental form. The first thing as to a work of this sort, then, is to know what is its purpose, its design. The general purpose of a Grecian temple is to hold the statue of a god. But in its exterior, the character of the temple relates to a different end, and its spirit is the life of the Greek people.

Among the Greeks, open structures, colonnades and porticoes, have as object the promenade in the open air, conversation, public life under a pure sky. Likewise the dwellings of private persons are insignificant. Among the Romans, on the contrary, whose national architecture has a more positive end in utility, appears later the luxury of private houses, palaces, villas, theatres, circuses, amphitheatres, aqueducts and fountains. But the principal edifice is that whose end is most remote from the wants of material life; it is the temple designed to serve as a shelter to a divine object, which already belongs to the fine arts—to the statue of a god.

Although devoted to a determinate end, this architecture is none the less free from it, in the sense, that it disengages itself from organic forms; it is more free even than sculpture, which is obliged to reproduce them; it invents its plan, the general configuration, and it displays in external forms all the richness of the imagination; it has no other laws than those of good taste and harmony; it labors without a direct model. Nevertheless, it works within a limited domain, that of mathematical figures, and it is subjected to the laws of mechanics. Here must be preserved, first of all, the relations between the width, the length, the height of the edifice; the exact proportions of the columns according to their thickness, the weight to be supported, the intervals, the number of columns, the style, the simplicity of the ornaments. It is this which gives to the theory of this art, and in particular of this form of architecture, the character of dryness and abstraction. But there dominates throughout, a natural eurythmy, which their perfectly accurate sense enabled the Greeks to find and fix as the measure and rule of the beautiful.

We will not follow the author in the description which he gives of the particular characteristics of architectural forms; we will omit also some other interesting details upon building in wood or in stone as the primitive type, upon the relation of the different parts of the Greek temple. In here following Vitruvius, the author has been able to add some discriminating and judicious remarks. What he says, in particular, of the column, of its proportions and of its design, of the internal unity of the different parts and of their effects as a whole, adds to what is already known a philosophical explication which satisfies the reason. We remark, especially, this passage, which sums up the general character of the Greek temple: “In general, the Greek temple presents an aspect which satisfies the vision, and, so to speak, surfeits it. Nothing is very elevated, it is regularly extended in length and breadth. The eye finds itself allured by the sense of extent, while Gothic architecture mounts even beyond measurement, and shoots upward to heaven. Besides, the ornaments are so managed that they do not mar the general expression of simplicity. In this, the ancients observe the most beautiful moderation.”

The connection of their architecture with the genius, the spirit, and the life of the Greek people, is indicated in the following passage: “In place of the spectacle of an assemblage united for a single end, all appears directed towards the exterior, and presents us the image of an animated promenade. There men who have leisure abandon themselves to conversations without end, wherein rule gayety and serenity. The whole expression of such a temple remains truly simple and grand in itself, but it has at the same time an air of serenity, something open and graceful.” This prepares and conducts us to another kind of architecture, which presents a striking contrast to the preceding Christian or Gothic architecture.

(c) We shall not further attempt to reproduce, even in its principal features, the description which Hegel gives, in some pages, of Romantic or Gothic architecture. The author has proposed to himself, as object, in the first place, to compare the two kinds of architecture, the Greek and the Christian, then to secure the apprehension of the relation of this form of architecture to the Christian idea. This is what constitutes the peculiar interest of this remarkable sketch, which, by its vigor and severity of design, preserves its distinctive merit when compared with all descriptions that have been made of the architecture of the Middle Ages.

Gothic architecture, according to Hegel, unites, in the first place, the opposite characters of the two preceding kinds. Notwithstanding, this union does not consist in the simple fusion of the architectural forms of the East and of Greece. Here, still more than in the Greek temple, the house furnishes the fundamental type. An architectural edifice which is the house of God, shows itself perfectly in conformity with its design and adapted to worship; but the monument is also there for its own sake, independent, absolute. Externally, the edifice ascends, shoots freely into the air.

The conformity to the end, although it presents itself to the eyes, is therefore effaced, and leaves to the whole the appearance of an independent existence. The monument has a determinate sense, and shows it; but, in its grand aspect and its sublime calm, it is lifted above all end in utility, to something infinite in itself.

If we examine the relation of this architecture to the inner spirit and the idea of Christian worship, we remark, in the first place, that the fundamental form is here the house wholly closed. Just as, in fact, the Christian spirit withdraws itself into the interior of the conscience, just so the church is an enclosure, sealed on all sides, the place of meditation and silence. “It is the place of the reflection of the soul into itself, which thus shuts itself up materially in space. On the other hand, if, in Christian meditation, the soul withdraws into itself, it is, at the same time, lifted above the finite, and this equally determines the character of the house of God. Architecture takes, then, for its independent signification, elevation towards the infinite, a character which it expresses by the proportions of its architectural forms.” These two traits, depth of self-examination and elevation of the soul towards the infinite, explain completely the Gothic architecture and its principal forms. They furnish also the essential differences between Gothic and Greek architecture.

