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

by Various

HERBERT SPENCER.

CHAPTER I.
THE CRISIS IN NATURAL SCIENCE.

During the past twenty years a revolution has been working in physical science. Within the last ten it has come to the surface, and is now rapidly spreading into all departments of mental activity.

Although its centre is to be found in the doctrine of the “Correlation of Forces,” it would be a narrow view that counted only the expounders of this doctrine, numerous as they are; the spirit of this movement inspires a heterogeneous multitude—Carpenter, Grove, Mayer, Faraday, Thompson, Tyndall and Helmholtz; Herbert Spencer, Stuart Mill, Buckle, Draper, Lewes, Lecky, Max Müller, Marsh, Liebig, Darwin and Agassiz; these names, selected at random, are suggested on account of the extensive circulation of their books. Every day the press announces some new name in this field of research.

What is the character of the old which is displaced, and of the new which gets established?

By way of preliminary, it must be remarked that there are observable in modern times three general phases of culture, more or less historic.

The first phase is thoroughly dogmatic: it accepts as of like validity metaphysical abstractions, and empirical observations. It has not arrived at such a degree of clearness as to perceive contradictions between form and content. For the most part, it is characterized by a reverence for external authority. With the revival of learning commences the protest of spirit against this phase. Descartes and Lord Bacon begin the contest, and are followed by the many—Locke, Newton, Leibnitz, Clark, and the rest. All are animated with the spirit of that time—to come to the matter in hand without so much mediation. Thought wishes to rid itself of its fetters; religious sentiment, to get rid of forms. This reaction against the former stage, which has been called by Hegel the metaphysical, finds a kind of climax in the intellectual movement just preceding the French revolution. Thought no longer is contented to say “Cogito, ergo sum,” abstractly, but applies the doctrine in all directions, “I think; in that deed, I am.” “I am a man only in so far as I think. In so far as I think, I am an essence. What I get from others is not mine. What I can comprehend, or dissolve in my reason, that is mine.” It looks around and spies institutions—“clothes of spirit,” as Herr Teufelsdroeck calls them. “What are you doing here, you sniveling priest?” says Voltaire: “you are imposing delusions upon society for your own aggrandizement. I had no part or lot in making the church; cogito, ergo sum; I will only have over me what I put there!”

“I see that all these complications of society are artificial,” adds Rousseau; “man has made them; they are not good, and let us tear them down and make anew.” These utterances echo all over France and Europe. “The state is merely a machine by which the few exploiter the many”—“off with crowns!” Thereupon they snatch off the crown of poor Louis, and his head follows with it. “Reason” is enthroned and dethroned. Thirty years of war satiates at length this negative second period, and the third phase begins. Its characteristic is to be constructive, not to accept the heritage of the past with passivity, nor wantonly to destroy, but to realize itself in the world of objectivity—the world of laws and institutions.

The first appearance of the second phase of consciousness is characterized by the grossest inconsistencies. It says in general, (see D’Holbach’s “Système de la Nature”): “The immediate, only, is true; what we know by our senses, alone has reality; all is matter and force.” But in this utterance it is unconscious that matter and force are purely general concepts, and not objects of immediate consciousness. What we see and feel is not matter or force in general, but only some special form. The self-refutation of this phase may be exhibited as follows:

I. “What is known is known through the senses: it is matter and force.”

II. But by the senses, the particular only is perceived, and this can never be matter, but merely a form. The general is a mediated result, and not an object of the senses.

III. Hence, in positing matter and force as the content of sensuous knowing, they unwittingly assert mediation to be the content of immediateness.

The decline of this period of science results from the perception of the contradiction involved. Kant was the first to show this; his labors in this field may be summed up thus:

The universal and necessary is not an empirical result. (General laws cannot be sensuously perceived.) The constitution of the mind itself, furnishes the ground for it:—first, we have an a priori basis (time and space) necessarily presupposed as the condition of all sensuous perception; and then we have categories presupposed as the basis of every generalization whatever. Utter any general proposition: for example the one above quoted—“all is matter and force”—and you merely posit two categories—Inherence and Causality—as objectively valid. In all universal and necessary propositions we announce only the subjective conditions of experience, and not anything in and for itself true (i. e. applicable to things in themselves).

At once the popular side of this doctrine began to take effect. “We know only phenomena; the true object in itself we do not know.”

This doctrine of phenomenal knowing was outgrown in Germany at the commencement of the present century. In 1791—ten years after the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason—the deep spirit of Fichte began to generalize Kant’s labors, and soon he announced the legitimate results of the doctrine. Schelling and Hegel completed the work of transforming what Kant had left in a negative state, into an affirmative system of truth. The following is an outline of the refutation of Kantian scepticism:

I. Kant reduces all objective knowledge to phenomenal: we furnish the form of knowing, and hence whatever we announce in general concerning it—and all that we call science has, of course, the form of generality—is merely our subjective forms, and does not belong to the thing in itself.

II. This granted, say the later philosophers, it follows that the subjective swallows up all and becomes itself the universal (subject and object of itself), and hence Reason is the true substance of the universe. Spinoza’s substance is thus seen to become subject. We partake of God as intellectually seeing, and we see only God as object, which Malebranche and Berkeley held with other Platonists.

1. The categories (e. g. Unity, Reality, Causality, Existence, etc.) being merely subjective, or given by the constitution of the mind itself—for such universals are presupposed by all experience, and hence not derived from it—it follows:

2. If we abstract what we know to be subjective, that we abstract all possibility of a thing in itself, too. For “existence” is a category, and hence if subjective, we may reasonably conclude that nothing objective can have existence.

3. Hence, since one category has no preference over another, and we cannot give one of them objectivity without granting it to all others, it follows that there can be no talk of noumena, or of things in themselves, existing beyond the reach of the mind, for such talk merely applies what it pronounces to be subjective categories, (existence) while at the same time it denies the validity of their application.

III. But since we remove the supposed “noumena,” the so-called phenomena are not opposed any longer to a correlate beyond the intelligence, and the noumenon proves to be mind itself.

An obvious corollary from this is, that by the self-determination of mind in pure thinking we shall find the fundamental laws of all phenomena.

Though the Kantian doctrine soon gave place in Germany to deeper insights, it found its way slowly to other countries. Comte and Sir Wm. Hamilton have made the negative results very widely known—the former, in natural science; the latter, in literature and philosophy. Most of the writers named at the beginning are more or less imbued with Comte’s doctrines, while a few follow Hamilton. For rhetorical purposes, the Hamiltonian statement is far superior to all others; for practical purposes, the Comtian. The physicist wishing to give his undivided attention to empirical observation, desires an excuse for neglecting pure thinking; he therefore refers to the well-known result of philosophy, that we cannot know anything of ultimate causes—we are limited to phenomena and laws. Although it must be conceded that this consolation is somewhat similar to that of the ostrich, who cunningly conceals his head in the sand when annoyed by the hunters, yet great benefit has thereby accrued to science through the undivided zeal of the investigators thus consoled.

When, however, a sufficiently large collection has been made, and the laws are sought for in the chaotic mass of observations, then thought must be had. Thought is the only crucible capable of dissolving “the many into the one.” Tycho Brahe served a good purpose in collecting observations, but a Kepler was required to discern the celestial harmony involved therein.

This discovery of laws and relations, or of relative unities, proceeds to the final stage of science, which is that of the absolute comprehension.

Thus modern science, commencing with the close of the metaphysical epoch, has three stages or phases:

I. The first rests on mere isolated facts of experience; accepts the first phase of things, or that which comes directly before it, and hence may be termed the stage of immediateness.

II. The second relates its thoughts to one another and compares them; it developes inequalities; tests one through another, and discovers dependencies everywhere; since it learns that the first phase of objects is phenomenal, and depends upon somewhat lying beyond it; since it denies truth to the immediate, it may be termed the stage of mediation.

III. A final stage which considers a phenomenon in its totality, and thus seizes it in its noumenon, and is the stage of the comprehension.

To resume: the first is that of sensuous knowing; the second, that of reflection (the understanding); the third, that of the reason (or the speculative stage).

In the sensuous knowing, we have crude, undigested masses all co-ordinated; each is in and for itself, and perfectly valid without the others. But as soon as reflection enters, dissolution is at work. Each is thought in sharp contrast with the rest; contradictions arise on every hand. The third stage finds its way out of these quarrelsome abstractions, and arrives at a synthetic unity, at a system, wherein the antagonisms are seen to form an organism.

The first stage of the development closes with attempts on all hands to put the results in an encyclopædiacal form. Humboldt’s Cosmos is a good example of this tendency, manifested so widely. Matter, masses, and functions are the subjects of investigation.

Reflection investigates functions and seizes the abstract category of force, and straightway we are in the second stage. Matter, as such, loses its interest, and “correlation of forces” absorbs all attention.

Force is an arrogant category and will not be co-ordinated with matter; if admitted, we are led to a pure dynamism. This will become evident as follows:

I. Force implies confinement (to give it direction); it demands, likewise, an “occasion,” or soliciting force to call it into activity.

II. But it cannot be confined except by force; its occasion must be a force likewise.

III. Thus, since its confinement and “occasion” are forces, force can only act upon forces—upon matter only in so far as that is a force. Its nature requires confinement in order to manifest it, and hence it cannot act or exist except in unity with other forces which likewise have the same dependence upon it that it has upon them. Hence a force has no independent subsistence, but is only an element of a combination of opposed forces, which combination is a unity existing in an opposed manner (or composed of forces in a state of tension). This deeper unity which we come upon as the ground of force is properly named law.

From this, two corollaries are to be drawn: (1.) That matter is merely a name for various forces, as resistance, attraction and repulsion, etc. (2.) That force is no ultimate category, but, upon reflection, is seen to rest upon law as a deeper category (not law as a mere similarity of phenomena, but as a true unity underlying phenomenal multiplicity).

From the nature of the category of force we see that whoever adopts it as the ultimate, embarks on an ocean of dualism, and instead of “seeing everywhere the one and all” as did Xenophanes, he will see everywhere the self opposed, the contradictory.

The crisis which science has now reached is of this nature. The second stage is at its commencement with the great bulk of scientific men.

To illustrate the self-nugatory character ascribed to this stage we shall adduce some of the most prominent positions of Herbert Spencer, whom we regard as the ablest exponent of this movement. These contradictions are not to be deprecated, as though they indicated a decline of thought; on the contrary, they show an increased activity, (though in the stage of mere reflection,) and give us good omens for the future. The era of stupid mechanical thinkers is over, and we have entered upon the active, chemical stage of thought, wherein the thinker is trained to consciousness concerning his abstract categories, which, as Hegel says, “drive him around in their whirling circle.”

Now that the body of scientific men are turned in this direction, we behold a vast upheaval towards philosophic thought; and this is entirely unlike the isolated phenomenon (hitherto observed in history) of a single group of men lifted above the surrounding darkness of their age into clearness. We do not have such a phenomenon in our time; it is the spirit of the nineteenth century to move by masses.

CHAPTER II.
THE “FIRST PRINCIPLES” OF THE “UNKNOWABLE.”

The British Quarterly speaking of Spencer, says: “These ‘First Principles’ are merely the foundation of a system of Philosophy, bolder, more elaborate and comprehensive, perhaps, than any other which has been hitherto designed in England.”

The persistence and sincerity, so generally prevailing among these correlationists, we have occasion to admire in Herbert Spencer. He seems to be always ready to sacrifice his individual interest for truth, and is bold and fearless in uttering, what he believes it to be.

For critical consideration no better division can be found than that adopted in the “First Principles” by Mr. Spencer himself, to wit: 1st, the unknowable, 2nd, the knowable. Accordingly, let us examine first his theory of

THE UNKNOWABLE.

When Mr. Spencer announces the content of the “unknowable” to be “ultimate religious and scientific ideas,” we are reminded at once of the old adage in jurisprudence—“Omnis definitio in jure civili est periculosa;” the definition is liable to prove self-contradictory in practice. So when we have a content assigned to the unknowable we at once inquire, whence come the distinctions in the unknowable? If unknown they are not distinct to us. When we are told that Time, Space, Force, Matter, God, Creation, etc., are unknowables, we must regard these words as corresponding to no distinct objects, but rather as all of the same import to us. It should be always borne in mind that all universal negatives are self-contradictory. Moreover, since all judgments are made by subjective intelligences, it follows that all general assertions concerning the nature of the intellect affect the judgment itself. The naïveté with which certain writers wield these double-edged weapons is a source of solicitude to the spectator.

When one says that he knows that he knows nothing, he asserts knowledge and denies it in the same sentence. If one says “all knowledge is relative,” as Spencer does, (p. 68, et seq., of First Principles,) he of course asserts that his knowledge of the fact is relative and not absolute. If a distinct content is asserted of ignorance, the same contradiction occurs.

The perception of this principle by the later German philosophers at once led them out of the Kantian nightmare, into positive truth. The principle may be applied in general to any subjective scepticism. The following is a general scheme that will apply to all particular instances:

I. “We cannot know things in themselves; all our knowledge is subjective; it is confined to our own states and changes.”

II. If this is so, then still more is what we name the “objective” only a state or change of us as subjective; it is a mere fiction of the mind so far as it is regarded as a “beyond” or thing in itself.

III. Hence we do know the objective; for the scepticism can only legitimately conclude that the objective which we do know is of a nature kindred with reason; and that by an a priori necessity we can affirm that not only all knowable must have this nature, but also all possible existence must.

In this we discover that the mistake on the part of the sceptic consists in taking self-conscious intelligence as something one-sided or subjective, whereas it must be, according to its very definition, subject and object in one, and thus universal.

The difficulty underlying this stage of consciousness is that the mind has not been cultivated to a clear separation of the imagination from the thinking. As Sir Wm. Hamilton remarks, (Metaphysics, p. 487,) “Vagueness and confusion are produced by the confounding of objects so different as the images of sense and the unpicturable notions of intelligence.”

Indeed the great “law of the conditioned” so much boasted of by that philosopher himself and his disciples, vanishes at once when the mentioned confusion is avoided. Applied to space it results as follows:

I.—Thought of Space.

1. Space, if finite, must be limited from without;

2. But such external limitations would require space to exist in;

3. And hence the supposed limits of space that were to make it finite do in fact continue it.

It appears, therefore, that space is of such a nature that it can only end in, or be limited by itself and thus is universally continuous or infinite.

II.—Imagination of Space.

If the result attained by pure thought is correct, space is infinite, and if so, it cannot be imagined. If, however, it should be found possible to compass it by imagination, it must be conceded that there really is a contradiction in the intelligence. That the result of such an attempt coincides with our anticipations we have Hamilton’s testimony—“imagination sinks exhausted.”

Therefore, instead of this result contradicting the first, as Hamilton supposes, it really confirms it.

In fact if the mind is disciplined to separate pure thinking from mere imagining, the infinite is not difficult to think. Spinoza saw and expressed this by making a distinction between “infinitum actu (or rationis),” and “infinitum imaginationis,” and his first and second axioms are the immediate results of thought elevated to this clearness. This distinction and his “omnis determinatio est negatio,” together with the development of the third stage of thinking (according to reason), “sub quadam specie æternitatis,”—these distinctions are the priceless legacy of the clearest-minded thinker of modern times; and it behooves the critic of “human knowing” to consider well the results that the “human mind” has produced through those great masters—Plato and Aristotle, Spinoza and Hegel.

Herbert Spencer, however, not only betrays unconsciousness of this distinction, but employs it in far grosser and self-destructive applications. On page 25, (“First Principles,”) he says: “When on the sea shore we note how the hulls of distant vessels are hidden below the horizon, and how of still remoter vessels only the uppermost sails are visible, we realize with tolerable clearness the slight curvature of that portion of the sea’s surface which lies before us. But when we seek in imagination to follow out this curved surface as it actually exists, slowly bending round until all its meridians meet in a point eight thousand miles below our feet, we find ourselves utterly baffled. We cannot conceive in its real form and magnitude even that small segment of our globe which extends a hundred miles on every side of us, much less the globe as a whole. The piece of rock on which we stand can be mentally represented with something like completeness; we find ourselves able to think of its top, its sides, and its under surface at the same time, or so nearly at the same time that they seem all present in consciousness together; and so we can form what we call a conception of the rock, but to do the like with the earth we find impossible.” “We form of the earth not a conception properly so-called, but only a symbolic conception.”

Conception here is held to be adequate when it is formed of an object of a given size; when the object is above that size the conception thereof becomes symbolical. Here we do not have the exact limit stated, though we have an example given (a rock) which is conceivable, and another (the earth) which is not.

“We must predicate nothing of objects too great or too multitudinous to be mentally represented, or we must make our predications by means of extremely inadequate representations of such objects, mere symbols of them.” (27 page.)

But not only is the earth an indefinitely multiple object, but so is the rock; nay, even the smallest grain of sand. Suppose the rock to be a rod in diameter; microscope magnifying two and a half millions of diameters would make its apparent magnitude as large as the earth. It is thus only a question of relative distance from the person conceiving, and this reduces it to the mere sensuous image of the retina. Remove the earth to the distance of the moon, and our conception of it would, upon these principles, become quite adequate. But if our conception of the moon be held inadequate, then must that of the rock or the grain of sand be equally inadequate.

Whatever occupies space is continuous and discrete; i. e., may be divided into parts. It is hence a question of relativity whether the image or picture of it correspond to it.

The legitimate conclusion is that all our conceptions are symbolic, and if that property invalidates their reliability, it follows that we have no reliable knowledge of things perceived, whether great or small.

Mathematical knowledge is conversant with pure lines, points, and surfaces; hence it must rest on inconceivables.

But Mr. Spencer would by no means concede that we do not know the shape of the earth, its size, and many other inconceivable things about it. Conception is thus no criterion of knowledge, and all built upon this doctrine (i. e. depending upon the conceivability of a somewhat) falls to the ground.

But he applies it to the questions of the divisibility of matter (page 50): “If we say that matter is infinitely divisible, we commit ourselves to a supposition not realizable in thought. We can bisect and rebisect a body, and continually repeating the act until we reduce its parts to a size no longer physically divisible, may then mentally continue the process without limit.”

