The Philosophy of Kant has a most important bearing on the whole question as to the validity of the natural evidence for the being and perfections of God. We shall confine our attention to those parts of his system which give rise to the speculations that have issued in the recent theories of Ideal or Spiritual Pantheism.
In attempting to explain the nature and origin of the whole system of human knowledge, Kant divides our intellectual being into three distinct faculties,—sensation, understanding, and reason. He supposes that from sensation we derive the whole matter of our knowledge; that from the understanding we derive its form, or the manner in which it is conceived of by us; and that from reason we derive certain general or abstract notions, which are highly useful, since they give a systematic unity to human thought, but which have no objective validity, that is, either no reality in nature that corresponds to them, or none, at least, that can be scientifically demonstrated. From this fundamental principle of his system it follows, that the only part of our knowledge which has any objective reality is that which is derived from our sense-perceptions, all else being purely formal or subjective, and arising solely from the laws of our own mental nature, which determine us to conceive of things in a particular way; and that even that part of our knowledge which is derived from sense-perception is purely phenomenal, since we know nothing of any object around us beyond the bare fact that it exists, and that it appears to us to be as our senses represent it. Hence the skeptical tendency of Kant's speculations, in so far as the scientific certainty of our knowledge is concerned. The practical utility of that knowledge is not disputed, but its objective reality, or the possibility of proving it, is, to a large extent, denied. Still he admits a primitive dualism, and a radical distinction between the subject and the object, between the mind which thinks and the matter of its thoughts. The matter comes from without, the form from within; and the senses are the channels through which the phenomena of nature are poured into the mould of the human mind. All knowledge implies this combination of matter with form, and is possible only on the supposition of the concurrent action both of the object and subject; not that either of the two is known to us in its essence, or that their real existence can be scientifically demonstrated, for we know the subject only in its relation to the object, and the object only in its relation to the subject; but that this relation necessarily requires the joint action of both, by which alone we can acquire the only knowledge of which we are capable, and which is supposed to be purely phenomenal, relative, and subjective. It is true that we are capable of forming certain grand ideas, such as that of God, the universe, and the soul; but these are the pure products of Reason, the mere personifications of our own modes of thinking, and have no objective reality, at least none that can be scientifically demonstrated. But, while "the Speculative Reason" is held to be incompetent to prove the existence of God, "the Practical Reason" is appealed to; and in the conscious liberty of the soul, and its sense of incumbent moral duty,—"the Categorical Imperative,"—Kant finds materials for reconstructing the basis and fabric of a true Theology, not scientifically perfect, but practically sufficient for all the purposes of life.
It was scarcely possible that Philosophy could find a permanent resting-place in such a theory as this; for, while it recognized both the "object" and the "subject" as equally indispensable, the one for the matter, the other for the form, of human knowledge, it did not hold the balance even between the two. It assigned so much to the "subject," and so little to the "object," and made so large a part of our knowledge merely formal and subjective, that it could neither be regarded as a self-consistent system of Skepticism, nor yet as a satisfactory basis for Scientific Belief. It was almost inevitable that speculative minds, starting from this point, should diverge into one or other of three courses; either following the line of the "subject" exclusively, and treating the "object" as a superfluous incumbrance, so as to reach, as Schulz and Maimon did, a pure Subjective Idealism, akin to utter Skepticism; or following the line of the "object," and giving it greater prominence than it had in the system of Kant, so as to lay the foundation, as Jacobi and Herbart did, of a system of Objective Certitude; or keeping both in view, and attempting, as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel did, to blend the two into one, so as to reduce them to systematic unity.[135]
In Kant's system a dualism was admitted, a real distinction between the "subject" and "object" of thought; but he had ascribed so much to the subject, and so little to the object, that Fichte conceived the idea of dispensing with the latter altogether, and constructing his whole philosophy on a purely subjective basis. Since Kant had taught that all objects are conceived of either according to the forms of our sensational faculty, or the categories of our understanding, or the ideas of pure reason, it seemed to be unnecessary to suppose the existence of any object distinct from the mind itself. For if it be the mind which furnishes the form of Space, and gives us the idea of Substance, of Cause, of Being, the mind alone might suffice to account for the whole sum of human knowledge. Fichte was followed by Schelling, and Schelling by Hegel, each differing from his predecessor, but all concurring in the attempt to identify "Seyn," or absolute Being, with Thought, and to represent everything in the universe as a mere mode or manifestation of one Infinite Essence. The identity of Existence and Thought is the fundamental principle of Hegel's doctrine. With him, Being and the Idea of being, are the same; and Being and Thought are combined in the "Absolute," which is at once ideal and real (l'être and l'idée). With him, the idea of God is that of a logical process of thought, "ever unfolding itself, but never unfolded,"—a dialectic movement rather than a Divine Being, which realizes itself, and reaches a state of self-consciousness in man. God, nature, and man, are but one process of thought, considered in different aspects; all finite personalities are only so many thoughts of one eternal mind; God is in man, and man is in God, and the progress of humanity, in all its stages, is a Divine development.