The impression which the Christian church ought to produce in contrast with this open and serene aspect of the Greek temple, is, in the first place, the calmness of the soul which reflects into itself, then that of a sublime majesty which shoots beyond the confines of sense. Greek edifices extend horizontally; the Christian church should lift itself from the ground and shoot into the air.

The most striking characteristic which the house of God presents, in its whole and its parts, is, then, the free flight, the shooting in points formed either by broken arches or by right lines. In Greek architecture, exact proportion between support and height is everywhere observed. Here, on the contrary, the operation of supporting and the disposition at a right angle—the most convenient for this end—disappears or is effaced. The walls and the column shoot without marked difference between what supports and what is supported, and meet in an acute angle. Hence the acute triangle and the ogee, which form the characteristic traits of Gothic architecture.

We are not able to follow the author in the detailed explication of the different forms and the divers parts of the Gothic edifice, and of its total structure.

THE METAPHYSICS OF MATERIALISM.
By D. G. Brinton.

Ubi tres physici, ibi duo athei,—the proverb is something musty. Natural science is and always has been materialistic. The explanation is simple. There is as great antagonism between chemical research and metaphysical speculation, as there is between what

“Youthful poets dream,

On summer’s eve by haunted stream,”

and book-keeping by double entry, and nothing is more customary than to deny what we do not understand. Of late years this scientific materialism has been making gigantic strides. Since the imposing fabric of the Hegelian philosophy proved but a house built on sands, the scales and metre have become our only gods.

Germany—mystic, metaphysical Germany—strange to say, leads the van in this crusade against all faith and all idealism. Vogt, the geologist, Moleschott, the physiologist, Virchow, the greatest of all living histologists, Büchner, Tiedemann, Reuchlin, Meldeg, and many others, not only hold these opinions, but have left the seclusion of the laboratory and the clinic to enter the arena of polemics in their favor. We do not mention the French and English advocates of “positive philosophy.” Their name is Legion.

It is not our design to enter at all at large into these views, still less to dispute them, but merely to give the latest and most approved defence of a single point of their position, a point which we submit is the kernel of the whole controversy, and which we believe to be the very Achilles heel and crack in the armor of their panoply of argument—that is, the Theory of the Absolute. Demonstrate the possibility of the Absolute, and materialism is impossible; disprove it, and all other philosophies are empty nothings,—vox et præterea nihil. Here, and only here, is materialism brought face to face with metaphysics; here is the combat à l’outrance in which one or the other must perish. No one of its apostles has accepted the proffered glaive more heartily, and defended his position with more wary dexterity, than Moleschott, and it is mainly from his work, entitled Der Kreislauf des Lebens, that we illustrate the present metaphysics of materialism.

Our first question is, What is the test of truth, what sanctions a law? Until this is answered, all assertion is absurd, and until it is answered correctly, all philosophy is vain. The response of the naturalist is: “The necessary sequence of cause and effect is the prime law of the experimentalist—a law which he does not ask from revelation, but will find out for himself by observation.” The source of truth is sensation; the uniform result of manifold experience is a law. Here a double objection arises: first, that the term “a necessary sequence” presupposes a law, and begs the question at issue; and, secondly, that, this necessity unproved, such truth is nothing more than a probability, for it is impossible to be certain that our next experiment may not have quite a different result. Either this is not the road to absolute truth, or absolute truth is unattainable. The latter horn of the dilemma is at once accepted; we neither know, nor can know, a law to be absolute; to us, the absolute does not exist. Matter and force with their relations are there, but what we know of them is a varying quantity, is of this age or the last, of this man or that, dependent upon the extent and accuracy of empirical science; we cannot speak of what we do not know, and we know no law that conceivable experience might not contradict.

But how, objects the reader, can this be reconciled with the pure mathematics? Here seem to be laws above experience, laws admitting no exception.

The response leads us back to the origin of our notions of Space and Time, on the the former of which mathematics is founded. The supposition that they are innate ideas is of course rejected by the materialist; for he looks upon innate ideas as fables; he considers them perceptions derived positively from the senses, but they do not belong to the senses alone, nor are they perceptions merely; “they are ideas, but ideas that without the sensuous perceptions of proximity and sequence could never have arisen. Nay, more—the perception of space must precede that of time,” for it is only through the former that we can reach the latter. The plainest laws of space, those which were the earliest impressions on the tabula rasa of the infant mind, and which the hourly experience of life verifies, are called, by the mathematician, axioms, and on these simplest generalizations of our perceptions he bases the whole of his structure. Axioms, therefore, are the uniform results of experiments, the possible conditions of which are extremely limited, and the factors of which have been subjected to all these conditions.

It follows from a denial of the absolute that all existence is concrete. Indeed, we may say that the corner stone of the edifice of materialism is embraced in the terse sentence of Moleschott—all existence is existence through attributes. Existence per se (Fürsichsein) is a meaningless term, and substance apart from attribute, the ens ineffabile, is a pedantic figment and nothing more. Finally, there can be no attribute except through a relation.