Setting aside conceivability as indifferent to our knowledge or thinking, we have the following solution of this point:

I. That which is extended may be bisected (i. e. has two halves).

II. Thus two extensions arise, which, in turn, have the same property of divisibility that the first one had.

III. Since, then, bisection is a process entirely indifferent to the nature of extension (i. e. does not change an extension into two non-extendeds), it follows that body is infinitely divisible.

We do not have to test this in imagination to verify it; and this very truth must be evident to him who says that the progress must be “continued without limit.” For if we examine the general conditions under which any such “infinite progress” is possible, we find them to rest upon the presupposition of a real infinite, thus:

Infinite Progress.

I. Certain attributes are found to belong to an object, and are not affected by a certain process. (For example, divisibility as a process in space does not affect the continuity of space, which makes that process possible. Or again, the process of limiting space does not interfere with its continuity, for space will not permit any limit except space itself.)

II. When the untutored reflection endeavors to apprehend a relation of this nature, it seizes one side of the dualism and is hurled to the other. (It bisects space, and then finds itself before two objects identical in nature with the first; it has effected nothing; it repeats the process, and, by and by getting exhausted, wonders whether it could meet a different result if its powers of endurance were greater. Or else suspecting the true case, says; “no other result would happen if I went on forever.”)

III. Pure thought, however, grasps this process as a totality, and sees that it only arises through a self-relation. The “progress” is nothing but a return to itself, the same monotonous round. It would be a similar attempt to seek the end of a circle by travelling round it, and one might make the profound remark: “If my powers were equal to the task, I should doubtless come to the end.” This difficulty vanishes as soon as the experience is made that the line returns into itself. “It is the same thing whether said once or repeated forever,” says Simplicius, treating of this paradox.

The “Infinite Progress” is the most stubborn fortress of Scepticism. By it our negative writers establish the impotency of Reason for various ulterior purposes. Some wish to use it as a lubricating fluid upon certain religious dogmas that cannot otherwise be swallowed. Others wish to save themselves the trouble of thinking out the solutions to the Problem of Life. But the Sphinx devours him who does not faithfully grapple with, and solve her enigmas.

Mephistopheles (a good authority on this subject) says of Faust, whom he finds grumbling at the littleness of man’s mind:

“Verachte nur Vernunft und Wissenchaft,

Des Menschen allerhöchste Kraft!

Und hätt’er sich auch nicht dem Teufel übergeben,

Er müsste doch zu Grunde gehen.”

Only prove that there is a large field of the unknowable and one has at once the vade mecum for stupidity. Crude reflection can pour in its distinctions into a subject, and save itself from the consequences by pronouncing the basis incomprehensible. It also removes all possibility of Theology, or of the Piety of the Intellect, and leaves a very narrow margin for religious sentiment, or the Piety of the Heart.

The stage of Science represented by the French Encyclopædists was immediately hostile to each and every form of religion. This second stage, however, has a choice. It can, like Hamilton or Mansel, let religious belief alone, as pertaining to the unknown and unknowable—which may be believed in as much as one likes; or it may “strip off,” as Spencer does, “determinations from a religion,” by which it is distinguished from other religions, and show their truth to consist in a common doctrine held by all, to-wit: “The truth of things is unknowable.”

Thus the scientific man can baffle all attacks from the religious standpoint; nay, he can even elicit the most unbounded approval, while he saps the entire structure of Christianity.

Says Spencer (p. 46): “Science and Religion agree in this, that the power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable.” He goes on to show that though this harmony exists, yet it is broken by the inconsistency of Religion: “For every religion, setting out with the tacit assertion of a mystery, forthwith proceeds to give some solution of this mystery, and so asserts that it is not a mystery passing human comprehension.” In this confession he admits that all religions agree in professing to reveal the solution of the Mystery of the Universe to man; and they agree, moreover, that man, as simply a being of sense and reflection, cannot comprehend the revelation; but that he must first pass through a profound mediation—be regenerated, not merely in his heart, but in intellect also. The misty limitations (“vagueness and confusion”) of the imagination must give way to the purifying dialectic of pure thought before one can see the Eternal Verities.

These revelations profess to make known the nature of the Absolute. They call the Absolute “Him,” “Infinite,” “Self-created,” “Self-existent,” “Personal,” and ascribe to this “Him” attributes implying profound mediation. All definite forms of religion, all definite theology, must at once be discarded according to Spencer’s principle. Self-consciousness, even, is regarded as impossible by him (p. 65): “Clearly a true cognition of self implies a state in which the knowing and known are one, in which subject and object are identified; and this Mr. Mansel rightly holds to be the annihilation of both.” He considers it a degradation (p. 109) to apply personality to God: “Is it not possible that there is a mode of being as much transcending intelligence and will as these transcend mechanical motion?” And again (p. 112) he holds that the mere “negation of absolute knowing contains more religion than all dogmatic theology.” (P. 121,) “All religions are envelopes of truth, which reveal to the lower and conceal to the higher.” (P. 66,) “Objective and subjective things are alike inscrutable in their substance and genesis.” “Ultimate religious and scientific ideas (p. 68) alike turn out to be mere symbols of the actual, and not cognitions of it.” (P. 69,) “We come to the negative result that the reality existing behind all appearances must ever be unknown.”

In these passages we see a dualism posited in this form: “Everything immediate is phenomenal, a manifestation of the hidden and inscrutable essence.” This essence is the unknown and unknowable; yet it manifests itself in the immediate or phenomenal.

The first stage of thought was unconscious that it dealt all the time with a mediated result (a dualism) while it assumed an immediate; that it asserted all truth to lie in the sensuous object, while it named at the same time “matter and force,” categories of reflection.

The second stage has got over that difficulty, but has fallen into another. For if the phenomenon manifested the essence, it could not be said to be “unknowable, hidden, and inscrutable.” But if the essence is not manifested by the phenomenon, then we have the so-called phenomenon as a self-existent, and therefore independent of the so-called essence, which stands coördinated to it as another existent, which cannot be known because it does not manifest itself to us. Hence the “phenomenon” is no phenomenon, or manifestation of aught but itself, and the “essence” is simply a fiction of the philosopher.

Hence his talk about essence is purely gratuitous, for there is not shown the need of one.

A dialectical consideration of essence and phenomenon will result as follows:

Essence and Phenomenon.

I. If essence is seized as independent or absolute being, it may be taken in two senses:

a. As entirely unaffected by “otherness” (or limitation) and entirely undetermined; and this would be pure nothing, for it cannot distinguish itself or be distinguished from pure nothing.

b. As relating to itself, and hence making itself a duality—becoming its own other; in this case the “other” is a vanishing one, for it is at the same time identical and non-identical—a process in which the essence may be said to appear or become phenomenal. The entire process is the absolute or self-related (and hence independent). It is determined, but by itself, and hence not in a finite manner.

II. The Phenomenon is thus seen to arise through the self-determination of essence, and has obviously the following characteristics:

a. It is the “other” of the essence, and yet the own self of the essence existing in this opposed manner, and thus self-nugatory; and this non-abiding character gives it the name of phenomenon (or that which merely appears, but is no permanent essence).

b. If this were simply another to the essence, and not the self-opposition of the same, then it would be through itself, and itself the essence in its first (or immediate) phase. But this is the essence only as negated, or as returned from the otherness.

c. This self-nugatoriness is seen to arise from the contradiction involved in its being other to itself, i. e. outside of its true being. Without this self-nugatoriness it would be an abiding, an essence itself, and hence no phenomenon; with this self-nugatoriness the phenomenon simply exhibits or “manifests” the essence; in fact, with the appearance and its negation taken together, we have before us a totality of essence and phenomenon.

III. Therefore: a. The phenomenal is such because it is not an abiding somewhat. It is dependent upon other or essence. b. Whatever it posesses belongs to that upon which it depends, i. e. belongs to essence. c. In the self-nugatoriness of the phenomenal we have the entire essence manifested.

This latter point is the important result, and may-be stated in a less strict and more popular form thus: The real world (so-called) is said to be in a state of change—origination and decay. Things pass away and others come in their places. Under this change, however, there is a permanent called Essence.

The imaginative thinking finds it impossible to realize such an abiding as exists through the decay of all external form, and hence pronounces it unknowable. But pure thought seizes it, and finds it a pure self-relation or process of return to itself, which accordingly has duality, thus: a. The positing or producing of a somewhat or an immediate, and, b. The cancelling of the same. In this duality of beginning and ceasing, this self-relation completes its circle, and is thus, c. the entire movement.

All categories of the understanding (cause and effect, matter and form, possibility, etc.) are found to contain this movement when dissolved. And hence they have self-determination for their presupposition and explanation. It is unnecessary to add that unless one gives up trying to imagine truth, that this is all very absurd reasoning. (At the end of the sixth book of Plato’s Republic, ch. xxi., and in the seventh book, ch. xiii., one may see how clearly this matter was understood two thousand, and more, years ago.)

To manifest or reveal is to make known; and hence to speak of the “manifestation of a hidden and inscrutable essence” is to speak of the making known of an unknowable.

Mr. Spencer goes on; no hypothesis of the universe is possible—creation not conceivable, for that would be something out of nothing—self-existence not conceivable, for that involves unlimited past time.

He holds that “all knowledge is relative,” for all explanation is the reducing of a cognition to a more general. He says, (p. 69,) “Of necessity, therefore, explanation must eventually bring us down to the inexplicable—the deepest truth which we can get at must be unaccountable.” This much valued insight has a positive side as well as the negative one usually developed:

I. (a.) To explain something we subsume it under a more general.

(b.) The “summum genus” cannot be subsumed, and

(c.) Hence is inexplicable.

II. But those who conclude from this that we base our knowledge ultimately upon faith (from the supposed fact than we cannot prove our premises) forget that—

(a.) If the subsuming process ends in an unknown, then all the subsuming has resulted in nothing; for to subsume something under an unknown does not explain it. (Plato’s Republic, Book VII, chap. xiii.)

(b.) The more general, however, is the more simple, and hence the “summum genus” is the purely simple—it is Being. But the simpler the clearer, and the pure simple is the absolutely clear.

(c.) At the “summum genus” subsumption becomes the principle of identity—being is being; and thus stated we have simple self-relation as the origin of all clearness and knowing whatsoever.

III. Hence it is seen that it is not the mere fact of subsumption that makes something clear, but rather it is the reduction of it to identity.

In pure being as the summum genus, the mind contemplates the pure form of knowing—“a is a,” or “a subject is a predicate”—(a is b). The pure “is” is the empty form of mental affirmation, the pure copula; and thus in the summum genus the mind recognizes the pure form of itself. All objectivity is at this point dissolved into the thinking, and hence the subsumption becomes identity—(being = ego, or “cogito, ergo sum”;) the process turns round and becomes synthetic, (“dialectic” or “genetic,” as called by some). From this it is evident that self-consciousness is the basis of all knowledge.

CHAPTER III.
THE “FIRST PRINCIPLES” OF THE “KNOWABLE.”

As might be expected from Spencer’s treatment of the unknowable, the knowable will prove a confused affair; especially since to the above-mentioned “inscrutability” of the absolute, he adds the doctrine of an “obscure consciousness of it,” holding, in fact, that the knowable is only a relative, and that it cannot be known without at the same time possessing a knowledge of the unknowable.

(P. 82) he says: “A thought involves relation, difference and likeness; whatever does not present each of them does not admit of cognition. And hence we may say that the unconditioned as presenting none of these, is trebly unthinkable.” And yet he says, (p. 96): “The relative is itself inconceivable except as related to a real non-relative.”

We will leave this infinite self-contradiction thus developed, and turn to the positions established concerning the knowable. They concern the nature of Force, Matter and Motion, and the predicates set up are “persistence,” “indestructibility” and similar.

THE KNOWABLE.

Although in the first part “conceivability” was shown to be utterly inadequate as a test of truth; that with it we could not even establish that the earth is round, or that space is infinitely continuous, yet here Mr. Spencer finds that inconceivability is the most convenient of all positive proofs.

The first example to be noticed is his proof of the compressibility of matter (p. 51): “It is an established mechanical truth that if a body moving at a given velocity, strikes an equal body at rest in such wise that the two move on together, their joint velocity will be but half that of the striking body. Now it is a law of which the negative is inconceivable, that in passing from any one degree of magnitude to another all intermediate degrees must be passed through. Or in the case before us, a body moving at velocity 4, cannot, by collision, be reduced to velocity 2, without passing through all velocities between 4 and 2. But were matter truly solid—were its units absolutely incompressible and in unbroken contact—this ‘law of continuity, as it is called, would be broken in every case of collision. For when, of two such units, one moving at velocity 4 strikes another at rest, the striking unit must have its velocity 4 instantaneously reduced to velocity 2; must pass from velocity 4 to velocity 2 without any lapse of time, and without passing through intermediate velocities; must be moving with velocities 4 and 2 at the same instant, which is impossible.” On page 57 he acknowledges that any transition from one rate of motion to another is inconceivable; hence it does not help the matter to “pass through intermediate velocities.” It is just as great a contradiction and just as inconceivable that velocity 4 should become velocity 3.9999+, as it is that it should become velocity 2; for no change whatever of the motion can be thought (as he confesses) without having two motions in one time. Motion, in fact, is the synthesis of place and time, and cannot be comprehended except as their unity. The argument here quoted is only adduced by Mr. S. for the purpose of antithesis to other arguments on the other side as weak as itself.

On page 241, Mr. Spencer deals with the question of the destructibility of matter: “The annihilation of matter is unthinkable for the same reason that the creation of matter is unthinkable.” (P. 54): “Matter in its ultimate nature is as absolutely incomprehensible as space and time.” The nature of matter is unthinkable, its creation or destructibility is unthinkable, and in this style of reasoning we can add that its indestructibility is likewise unthinkable; in fact the argument concerning self-existence will apply here. (P. 31): “Self-existence necessarily means existence without a beginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is to form a conception of existence without a beginning. Now by no mental effort can we do this. To conceive existence through infinite past time, implies the conception of infinite past time, which is an impossibility.” Thus, too, we might argue in a strain identical; indestructibility implies existence through infinite future time, but by no mental effort can infinite time be conceived. And thus, too, we prove and disprove the persistence of force and motion. When occasion requires, the ever-convenient argument of “inconceivability” enters. It reminds one of Sir Wm. Hamilton’s “imbecility” upon which are based “sundry of the most important phenomena of intelligence,” among which he mentions the category of causality. If causality is founded upon imbecility, and all experience upon it, it follows that all empirical knowledge rests upon imbecility.

On page 247, our author asserts that the first law of motion “is in our day being merged in the more general one, that motion, like matter, is indestructible.” It is interesting to observe that this so-called “First law of motion” rests on no better basis than very crude reflection.

“When not influenced by external forces, a moving body will go on in a straight line with a uniform velocity,” is Spencer’s statement of it.

This abstract, supposed law has necessitated much scaffolding in Natural Philosophy that is otherwise entirely unnecessary; it contradicts the idea of momentum, and is thus refuted:

I. A body set in motion continues in motion after the impulse has ceased from without, for the reason that it retains momentum.

II. Momentum is the product of weight by velocity, and weight is the attraction of the body in question to another body external to it. If all bodies external to the moving body were entirely removed, the latter would have no weight, and hence the product of weight by velocity would be zero.

III. The “external influences” referred to in the so-called “law,” mean chiefly attraction. Since no body could have momentum except through weight, another name for attraction, it follows that all free motion has reference to another body, and hence is curvilinear; thus we are rid of that embarrassing “straight line motion” which gives so much trouble in mechanics. It has all to be reduced back again through various processes to curvilinear movement.

We come, finally, to consider the central point of this system:

THE CORRELATION OF FORCES.

Speaking of persistence of force, Mr. Spencer concedes (p. 252) that this doctrine is not demonstrable from experience. He says (p. 254): “Clearly the persistence of force is an ultimate truth of which no inductive proof is possible.” (P. 255): “By the persistence of force we really mean the persistence of some power which transcends our knowledge and conception.” (P. 257): “The indestructibility of matter and the continuity of motion we saw to be really corollaries from the impossibility of establishing in thought a relation between something and nothing.” (Thus what was established as a mental impotence is now made to have objective validity.) “Our inability to conceive matter and motion destroyed is our inability to suppress consciousness itself.” (P. 258): “Whoever alleges that the inability to conceive a beginning or end of the universe is a negative result of our mental structure, cannot deny that our consciousness of the universe as persistent is a positive result of our mental structure. And this persistence of the universe is the persistence of that unknown cause, power, or force, which is manifested to us through all phenomena.” This “positive result of our mental structure” is said to rest on our “inability to conceive the limitation of consciousness” which is “simply the obverse of our inability to put an end to the thinking subject while still continuing to think.” (P. 257): “To think of something becoming nothing, would involve that this substance of consciousness having just existed under a given form, should next assume no form, or should cease to be consciousness.”

It will be observed here that he is endeavoring to solve the First Antinomy of Kant, and that his argument in this place differs from Kant’s proof of the “Antithesis” in this, that while Kant proves that “The world [or universe] has no beginning,” etc., by the impossibility of the origination of anything in a “void time,” that Mr. Spencer proves the same thing by asserting it to be a “positive result of our mental structure,” and then proceeds to show that this is a sort of “inability” which has a subjective explanation; it is, according to him, merely the “substance of consciousness” objectified and regarded as the law of reality.

But how is it with the “Thesis” to that Antinomy, “The world has a beginning in time?” Kant proves this apagogically by showing the absurdity of an “infinite series already elapsed.” That our author did not escape the contradiction has already been shown in our remarks upon the “indestructibility of matter.” While he was treating of the unknowable it was his special province to prove that self-existence is unthinkable. (P. 31): He says it means “existence without a beginning,” and “to conceive existence through infinite past time, implies the conception of infinite past time, which is an impossibility.” Thus we have the Thesis of the Antinomy supported in his doctrine of the “unknowable,” and the antithesis of the same proved in the doctrine of the knowable.

We shall next find him involved with Kant’s Third Antinomy.

