P. [368], § 230. Kant, Kritik der Urtheilskraft: Einleitung, § 9 (note), (Werke, ed. Ros. iv. 39); see Caird's Critical Philosophy of I. Kant, Book i. ch. 5; also Hegel's Werke, ii. 3.
P. [369], § 231. An example of Wolfs pedantry is given in Hegel, Werke, v. 307, from Wolfs Rudiments of Architecture, Theorem viii. 'A window must be broad enough for two persons to recline comfortably in it, side by side. Proof. It is customary to recline with another person on the window to look about. But as the architect ought to satisfy the main views of the owner (§ I) he must make the window broad enough for two persons to recline comfortably side by side.'
'Construction': cf. Werke, ii. 38. 'Instead of its own internal life and spontaneous movement, such a simple mode (as subject, object, cause, substance, &c.) has expression given to it by perception (here = sense-consciousness) on some superficial analogy: and this external and empty application of the formula is called "Construction." The procedure shares the qualities of all such formalism. How stupid-headed must be the man, who could not in a quarter of an hour master the theory of asthenic, sthenic and indirectly asthenic diseases' (this is pointed at Schelling's Werke, iii. 236) 'and the three corresponding curative methods, and who, when, no long time since, such instruction was sufficient, could not in this short period be transformed from a mere practitioner into a "scientific" physician? The formalism of Naturphilosophie may teach e.g. that understanding is electricity, or that the animal is nitrogen, or even that it is like the South or the North, or that it represents it,—as baldly as is here expressed or with greater elaboration in terminology. At such teachings the inexperienced may fall into a rapture of admiration, may reverence the profound genius it implies,—may take delight in the sprightliness of language which instead of the abstract concept gives the more pleasing perceptual image, and may congratulate itself on feeling its soul akin to such splendid achievement. The trick of such a wisdom is as soon learnt as it is easy to practice; its repetition, when it grows familiar, becomes as intolerable as the repetition of juggling once detected. The instrument of this monotonous formalism is not harder to manipulate than a painter's palette with two colours on it, say red and green, the former to dye the surface if a historic piece, the latter if a landscape is asked for.'
Kant (Werke, iii. 36) in the 'Prolegomena to every future Metaphysic,' § 7, says: 'We find, however, it is the peculiarity of mathematical science that it must first exhibit its concept in a percept, and do so à priori,—hence in a pure percept. This observation with regard to the nature of mathematics gives a hint as to the first and supreme condition of its possibility: it must be based on some pure percept in which it can exhibit all its concepts in concreto and yet à priori, or, as it is called, construe them.'
The phrase, and the emphasis on the doctrine, that perception must be taken as an auxiliary in mathematics,' belong specially to the second edition of the Kritik, e.g. Pref. xii. To learn the properties of the isosceles triangle the mathematical student must 'produce (by 'construction') what he himself thought into it and exhibited à priori according to concepts.'
'Construction, in general,' says Schelling (Werke, v. 252: cf. iv. 407) 'is the exhibition of the universal and particular in unity':—'absolute unity of the ideal and the real.' v. 225. Darstellung in intellektueller Anschauung ist philosophische Konstruktion.
P. [372]. 'Recollection' = Erinnerung: i.e. the return from differentiation and externality to simplicity and inwardness: distinguished from Gedächtniss = memory (specially of words).
P. [373], § 236. Cf. Schelling, Werke, iv. 405. 'Every particular object is in its absoluteness the Idea; and accordingly the Idea is also the absolute object (Gegenstand) itself,—as the absolutely ideal also the absolutely real.'
P. [374], § 236. Aristotle, Metaphys. xi. 9 (1074. 6. 34) αὑτὸν ἅρα νοεῖ (ὁ νοῦς = θεος), εἵπερ ἐστὶ τὸ κράτιστον, καὶ ἐστιν ἡ νόησις νοήσεως νόησις. Cf. Arist. Metaph. xii. 7.