Let this trilogy of existence, attribute and relation, be clearly before the mind, and the position that the positive philosophy bears to all others becomes at once luminous enough. There is no existence apart from attributes, no attributes but through relations, no relations but to other existences. To exemplify: a stone is heavy, hard, colored, perhaps bitter to the taste. Now, says the idealist, this weight, this hardness, this color, this bitterness, these are not the stone, they are merely its properties or attributes, and the stone itself is some substance behind them all, to which they adhere and which we cannot detect with our senses; further, he might add, if a moderate in his school, these attributes are independently existent, the bitterness is there when we are not tasting it, and the attribute of color, though there be no light. All this the materialist denies. To him, the attributes and nothing else constitute the stone, and these attributes have no existence apart from their relations to other objects. The bitterness exists only in relation to the organs of taste, and the color to the organs of sight, and the weight to other bodies of matter. Nothing, in short, can be said to exist to us that is not cognizable by our senses. But, objects some one, there may be an existence which is not to us, which is as much beyond our ken as color is beyond the conception of the born blind. The expression was used advisedly: no such existence can become the subject of rational language. “Does not all knowledge predicate a knower, consequently a relation of the subject to the the observer? Such a relation is an attribute. Without it, knowledge is inconceivable. Neither God nor man can raise himself above the knowledge furnished by these relations to his organs of apprehension.”

A disagreeable sequence to this logic will not fail to occur to every one. If all knowledge comes from the organs of sense, then differently formed organs must furnish very different and contradictory knowledge, and one is as likely to be correct as another. The radiate animal, who sees the world through a cornea alone, must have quite another notion of light, color, and relative size, from the spider whose eye is provided with lenses and a vitreous humor. Consonantly with the theory, each of these probably opposing views is equally true. This ugly dilemma is foreseen by our author, for he grants that “the knowledge of the insect, its knowledge of the action of the outer world, is altogether a different one from that of man,” but he avoids the ultimate result of this reasoning.

To sum up the views of this school: matter is eternal, force is eternal, but each is impossible without the other; what bears any relation to our senses we either know or can know; what does not, it is absurd to discuss; the highest thought is but the physical elaboration of sensations, or, to use the expression of Carl Vogt, “thought is a secretion of the brain as urine is of the kidneys. Without phosphorus there is no thought.” “And so,” concludes Moleschott, “only when thought is based on fact, only when the reason is granted no sphere of action but the historical which arises from observation, when the perception is at the same time thought, and the understanding sees with consciousness, does the contradiction between Philosophy and Science disappear.”

This, then, is the last word of materialism, this the solution it now offers us of the great problem of Life. We enter no further into its views, for all collateral questions concerning the origin of the ideas of the true, the good and the beautiful, the vital force, and the spiritual life, depend directly on the question we have above mentioned. Let the reader turn back precisely a century to the Système de la Nature, so long a boasted bulwark of the rationalistic school, and judge for himself what advance, if any, materialism has made in fortifying this, the most vital point of her structure. Let him ask himself anew whether the criticism of Hume on the law of cause and effect can in any way be met except after the example of Kant, by the assumption of the absolute idea, and we have little doubt what conclusion he will arrive at in reference to that system which, while it boasts to offer the only method of discovering truth, starts with the flat denial of all truth other than relative.

LETTERS ON FAUST.
By H. C. Brockmeyer.

I.

Dear H.—Yours of a recent date, requesting an epistolary criticism of “Goethe’s Faust,” has come to hand, and I hasten to assure you of a compliance of some sort. I say a compliance of some sort, for I cannot promise you a criticism. This, it seems to me, would be both too little and too much; too little if understood in the ordinary sense, as meaning a mere statement of the relation existing between the work and myself; too much if interpreted as pledging an expression of a work of the creative imagination, as a totality, in the terms of the understanding, and submitting the result to the canons of art.

The former procedure, usually called criticism, reduced to its simplest forms, amounts to this: that I, the critic, report to you, that I was amused or bored, flattered or satirized, elevated or degraded, humanized or brutalized, enlightened or mystified, pleased or displeased, by the work under consideration; and—since it depends quite as much upon my own humor, native ability, and culture acquired, which set of adjectives I may be able to report, as it does upon the work—I cannot perceive what earthly profit such a labor could be to you. For that which is clear to you may be dark to me; hence, if I report that a given work is a “perfect riddle to me,” you will only smile at my simplicity. Again, that which amuses me may bore you, for I notice that even at the theatre, some will yawn with ennui while others thrill with delight, and applaud the play. Now, if each of these should tell you how he liked the performance, the one would say “excellent,” and the other “miserable,” and you be none the wiser. To expect, therefore, that I intend to enter upon a labor of this kind, is to expect too little.