The doctrine of the correlation is stated in the following passages:

(P. 280): “Those modes of the unknowable, which we call motion, heat, light, chemical affinity, etc., are alike transformable into each other, and into those modes of the unknowable which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, thought: these, in their turns, being directly or indirectly re-transformable into the original shapes. That no idea or feeling arises, save as a result of some physical force expended in producing it, is fast becoming a common-place of science; and whoever duly weighs the evidence, will see that nothing but an overwhelming bias in favor of a preconceived theory can explain its non-acceptance. How this metamorphosis takes place—how a force existing as motion, heat, or light, can become a mode of consciousness—how it is possible for aërial vibrations to generate the sensation we call sound, or for the forces liberated by chemical changes in the brain to give rise to emotion—these are mysteries which it is impossible to fathom.” (P. 284): “Each manifestation of force can be interpreted only as the effect of some antecedent force; no matter whether it be an inorganic action, an animal movement, a thought, or a feeling. Either this must be conceded, or else it must be asserted that our successive states of consciousness are self-created.” “Either mental energies as well as bodily ones are quantitatively correlated to certain energies expended in their production, and to certain other energies they initiate; or else nothing must become something and something, nothing. Since persistence of force, being a datum of consciousness, cannot be denied, its unavoidable corollary must be accepted.”

On p. 294 he supports the doctrine that “motion takes the direction of the least resistance,” mentally as well as physically.

Here are some of the inferences to be drawn from the passages quoted:

1. Every act is determined from without, and hence does not belong to the subject in which it manifests itself.

2. To change the course of a force, is to make another direction “that of the least resistance,” or to remove or diminish a resistance.

3. But to change a resistance requires force, which (in motion) must act in “the direction of the least resistance,” and hence it is entirely determined from without, and governed by the disposition of the forces it meets.

4. Hence, of will, it is an absurdity to talk; freedom or moral agency is an impossible phantom.

5. That there is self-determination in self-consciousness—that it is “self-created”—is to Mr. Spencer the absurd alternative which at once turns the scale in favor of the doctrine that mental phenomena are the productions of external forces.

After this, what are we to say of the following? (P. 501): “Notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary, there will probably have arisen in not a few minds the conviction that the solutions which have been given, along with those to be derived from them, are essentially materialistic. Let none persist in these misconceptions.” (P. 502): “Their implications are no more materialistic than they are spiritualistic, and no more spiritualistic than they are materialistic.”

If we hold these positions by the side of Kant’s Third Antinomy, we shall see that they all belong to the proof of the “Antithesis,” viz: “There is no freedom, but everything in the world happens according to the laws of nature.” The “Thesis,” viz: “That a causality of freedom is necessary to account fully for the phenomena of the world,” he has not anywhere supported. We find, in fact, only those thinkers who have in some measure mastered the third phase of culture in thought, standing upon the basis presented by Kant in the Thesis. The chief point in the Thesis may be stated as follows: 1. If everything that happens presupposes a previous condition, (which the law of causality states,) 2. This previous condition cannot be a permanent (or have been always in existence); for, if so, its consequence, or the effect, would have always existed. Thus the previous condition must be a thing which has happened. 3. With this the whole law of causality collapses; for (a) since each cause is an effect, (b) its determining power escapes into a higher member of the series, and, (c) unless the law changes, wholly vanishes; there result an indefinite series of effects with no cause; each member of the series is a dependent, has its being in another, which again has its being in another, and hence cannot support the subsequent term.

Hence it is evident that this Antinomy consists, first: in the setting up of the law of causality as having absolute validity, which is the antithesis. Secondly, the experience is made that such absolute law of causality is a self-nugatory one, and thus it is to be inferred that causality, to be at all, presupposes an origination in a “self-moved,” as Plato calls it. Aristotle (Metaphysics, xi. 6-7, and ix. 8) exhibits this ultimate as the “self-active,” and the Scholastics take the same, under the designation “actus purus,” for the definition of God.

The Antinomy thus reduced gives:

I. Thesis: Self-determination must lie at the basis of all causality, otherwise causality cannot be at all.

II. Antithesis: If there is self-determination, “the unity of experience (which leads us to look for a cause) is destroyed, and hence no such case could arise in experience.”

In comparing the two proofs it is at once seen that they are of different degrees of universality. The argument of the Thesis is based upon the nature of the thing itself, i. e. a pure thought; while that of the Antithesis loses sight of the idea of “efficient” cause, and seeks mere continuity in the sequence of time, and thus exhibits itself as the second stage of thought, which leans on the staff of fancy, i. e. mere representative thinking. This “unity of experience,” as Kant calls it, is the same thing, stated in other words, that Spencer refers to as the “positive result of our mental structure.” In one sense those are true antinomies—those of Kant, Hamilton, et al.—viz. in this: that the “representative” stage of thinking finds itself unable to shake off the sensuous picture, and think “sub quadam specie æternitatis.” To the mind disciplined to the third stage of thought, these are no antinomies; Spinoza, Leibnitz, Plato and Aristotle are not confused by them. The Thesis, properly stated, is a true universal, and exhibits its own truth, as that upon which the law of causality rests; and hence the antithesis itself—less universal—resting upon the law of causality, is based upon the Thesis. Moreover, the Thesis does not deny an infinite succession in time and space, it only states that there must be an efficient cause—just what the law of causality states, but shows, in addition, that this efficient cause must be a “self-determined.”

On page 282 we learn that, “The solar heat is the final source of the force manifested by society.” “It (the force of society) is based on animal and vegetable products, and these in turn are dependent on the light and heat of the sun.”

As an episode in this somewhat abstract discussion, it may be diverting to notice the question of priority of discovery, touched upon in the following note (p. 454): “Until I recently consulted his ‘Outlines of Astronomy’ on another question, I was not aware that, so far back as 1833, Sir John Herschel had enunciated the doctrine that ‘the sun’s rays are the ultimate source of almost every motion which takes place on the surface of the earth.’ He expressly includes all geologic, meteorologic, and vital actions; as also those which we produce by the combustion of coal. The late George Stephenson appears to have been wrongly credited with this last idea.”

In order to add to the thorough discussion of this important question, we wish to suggest the claims of Thomas Carlyle, who, as far back as 1830, wrote the following passage in his Sartor Resartus (Am. ed. pp. 55-6): “Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: ‘If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the Universe, God is there.’ Thou, too, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no psalmist, but a prosaist, knowing God only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at least force is not? The drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; already, on the wings of the north wind, it is nearing the tropic of Cancer. How it came to evaporate and not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless, without force, and dead?

“As I rode through the Schwartzwald, I said to myself: That little fire which glows starlike across the dark-growing (nachtende) moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost horseshoe—is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the whole universe, or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was primarily kindled at the sun; is fed by air that circulates from beyond Noah’s deluge, from beyond the Dog star; it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre in the great vital system of immensity.”

We have, finally, to consider the correlation theory in connection with equilibrium.

I. Motion results from destroyed equilibrium. The whole totality does not correspond to itself, its ideal and real contradict each other. The movement is the restoring of the equilibrium, or the bringing into unity of the ideal and real. To illustrate: a spring (made of steel, rubber, or any elastic material) has a certain form in which, it may exist without tension; this may be called the ideal shape, or simply the ideal. If the spring is forced to assume another shape, its real shape becomes different from the ideal; its equilibrium is destroyed, and force is manifested as a tendency to restore the equilibrium (or unity of the ideal and real). Generalize this: all forces have the same nature; (a) expansive forces arise from the ideal existing without—a gas, steam, for example, ideally takes up a more extended space than it has really; it expands to fill it. Or (b) contractive forces: the multiplicity ideally exists within; e. g. attraction of gravitation; matter trying to find the centre of the earth, its ideal. The will acts in this way: The ideal is changed first, and draws the real after it. I first destroy, in thought and will, the identity of ideal and real; the tension resulting is force. Thinking, since it deals with the universal (or the potential and the actual) is an original source of force, and, as will result in the sequel from a reverse analysis (see below, V. 3, c) the only source of force.

II. Persistence of force requires an unrestorable equilibrium; in moving to restore one equilibrium, it must destroy another—its equivalent.

III. But this contradicts the above developed conception of force as follows: (a) Since force results from destroyed equilibrium, it follows (b) that it requires as much force to destroy the equilibrium as is developed in the restoring of it (and this notion is the basis of the correlation theory). But (c) if the first equilibrium (already destroyed) can only be restored by the destroying of another equal to the same, it has already formed an equilibrium with the second, and the occasion of the motion is removed.

If two forces are equal and opposed, which will give way?

By this dialectic consideration of force, we learn the insufficiency of the theory of correlation as the ultimate truth. Instead of being “the sole truth, which transcends experience by underlying it” (p. 258), we are obliged to confess that this “persistence of force” rests on the category of causality; its thin disguise consists in the substitution of other words for the metaphysical expression, “Every effect must be equal to its cause.” And this, when tortured in the crucible, confesses that the only efficient cause is “causi sui;” hence the effect is equal to its cause, because it is the cause.

And the correlation theory results in showing that force cannot be, unless self-originated.

That self-determination is the inevitable result, no matter what hypothesis be assumed, is also evident. Taking all counter-hypotheses and generalizing them, we have this analysis:

I. Any and every being is determined from without through another. (This theorem includes all anti-self-determination doctrines.)

II. It results from this that any and every being is dependent upon another and is a finite one; it cannot be isolated without destroying it. Hence it results that every being is an element of a whole that includes it as a subordinate moment.

III. Dependent being, as a subordinate element, cannot be said to support any thing attached to it, for its own support is not in itself but in another, namely, the whole that includes it. From this it results that no dependent being can depend upon another dependent being, but rather upon the including whole.

The including whole is therefore not a dependent; since it is for itself, and each element is determined through it, and for it, it may be called the negative unity (or the unity which negates the independence of the elements).

Remark.—A chain of dependent beings collapses into one dependent being. Dependence is not converted into independence by simple multiplication. All dependence is thus an element of an independent whole.

IV. What is the character of this independent whole, this negative unity? “Character” means determination, and we are prepared to say that its determination cannot be through another, for then it would be a dependent, and we should be referred again to the whole, including it. Its determination by which the multiplicity of elements arises is hence its own self-determination. Thus all finitude and dependence presupposes as its condition, self-determination.

V. Self-determination more closely examined exhibits some remarkable results, (which will throw light on the discussion of “Essence and Phenomena” above):

(1.) It is “causa sui;” active and passive; existing dually as determining and determined; this self-diremption produces a distinction in itself which is again cancelled.

(2.) As determiner (or active, or cause), it is the pure universal—the possibility of any determinations. But as determined (passive or effect) it is the special, the particular, the one-sided reality that enters into change.

(3.) But it is “negative unity” of these two sides, and hence an individual. The pure universal whose negative relation to itself as determiner makes the particular, completes itself to individuality through this act.

(a.) Since its pure universality is the substrate of its determination, and at the same time a self-related activity (or negativity), it at once becomes its own object.

(b.) Its activity (limiting or determining)—a pure negativity—turned to itself as object, dissolves the particular in the universal, and thus continually realizes its subjectivity.

(c.) Hence these two sides of the negative unity are more properly subject and object, and since they are identical (causa sui) we may name the result “self-consciousness.”

The absolute truth of all truths, then, is that self-consciousness is the form of the Total. God is a Person, or rather the Person. Through His self-consciousness (thought of Himself) he makes Himself an object to Himself (Nature), and in the same act cancels it again into His own image (finite spirit), and thus comprehends Himself in this self-revelation.

Two remarks must be made here: (1.) This is not “Pantheism;” for it results that God is a Person; and secondly Nature is a self-cancelling side in the process; thirdly, the so-called “finite spirit,” or man, is immortal, since otherwise he would not be the last link of the chain; but such he is, because he can develop out of his sensuous life to pure thought, unconditioned by time and space, and hence he can surpass any fixed “higher intelligence,” no matter how high created.

(2.) It is the result that all profound thinkers have arrived at.

Aristotle (Metaphysics XI. 6 & 7) carries this whole question of motion back to its presupposition in a mode of treatment, “sub quadam specie æternitatis.” He concludes thus: “The thinking, however, of that which is purely for itself, is a thinking of that which is most excellent in and for itself.

“The thinking thinks itself, however, through participation in that which is thought by it; it becomes this object in its own activity, in such a manner that the subject and object are identical. For the apprehending of thought and essence is what constitutes reason. The activity of thinking produces that which is perceived; so that the activity is rather that which Reason seems to have of a divine nature; speculation [pure thinking] is the most excellent employment; if, then, God is always engaged in this, as we are at times, He is admirable, and if in a higher degree, more admirable. But He is in this pure thinking, and life too belongs to Him; for the activity of thought is life. He is this activity. The activity, returning into itself, is the most excellent and eternal life. We say, therefore, that God is an eternal and the best living being. So that life and duration are uninterrupted and eternal; for this is God.”

When one gets rid of those “images of sense” called by Spencer “conceivables,” and arrives at the “unpicturable notions of intelligence,” he will find it easy to reduce the vexed antinomies of force, matter, motion, time, space and causality; arriving at the fundamental principle—self-determination—he will be able to make a science of Biology. The organic realm will not yield to dualistic Reflection. Goethe is the great pioneer of the school of physicists that will spring out of the present activity of Reflection when it shall have arrived at a perception of its method.

Resumé.—Mr. Spencer’s results, so far as philosophy is concerned, may be briefly summed up under four general heads: 1. Psychology. 2. Ontology. 3. Theology. 4. Cosmology.

PSYCHOLOGY.

(1.) Conception is a mere picture in the mind; therefore what cannot be pictured cannot be conceived; therefore the Infinite, the Absolute, God, Essence, Matter, Motion, Force—anything, in short, that involves mediation—cannot be conceived; hence they are unknowable.

(2.) Consciousness is self-knowing; but that subject and object are one, is impossible. We can neither know ourselves nor any real being.

(3.) All reasoning or explaining is the subsuming of a somewhat under a more general category; hence the highest category is unsubsumed, and hence inexplicable.

(4.) Our intellectual faculties may be improved to a certain extent, and beyond this, no amount of training can avail anything. (Biology, vol. I, p. 188.)

(5.) The “substance of consciousness” is the basis of our ideas of persistence of Force, Matter, etc.

(6.) All knowing is relative; our knowledge of this fact, however, is not relative but absolute.

ONTOLOGY.

(1.) All that we know is phenomenal. The reality passes all understanding. In the phenomenon the essence is “manifested,” but still it is not revealed thereby; it remains hidden behind it, inscrutable to our perception.

(2.) And yet, since all our knowledge is relative, we have an obscure knowledge of the hidden and inscrutable essence of the correlate of our knowledge of phenomena. We know that it exists.

(3.) Though what is inconceivable is for that reason unknowable, yet we know that persistence belongs to force, motion and matter; it is a positive result of our “mental structure,” although we cannot conceive either destructibility or indestructibility.

(4.) Though self-consciousness is an impossibility, yet it sometimes occurs, since the “substance of consciousness” is the object of consciousness when it decides upon the persistence of the Universe, and of Force, Matter, etc.

THEOLOGY.

The Supreme Being is unknown and unknowable; unrevealed and unrevealable, either naturally or supernaturally; for to reveal, requires that some one shall comprehend what is revealed. The sole doctrine of Religion of great value is the doctrine that God transcends the human intellect. When Religion professes to reveal Him to man and declare His attributes, then it is irreligious. Though God is the unknown, yet personality, reason, consciousness, etc., are degrading when applied to Him. The “Thirty-nine Articles” should be condensed into one, thus: “There is an Unknown which I know that I cannot know.“

“Religions are envelopes of truth which reveal to the lower, and conceal to the higher.” “They are modes of manifestation of the unknowable.”

COSMOLOGY.

“Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; through continuous differentiations and integrations.” This is the law of the Universe. All progresses to an equilibration—to a moving equilibrium.

INTRODUCTION TO FICHTE’S SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE.
TRANSLATED BY A. E. KROEGER.

[Note.—In presenting this “Introduction” to the readers of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, we believe we afford them the easiest means of gaining an insight into Fichte’s great work on the Science of Knowledge. The present introduction was written by Fichte in 1797, three years after the first publication of his full system. It is certainly written in a remarkably clear and vigorous style, so as to be likely to arrest the attention even of those who have but little acquaintance with the rudiments of the Science of Philosophy. This led us to give it the preference over other essays, also written by Fichte, as Introductions to his Science of Knowledge. A translation of the Science of Knowledge, by Mr. Kroeger, is at present in course of publication in New York. This article is, moreover, interesting as being a more complete unfolding of the doctrine of Plato upon Method, heretofore announced.—Ed.]

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

De re, quæ agitur, petimus, ut homines, eam non opinionem, sed opus esse, cogitent ac pro certo habeant, non sectæ nos alicujus, aut placiti, sed utilitatis et amplitudinis humanæ fundamenta moliri. Deinde, ut, suis commodis æqui, in commune consulant, et ipsi in partem veniant.—Baco de Verulamio.

The author of the Science of Knowledge was soon convinced, through a slight acquaintance with the philosophical literature since the appearance of Kant’s Critiques, that the object of this great man—to effect a total reform in the study of philosophy, and hence of all science—had resulted in a failure, since not one of his numerous successors appeared to understand what he had really spoken of. The author believed that he had understood the latter; he resolved to devote his life to a representation—totally independent from Kant’s—of that great discovery, and he will not give up this resolve. Whether he will succeed better in making himself understood to his age, time alone can show. At all events, he knows that nothing true and useful, which has once been given to mankind, is lost, though only remote posterity should learn how to use it.

Determined by my academical vocation, I wrote, in the first instance, for my hearers, with whom it was in my power to explain myself in words until I was understood.