Besides, such an undertaking seems to me not without its peculiar danger; for it may happen that the work measures or criticises the critic, instead of the latter the former. If, for example, I should tell you that the integral and differential calculus is all fog to me—mystifies me completely—you would conclude my knowledge of mathematics to be rather imperfect, and thus use my own report of that work as a sounding-lead to ascertain the depth of my attainment. Nay, you might even go further, and regard the work as a kind of Doomsday Book, on the title page of which I had “written myself down an ass.” Now, as I am not ambitious of a memorial of this kind, especially when there is no probability that the pages in contemplation—Goethe’s Faust—will perish any sooner than the veritable Doomsday Book itself, I request you, as a special favor, not to understand of me that I propose engaging in any undertaking of this sort.[^[16]]

Nor are you to expect an inquiry into the quantity or quality of the author’s food, drink or raiment. For the present infantile state of analytic science refuses all aid in tracing such primary elements, so to speak, in the composition of the poem before us; and hence such an investigation would lead, at best, to very secondary and remote conclusions. Nor shall we be permitted to explore the likes and dislikes of the poet, in that fine volume of scandal, for the kindred reason that neither crucible, reagent nor retort are at hand which can be of the remotest service.

By the by, has it never occurred to you, when perusing works of the kind last referred to, what a glowing picture the pious Dean of St. Patrick’s, the saintly Swift, has bequeathed to us of their producers, when he places the great authors, the historical Gullivers of our race, in all their majesty of form, astride the public thoroughfare of a Liliputian age, and marches the inhabitants, in solid battalions, through between their legs? you recollect what he says?

Nor yet are you to expect a treat of that most delightful of all compounds, the table talk and conversation—or, to use a homely phrase, the literary dishwater retailed by the author’s scullion. To expect such, or the like, would be to expect too little.

On the other hand, to expect that I shall send you an expression, in the terms of the understanding, of a work of the creative imagination, as a totality, and submit the result to the canons of art, is to expect too much. For while I am ready, and while I intend to comply with the first part of this proposition, I am unable to fulfil the requirement of the latter part—that is, I am not able to submit the result to the canons of art. The reason for this inability it is not necessary to develop in this connection any further than merely to mention that I find it extremely inconvenient to lay my hand upon the aforementioned canons just at this time.

I must, therefore, content myself with the endeavor to summon before you the Idea which creates the poem—each act, scene and verse—so that we may see the part in its relation to the whole, and the whole in its concrete, organic articulation. If we succeed in this, then we may say that we comprehend the work—a condition precedent alike to the beneficial enjoyment and the rational judgment of the same.

II.

In my first letter, dear friend, I endeavored to guard you against misapprehension as to what you might expect from me. Its substance, if memory serves me, was that I did not intend to write on Anthropology or Psychology, nor yet on street, parlor or court gossip, but simply about a work of art.

I deemed these remarks pertinent in view of the customs of the time, lest that, in my not conforming to them, you should judge me harshly without profit to yourself. With the same desire of keeping up a fair understanding with you, I must call your attention to some terms and distinctions which we shall have occasion to use, and which, unless explained, might prove shadows instead of lights along the path of our intercourse.

I confess to you that I share the (I might say) abhorrence so generally entertained by the reading public, of the use of any general terms whatsoever, and would avoid them altogether if I could only see how. But in reading the poem that we are to consider, I come upon such passages as these:

(Choir of invisible Spirits.)

“Woe! Woe!

Thou hast destroyed it,

The beautiful world!

It reels, it crumbles,

Crushed by a demigod’s mighty hand!”

and I cannot see how we are to understand these spirits, or the poet who gave them voice, unless we attack this very general expression “The beautiful world,” here said to have been destroyed by Faust.

I am, however, somewhat reconciled to this by the example of my neighbor—a non-speculative, practical farmer—now busily engaged in harvesting his wheat. For I noticed that he first directed his attention, after cutting the grain, to collecting and tying it together in bundles; and I could not help but perceive how much this facilitated his labor, and how difficult it would have been for him to collect his wheat, grain by grain, like the sparrow of the field. Though wheat it were, and not chaff, still such a mode of handling would reduce it even below the value of chaff.

Just think of handling the wheat crop of these United States, the two hundred and twenty-five millions of bushels a year, in this manner! It is absolutely not to be thought of, and we must have recourse to agglomeration, if not to generalization. But the one gives us general masses, and the other general terms. The only thing that we can do, therefore, is, in imitation of our good neighbor of the wheat field, to handle bundles, bushels, and bags, or—what is still better, if it can be done by some daring system of intellectual elevators—whole ship loads of grain at a time, due care being taken that we tie wheat to wheat, oats to oats, barley to barley, and not promiscuously.

Now, with this example well before our minds, and the necessity mentioned, which compels us to handle—not merely the wheat crop of the United States for one year, but—whatever has been raised by the intelligence of man from the beginning of our race to the time of Goethe the poet, together with the ground on which it was raised, and the sky above—for no less than this seems to be contained in the expression “The beautiful world”—I call your attention first to the expression “form and matter,” which, when applied to works of intelligence, we must take the liberty of changing into the expression “form and content,” for since there is nothing in works of this kind that manifests gravity, it can be of no use to say so, but may be of some injury.

The next is the expression “works of art,” which sounds rather suspicious in some of its applications—sounds as if it was intended to conceal rather than reveal the worker. Now I take it that the “works of art” are the works of the intelligence, and I shall have to classify them accordingly. Another point with reference to this might as well be noticed, and that is that the old expressions “works of art” and “works of nature” do not contain, as they were intended to, all the works that present themselves to our observation—the works of science, for example. Besides, we have government, society, and religion, all of which are undoubtedly distinct from the “works of art” no less than from the “works of nature,” and to tie them up in the same bundle with either of them, seems to me to be like tying wheat with oats, and therefore to be avoided, as in the example before our minds. This seems to be done in the expression “works of self-conscious intelligence,” and “works of nature.”

But if we reflect upon the phrases “works of self-conscious intelligence” and “works of nature,” it becomes obvious that there must be some inaccuracy contained in them; for how can two distinct subjects have the same predicate? It would, therefore, perhaps be better to say “the works of self-conscious intelligence” and the “products of nature.”

Without further rasping and filing of old phrases, I call your attention, in the next place, to the most general term which we shall have occasion to use—“the world.”

Under this we comprehend:

I. The natural world—Gravity.;

II. The spiritual world—Self-determination.

I. Under the natural world we comprehend the terrestrial globe, and that part of the universe which is involved in its processes; these are:

(a) (1.) Mechanic=Gravity, } Meteorologic=Electricity.

(2.) Chemic=Affinity, }

(b) (1.) Organic=Galvanism, } Vital=Sensation.

(2.) Vegetative=Assimilation, }

II. Under “The Spiritual World,” the world of conscious intelligence, we comprehend:

(a) The real world=implement, mediation.

(b) The actual world=self-determination.

(a) The real world contains whatever derives the end of its existence only, from self-conscious intelligence.

(1.) The family=Affection.

(2.) Society=Ethics, } Mediation.

(3.) State=Rights, }

(b) The actual world contains whatever derives the end and the means of its existence from self-conscious intelligence.

(1.) Art=Manifestation, }

(2.) Religion=Revelation, } Self-determination.

(3.) Philosophy=Definition, }

From this it appears that we have divided the world into three large slices—the Natural, the Real, and the Actual—with gravity for one and self-determination for the other extreme, and mediation between them.

III.

In my last, I gave you some general terms, and the sense in which I intend to use them. I also gave you a reason why I should use them, together with an illustration. But I gave you no reason why I used these and no others—or I did not advance anything to show that there are objects to which they necessarily apply. I only take it for granted that there are some objects presented to your observation and mine, that gravitate or weigh something, and others that do not. To each I have applied as nearly as I could the ordinary terms. Now this procedure, although very unphilosophical, I can justify only by reminding you of the object of these letters.

If we now listen again to the chant of the invisible choir,

“Thou hast destroyed it,

The beautiful world,”

it will be obvious that this can refer only to the world of mediation and self-determination, to the world of spirit, of self-conscious intelligence, for the world of gravitation is not so easily affected. But how is this—how is it that the world of self-conscious intelligence is so easily affected, is so dependent upon the individual man? This can be seen only by examining its genesis.

In the genesis of Spirit we have three stages—manifestation, realization, and actualization. The first of these, upon which the other two are dependent and sequent, falls in the individual man. For, in him it is that Reason manifests itself before it can realize, or embody itself in this or that political, social, or moral institution. And it is not merely necessary that it should so manifest itself in the individual; it must also realize itself in these institutions before it can actualize itself in Art, Religion, and Philosophy. For in this actualization it is absolutely dependent upon the former two stages of its genesis for a content. From this it appears that Art shows what Religion teaches, and what Philosophy comprehends; or that Art, Religion, and Philosophy have the same content. Nor is it difficult to perceive why this world of spirit or self-conscious intelligence is so dependent upon the individual man.

Again, in the sphere of manifestation and reality, this content, the self-conscious intelligence, is the self-consciousness of an individual, a nation, or an age. And art, in the sphere of actuality, is this or that work of art, this poem, that painting, or yonder piece of sculpture, with the self-consciousness of this or that individual, nation, or age, for its content. Moreover, the particularity (the individual, nation, or age) of the content constitutes the individuality of the work of Art. And not only this, but this particularity of the self-consciousness furnishes the very contradiction itself with the development and solution of which the work of art is occupied. For the self-consciousness which constitutes the content, being the self consciousness of an individual, a nation, or an age, instead of being self-conscious intelligence in its pure universality, contains in that very particularity the contradiction which, in the sphere of manifestation and reality, constitutes the collision, conflict, and solution.[^[17]]

Now, if we look back upon the facts stated, we have the manifestation, the realization, and the actualization of self-conscious intelligence as the three spheres or stages in the process which evolves and involves the entire activity of man, both practical and theoretical. It is also obvious that the realization of self-conscious intelligence in the family, society, and the state, and its actualization in Art, Religion, and Philosophy, depend in their genesis upon its manifestation in the individual. Hence a denial of the possibility of this manifestation is a denial of the possibility of the realization and actualization also.