This is not the place to testify how much cause I have to be satisfied with my efforts, and to entertain, of some of my students, the best hopes for science. That book of mine has also become known elsewhere, and there are various opinions afloat concerning it amongst the learned. A judgment, which even pretended to bring forth arguments, I have neither read nor heard, except from my students; but I have both heard and read a vast amount of derision, denunciation, and the general assurance that everybody is heartily opposed to this doctrine, and the confession that no one can understand it. As far as the latter is concerned, I will cheerfully assume all the blame, until others shall represent it so as to make it comprehensible, when students will doubtless discover that my representation was not so very bad after all; or I will assume it altogether and unconditionally, if the reader thereby should be encouraged to study the present representation, in which I shall endeavor to be as clear as possible. I shall continue these representations so long as I am convinced that I do not write altogether in vain. But I write in vain when nobody examines my argument.

I still owe my readers the following explanations: I have always said, and say again, that my system is the same as Kant’s. That is to say, it contains the same view of the subject, but is totally independent of Kant’s mode of representation. I have said this, not to cover myself by a great authority, or to support my doctrine except by itself, but in order to say the truth and to be just.

Perhaps it may be proven after twenty years. Kant is as yet a sealed book, and what he has been understood to teach, is exactly what he intended to eradicate.

My writings are neither to explain Kant, nor to be explained by his; they must stand by themselves, and Kant must not be counted in the game at all. My object is—let me say it frankly—not to correct or amplify such philosophical reflections as may be current, be they called anti-Kant or Kant, but to totally eradicate them, and to effect a complete revolution in the mode of thinking regarding these subjects, so that hereafter the Object will be posited and determined by Knowledge (Reason), and not vice versa; and this seriously, not merely in words.

Let no one object: “If this system is true, certain axioms cannot be upheld,” for I do not intend that anything should be upheld which this system refutes.

Again: “I do not understand this book,” is to me a very uninteresting and insignificant confession. No one can and shall understand my writings, without having studied them; for they do not contain a lesson heretofore taught, but something—since Kant has not been understood—altogether new to the age.

Censure without argument tells me simply that my doctrine does not please; and this confession is again very unimportant; for the question is not at all, whether it pleases you or not, but whether it has been proven. In the present sketch I write only for those, in whom there still dwells an inner sense of love for truth; who still value science and conviction, and who are impelled by a lively zeal to seek truth. With those, who, by long spiritual slavery, have lost with the faith in their own conviction their faith in the conviction of others; who consider it folly if anybody attempts to seek truth for himself; who see nothing in science but a comfortable mode of subsistence; who are horrified at every proposition to enlarge its boundaries involving as a new labor, and who consider no means disgraceful by which they can hope to suppress him who makes such a proposition,—with those I have nothing to do.

I should be sorry if they understood me. Hitherto this wish of mine has been realized; and I hope, even now, that these present lines will so confuse them that they can perceive nothing more in them than mere words, while that which represents their mind is torn hither and thither by their ill-concealed rage.

INTRODUCTION.

I. Attend to thyself; turn thine eye away from all that surrounds thee and into thine own inner self! Such is the first task imposed upon the student by Philosophy. We speak of nothing that is without thee, but merely of thyself.

The slightest self-observation must show every one a remarkable difference between the various immediate conditions of his consciousness, which we may also call representations. For some of them appear altogether dependent upon our freedom, and we cannot possibly believe that there is without us anything corresponding to them. Our imagination, our will, appears to us as free. Others, however, we refer to a Truth as their model, which is held to be firmly fixed, independent of us; and in determining such representations, we find ourselves conditioned by the necessity of their harmony with this Truth. In the knowledge of them we do not consider ourselves free, as far as their contents are concerned. In short: while some of our representations are accompanied by the feeling of freedom, others are accompanied by the feeling of necessity.

Reasonably the question cannot arise—why are the representations dependent upon our freedom determined in precisely this manner, and not otherwise? For in supposing them to be dependent upon our freedom, all application of the conception of a ground is rejected; they are thus, because I so fashioned them, and if I had fashioned them differently, they would be otherwise.

But it is certainly a question worthy of reflection—what is the ground of the system of those representations which are accompanied by the feeling of necessity and of that feeling of necessity itself? To answer this question is the object of philosophy; and, in my opinion, nothing is philosophy but the Science which solves this problem. The system of those representations, which are accompanied by the feeling of necessity, is also called Experience—internal as well as external experience. Philosophy, therefore, to say the same thing in other words, has to find the ground of all Experience.

Only three objections can be raised against this. Somebody might deny that representations, accompanied by the feeling of necessity, and referred to a Truth determined without any action of ours, do ever occur in our consciousness. Such a person would either deny his own knowledge, or be altogether differently constructed from other men; in which latter case his denial would be of no concern to us. Or somebody might say: the question is completely unanswerable, we are in irremovable ignorance concerning it, and must remain so. To enter into argument with such a person is altogether superfluous. The best reply he can receive is an actual answer to the question, and then all he can do is to examine our answer, and tell us why and in what matters it does not appear satisfactory to him. Finally, somebody might quarrel about the designation, and assert: “Philosophy is something else than what you have stated above, or at least something else besides.” It might be easily shown to such a one, that scholars have at all times designated exactly what we have just stated to be Philosophy, and that whatever else he might assert to be Philosophy, has already another name, and that if this word signifies anything at all, it must mean exactly this Science. But as we are not inclined to enter upon any dispute about words, we, for our part, have already given up the name of Philosophy, and have called the Science which has the solution of this problem for its object, the Science of Knowledge.

II. Only when speaking of something, which we consider accidental, i. e. which we suppose might also have been otherwise, though it was not determined by freedom, can we ask for its ground; and by this very asking for its ground does it become accidental to the questioner. To find the ground of anything accidental means, to find something else, from the determinedness of which it can be seen why the accidental, amongst the various conditions it might have assumed, assumed precisely the one it did. The ground lies—by the very thinking of a ground—beyond its Grounded, and both are, in so far as they are Ground and Grounded, opposed to each other, related to each other, and thus the latter is explained from the former.

Now Philosophy is to discover the ground of all experience; hence its object lies necessarily beyond all Experience. This sentence applies to all Philosophy, and has been so applied always heretofore, if we except these latter days of Kant’s misconstruers and their facts of consciousness, i. e. of inner experience.

No objection can be raised to this paragraph; for the premise of our conclusion is a mere analysis of the above-stated conception of Philosophy, and from the premise the conclusion is drawn. If somebody should wish to remind us that the conception of a ground must be differently explained, we can, to be sure, not prevent him from forming another conception of it, if he so chooses; but we declare, on the strength of our good right, that we, in the above description of Philosophy, wish to have nothing else understood by that word. Hence, if it is not to be so understood, the possibility of Philosophy, as we have described it, must be altogether denied, and such a denial we have replied to in our first section.

III. The finite intelligence has nothing beyond experience; experience contains the whole substance of its thinking. The philosopher stands necessarily under the same conditions, and hence it seems impossible that he can elevate himself beyond experience.

But he can abstract; i. e. he can separate by the freedom of thinking what in experience is united. In Experience, the Thing—that which is to be determined in itself independent of our freedom, and in accordance with which our knowledge is to shape itself—and the Intelligence—which is to obtain a knowledge of it—are inseparably united. The philosopher may abstract from both, and if he does, he has abstracted from Experience and elevated himself above it. If he abstracts from the first, he retains an intelligence in itself, i. e. abstracted from its relation to experience; if he abstract from the latter, he retains the Thing in itself, i. e. abstracted from the fact that it occurs in experience; and thus retains the Intelligence in itself, or the “Thing in itself,” as the explanatory ground of Experience. The former mode of proceeding is called Idealism, the latter Dogmatism.

Only these two philosophical systems—and of that these remarks should convince everybody—are possible. According to the first system the representations, which are accompanied by the feeling of necessity, are productions of the Intelligence, which must be presupposed in their explanation; according to the latter system they are the productions of a thing in itself which must be presupposed to explain them. If anybody desired to deny this, he would have to prove that there is still another way to go beyond experience than the one by means of abstraction, or that the consciousness of experience contains more than the two components just mentioned.

Now in regard to the first, it will appear below, it is true, that what we have here called Intelligence does, indeed, occur in consciousness under another name, and hence is not altogether produced by abstraction; but it will at the same time be shown that the consciousness of it is conditioned by an abstraction, which, however, occurs naturally to mankind.

We do not at all deny that it is possible to compose a whole system from fragments of these incongruous systems, and that this illogical labor has often been undertaken; but we do deny that more than these two systems are possible in a logical course of proceeding.

IV. Between the object—(we shall call the explanatory ground of experience, which a philosophy asserts, the object of that philosophy, since it appears to be only through and for such philosophy)—between the object of Idealism and that of Dogmatism there is a remarkable distinction in regard to their relation to consciousness generally. All whereof I am conscious is called object of consciousness. There are three ways in which the object can be related to consciousness. Either it appears to have been produced by the representation, or as existing without any action of ours; and in the latter case, as either also determined in regard to its qualitativeness, or as existing merely in regard to its existence, while determinable in regard to its qualitativeness by the free intelligence.

The first relation applies merely to an imaginary object; the second merely to an object of Experience; the third applies only to an object, which we shall at once proceed to describe.

I can determine myself by freedom to think, for instance, the Thing in itself of the Dogmatists. Now if I am to abstract from the thought and look simply upon myself, I myself become the object of a particular representation. That I appear to myself as determined in precisely this manner, and none other, e. g. as thinking, and as thinking of all possible thoughts—precisely this Thing in itself, is to depend exclusively upon my own freedom of self-determination; I have made myself such a particular object out of my own free will. I have not made myself; on the contrary, I am forced to think myself in advance as determinable through this self-determination. Hence I am myself my own object, the determinateness of which, under certain conditions, depends altogether upon the intelligence, but the existence of which must always be presupposed. Now this very “I” is the object of Idealism. The object of this system does not occur actually as something real in consciousness, not as a Thing in itself—for then Idealism would cease to be what it is, and become Dogmatism—but as “I” in itself; not as an object of Experience—for it is not determined, but is exclusively determinable through my freedom, and without this determination it would be nothing, and is really not at all—but as something beyond all Experience.

The object of Dogmatism, on the contrary, belongs to the objects of the first class, which are produced solely by free Thinking. The Thing in itself is a mere invention, and has no reality at all. It does not occur in Experience, for the system of Experience is nothing else than Thinking accompanied by the feeling of necessity, and can not even be said to be anything else by the dogmatist, who, like every philosopher, has to explain its cause. True, the dogmatist wants to obtain reality for it through the necessity of thinking it as ground of all experience, and would succeed, if he could prove that experience can be, and can be explained only by means of it. But this is the very thing in dispute, and he cannot presuppose what must first be proven.

Hence the object of Idealism has this advantage over the object of Dogmatism, that it is not to be deduced as the explanatory ground of Experience—which would be a contradiction, and change this system itself into a part of Experience—but that it is, nevertheless, to be pointed out as a part of consciousness; whereas, the object of Dogmatism can pass for nothing but a mere invention, which obtains validity only through the success of the system.

This we have said merely to promote a clearer insight into the distinction between the two systems, but not to draw from it conclusions against the latter system. That the object of every philosophy, as explanatory ground of Experience, must lie beyond all experience, is required by the very nature of Philosophy, and is far from being derogatory to a system. But we have as yet discovered no reasons why that object should also occur in a particular manner within consciousness.

If anybody should not be able to convince himself of the truth of what we have just said, this would not make his conviction of the truth of the whole system an impossibility, since what we have just said was only intended as a passing remark. Still in conformity to our plan we will also here take possible objections into consideration. Somebody might deny the asserted immediate self-consciousness in a free act of the mind. Such a one we should refer to the conditions stated above. This self-consciousness does not obtrude itself upon us, and comes not of its own accord; it is necessary first to act free, and next to abstract from the object, and attend to one’s self. Nobody can be forced to do this, and though he may say he has done it, it is impossible to say whether he has done it correctly. In one word, this consciousness cannot be proven to any one, but everybody must freely produce it within himself. Against the second assertion, that the “Thing in itself” is a mere invention, an objection could only be raised, because it were misunderstood.

V. Neither of these two systems can directly refute the other; for their dispute is a dispute about the first principle; each system—if you only admit its first axiom—proves the other one wrong; each denies all to the opposite, and these two systems have no point in common from which they might bring about a mutual understanding and reconciliation. Though they may agree on the words of a sentence, they will surely attach a different meaning to the words.

(Hence the reason why Kant has not been understood and why the Science of Knowledge can find no friends. The systems of Kant and of the Science of Knowledge are idealistic—not in the general indefinite, but in the just described definite sense of the word; but the modern philosophers are all of them dogmatists, and are firmly resolved to remain so. Kant was merely tolerated, because it was possible to make a dogmatist out of him; but the Science of Knowledge, which cannot be thus construed, is insupportable to these wise men. The rapid extension of Kant’s philosophy—when it was thus misunderstood—is not a proof of the profundity, but rather of the shallowness of the age. For in this shape it is the most wonderful abortion ever created by human imagination, and it does little honor to its defenders that they do not perceive this. It can also be shown that this philosophy was accepted so greedily only because people thought it would put a stop to all serious speculation, and continue the era of shallow Empiricism.)

First. Idealism cannot refute Dogmatism. True, the former system has the advantage, as we have already said, of being enabled to point out its explanatory ground of all experience—the free acting intelligence—as a fact of consciousness. This fact the dogmatist must also admit, for otherwise he would render himself incapable of maintaining the argument with his opponent; but he at the same time, by a correct conclusion from his principle, changes this explanatory ground into a deception and appearance, and thus renders it incapable of being the explanatory ground of anything else, since it cannot maintain its own existence in its own philosophy. According to the Dogmatist, all phenomena of our consciousness are productions of a Thing in itself, even our pretended determinations by freedom, and the belief that we are free. This belief is produced by the effect of the Thing upon ourselves, and the determinations, which we deduced from freedom, are also produced by it. The only difference is, that we are not aware of it in these cases, and hence ascribe it to no cause, i. e. to our freedom. Every logical dogmatist is necessarily a Fatalist; he does not deny the fact of consciousness, that we consider ourselves free—for this would be against reason;—but he proves from his principle that this is a false view. He denies the independence of the Ego, which is the basis of the Idealist, in toto, makes it merely a production of the Thing, an accidence of the World; and hence the logical dogmatist is necessarily also materialist. He can only be refuted from the postulate of the freedom and independence of the Ego; but this is precisely what he denies. Neither can the dogmatist refute the Idealist.

The principle of the former, the Thing in itself, is nothing, and has no reality, as its defenders themselves must admit, except that which it is to receive from the fact that experience can only be explained by it. But this proof the Idealist annihilates by explaining experience in another manner, hence by denying precisely what dogmatism assumes. Thus the Thing in itself becomes a complete Chimera; there is no further reason why it should be assumed; and with it the whole edifice of dogmatism tumbles down.

From what we have just stated, is moreover evident the complete irreconcilability of both systems; since the results of the one destroy those of the other. Wherever their union has been attempted the members would not fit together, and somewhere an immense gulf appeared which could not be spanned.

If any one were to deny this he would have to prove the possibility of such a union—of a union which consists in an everlasting composition of Matter and Spirit, or, which is the same, of Necessity and Liberty.

Now since, as far as we can see at present, both systems appear to have the same speculative value, but since both cannot stand together, nor yet either convince the other, it occurs as a very interesting question: What can possibly tempt persons who comprehend this—and to comprehend it is so very easy a matter—to prefer the one over the other; and why skepticism, as the total renunciation of an answer to this problem, does not become universal?

The dispute between the Idealist and the Dogmatist is, in reality, the question, whether the independence of the Ego is to be sacrificed to that of the Thing, or vice versa? What, then, is it, which induces sensible men to decide in favor of the one or the other?

The philosopher discovers from this point of view—in which he must necessarily place himself, if he wants to pass for a philosopher, and which, in the progress of Thinking, every man necessarily occupies sooner or later,—nothing farther than that he is forced to represent to himself both: that he is free, and that there are determined things outside of him. But it is impossible for man to stop at this thought; the thought of a representation is but a half-thought, a broken off fragment of a thought; something must be thought and added to it, as corresponding with the representation independent of it. In other words: the representation cannot exist alone by itself, it is only something in connection with something else, and in itself it is nothing. This necessity of thinking it is, which forces one from that point of view to the question: What is the ground of the representations? or, which is exactly the same, What is that which corresponds with them?

Now the representation of the independence of the Ego and that of the Thing can very well exist together; but not the independence itself of both. Only one can be the first, the beginning, the independent; the second, by the very fact of being the second, becomes necessarily dependent upon the first, with which it is to be connected—now, which of the two is to be made the first? Reason furnishes no ground for a decision; since the question concerns not the connecting of one link with another, but the commencement of the first link, which as an absolute first act is altogether conditional upon the freedom of Thinking. Hence the decision is arbitrary; and since this arbitrariness is nevertheless to have a cause, the decision is dependent upon inclination and interest. The last ground, therefore, of the difference between the Dogmatist and the Idealist is the difference of their interest.

The highest interest, and hence the ground of all other interest, is that which we feel for ourselves. Thus with the Philosopher. Not to lose his Self in his argumentation, but to retain and assert it, this is the interest which unconsciously guides all his Thinking. Now, there are two grades of mankind; and in the progress of our race, before the last grade has been universally attained, two chief kinds of men. The one kind is composed of those who have not yet elevated themselves to the full feeling of their freedom and absolute independence, who are merely conscious of themselves in the representation of outward things. These men have only a desultory consciousness, linked together with the outward objects, and put together out of their manifoldness. They receive a picture of their Self only from the Things, as from a mirror; for their own sake they cannot renounce their faith in the independence of those things, since they exist only together with these things. Whatever they are they have become through the outer World. Whosoever is only a production of the Things will never view himself in any other manner; and he is perfectly correct, so long as he speaks merely for himself and for those like him. The principle of the dogmatist is: Faith in the things, for their own sake; hence, mediated Faith in their own desultory self, as simply the result of the Things.

But whosoever becomes conscious of his self-existence and independence from all outward things—and this men can only become by making something of themselves, through their own Self, independently of all outward things—needs no longer the Things as supports of his Self, and cannot use them, because they annihilate his independence and turn it into an empty appearance. The Ego which he possesses, and which interests him, destroys that Faith in the Things; he believes in his independence, from inclination, and seizes it with affection. His Faith in himself is immediate.

From this interest the various passions are explicable, which mix generally with the defence of these philosophical systems. The dogmatist is in danger of losing his Self when his system is attacked; and yet he is not armed against this attack, because there is something within him which takes part with the aggressor; hence, he defends himself with bitterness and heat. The idealist, on the contrary, cannot well refrain from looking down upon his opponent with a certain carelessness, since the latter can tell him nothing which he has not known long ago and has cast away as useless. The dogmatist gets angry, misconstrues, and would persecute, if he had the power; the idealist is cold and in danger of ridiculing his antagonist.

Hence, what philosophy a man chooses depends entirely upon what kind of man he is; for a philosophical system is not a piece of dead household furniture, which you may use or not use, but is animated by the soul of the man who has it. Men of a naturally weak-minded character, or who have become weak-minded and crooked through intellectual slavery, scholarly luxury and vanity, will never elevate themselves to idealism.

You can show the dogmatist the insufficiency and inconsequence of his system, of which we shall speak directly; you can confuse and terrify him from all sides; but you cannot convince him, because he is unable to listen to and examine with calmness what he cannot tolerate. If Idealism should prove to be the only real Philosophy, it will also appear that a man must be born a philosopher, be educated to be one, and educate himself to be one; but that no human art (no external force) can make a philosopher out of him. Hence, this Science expects few proselytes from men who have already formed their character; if our Philosophy has any hopes at all, it entertains them rather from the young generation, the natural vigor of which has not yet been submerged in the weak-mindedness of the age.

VI. But dogmatism is totally incapable of explaining what it should explain, and this is decisive in regard to its insufficiency. It is to explain the representation of things, and proposes to explain them as an effect of the Things. Now, the dogmatist cannot deny what immediate consciousness asserts of this representation. What, then, does it assert thereof? It is not my purpose here to put in a conception what can only be gathered in immediate contemplation, nor to exhaust that which forms a great portion of the Science of Knowledge. I will merely recall to memory what every one, who has but firmly looked within himself, must long since have discovered.

The Intelligence, as such, sees itself, and this seeing of its self is immediately connected with all that appertains to the Intelligence; and in this immediate uniting of Being and Seeing the nature of the Intelligence consists. Whatever is in the Intelligence, whatever the Intelligence is itself, the Intelligence is for itself, and only in so far as it is this for itself is it this, as Intelligence.

I think this or that object! Now what does this mean, and how do I appear to myself in this Thinking? Not otherwise than thus: I produce certain conditions within myself, if the object is a mere invention; but if the objects are real and exist without my invention, I simply contemplate, as a spectator, the production of those conditions within me. They are within me only in so far as I contemplate them; my contemplation and their Being are inseparably united.

A Thing, on the contrary, is to be this or that; but as soon as the question is put: For whom is it this? Nobody, who but comprehends the word, will reply: For itself! But he will have to add the thought of an Intelligence, for which the Thing is to be; while, on the contrary, the Intelligence is self-sufficient and requires no additional thought. By thinking it as the Intelligence you include already that for which it is to be. Hence, there is in the Intelligence, to express myself figuratively, a twofold—Being and Seeing, the Real and the Ideal; and in the inseparability of this twofold the nature of the Intelligence consists, while the Thing is simply a unit—the Real. Hence Intelligence and Thing are directly opposed to each other; they move in two worlds, between which there is no bridge.

The nature of the Intelligence and its particular determinations Dogmatism endeavors to explain by the principle of Causality; the Intelligence is to be a production, the second link in a series.

But the principle of causality applies to a real series, and not to a double one. The power of the cause goes over into an Other opposed to it, and produces therein a Being, and nothing further; a Being for a possible outside Intelligence, but not for the thing itself. You may give this Other even a mechanical power, and it will transfer the received impression to the next link, and thus the movement proceeding from the first may be transferred through as long a series as you choose to make; but nowhere will you find a link which reacts back upon itself. Or give the Other the highest quality which you can give a thing—Sensibility—whereby it will follow the laws of its own inner nature, and not the law given to it by the cause—and it will, to be sure, react upon the outward cause; but it will, nevertheless, remain a mere simple Being, a Being for a possible intelligence outside of it. The Intelligence you will not get, unless you add it in thinking as the primary and absolute, the connection of which, with this your independent Being, you will find it very difficult to explain.

The series is and remains a simple one; and you have not at all explained what was to be explained. You were to prove the connection between Being and Representation; but this you do not, nor can you do it; for your principle contains merely the ground of a Being, and not of a Representation, totally opposed to Being. You take an immense leap into a world, totally removed from your principle. This leap they seek to hide in various ways. Rigorously—and this is the course of consistent dogmatism, which thus becomes materialism;—the soul is to them no Thing at all, and indeed nothing at all, but merely a production, the result of the reciprocal action of Things amongst themselves. But this reciprocal action produces merely a change in the Things, and by no means anything apart from the Things, unless you add an observing intelligence. The similes which they adduce to make their system comprehensible, for instance, that of the harmony resulting from sounds of different instruments, make its irrationality only more apparent. For the harmony is not in the instruments, but merely in the mind of the hearer, who combines within himself the manifold into One; and unless you have such a hearer there is no harmony at all.

But who can prevent Dogmatism from assuming the Soul as one of the Things, per se? The soul would thus belong to what it has postulated for the solution of its problem, and, indeed, would thereby be made the category of cause and effect applicable to the Soul and the Things—materialism only permitting a reciprocal action of the Things amongst themselves—and thoughts might now be produced. To make the Unthinkable thinkable, Dogmatism has, indeed, attempted to presuppose Thing or the Soul, or both, in such a manner, that the effect of the Thing was to produce a representation. The Thing, as influencing the Soul, is to be such, as to make its influences representations; God, for instance, in Berkley’s system, was such a thing. (His system is dogmatic, not idealistic.) But this does not better matters; we understand only mechanical effects, and it is impossible for us to understand any other kind of effects. Hence, that presupposition contains merely words, but there is no sense in it. Or the soul is to be of such a nature that every effect upon the Soul turns into a representation. But this also we find it impossible to understand.

In this manner Dogmatism proceeds everywhere, whatever phase it may assume. In the immense gulf, which in that system remains always open between Things and Representations, it places a few empty words instead of an explanation, which words may certainly be committed to memory, but in saying which nobody has ever yet thought, nor ever will think, anything. For whenever one attempts to think the manner in which is accomplished what Dogmatism asserts to be accomplished, the whole idea vanishes into empty foam. Hence Dogmatism can only repeat its principle, and repeat it in different forms; can only assert and re-assert the same thing; but it cannot proceed from what it asserts to what is to be explained, nor ever deduce the one from the other. But in this deduction Philosophy consists. Hence Dogmatism, even when viewed from a speculative stand-point, is no Philosophy at all, but merely an impotent assertion. Idealism is the only possible remaining Philosophy. What we have here said can meet with no objection; but it may well meet with incapability of understanding it. That all influences are of a mechanical nature, and that no mechanism can produce a representation, nobody will deny, who but understands the words. But this is the very difficulty. It requires a certain degree of independence and freedom of spirit to comprehend the nature of the intelligence, which we have described, and upon which our whole refutation of Dogmatism is founded. Many persons have not advanced further with their Thinking than to comprehend the simple chain of natural mechanism, and very naturally, therefore, the Representation, if they choose to think it at all, belongs, in their eyes, to the same chain of which alone they have any knowledge. The Representation thus becomes to them a sort of Thing of which we have divers examples in some of the most celebrated philosophical writers. For such persons Dogmatism is sufficient: for them there is no gulf, since the opposite does not exist for them at all. Hence you cannot convince the Dogmatist by the proof just stated, however clear it may be, for you cannot bring the proof to his knowledge, since he lacks the power to comprehend it.

Moreover, the manner in which Dogmatism is treated here, is opposed to the mild way of thinking which characterizes our age, and which, though it has been extensively accepted in all ages, has never been converted to an express principle except in ours; i. e. that philosophers must not be so strict in their logic; in philosophy one should not be so particular as, for instance, in Mathematics. If persons of this mode of thinking see but a few links of the chain and the rule, according to which conclusions are drawn, they at once fill up the remaining part through their imagination, never investigating further of what they may consist. If, for instance, an Alexander Von Ioch tells them: “All things are determined by natural necessity; now our representations depend upon the condition of Things, and our will depends upon our representations: hence all our will is determined by natural necessity, and our opinion of a free will is mere deception!”—then these people think it mightily comprehensible and clear, although there is no sense in it; and they go away convinced and satisfied at the stringency of this his demonstration.

I must call to mind, that the Science of Knowledge does not proceed from this mild way of thinking, nor calculate upon it. If only a single link in the long chain it has to draw does not fit closely to the following, this Science does not pretend to have established anything.

VII. Idealism, as we have said above, explains the determinations of consciousness from the activity of the Intelligence, which, in its view, is only active and absolute, not passive; since it is postulated as the first and highest, preceded by nothing, which might explain its passivity. From the same reason actual Existence cannot well be ascribed to the Intelligence, since such Existence is the result of reciprocal causality, but there is nothing wherewith the Intelligence might be placed in reciprocal causality. From the view of Idealism, the Intelligence is a Doing, and absolutely nothing else; it is even wrong to call it an Active, since this expression points to something existing, in which the activity is inherent.

But to assume anything of this kind is against the principle of Idealism, which proposes to deduce all other things from the Intelligence. Now certain determined representations—as, for instance, of a world, of a material world in space, existing without any work of our own—are to be deduced from the action of the Intelligence; but you cannot deduce anything determined from an undetermined; the form of all deductions, the category of ground and sequence, is not applicable here. Hence the action of the Intelligence, which is made the ground, must be a determined action, and since the action of the Intelligence itself is the highest ground of explanation, that action must be so determined by the Intelligence itself, and not by anything foreign to it. Hence the presupposition of Idealism will be this: the Intelligence acts, but by its very essence it can only act in a certain manner. If this necessary manner of its action is considered apart from the action, it may properly be called Laws of Action. Hence, there are necessary laws of the Intelligence.

This explains also, at the same time, the feeling of necessity which accompanies the determined representations; the Intelligence experiences in those cases, not an impression from without, but feels in its action the limits of its own Essence. In so far as Idealism makes this only reasonable and really explanatory presupposition of necessary laws of the Intelligence, it is called Critical or Transcendental Idealism. A transcendent Idealism would be a system which were to undertake a deduction of determined representations from the free and perfectly lawless action of the Intelligence: an altogether contradictory presupposition, since, as we have said above, the category of ground and sequence is not applicable in that case.

The laws of action of the Intelligence, as sure as they are to be founded in the one nature of the Intelligence, constitute in themselves a system; that is to say, the fact that the Intelligence acts in this particular manner under this particular condition is explainable, and explainable because under a condition it has always a determined mode of action, which again is explainable from one highest fundamental law. In the course of its action the Intelligence gives itself its own laws; and this legislation itself is done by virtue of a higher necessary action or Representation. For instance: the law of Causality is not a first original law, but only one of the many modes of combining the manifold, and to be deduced from the fundamental law of this combination; this law of combining the manifold is again, like the manifold itself, to be deduced from higher laws.

Hence, even Critical Idealism can proceed in a twofold manner. Either it deduces this system of necessary modes of action, and together with it the objective representations arising therefrom, really from the fundamental laws of the Intelligence, and thus causes gradually to arise under the very eyes of the reader or hearer the whole extent of our representations; or it gathers these laws—perhaps as they are already immediately applied to objects; hence, in a lower condition, and then they are called categories—gathers these laws somewhere, and now asserts, that the objects are determined and regulated by them.

I ask the critic who follows the last-mentioned method, and who does not deduce the assumed laws of the Intelligence from the Essence of the Intelligence, where he gets the material knowledge of these laws, the knowledge that they are just these very same laws; for instance, that of Substantiality or Causality? For I do not want to trouble him yet with the question, how he knows that they are mere immanent laws of the Intelligence. They are the laws which are immediately applied to objects, and he can only have obtained them by abstraction from these objects, i. e. from Experience. It is of no avail if he takes them, by a roundabout way, from logic, for logic is to him only the result of abstraction from the objects, and hence he would do indirectly, what directly might appear too clearly in its true nature. Hence he can prove by nothing that his postulated Laws of Thinking are really Laws of Thinking, are really nothing but immanent laws of the Intelligence. The Dogmatist asserts in opposition, that they are not, but that they are general qualities of Things, founded on the nature of Things, and there is no reason why we should place more faith in the unproved assertion of the one than in the unproved assertion of the other. This course of proceeding, indeed, furnishes no understanding that and why the Intelligence should act just in this particular manner. To produce such an understanding, it would be necessary to premise something which can only appertain to the Intelligence, and from those premises to deduce before our eyes the laws of Thinking.

By such a course of proceeding it is above all incomprehensible how the object itself is obtained; for although you may admit the unproved postulates of the critic, they explain nothing further than the qualities and relations of the Thing: (that it is, for instance, in space, manifested in time, with accidences which must be referred to a substance, &c.) But whence that which has these relations and qualities? whence then the substance which is clothed in these forms? This substance Dogmatism takes refuge in, and you have but increased the evil.

We know very well: the Thing arises only from an act done in accordance with these laws, and is, indeed, nothing else than all these relations gathered together by the power of imagination; and all these relations together are the Thing. The Object is the original Synthesis of all these conceptions. Form and Substance are not separates; the whole formness is the substance, and only in the analysis do we arrive at separate forms.

But this the critic, who follows the above method, can only assert, and it is even a secret whence he knows it, if he does know it. Until you cause the whole Thing to arise before the eyes of the thinker, you have not pursued Dogmatism into its last hiding places. But this is only possible by letting the Intelligence act in its whole, and not in its partial, lawfulness.

Hence, an Idealism of this character is unproven and unprovable. Against Dogmatism it has no other weapon than the assertion that it is in the right; and against the more perfected criticism no other weapon than impotent anger, and the assurance that you can go no further than itself goes.

Finally a system of this character puts forth only those laws, according to which the objects of external experience are determined. But these constitute by far the smallest portion of the laws of the Intelligence. Hence, on the field of Practical Reason and of Reflective Judgment, this half criticism, lacking the insight into the whole procedure of reason, gropes about as in total darkness.

The method of complete transcendental Idealism, which the Science of Knowledge pursues, I have explained once before in my Essay, On the conception of the Science of Knowledge. I cannot understand why that Essay has not been understood; but suffice it to say, that I am assured it has not been understood. I am therefore compelled to repeat what I have said, and to recall to mind that everything depends upon the correct understanding thereof.

This Idealism proceeds from a single fundamental Law of Reason, which is immediately shown as contained in consciousness. This is done in the following manner: The teacher of that Science requests his reader or hearer to think freely a certain conception. If he does so, he will find himself forced to proceed in a particular manner. Two things are to be distinguished here: the act of Thinking, which is required—the realization of which depends upon each individual’s freedom,—and unless he realizes it thus, he will not understand anything which the Science of Knowledge teaches; and the necessary manner in which it alone can be realized, which manner is grounded in the Essence of the Intelligence, and does not depend upon freedom; it is something necessary, but which is only discovered in and together with a free action; it is something discovered, but the discovery of which depends upon an act of freedom.

So far as this goes, the teacher of Idealism shows his assertion to be contained in immediate consciousness. But that this necessary manner is the fundamental law of all reason, that from it the whole system of our necessary representations, not only of a world and the determinedness and relations of objects, but also of ourselves, as free and practical beings acting under laws, can be deduced. All this is a mere presupposition, which can only be proven by the actual deduction, which deduction is therefore the real business of the teacher.

In realizing this deduction, he proceeds as follows: He shows that the first fundamental law which was discovered in immediate consciousness, is not possible, unless a second action is combined with it, which again is not possible without a third action; and so on, until the conditions of the First are completely exhausted, and itself is now made perfectly comprehensible in its possibility. The teacher’s method is a continual progression from the conditioned to the condition. The condition becomes again conditioned, and its condition is next to be discovered.

If the presupposition of Idealism is correct, and if no errors have been made in the deduction, the last result, as containing all the conditions of the first act, must contain the system of all necessary representations, or the total experience;—a comparison, however, which is not instituted in Philosophy itself, but only after that science has finished its work.

For Idealism has not kept this experience in sight, as the preknown object and result, which it should arrive at; in its course of proceeding it knows nothing at all of experience, and does not look upon it; it proceeds from its starting point according to its rules, careless as to what the result of its investigations might turn out to be. The right angle, from which it has to draw its straight line, is given to it; is there any need of another point to which the line should be drawn? Surely not; for all the points of its line are already given to it with the angle. A certain number is given to you. You suppose that it is the product of certain factors. All you have to do is to search for the product of these factors according to the well-known rules. Whether that product will agree with the given number, you will find out, without any difficulty, as soon as you have obtained it. The given number is the total experience; those factors are: the part of immediate consciousness which was discovered, and the laws of Thinking; the multiplication is the Philosophizing. Those who advise you, while philosophizing, also to keep an eye upon experience, advise you to change the factors a little, and to multiply falsely, so as to obtain by all means corresponding numbers; a course of proceeding as dishonest as it is shallow. In so far as those final results of Idealism are viewed as such, as consequences of our reasoning, they are what is called the a priori of the human mind; and in so far as they are viewed, also—if they should agree with experience—as given in experience, they are called a posteriori. Hence the a priori and the a posteriori are, in a true Philosophy, not two, but one and the same, only viewed in two different ways, and distinguished only by the manner in which they are obtained. Philosophy anticipates the whole experience, thinks it only as necessary; and, in so far, Philosophy is, in comparison with real experience, a priori. The number is a posteriori, if regarded as given; the same number is a priori, if regarded as product of the factors. Whosoever says otherwise knows not what he talks about.