Now if this denial assume the form of a conviction in the consciousness of an individual, a nation, or an age, then there results a contradiction which involves in the sweep of its universality the entire spiritual world of man. For it is the self-consciousness of that individual, nation, or age, in direct conflict with itself, not with this or that particularity of itself, but with its entire content, in the sphere of manifestation, with the receptivity for, the production of, and the aspiration after, the Beautiful, the Good, and the True, within the individual himself; in the sphere of realization with the Family, with Society, and with the State; and finally, in the sphere of actuality with Art, Religion, and Philosophy.

Now this contradiction is precisely what is presented in the proposition, “Man cannot know truth.” This you will remember was, in the history of modern thought, the result of Kant’s philosophy. And Kant’s philosophy was the philosophy of Germany at the time of the conception of Goethe’s Faust. And Goethe was the truest poet of Germany, and thus he sings:

“So then I have studied philosophy,

Jurisprudence and medicine,

And what is worse, Theology,

Thoroughly, but, alas! in vain,

And here I stand with study hoar,

A fool, and know what I knew before;

Am called Magister, nay, LL.D.,

And for ten years, am busily

Engaged, leading through fen and close,

My trusting pupils by the nose;

Yet see that nothing can be known.

This burns my heart, this, this alone!”

Here, you will perceive in the first sentence of the poem, as was meet, the fundamental contradiction, the theme, or the “argument,” as it is so admirably termed by critics, is stated in its naked abstractness, just as Achilles’ wrath is the first sentence of the Iliad.

This theme, then, is nothing more nor less than the self-consciousness in contradiction with itself, in conflict with its own content. Hence, if the poem is to portray this theme, this content, in its totality, it must represent it in three spheres: first, Manifestation—Faust in conflict with himself; second, Realization—Faust in conflict with the Family, Society, and the State; thirdly, Actualization—Faust in conflict with Art, Religion, and Philosophy.

Now, my friend, please to examine the poem once more, reflect closely upon what has been said, and then tell how much of the poem can you spare, or how much is there in the poem as printed, which does not flow from or develop this theme?

IV.

In my last, dear friend, I called your attention to the theme, to the content of the poem in a general way, stating it in the very words of the poet himself. To trace the development of this theme from the abstract generality into concrete detail is the task before us.

According to the analysis, we have to consider, first of all, the sphere of Manifestation.

In this we observe the three-fold relation which the individual sustains to self-conscious intelligence, viz: Receptivity for, and production of, and aspiration for, the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Now if it is true that man cannot know truth, then it follows that he can neither receive nor produce the True. For how shall he know that whatever he may receive and produce is true, since it is specially denied that he can know it. This conclusion as conviction, however, does not affect immediately the third relation—the aspiration—nor quench its gnawing. And this is the first form of conflict in the individual. Let us now open the book and place it before us.

The historic origin of our theme places us in a German University, in the professor’s private studio.

It is well here to remember that it is a German University, and that the occupant of the room is a German professor. Also that it is the received opinion that the Germans are a theoretical people; by which we understand that they act from conviction, and not from instinct. Moreover, that their conviction is not a mere holiday affair, to be rehearsed, say on Sunday, and left in charge of a minister, paid for the purpose, during the balance of the week, but an actual, vital fountain of action. Hence, the conviction of such a character being given, the acts follow in logical sequence.

With this remembered, let us now listen to the self-communion of the occupant of the room.

In bitter earnest the man has honestly examined, and sought to possess himself of the intellectual patrimony of the race. In poverty, in solitude, in isolation, he has labored hopefully, earnestly; and now he casts up his account and finds—what? “That nothing can be known.” His hair is gray with more than futile endeavor, and for ten years his special calling has been to guide the students to waste their lives, as he has done his own, in seeking to accomplish the impossible—to know. This is the worm that gnaws his heart! As compensation, he is free from superstition—fears neither hell nor devil. But this sweeps with it all fond delusions, all conceit that he is able to know, and to teach something for the elevation of mankind. Nor yet does he possess honor or wealth—a dog would not lead a life like this.

Here you will perceive how the first two relations are negated by the conviction that man cannot know truth, and how, on the wings of aspiration, he sallies forth into the realm of magic, of mysticism, of subjectivity. For if reason, with its mediation, is impotent to create an object for this aspiration, let us see what emotion and imagination, without mediation, can do for subjective satisfaction.

And here all is glory, all is freedom! The imagination seizes the totality of the universe, and revels in ecstatic visions. What a spectacle! But, alas! a spectacle only! How am I to know, to comprehend the fountain of life, the centre of which articulates this totality?

See here another generalization: the practical world as a whole! Ah, that is my sphere; here I have a firm footing; here I am master; here I command spirits! Approach, and obey your master!

“Spirit. Who calls?

Faust. Terrific face!

Sp. Art thou he that called?

Thou trembling worm!

Faust. Yes; I’m he; am Faust, thy peer.

Sp. Peer of the Spirit thou comprehendest—not of me!