If the results of a Philosophy do not agree with experience, that Philosophy is surely wrong; for it has not fulfilled its promise of deducing the whole experience from the necessary action of the intelligence. In that case, either the presupposition of transcendental Idealism is altogether incorrect, or it has merely been incorrectly treated in the particular representation of that science. Now, since the problem, to explain experience from its ground, is a problem contained in human reason, and as no rational man will admit that human reason contains any problem the solution of which is altogether impossible; and since, moreover, there are only two ways of solving it, the dogmatic system (which, as we have shown, cannot accomplish what it promises) and the Idealistic system, every resolute Thinker will always declare that the latter has been the case; that the presupposition in itself is correct enough, and that no failure in attempts to represent it should deter men from attempting it again until finally it must succeed. The course of this Idealism proceeds, as we have seen, from a fact of consciousness—but which is only obtained by a free act of Thinking—to the total experience. Its peculiar ground is between these two. It is not a fact of consciousness and does not belong within the sphere of experience; and, indeed, how could it be called Philosophy if it did, since Philosophy has to discover the ground of experience, and since the ground lies, of course, beyond the sequence. It is the production of free Thinking, but proceeding according to laws. This will be at once clear, if we look a little closer at the fundamental assertion of Idealism. It proves that the Postulated is not possible without a second, this not without a third, &c., &c.; hence none of all its conditions is possible alone and by itself, but each one is only possible in its union with all the rest. Hence, according to its own assertion, only the Whole is found in consciousness, and this Whole is the experience. You want to obtain a better knowledge of it; hence you must analyze it, not by blindly groping about, but according to the fixed rule of composition, so that it arises under your eyes as a Whole. You are enabled to do this because you have the power of abstraction; because in free Thinking you can certainly take hold of each single condition. For consciousness contains not only necessity of Representations, but also freedom thereof; and this freedom again may proceed according to rules. The Whole is given to you from the point of view of necessary consciousness; you find it just as you find yourself. But the composition of this Whole, the order of its arrangement, is produced by freedom. Whosoever undertakes this act of freedom, becomes conscious of freedom, and thus establishes, as it were, a new field within his consciousness; whosoever does not undertake it, for him this new field, dependent thereupon, does not exist. The chemist composes a body, a metal for instance, from its elements. The common beholder sees the metal well known to him; the chemist beholds, moreover, the composition thereof and the elements which it comprises. Do both now see different objects? I should think not! Both see the same, only in a different manner. The chemist’s sight is a priori; he sees the separates; the ordinary beholder’s sight is a posteriori; he sees the Whole. The only distinction is this: the chemist must first analyze the Whole before he can compose it, because he works upon an object of which he cannot know the rule of composition before he has analyzed it; while the philosopher can compose without a foregoing analysis, because he knows already the rule of his object, of reason.

Hence the content of Philosophy can claim no other reality than that of necessary Thinking, on the condition that you desire to think of the ground of Experience. The Intelligence can only be thought as active, and can only be thought active in this particular manner! Such is the assertion of Philosophy. And this reality is perfectly sufficient for Philosophy, since it is evident from the development of that science that there is no other reality.

This now described complete critical Idealism, the Science of Knowledge intends to establish. What I have said just now contains the conception of that science, and I shall listen to no objections which may touch this conception, since no one can know better than myself what I intend to accomplish, and to demonstrate the impossibility of a thing which is already realized, is ridiculous.

Objections, to be legitimate, should only be raised against the elaboration of that conception, and should only consider whether it has fulfilled what it promised to accomplish or not.

ANALYTICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAY UPON THE ÆSTHETICS OF HEGEL.
[Translated from the French of M. Ch. Bénard by J. A. Martling.]

ANALYSIS.

Having undertaken to translate into our language the Æsthetics of Hegel, we hope to render a new service to our readers, by presenting, in an analysis at once cursory and detailed the outline of the ideas which form the basis of that vast work. The thought of the author will appear shorn of its rich developments; but it will be more easy to seize the general spirit, the connection of the various parts of the work, and to appreciate their value. In order not to mar the clearness of our work, we shall abstain from mingling criticism with exposition; but reserve for the conclusion a general judgment upon this book, which represents even to-day the state of the philosophy of art in Germany.

The work is divided into three parts; the first treats of the beautiful in art in general; the second, of the general forms of art in its historic development; the third contains the system of the arts—the theory of architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry.

PART I.
OF THE BEAUTIFUL IN ART.

In an extended introduction, Hegel lays the foundations of the science of the Beautiful: he defines its object, demonstrates its legitimacy, and indicates its method; he then undertakes to determine the nature and the end of art. Upon each of these points let us endeavor to state, in a brief manner, his thought, and, if it is necessary, explain it.

Æsthetics is the science of the Beautiful. The Beautiful manifests itself in nature and in art; but the variety and multiplicity of forms under which beauty presents itself in the real world, does not permit their description and systematic classification. The science of the Beautiful has then as its principal object, art and its works; it is the philosophy of the fine arts.

Is art a proper object of science? No, undoubtedly, if we consider it only as an amusement or a frivolous relaxation. But it has a nobler purpose. It will even be a misconception of its true aim to regard it simply as an auxiliary of morals and religion. Although it often serves as interpreter of moral and religious ideas, it preserves its independence. Its proper object is to reveal truth under sensuous forms.

Nor is it allowable to say that it produces its effects by illusion. Appearance, here, is truer than reality. The images which it places under our eyes are more ideal, more transparent, and also more durable than the mobile and fugitive existences of the real world. The world of art is truer than that of nature and of history.

Can science subject to its formulas the free creations of the imagination? Art and science, it is true, differ in their methods; but imagination, also, has its laws; though free, it has not the right to be lawless. In art, nothing is arbitrary; its ground is the essence of things; its form is borrowed from the real world, and the Beautiful is the accord, the harmony of the two terms. Philosophy recognizes in works of art the eternal content of its meditations, the lofty conceptions of intelligence, the passions of man, and the motives of his volition. Philosophy does not pretend to furnish prescriptions to art, but is able to give useful advice; it follows it in its procedures, it points out to it the paths whereon it may go astray; it alone can furnish to criticism a solid basis and fixed principles.

As to the method to be followed, two exclusive and opposite courses present themselves. The one, empiric and historic, seeks to draw from the study of the master-pieces of art, the laws of criticism and the principles of taste. The other, rational and a priori, rises immediately to the idea of the beautiful, and deduces from it certain general rules. Aristotle and Plato represent these two methods. The first reaches only a narrow theory, incapable of comprehending art in its universality; the other, isolating itself on the heights of metaphysics, knows not how to descend therefrom to apply itself to particular arts, and to appreciate their works. The true method consists in the union of these two methods, in their reconciliation and simultaneous employment. To a positive acquaintance with works of art, to the discrimination and delicacy of taste necessary to appreciate them, there should be joined philosophic reflection, and the capacity of seizing the Beautiful in itself, and of comprehending its characteristics and immutable laws.

What is the nature of art? The answer to this question can only be the philosophy of art itself; and, furthermore, this again can be perfectly understood only in its connection with the other philosophic sciences. One is here compelled to limit himself to general reflections, and to the discussion of received opinions.

In the first place, art is a product of human activity, a creation of the mind. What distinguishes it from science is this, that it is the fruit of inspiration, not of reflection. On this account it can not be learned or transmitted; it is a gift of genius. Nothing can possibly supply a lack of talent in the arts.

Let us guard ourselves meanwhile from supposing that, like the blind forces of nature, the artist does not know what he does, that reflection has no part in his works. There is, in the first place, in the arts a technical part which must be learned, and a skill which is acquired by practice. Furthermore, the more elevated art becomes, the more it demands an extended and varied culture, a study of the objects of nature, and a profound knowledge of the human heart. This is eminently true of the higher spheres of art, especially in Poetry.

If works of art are creations of the human spirit, they are not on that account inferior to those of nature. They are, it is true, living, only in appearance; but the aim of art is not to create living beings; it seeks to offer to the spirit an image of life clearer than the reality. In this, it surpasses nature. There is also something divine in man, and God derives no less honor from the works of human intelligence than from the works of nature.

Now what is the cause which incites man to the production of such works? Is it a caprice, a freak, or an earnest, fundamental inclination of his nature?

It is the same principle which causes him to seek in science food for his mind, in public life a theatre for his activity. In science he endeavors to cognize the truth, pure and unveiled; in art, truth appears to him not in its pure form, but expressed by images which strike his sense at the same time that they speak to his intelligence. This is the principle in which art originates, and which assigns to it a rank so high among the creations of the human mind.

Although art is addressed to the sensibility, nevertheless its direct aim is not to excite sensation, and to give birth to pleasure. Sensation is changeful, varied, contradictory. It represents only the various states or modifications of the soul. If then we consider only the impressions which art produces upon us, we make abstraction of the truth which it reveals to us. It becomes even impossible to comprehend its grand effects; for the sentiments which it excites in us, are explicable only through the ideas which attach to them.

The sensuous element, nevertheless, occupies a large place in art. What part must be assigned to it? There are two modes of considering sensuous objects in their connection with our mind. The first is that of simple perception of objects by the senses. The mind then knows only their individual side, their particular and concrete form; the essence, the law, the substance of things escapes it. At the same time the desire which is awakened in us, is a desire to appropriate them to our use, to consume them, to destroy them. The soul, in the presence of these objects, feels its dependence; it cannot contemplate them with a free and disinterested eye.

Another relation of sensuous objects with spirit, is that of speculative thought or science. Here the intelligence is not content to perceive the object in its concrete form and its individuality; it discards the individual side in order to abstract and disengage from it the law, the universal, the essence. Reason thus lifts itself above the individual form perceived by sense, in order to conceive the pure idea in its universality.

Art differs both from the one and from the other of these modes; it holds the mean between sensuous perception and rational abstraction. It is distinguished from the first in that it does not attach itself to the real but to the appearance, to the form of the object, and in that it does not feel any selfish longing to consume it, to cause it to serve a purpose, to utilize it. It differs from science in that it is interested in this particular object, and in its sensuous form. What it loves to see in it, is neither its materiality, nor the pure idea in its generality, but an appearance, an image of the truth, something ideal which appears in it; it seizes the connective of the two terms, their accord and their inner harmony. Thus the want which it feels is wholly contemplative. In the presence of this vision the soul feels itself freed from all selfish desire.

In a word, art purposely creates images, appearances, designed to represent ideas, to show to us the truth under sensuous forms. Thereby it has the power of stirring the soul in its profoundest depths, of causing it to experience the pure delight springing from the sight and contemplation of the Beautiful.

The two principles are found equally combined in the artist. The sensuous side is included in the faculty which creates—the imagination. It is not by mechanical toil, directed by rules learned by heart that he executes his works; nor is it by a process of reflection like that of the philosopher who is seeking the truth. The mind has a consciousness of itself, but it cannot seize in an abstract manner the idea which it conceives; it can represent it only under sensuous forms. The image and the idea coexist in thought, and cannot be separated. Thus the imagination is itself a gift of nature. Scientific genius is rather a general capacity than an innate and special talent. To succeed in the arts, there is necessary a determinate talent which reveals itself early under the form of an active and irresistible longing, and a certain facility in the manipulation of the materials of art. It is this which makes the painter, the sculptor, the musician.

Such is the nature of art. If it be asked, what is its end, here we encounter the most diverse opinions. The most common is that which gives imitation as its object. This is the foundation of nearly all the theories upon art. Now of what use to reproduce that which nature already offers to our view? This puerile talk, unworthy of spirit to which it is addressed, unworthy of man who produces it, would only end in the revelation of its impotency and the vanity of its efforts; for the copy will always remain inferior to the original. Besides, the more exact the imitation, the less vivid is the pleasure. That which pleases us is not imitation, but creation. The very least invention surpasses all the masterpieces of imitation.

In vain is it said that art ought to imitate beautiful Nature. To select is no longer to imitate. Perfection in imitation is exactness; moreover, choice supposes a rule; where find the criterion? What signifies, in fine, imitation in architecture, in music, and even in poetry? At most, one can thus explain descriptive poetry, that is to say, the most prosaic kind. We must conclude, therefore, that if, in its compositions, art employs the forms of Nature, and must study them, its aim is not to copy and to reproduce them. Its mission is higher—its procedure freer. Rival of nature, it represents ideas as well as she, and even better; it uses her forms as symbols to express them; and it fashions even these, remodels them upon a type more perfect and more pure. It is not without significance that its works are styled the creations of the genius of man.

A second system substitutes expression for imitation. Art accordingly has for its aim, not to represent the external form of things, but their internal and living principle, particularly the ideas, sentiments, passions, and conditions of the soul.

Less gross than the preceding, this theory is no less false and dangerous. Let us here distinguish two things: the idea and the expression—the content and the form. Now, if Art is designed for expression solely—if expression is its essential object—its content is indifferent. Provided that the picture be faithful, the expression lively and animated, the good and the bad, the vicious, the hideous, the ugly, have the same right to figure here as the Beautiful. Immoral, licentious, impious, the artist will have fulfilled his obligation and reached perfection, when he has succeeded in faithfully rendering a situation, a passion, an idea, be it true or false. It is clear that if in this system the object of imitation is changed, the procedure is the same. Art would be only an echo, a harmonious language; a living mirror, where all sentiments and all passions would find themselves reflected, the base part and the noble part of the soul contending here for the same place. The true, here, would be the real, would include objects the most diverse and the most contradictory. Indifferent as to the content, the artist seeks only to represent it well. He troubles himself little concerning truth in itself. Skeptic or enthusiast indifferently, he makes us partake of the delirium of the Bacchanals, or the unconcern of the Sophist. Such is the system which takes for a motto the maxim, Art is for art; that is to say, mere expression for its own sake. Its consequences, and the fatal tendency which it has at all times pressed upon the arts, are well known.

A third system sets up moral perfection as the aim of art. It cannot be denied that one of the effects of art is to soften and purify manners (emollit mores). In mirroring man to himself, it tempers the rudeness of his appetites and his passions; it disposes him to contemplation and reflection; it elevates his thought and sentiments, by leading them to an ideal which it suggests,—to ideas of a superior order. Art has, from all time, been regarded as a powerful instrument of civilization, as an auxiliary of religion. It is, together with religion, the earliest instructor of nations; it is besides a means of instruction for minds incapable of comprehending truth otherwise than under the veil of a symbol, and by images that address themselves to the sense as well as to the spirit.

But this theory, although much superior to the preceding, is no more exact. Its defect consists in confounding the moral effect of art with its real aim. This confusion has inconveniences which do not appear at the first glance. Let care be taken, meanwhile, lest, in thus assigning to art a foreign aim, it be not robbed of its liberty, which is its essence, and without which it has no inspiration—that thereby it be not prevented from producing the effects which are to be expected from it. Between religion, morals and art, there exists an eternal and intimate harmony; but they are, none the less, essentially diverse forms of truth, and, while preserving entire the bonds which unite them, they claim a complete independence. Art has its peculiar laws, methods and jurisdiction; though it ought not to wound the moral sense, yet it is the sense of the Beautiful to which it is addressed. When its works are pure, its effect on the soul is salutary, but its direct and immediate aim is not this result. Seeking it, it risks losing it, and does lose its own end. Suppose, indeed, that the aim of art should be to instruct, under the veil of allegory; the idea, the abstract and general thought, must be present in the spirit of the artist at the very moment of composition. It seeks, then, a form which is adapted to that idea, and furnishes drapery for it. Who does not see that this procedure is the very opposite of inspiration? There can be born of it only frigid and lifeless works; its effect will thus be neither moral nor religious; it will produce only ennui.

Another consequence of the opinion which makes moral perfection the object of art and its creations, is that this end is imposed so completely upon art, and controls it to such a degree, that it has no longer even a choice of subjects. The severe moralist would have it represent moral subjects alone. Art is then undone. This system led Plato to banish poets from his republic. If, then, it is necessary to maintain the agreement of morality and art, and the harmony of their laws, their distinct bases and independence must also be recognized. In order to understand thoroughly this distinction between morals and art, it is necessary to have solved the moral problem. Morality is the realization of the “ought” by the free will; it is the conflict between passion and reason, inclination and law, the flesh and the spirit. It hinges upon an opposition. Antagonism is, indeed, the very law of the physical and moral universe. But this opposition ought to be cancelled. This is the destiny of beings who by their development and progress continually realize themselves.

Now, in morals, this harmony of the powers of our being, which should restore peace and happiness, does not exist. Morality proposes it as an end to the free will. The aim and the realization are distinct. Duty consists in an incessant striving. Thus, in one respect, morals and art have the same principle and the same aim; the harmony of rectitude, and happiness of actions and law. But that wherein they differ is, that in morals the end is never wholly attained. It appears separated from the means; the consequence is equally separated from the principle. The harmony of rectitude and happiness ought to be the result of the efforts of virtue. In order to conceive the identity of the two terms, it is necessary to elevate one’s self to a superior point of view, which is not that of morals. In empirical science equally, the law appears distinct from the phenomenon, the essence separated from its form. In order that this distinction may be cancelled, there is necessary a mode of thinking which is superior to that of reflection, or of empirical science.

Art, on the contrary, offers to us in a visible image, the realized harmony of the two terms of existence, of the law of beings and their manifestation, of essence and form, of rectitude and happiness. The beautiful is essence realized, activity in conformity with its end, and identified with it; it is the force which is harmoniously developed under our eyes, in the innermost of existences, and which cancels the contradictions of its nature: happy, free, full of serenity in the very midst of suffering and of sorrow. The problem of art is then distinct from the moral problem. The good is harmony sought for; beauty is harmony realized. So must we understand the thought of Hegel; he here only intimates it, but it will be fully developed in the sequel.

The true aim of art is then to represent the Beautiful, to reveal this harmony. This is its only purpose. Every other aim, purification, moral amelioration, edification, are accessories or consequences. The effect of the contemplation of the Beautiful is to produce in us a calm and pure joy, incompatible with the gross pleasures of sense; it lifts the soul above the ordinary sphere of its thoughts; it disposes to noble resolutions and generous actions by the close affinity which exists between the three sentiments and the three ideas of the Good, the Beautiful, and the Divine.