Faust. What! not of thee! Of whom, then? I, the image of Deity itself, and not even thy peer?“

No, indeed, Mr. Faust, thou dost not include within thyself the totality of the practical world, but only that part thereof which thou dost comprehend—only thy vocation, and hark! “It knocks!”

Oh, death! I see, ’t is my vocation; indeed, “It is my famulus!”

And this, too, is merely a delusion; this great mystery of the practical world shrinks to this dimension—a bread-professorship.

It would seem so; for no theory of the practical world is possible without the ability to know truth. As individual, you may imitate the individual, as the brute his kind, and thus transmit a craft; but you cannot seize the practical world in transparent forms and present it as a harmonious totality to your fellow-man, for that would require that these transparent intellectual forms should possess objective validity—and this they have not, according to your conviction. And so it cannot be helped.

But see what a despicable thing it is to be a bread-professor!

And is this the mode of existence, this the reality, the only reality to answer the aspiration of our soul—the aspiration which sought to seize the universe, to kindle its inmost recesses with the light of intelligence, and thus illumine the path of life? Alas, Reason gave us error—Imagination, illusion—and the practical world, the Will, a bread-professorship! Nothing else? Yes; a bottle of laudanum!

Let us drink, and rest forever! But hold, is there nothing else, really? No emotional nature? Hark! what is that? Easter bells! The recollections of my youthful faith in a revelation! They must be examined. We cannot leave yet.

And see what a panorama, what a strange world lies embedded with those recollections. Let us see it in all its varied character and reality, on this Easter Sunday, for example.

V.

I have endeavored before to trace the derivation of the content of the first scene of the poem, together with its character, from the abstract theme of the work. In it we saw that the fundamental conviction of Faust leaves him naked—leaves him nothing but a bare avocation, a mere craft, and the precarious recollections of his youth (when he believed in revealed truths) to answer his aspirations. These recollections arouse his emotions, and rescue him from nothingness (suicide)—they fill his soul with a content.

To see this content with all its youthful charm, we have to retrace our childhood’s steps before the gates of the city on this the Easter festival of the year—you and I being mindful, in the meantime, that the public festivals of the Church belong to the so-called external evidences of the truth of the Christian Religion.

Well, here we are in the suburbs of the city, and what do we see? First, a set of journeymen mechanics, eager for beer and brawls, interspersed with servant girls; students whose tastes run very much in the line of strong beer, biting tobacco, and the well-dressed servant girls aforesaid; citizens’ daughters, perfectly outraged at the low taste of the students who run after the servant girls, “when they might have the very best of society;” citizens dissatisfied with the new mayor of the city—“Taxes increase from day to day, and nothing is done for the welfare of the city.” A beggar is not wanting. Other citizens, who delight to speak of war and rumors of war in distant countries, in order to enjoy their own peace at home with proper contrast; also an “elderly one,” who thinks that she is quite able to furnish what the well-dressed citizens’ daughters wish for—to the great scandal of the latter, who feel justly indignant at being addressed in public by such an old witch (although, “between ourselves, she did show us our sweethearts on St. Andrew’s night”); soldiers, who sing of high-walled fortresses and proud women to be taken by storm; and, finally, farmers around the linden tree, dancing a most furious gallopade—a real Easter Sunday or Monday “before the gate”—of any city in Germany, even to this day.

And into this real world, done up in holiday attire, but not by the poet—into this paradise, this very heaven of the people, where great and small fairly yell with delight—Faust enters, assured that here he can maintain his rank as a man; “here I dare to be a man!” And, sure enough, listen to the welcome:

“Nay, Doctor, ’tis indeed too much

To be with us on such a day,

To join the throng, the common mass,

You, you, the great, the learned man!

Take, then, this beaker, too,” &c.

And here goes—a general health to the Doctor, to the man who braved the pestilence for us, and who even now, does not think it beneath him to join us in our merry-making—hurrah for the Doctor; hip, hip, &c.

And is not this something, dear friend? Just think, with honest Wagner, when he exclaims, “What emotions must crowd thy breast, O great man, while listening to such honors?” and you will also say with him:

“Thrice blest the man who draws such profits rare,

From talents all his own!”

Why, see! the father shows you to his son; every one inquires—presses, rushes to see you! The fiddle itself is hushed, the dancers stop. Where you go, they fall into lines; caps and hats fly into the air! But a little more, and they would fall upon their knees, as if the sacred Host passed that way!

And is not this great? Is not this the very goal of human ambition? To Wagner, dear friend, it is; for the very essence of an avocation is, and must be, “success in life.” But how does it stand with the man whose every aspiration is the True, the Good, and the Beautiful? Will a hurrah from one hundred thousand throats, all in good yelling order, assist him? No.

To Wagner it is immaterial whether he knows what he needs, provided he sees the day when the man who has been worse to the people than the very pestilence itself, receives public honors; but to Faust, to the man really in earnest—who is not satisfied when he has squared life with life, and obtained zero for a result, or who does not merely live to make a living, but demands a rational end for life, and, in default of that rational end, spurns life itself—to such a man this whole scene possesses little significance indeed. It possesses, however, some significance, even for him! For if it is indeed true that man cannot know truth—that the high aspiration of his soul has no object—then this scene demonstrates, at least, that Faust possesses power over the practical world. If he cannot know the world, he can at least swallow a considerable portion of it, and this scene demonstrates that he can exercise a great deal of choice as to the parts to be selected; do you see this conviction?

Do you see this conviction? Do you see this dog? Consider it well; what is it, think you? Do you perceive how it encircles us nearer and nearer—becomes more and more certain, and, if I mistake not, a luminous emanation of gold, of honor, of power, follows in its wake. It seems to me as if it drew soft magic rings, as future fetters, round our feet! See, the circles become smaller and smaller-’tis almost a certainty—’tis already near; come, come home with as!

The temptation here spread before us by the poet, to consider the dog “well,” is almost irresistible; but all we can say in this place, dear friend, is that if you will look upon what is properly called an avocation in civil society, eliminate from it all higher ends and motives other than the simple one of making a living—no matter with what pomp and circumstance—no doubt you will readily recognize the POODLE. But we must hasten to the studio to watch further developments, for the conflict is not as yet decided. We are still to examine the possibility of a divine revelation to man, who cannot know truth.

And for this purpose our newly acquired conviction, that we possess power over the practical world—although not as yet in a perfectly clear form before us—comfortably lodged behind the stove, where it properly belongs, we take down the original text of the New Testament in order to realize its meaning, in our own loved mother tongue. It stands written: “In the beginning was the Word.” Word? Word? Never! Meaning it ought to be! Meaning what? Meaning? No; it is Power! No; Deed! Word, meaning, power, deed—which is it? Alas, how am I to know, unless I can know truth? ’Tis even so, our youthful recollections dissolve in mist, into thin air—and nothing is left us but our newly acquired conviction, the restlessness of which during this examination has undoubtedly not escaped your attention, dear friend. (“Be quiet, there, behind the stove.” “See here, poodle, one of us two has to leave this room!”) What, then, is the whole content of this conviction, which, so long as there was the hope of a possibility of a worthy object for our aspiration, seemed so despicable? What is it that governs the practical world of finite motives, the power that adapts means to ends, regardless of a final, of an infinite end? Is it not the Understanding? and although Reason—in its search after the final end, with its perfect system of absolute means, of infinite motives and interests—begets subjective chimeras, is it not demonstrated that the understanding possesses objective validity? Nay, look upon this dog well; does it not swell into colossal proportions—is no dog at all, in fact, but the very power that holds absolute sway over the finite and negative—the understanding itself—Mephistopheles in proper form?

And who calls this despicable? Is it not Reason, the power that begets chimeras, and it alone? And shall we reject the real, the actual—all in fact that possesses objective validity—because, forsooth, the power of subjective chimeras declares it negative, finite, perishable? Never. “No fear, dear sir, that I’ll do this. Precisely what I have promised is the very aim of all my endeavor. Conceited fool that I was! I prized myself too highly”—claimed kin with the infinite. “I belong only in thy sphere”—the finite. “The Great Spirit scorns me. Nature is a sealed book to me; the thread of thought is severed. Knowing disgusts me. In the depths of sensuality I’ll quench the burning passion.”

Here, then, my friend, we arrive at the final result of the conflict in the first sphere of our theme—in the sphere of manifestation—that of the individual. We started with the conviction that man cannot know truth. This destroyed our spiritual endeavors, and reduced our practical avocation to an absurdity. We sought refuge in the indefinite—the mysticism of the past—and were repelled by its subjectivity. We next examined the theoretical side of the practical world, and found this likewise an impossibility and suicide—a mere blank nothingness—as the only resource. But here we were startled by our emotional nature, which unites us with our fellow-man, and seems to promise some sort of a bridge over into the infinite—certainly demands such a transition. Investigating this, therefore, with all candor, we found our fellow-men wonderfully occupied—occupied like the kitten pursuing its own tail! At the same time it became apparent that we might be quite a dog in this kitten dance, or that the activity of the understanding possessed objective validity. With this conviction fairly established, although still held in utter contempt, we examined the last resource: the possibility of a divine revelation of truth to men that cannot know truth. The result, as the mere statement of the proposition would indicate, is negative, and thus the last chance of obtaining validity for anything except the activity of the understanding vanishes utterly. But with this our contempt for the understanding likewise vanishes. For whatever our aspiration may say, it has no object to correspond to it, and is therefore merely subjective, a hallucination, a chimera, and the understanding is the highest attainable for us. Here, therefore, the subjective conflict ends, for we have attained to objectivity, and this is the highest, since there is nothing else that possesses validity for man. Nor is this by any means contemptible in itself, for it is the power over the finite world, and the net result is: That if you and I, my friend, have no reason, cannot know truth, we do have at least a stomach, a capacity for sensual enjoyment, and an understanding to administer to the same—to be its servant. This, at least, is demonstrated by the kitten dance of the whole world.