Such are the principal ideas which this remarkable introduction contains. The remainder, devoted to the examination of works which have marked the development of æsthetic science in Germany since Kant, is scarcely susceptible of analysis, and does not so much deserve our attention.

The first part of the science of æsthetics, which might be called the Metaphysics of the Beautiful, contains, together with the analysis of the idea of the Beautiful, the general principles common to all the arts. Thus Hegel here treats: First, of the abstract idea of the Beautiful; second, of the Beautiful in nature; third, of the Beautiful in art, or of the ideal. He concludes with an examination of the qualities of the artist. But before entering upon these questions, he thought it necessary to point out the place of art in human life, and especially its connections with religion and philosophy.

The destination of man, the law of his nature, is to develop himself incessantly, to stretch unceasingly towards the infinite. He ought, at the same time, to put an end to the opposition which he finds in himself between the elements and powers of his being; to place them in accord by realizing and developing them externally. Physical life is a struggle between opposing forces, and the living being can sustain itself only through the conflict and the triumph of the force which constitutes it. With man, and in the moral sphere, this conflict and progressive enfranchisement are manifested under the form of freedom, which is the highest destination of spirit. Freedom consists in surmounting the obstacles which it encounters within and without, in removing the limits, in effacing all contradiction, in vanquishing evil and sorrow, in order to attain to harmony with the world and with itself. In actual life, man seeks to destroy that opposition by the satisfaction of his physical wants. He calls to his aid, industry and the useful arts; but he obtains thus only limited, relative, and transient enjoyments. He finds a nobler pleasure in science, which furnishes food for his ardent curiosity, and promises to reveal to him the laws of nature and to unveil the secrets of the universe. Civil life opens another channel to his activity; he burns to realize his conceptions; he marches to the conquest of the right, and pursues the ideal of justice which he bears within him. He endeavors to realize in civil society his instinct of sociability, which is also the law of his being, and one of the fundamental inclinations of his moral nature.

But here, again, he attains an imperfect felicity; he encounters limits and obstacles which he cannot surmount, and against which, his will is broken. He cannot obtain the perfect realization of his ideas, nor attain the ideal which his spirit conceives and toward which it aspires. He then feels the necessity of elevating himself to a higher sphere where all contradictions are cancelled; where the idea of the good and of happiness in their perfect accord and their enduring harmony is realized. This profound want of the soul is satisfied in three ways: in art, in religion, and in philosophy. The function of art is to lead us to the contemplation of the true, the infinite, under sensuous forms; for the beautiful is the unity, the realized harmony of two principles of existence, of the idea and the form, of the infinite and the finite. This is the principle and the hidden essence of things, beaming through their visible form. Art presents us, in its works, the image of this happy accord where all opposition ceases, and where all contradiction is cancelled. Such is the aim of art: to represent the divine, the infinite, under sensuous forms. This is its mission; it has no other and this it alone can fulfil. By this title it takes its place by the side of religion, and preserves its independence. It takes its rank also with philosophy, whose object is the knowledge of the true, of absolute truth.

Alike then as to their general ground and aims, these three spheres are distinguished by the form under which they become revealed to the spirit and consciousness of man. Art is addressed to sensuous perception and to the imagination; religion is addressed to the soul, to the conscience, and to sentiment; philosophy is addressed to pure thought or to the reason, which conceives the truth in an abstract manner.

Art, which offers us truth under sensuous forms, does not, however, respond to the profoundest needs of the soul. The spirit is possessed of the desire of entering into itself, of contemplating the truth in the inner recesses of consciousness. Above the domain of art, then, religion is placed, which reveals the infinite, and by meditation conveys to the depths of the heart, to the centre of the soul, that which in art we contemplate externally. As to philosophy, its peculiar aim is to conceive and to comprehend, by the intellect alone, under an abstract form, that which is given as sentiment or as sensuous representation.

I. Of the Idea of the Beautiful.

After these preliminaries, Hegel enters upon the questions which form the object of this first part. He treats, in the first place, of the idea of the beautiful in itself, in its abstract nature. Freeing his thought from the metaphysical forms which render it difficult of comprehension to minds not familiar with his system, we arrive at this definition, already contained in the foregoing: the Beautiful is the true, that is to say, the essence, the inmost substance of things; the true, not such as the mind conceives it in its abstract and pure nature, but as manifested to the senses under visible forms. It is the sensuous manifestation of the idea, which is the soul and principle of things. This definition recalls that of Plato: the Beautiful is the splendor of the true.

What are the characteristics of the beautiful? First, it is infinite in this sense, that it is the divine principle itself which is revealed and manifested, and that the form which expresses it, in place of limiting it, realizes it and confounds itself with it; second, it is free, for true freedom is not the absence of rule and measure, it is force which develops itself easily and harmoniously. It appears in the bosom of the existences of the sensuous world, as their principle of life, of unity, and of harmony, whether free from all obstacle, or victorious and triumphant in conflict, always calm and serene.

The spectator who contemplates beauty feels himself equally free, and has a consciousness of his infinite nature. He tastes a pure pleasure, resulting from the felt accord of the powers of his being; a celestial and divine joy, which has nothing in common with material pleasures, and does not suffer to exist in the soul a single impure or gross desire.

The contemplation of the Beautiful awakens no such craving; it is self-sufficing, and is not accompanied by any return of the me upon itself. It suffers the object to preserve its independence for its own sake. The soul experiences something analogous to divine felicity; it is transported into a sphere foreign to the miseries of life and terrestrial existence.

This theory, it is apparent, would need only to be developed to return wholly to the Platonic theory. Hegel limits himself to referring to it. We recognize here, also, the results of the Kantian analysis.

II. Of the Beautiful in Nature.

Although science cannot pause to describe the beauties of nature, it ought, nevertheless, to study, in a general manner, the characteristics of the Beautiful, as it appears to us in the physical world and in the beings which it contains. This is the subject of a somewhat extended chapter, with the following title: Of the Beautiful in Nature. Hegel herein considers the question from the particular point of view of his philosophy, and he applies his theory of the Idea. Nevertheless, the results at which he arrives, and the manner in which he describes the forms of physical beauty, can be comprehended and accepted independently of his system, little adapted, it must be confessed, to cast light upon this subject.

The Beautiful in nature is the first manifestation of the Idea. The successive degrees of beauty correspond to the development of life and organization in beings. Unity is an essential characteristic of it. Thus, in the mineral, beauty consists in the arrangement or disposition of the parts, in the force which resides in them, and which reveals itself in this unity. The solar system offers us a more perfect unity and a higher beauty. The bodies in that system, while preserving entire their individual existence, co-ordinate themselves into a whole, the parts of which are independent, although attached to a common centre, the sun. Beauty of this order strikes us by the regularity of the movements of the celestial bodies. A unity more real and true is that which is manifested in organized and living beings. The unity here consists in a relation of reciprocity and of mutual dependence between the organs, so that each of them loses its independent existence in order to give place to a wholly ideal unity which reveals itself as the principle of life animating them.

Life is beautiful in nature: for it is essence, force, the idea realized under its first form. Nevertheless, beauty in nature is still wholly external; it has no consciousness of itself; it is beautiful solely for an intelligence which sees and contemplates it.

How do we perceive beauty in natural beings? Beauty, with living and animate beings, is neither accidental and capricious movements, nor simple conformity of those movements to an end—the uniform and mutual connection of parts. This point of view is that of the naturalist, of the man of science; it is not that of the Beautiful. Beauty is total form in so far as it reveals the force which animates it; it is this force itself, manifested by a totality of forms, of independent and free movements; it is the internal harmony which reveals itself in this secret accord of members, and which betrays itself outwardly, without the eye’s pausing to consider the relation of the parts to the whole, and their functions or reciprocal connection, as science does. The unity exhibits itself merely externally as the principle which binds the members together. It manifests itself especially through the sensibility. The point of view of beauty is then that of pure contemplation, not that of reflection, which analyzes, compares and seizes the connection of parts and their destination.

This internal and visible unity, this accord, and this harmony, are not distinct from the material element; they are its very form. This is the principle which serves to determine beauty in its inferior grades, the beauty of the crystal with its regular forms, forms produced by an internal and free force. A similar activity is developed in a more perfect manner in the living organism, its outlines, the disposition of its members, the movements, and the expression of sensibility.

Such is beauty in individual beings. It is otherwise with it when we consider nature in its totality, the beauty of a landscape, for example. There is no longer question here about an organic disposition of parts and of the life which animates them; we have under our eyes a rich multiplicity of objects which form a whole, mountains, trees, rivers, etc. In this diversity there appears an external unity which interests us by its agreeable or imposing character. To this aspect there is added that property of the objects of nature through which they awaken in us, sympathetically, certain sentiments, by the secret analogy which exists between them and the situations of the human soul.

Such is the effect produced by the silence of the night, the calm of a still valley, the sublime aspect of a vast sea in tumult, and the imposing grandeur of the starry heavens. The significance of these objects is not in themselves; they are only symbols of the sentiments of the soul which they excite. It is thus we attribute to animals the qualities which belong only to man, courage, fortitude, cunning. Physical beauty is a reflex of moral beauty.

To recapitulate, physical beauty, viewed in its ground or essence, consists in the manifestation of the concealed principle, of the force which is developed in the bosom of matter. This force reveals itself in a manner more or less perfect, by unity in inert matter, and in living beings by the different modes of organization.

Hegel then devotes a special examination to the external side, or to beauty of form in natural objects. Physical beauty, considered externally, presents itself successively under the aspects of regularity and symmetry, of conformity to law and of harmony; lastly, of purity and simplicity of matter.

1. Regularity, which is only the repetition of a form equal to itself, is the most elementary and simple form. In symmetry there already appears a diversity which breaks the uniformity. These two forms of beauty pertain to quantity, and constitute mathematical beauty; they are found in organic and inorganic bodies, minerals and crystals. In plants are presented less regular, and freer forms. In the organization of animals, this regular and symmetrical disposition becomes more and more subordinated in proportion as we ascend to higher degrees of the animal scale.

2. Conformity to a law marks a degree still more elevated, and serves as a transition to freer forms. Here there appears an accord more real and more profound, which begins to transcend mathematical rigor. It is no longer a simple numerical relation, where quantity plays the principal rôle; we discover a relation of quality between different terms. A law rules the whole, but it cannot be calculated; it remains a hidden bond, which reveals itself to the spectator. Such is the oval line, and above all, the undulating line, which Hogarth has given as the line of beauty. These lines determine, in fact, the beautiful forms of organic nature in living beings of a high order, and, above all, the beautiful forms of the human body, of man and of woman.

3. Harmony is a degree still superior to the preceding, and it includes them. It consists in a totality of elements essentially distinct, but whose opposition is destroyed and reduced to unity by a secret accord, a reciprocal adaptation. Such is the harmony of forms and colors, that of sounds and movements, Here the unity is stronger, more prononcé, precisely because the differences and the oppositions are more marked. Harmony, however, is not as yet true unity, spiritual unity, that of the soul, although the latter possesses within it a principle of harmony. Harmony alone, as yet, reveals neither the soul nor the spirit, as one may see in music and dancing.

Beauty exists also in matter itself, abstraction being made of its form; it consists, then, in the unity and simplicity which constitutes purity. Such is the purity of the sky and of the atmosphere, the purity of colors and of sounds; that of certain substances—of precious stones, of gold, and of the diamond. Pure and simple colors are also the most agreeable.

After having described the beautiful in nature, in order that the necessity of a beauty more exalted and more ideal shall be comprehended, Hegel sets forth the imperfections of real beauty. He begins with animal life, which is the most elevated point we have reached, and he dwells upon the characteristics and causes of that imperfection.

Thus, first in the animal, although the organism is more perfect than that of the plant, what we see is not the central point of life; the special seat of the operations of the force which animates the whole, remains concealed from us. We see only the outlines of the external form, covered with hairs, scales, feathers, skin; secondly, the human body, it is true, exhibits more beautiful proportions, and a more perfect form, because in it, life and sensibility are everywhere manifested—in the color, the flesh, the freer movements, nobler attitudes, &c. Yet here, besides the imperfections in details, the sensibility does not appear equally distributed. Certain parts are appropriated to animal functions, and exhibit their destination in their form. Further, individuals in nature, placed as they are under a dependence upon external causes, and under the influence of the elements, are under the dominion of necessity and want. Under the continual action of these causes, physical being is exposed to losing the fulness of its forms and the flower of its beauty; rarely do these causes permit it to attain to its complete, free and regular development. The human body is placed under a like dependence upon external agents. If we pass from the physical to the moral world, that dependence appears still more clearly.

Everywhere there is manifested diversity, and opposition of tendencies and interests. The individual, in the plenitude of his life and beauty, cannot preserve the appearance of a free force. Each individual being is limited and particularized in his excellence. His life flows in a narrow circle of space and time; he belongs to a determinate species; his type is given, his form defined, and the conditions of his development fixed. The human body itself offers, in respect to beauty, a progression of forms dependent on the diversity of races. Then come hereditary qualities, the peculiarities which are due to temperament, profession, age, and sex. All these causes alter and disfigure the purest and most perfect primitive type.

All these imperfections are summed up in a word: the finite. Human life and animal life realize their idea only imperfectly. Moreover, spirit—not being able to find, in the limits of the real, the sight and the enjoyment of its proper freedom—seeks to satisfy itself in a region more elevated, that of art, or of the ideal.

III. Of the beautiful in Art or of the Ideal.

Art has as its end and aim the representation of the ideal. Now what is the ideal? It is beauty in a degree of perfection superior to real beauty. It is force, life, spirit, the essence of things, developing themselves harmoniously in a sensuous reality, which is its resplendent image, its faithful expression; it is beauty disengaged and purified from the accidents which veil and disfigure it, and which alter its purity in the real world.

The ideal, in art, is not then the contrary of the real, but the real idealized, purified, rendered conformable to its idea, and perfectly expressing it. In a word, it is the perfect accord of the idea and the sensuous form.

On the other hand, the true ideal is not life in its inferior degrees—blind, undeveloped force—but the soul arrived at the consciousness of itself, free, and in the full enjoyment of its faculties; it is life, but spiritual life—in a word, spirit. The representation of the spiritual principle, in the plenitude of its life and freedom, with its high conceptions, its profound and noble sentiments, its joys and its sufferings: this is the true aim of art, the true ideal.

Finally, the ideal is not a lifeless abstraction, a frigid generality; it is the spiritual principle under the form of the living individual, freed from the bonds of the finite, and developing itself in its perfect harmony with its inmost nature and essence.

We see, thus, what are the characteristics of the ideal. It is evident that in all its degrees it is calmness, serenity, felicity, happy existence, freed from the miseries and wants of life. This serenity does not exclude earnestness; for the ideal appears in the midst of the conflicts of life; but even in the roughest experiences, in the midst of intense suffering, the soul preserves an evident calmness as a fundamental trait. It is felicity in suffering, the glorification of sorrow, smiling in tears. The echo of this felicity resounds in all the spheres of the ideal.

It is important to determine, with still more precision, the relations of the ideal and the real.

The opposition of the ideal and the real has given rise to two conflicting opinions. Some conceive of the ideal as something vague, an abstract, lifeless generality, without individuality. Others extol the natural, the imitation of the real in the most minute and prosaic details. Equal exaggeration! The truth lies between the two extremes.

In the first place, the ideal may be, in fact, something external and accidental, an insignificant form or appearance, a common existence. But that which constitutes the ideal, in this inferior degree, is the fact that this reality, imitated by art, is a creation of spirit, and becomes then something artificial, not real. It is an image and a metamorphosis. This image, moreover, is more permanent than its model, more durable than the real object. In fixing that which is mobile and transient, in eternizing that which is momentary and fugitive—a flower, a smile—art surpasses nature and idealizes it.

But it does not stop here. Instead of simply reproducing these objects, while preserving their natural form, it seizes their internal and deepest character, it extends their signification, and gives to them a more elevated and more general significance; for it must manifest the universal in the individual, and render visible the idea which they represent, their eternal and fixed type. It allows this character of generality to penetrate everywhere, without reducing it to an abstraction. Thus the artist does not slavishly reproduce all the features of the object, and its accidents, but only the true traits, those conformable to its idea. If, then, he takes nature as a model, he still surpasses and idealizes it. Naturalness, faithfulness, truth, these are not exact imitation, but the perfect conformity of the form to the idea; they are the creation of a more perfect form, whose essential traits represent the idea more faithfully and more clearly than it is expressed in nature itself. To know how to disengage the operative, energetic, essential and significant elements in objects,—this is the task of the artist. The ideal, then, is not the real; the latter contains many elements insignificant, useless, confused and foreign, or opposed to the idea. The natural here loses its vulgar significance. By this word must be understood the more exalted expression of spirit. The ideal is a transfigured, glorified nature.

As to vulgar and common nature, if art takes it also for its object, it is not for its own sake, but because of what in it is true, excellent, interesting, ingenuous or gay, as in genre painting, in Dutch painting particularly. It occupies, nevertheless, an inferior rank, and cannot make pretensions to a place beside the grand compositions of art.

But there are other subjects—a nature more elevated and more ideal. Art, at its culminating stage, represents the development of the internal powers of the soul, its grand passions, profound sentiments, and lofty destinies. Now, it is clear that the artist does not find in the real world, forms so pure and ideal that he may safely confine himself to imitating and copying. Moreover, if the form itself be given, expression must be added. Besides, he ought to secure, in a just measure, the union of the individual and the universal, of the form and the idea; to create a living ideal, penetrated with the idea, and in which it animates the sensuous form and appearance throughout, so that there shall be nothing in it empty or insignificant, nothing that is not alive with expression itself. Where shall he find in the real world, this just measure, this animation, and this exact correspondence of all the parts and of all the details conspiring to the same end, to the same effect? To say that he will succeed in conceiving and realizing the ideal, by making a felicitous selection of ideas and forms, is to ignore the secret of artistic composition; it is to misconceive the entirely spontaneous method of genius,—inspiration which creates at a single effort,—to replace it by a reflective drudgery, which only results in the production of frigid and lifeless works.

It does not suffice to define the ideal in an abstract manner; the ideal is exhibited to us in the works of art under very various and diverse forms. Thus sculpture represents it under the motionless features of its figures. In the other arts it assumes the form of movement and of action; in poetry, particularly, it manifests itself in the midst of most varied situations and events, of conflicts between persons animated by diverse passions. How, and under what conditions, is each art in particular called upon to represent thus the ideal? This will be the object of the theory of the arts. In the general exposition of the principles of art, we may, nevertheless, attempt to define the degrees of this development, to study the principal aspects under which it manifests itself. Such is the object of those considerations, the title of which is, Of the Determination of the Ideal, and which the author develops in this first part of the work. We can trace only summarily the principal ideas, devoting ourselves to marking their order and connection.

The gradation which the author establishes between the progressively determined forms of the ideal is as follows:

1. The ideal, under the most elevated form, is the divine idea, the divine such as the imagination can represent it under sensuous forms; such is the Greek ideal of the divinities of Polytheism; such the Christian ideal in its highest purity, under the form of God the Father, of Christ, of the Virgin, of the Apostles, etc. It is given above all to sculpture and painting, to present us the image of it. Its essential characteristics are calmness, majesty, serenity.

2. In a degree less elevated, but more determined, in the circle of human life, the ideal appears to us, with man, as the victory of the eternal principles which fill the human heart, the triumph of the noble part of the soul over the inferior and passionate. The noble, the excellent, the perfect, in the human soul, is the moral and divine principle which is manifested in it, which governs its will, and causes it to accomplish grand actions; this is the true source of self-sacrifice and of heroism.

3. But the idea, when it is manifested in the real world, can be developed only under the form of action. Now, action itself has for its condition a conflict between principles and persons, divided as to interests, ideas, passions, and characters. It is this especially that is represented by poetry—the art par excellence, the only art which can reproduce an action in its successive phases, with its complications, its sudden turns of fortune, its catastrophe and its denouement.

Action, if one considers it more closely, includes the following conditions: 1st. A world which serves it as a basis and theatre, a form of society which renders it possible, and is favorable to the development of ideal figures. 2d. A determinate situation, in which the personages are placed who render necessary the conflict between opposing interests and passions, whence a collision may arise. 3d. An action, properly so called, which develops itself in its essential moments, which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. This action, in order to afford a high interest, should revolve upon ideas of an elevated order, which inspire and sustain the personages, ennobling their passions, and forming the basis of their character.

Hegel treats, in a general manner, each of these points, which will appear anew, under a more special form, in the study of poetry, and particularly of epic and dramatic poetry.

1. The state of society most favorable to the ideal is that which allows the characters to act with most freedom, to reveal a lofty and powerful personality. This cannot be a social order, where all is fixed and regulated by laws and a constitution. Nor can it be the savage state, where all is subject to caprice and violence, and where man is dependent upon a thousand external causes, which render his existence precarious. Now the state intermediate between the barbarous state and an advanced civilization, is the heroic age, that in which the epic poets locate their action, and from which the tragic poets themselves have often borrowed their subjects and their personages. That which characterizes heroes in this epoch is, above all, the independence which is manifested in their characters and acts. On the other hand, the hero is all of a piece; he assumes not only the responsibility of his acts and their consequences, but the results of actions he has not perpetrated, of the faults or crimes of his race; he bears in his person an entire race.

Another reason why the ideal existences of art belong to the mythologic ages, and to remote epochs of history, is that the artist or the poet, in representing or recounting events, has a freer scope in his ideal creations. Art, also, for the same reason, has a predilection for the higher conditions of society, those of princes particularly, because of the perfect independence of will and action which characterizes them. In this respect, our actual society, with its civil and political organization, its manners, administration, police, etc., is prosaic. The sphere of activity of the individual is too restricted; he encounters everywhere limits and shackles to his will. Our monarchs themselves are subject to these conditions; their power is limited by institutions, laws and customs. War, peace, and treaties are determined by political relations independent of their will.

The greatest poets have not been able to escape these conditions; and when they have desired to represent personages nearer to us, as Charles Moor, or Wallenstein, they have been obliged to place them in revolt against society or against their sovereign. Moreover, these heroes rush on to an inevitable ruin, or they fall into the ridiculous situation, of which the Don Quixote of Cervantes gives us the most striking example.

2. To represent the ideal in personages or in an action, there is necessary not only a favorable world from which the subject is to be borrowed, but a situation. This situation can be either indeterminate, like that of many of the immobile personages of antique or religious sculpture, or determinate, but yet of little earnestness. Such are also the greater number of the situations of the personages of antique sculpture. Finally, it may be earnest, and furnish material for a veritable action. It supposes, then, an opposition, an action and a reaction, a conflict, a collision. The beauty of the ideal consists in absolute serenity and perfection. Now, collision destroys this harmony. The problem of art consists, then, in so managing that the harmony reappears in the denouement. Poetry alone is capable of developing this opposition upon which the interest, particularly, of tragic art turns.

Without examining here the nature of the different collisions, the study of which belongs to the theory of dramatic art, we must already have remarked that the collisions of the highest order are those in which the conflict takes place between moral forces, as in the ancient tragedies. This is the subject of true classic tragedy, moral as well as religious, as will be seen from what follows.

Thus the ideal, in this superior degree, is the manifestation of moral powers and of the ideas of spirit, of the grand movements of the soul, and of the characters which appear and are revealed in the development of the representation.

3. In action, properly so-called, three things are to be considered which constitute its ideal object: 1. The general interests, the ideas, the universal principles, whose opposition forms the very foundation of the action; 2. The personages; 3. Their character and their passions, or the motives which impel them to act.

In the first place, the eternal principles of religion, of morality, of the family, of the state—the grand sentiments of the soul, love, honor, etc.—these constitute the basis, the true interest of the action. These are the grand and true motives of art, the eternal theme of exalted poetry.

To these legitimate and true powers others are, without doubt, added; the powers of evil; but they ought not to be represented as forming the real foundation and end of the action. “If the idea, the end and aim, be something false in itself, the hideousness of the ground will allow still less beauty of form. The sophistry of the passions may, indeed, by a true picture, attempt to represent the false under the colors of the true, but it places under our eyes only a whited sepulchre. Cruelty and the violent employment of force can be endured in representation, but only when they are relieved by the grandeur of the character and ennobled by the aim which is pursued by the dramatis personæ. Perversity, envy, cowardice, baseness, are only repulsive.

“Evil, in itself, is stripped of real interest, because nothing but the false can spring from what is false; it produces only misfortune, while art should present to us order and harmony. The great artists, the great poets of antiquity, never give us the spectacle of pure wickedness and perversity.”

We cite this passage because it exhibits the character and high moral tone which prevails in the entire work, as we shall have occasion to observe more than once hereafter.

If the ideas and interests of human life form the ground of the action, the latter is accomplished by the characters upon whom the interest is fastened. General ideas may, indeed, be personated by beings superior to man, by certain divinities like those which figure in ancient epic poetry and tragedy. But it is to man that action, properly so-called, returns; it is he who occupies the scene. Now, how reconcile divine action and human action, the will of the gods and that of man? Such is the problem which has made shipwreck of so many poets and artists. To maintain a proper equipoise it is necessary that the gods have supreme direction, and that man preserve his freedom and his independence without which he is no more than the passive instrument of the will of the gods; fatality weighs upon all his acts. The true solution consists in maintaining the identity of the two terms, in spite of their difference; in so acting that what is attributed to the gods shall appear at the same time to emanate from the inner nature of the dramatis personæ and from their character. The talent of the artist must reconcile the two aspects. “The heart of man must be revealed in his gods, personifications of the grand motives which allure him and govern him within.” This is the problem resolved by the great poets of antiquity, Homer, Æschylus, and Sophocles.

The general principles, those grand motives which are the basis of the action, by the fact that they are living in the soul of the characters, form, also, the very ground of the passions; this is the essence of true pathos. Passion, here, in the elevated ideal sense, is, in fact, not an arbitrary, capricious, irregular movement of the soul; it is a noble principle, which blends itself with a great idea, with one of the eternal verities of moral or religious order. Such is the passion of Antigone, the holy love for her brother; such, the vengeance of Orestes. It is an essentially legitimate power of the soul which contains one of the eternal principles of the reason and the will. This is still the ideal, the true ideal, although it appears under the form of a passion. It relieves, ennobles and purifies it; it thus gives to the action a serious and profound interest.

It is in this sense that passion constitutes the centre and true domain of art; it is the principle of emotion, the source of true pathos.

Now, this moral verity, this eternal principle which descends into the heart of man and there takes the form of great and noble passion, identifying itself with the will of the dramatis personæ, constitutes, also, their character. Without this high idea which serves as support and as basis to passion, there is no true character. Character is the culminating point of ideal representation. It is the embodiment of all that precedes. It is in the creation of the characters, that the genius of the artist or of the poet is displayed.

Three principal elements must be united to form the ideal character, richness, vitality, and stability. Richness consists in not being limited to a single quality, which would make of the person an abstraction, an allegoric being. To a single dominant quality there should be added all those which make of the personage or hero a real and complete man, capable of being developed in diverse situations and under varying aspects. Such a multiplicity alone can give vitality to the character. This is not sufficient, however; it is necessary that the qualities be moulded together in such a manner as to form not a simple assemblage and a complex whole, but one and the same individual, having peculiar and original physiognomy. This is the case when a particular sentiment, a ruling passion, presents the salient trait of the character of a person, and gives to him a fixed aim, to which all his resolutions and his acts refer. Unity and variety, simplicity and completeness of detail, these are presented to us in the characters of Sophocles, Shakspeare, and others.

Lastly, what constitutes essentially the ideal in character is consistency and stability. An inconsistent, undecided, irresolute character, is the utter want of character. Contradictions, without doubt, exist in human nature, but unity should be maintained in spite of these fluctuations. Something identical ought to be found throughout, as a fundamental trait. To be self-determining, to follow a design, to embrace a resolution and persist in it, constitute the very foundation of personality; to suffer one’s self to be determined by another, to hesitate, to vacillate, this is to surrender one’s will, to cease to be one’s self, to lack character; this is, in all cases, the opposite of the ideal character.

Hegel on this subject strongly protests against the characters which figure in modern pieces and romances, and of which Werther is the type.

These pretended characters, says he, represent only unhealthiness of spirit, and feebleness of soul. Now true and healthy art does not represent what is false and sickly, what lacks consistency and decision, but that which is true, healthy and strong. The ideal, in a word, is the idea realized; man can realize it only as a free person, that is to say, by displaying all the energy and constancy which can make it triumph.

We shall find more than once, in the course of the work, the same ideas developed with the same force and precision.

That which constitutes the very ground of the ideal is the inmost essence of things, especially the lofty conceptions of the spirit, and the development of the powers of the soul. These ideas are manifest in an action in which are placed upon the scene the grand interests of life, the passions of the human heart, the will and the character of actors. But this action is itself developed in the midst of an external nature which, moreover, lends to the ideal, colors and a determinate form. These external surroundings must also be conceived and fashioned in the meaning of the ideal, according to the laws of regularity, symmetry, and harmony, of which mention has been made above. How ought man to be represented in his relations with external nature? How ought this prose of life to be idealized? If art, in fact, frees man from the wants of material life, it cannot, however, elevate him above the conditions of human existence, and suppress these connections.

Hegel devotes a special examination to this new phase of the question of the ideal, which he designates by this title—Of the external determination of the ideal.

In our days we have given an exaggerated importance to this external side, which we have made the principal object. We are too unmindful that art should represent the ideas and sentiments of the human soul, that this is the true ground of its works. Hence all these minute descriptions, this external care given to the picturesque element or to the local color, to furniture, to costumes, to all those artificial means employed to disguise the emptiness and insignificance of the subject, the absence of ideas, the falsity of the situations, the feebleness of the characters, and the improbability of the action.

Nevertheless, this side has its place in art, and should not be neglected. It gives clearness, truthfulness, life, and interest to its works, by the secret sympathy which exists between man and nature. It is characteristic of the great masters to represent nature with perfect truthfulness. Homer is an example of this. Without forgetting the content for the form, picture for the frame, he presents to us a faultless and precise image of the theatre of action. The arts differ much in this respect. Sculpture limits itself to certain symbolic indications; painting, which has at its disposal means more extended, enriches with these objects the content of its pictures. Among the varieties of poetry, the epic is more circumstantial in its descriptions than the drama or lyric poetry. But this external fidelity should not, in any art, extend to the representation of insignificant details, to the making of them an object of predilection, and to subordinating to them the developments which the subject itself claims. The grand point in these descriptions is that we perceive a secret harmony between man and nature, between the action and the theatre on which it occurs.

Another species of accord is established between man and the objects of physical nature, when, through his free activity, he impresses upon them his intelligence and will, and appropriates them to his own use; the ideal consists in causing misery and necessity to disappear from the domain of art, in revealing the freedom which develops itself without effort under our eyes, and easily surmounts obstacles.

Such is the ideal considered under this aspect. Thus the gods of polytheism themselves have garments and arms; they drink nectar and are nourished by ambrosia. The garment is an ornament designed to heighten the glory of the features, to give nobleness to the countenance, to facilitate movement, or to indicate force and agility. The most brilliant objects, the metals, precious stones, purple and ivory, are employed for the same end. All concur to produce the effect of grace and beauty.

In the satisfaction of physical wants the ideal consists, above all, in the simplicity of the means. Instead of being artificial, factitious, complex, the latter emanate directly from the activity of man, and freedom. The heroes of Homer themselves slay the oxen which are to serve for the feast, and roast them; they forge their arms, and prepare their couches. This is not, as one might think, a relic of barbarous manners, something prosaic; but we see, penetrating everywhere the delight of invention, the pleasure of easy toil and free activity exercised on material objects. Everything is peculiar to and inherent in his character, and a means for the hero of revealing the force of his arm and the skill of his hand; while, in civilized society, these objects depend on a thousand foreign causes, on a complex adjustment in which man is converted into a machine subordinated to other machines. Things have lost their freshness and vitality; they remain inanimate, and are no longer proper, direct creations of the human person, in which the man loves to solace and contemplate himself.

A final point relative to the external form of the ideal is that which concerns the relation of works of art to the public, that is to say, to the nation and epoch for which the artist or the poet composes his works. Ought the artist, when he treats a subject, to consult, above all, the spirit, taste and manners of the people whom he addresses, and conform himself to their ideas? This is the means of exciting interest in fabulous and imaginary or even historic persons. But then there is a liability to distort history and tradition.

Ought he, on the other hand, to reproduce with scrupulous exactness the manners and customs of another time, to give to the facts and the characters their proper coloring and their original and primitive costume? This is the problem. Hence arise two schools and two opposite modes of representation. In the age of Louis XIV., for example, the Greeks and Romans are conceived in the likeness of Frenchmen. Since then, by a natural reaction, the contrary tendency has prevailed. Today the poet must have the knowledge of an archeologist, and possess his scrupulous exactness, and pay close attention, above all, to local color, and historic verity has become the principal and essential aim of art.

Truth here, as always, lies between the two extremes. It is necessary to maintain, at the same time, the rights of art and these of the public, to have a proper regard for the spirit of the epoch, and to satisfy the exigencies of the subject treated. These are the very judicious rules which the author states upon this delicate point.

The subject should be intelligible and interesting to the public to which it is addressed. But this end the poet or the artist will attain only so far as, by his general spirit, his work responds to some one of the essential ideas of the human spirit and to the general interests of humanity. The particularities of an epoch are not of true and enduring interest to us.

If, then, the subject is borrowed from remote epochs of history, or from some far-off tradition, it is necessary that, by our general culture, we should be familiarized with it. It is thus only that we can sympathize with an epoch and with manners that are no more. Hence the two essential conditions; that the subject present the general human character, then that it be in relation with our ideas.

Art is not designed for a small number of scholars and men of science; it is addressed to the entire nation. Its works should be comprehended and relished of themselves, and not after a course of difficult research. Thus national subjects are the most favorable. All great poems are national poems. The Bible histories have for us a particular charm, because we are familiar with them from our infancy. Nevertheless, in the measure that relations are multiplied between peoples, art can borrow its subjects from all latitudes and from all epochs. It should, indeed, as to the principal features, preserve, to the traditions, events, and personages, to manners and institutions, their historic or traditional character; but the duty of the artist, above all, is to place the idea which constitutes its content in harmony with the spirit of his own age, and the peculiar genius of his nation.

In this necessity lies the reason and excuse for what is called anachronism in art. When the anachronism bears only upon external circumstances it is unimportant. It becomes a matter of more moment if we attribute to the characters, the ideas, and sentiments of another epoch. Respect must be paid to historic truth, but regard must also be had to the manners and intellectual culture of one’s own time. The heroes of Homer themselves are more than were the real personages of the epoch which he presents; and the characters of Sophocles are brought still nearer to us. To violate thus the rules of historic reality, is a necessary anachronism in art. Finally, another form of anachronism, which the utmost moderation and genius can alone make pardonable, is that which transfers the religious or moral ideas of a more advanced civilization to an anterior epoch; when one attributes, for example, to the ancients the ideas of the moderns. Some great poets have ventured upon this intentionally; few have been successful in it.

The general conclusion is this: “The artist should be required to make himself the cotemporary of past ages, and become penetrated himself with their spirit. For if the substance of those ideas be true, it remains clear for all time. But to undertake to reproduce with a scrupulous exactness the external element of history, with all its details and particulars,—in a word, all the rust of antiquity, is the work of a puerile erudition, which attaches itself only to a superficial aim. We should not wrest from art the right which it has to float between reality and fiction.”

This first part concludes with an examination of the qualities necessary to an artist, such as imagination, genius, inspiration, originality, etc. The author does not deem it obligatory to treat at much length this subject, which appears to him to allow only a small number of general rules or psychological observations. The manner in which he treats of many points, and particularly of the imagination, causes us to regret that he has not thought it worth while to give a larger space to these questions, which occupy the principal place in the majority of æsthetical treatises; we shall find them again under another form in the theory of the arts.

[The next number will continue this translation through the treatment of the Symbolic, Classic, and Romantic forms of art.]