This bare outline of these systems must suffice for our present purpose, and we now proceed to offer a few remarks on the doctrine of Ideal as distinguished from Material Pantheism.
1. The whole system of "Idealism," as propounded in the German schools, is utterly baseless, and contradicts the intuitive, the universal convictions of the human mind. For what is Idealism? Reduced to its utmost simplicity, and expressed in the briefest formula, it amounts, in substance, to this: that the whole universe is to us a mere process of thought, and that nothing exists, or, at least, can be known by us, beyond the ideas of our own minds. And what is the ground on which it rests? It rests entirely on the assumption, that, since we can know nothing otherwise than through the exercise of our mental faculties, these faculties must be the sole sources of all our knowledge, and altogether independent of any external object. According to this theory, the mind is not informed or instructed by the universe, but the universe is created by the mind; the objective is developed from the subjective; and there is no reality anywhere except in the region of consciousness. Nature is seen only as it is imaged in the mirror within; and to us it is a mere phantasmagoria, a series of phenomena, a succession of thoughts. "The sum total," says Fichte, "is this; there is absolutely nothing permanent, either without me or within me, but only an unceasing change. I know absolutely nothing of any existence, not even of my own. I myself know nothing, and am nothing. Images there are; they constitute all that apparently exists; and what they know of themselves is after the manner of images; images that pass and vanish without there being aught to witness their transition; that consist, in fact, of the images of images, without significance and without an aim. I myself am one of these images; nay, I am not even thus much, but only a confused image of images. All reality is converted into a marvellous dream, without a life to dream of, and without a mind to dream,—into a dream made up only of a dream itself. Perception is a dream; thought—the source of all existence, and all the reality which I imagine to myself of my existence, of my power, of my destination—is the dream of that dream."[136]
The tendency of such speculations as these towards universal Skepticism, or even absolute Nihilism, with the exception only of certain fleeting phenomena of Consciousness, is too apparent to require any formal proof; and it must be equally evident that they contradict some of the most universal and deeply-rooted convictions of the human mind. The ultimate ground of every system of Idealism which excludes the knowledge of an external world must be one or other of these two assumptions, or a combination of both: either, that our knowledge cannot extend beyond the range of consciousness, which takes cognizance only of ideas, or of subjective mental states; or that any attempt to extend it beyond these limits, so as to embrace external objects as really existing, can only be successful on this condition,—that we prove, by reasoning from the subjective to the objective, that there is a necessary logical connection between the state of the one and the reality of the other. Each of these assumptions is equally groundless. It is true that consciousness, strictly so called, takes cognizance only of what passes within; it is not true that consciousness, in this restricted sense, is commensurate with our entire knowledge. It is true that we acquire our knowledge only through the exercise of our mental faculties; it is not true that our mental faculties are the only sources of our knowledge, nor even that, without the concurrence of certain objects, they could give us any knowledge at all. It is true that there must be a connection between the subjective and the objective; it is not true that this connection must be established by reasoning, or that we must prove the existence of an external world distinct from the thinking mind, before we are entitled to believe in it. For a great part of our knowledge is presentative, and we directly perceive the objects of Nature not less than the phenomena of Consciousness.
When it is said, in the jargon of the modern German philosophy, that "the Ego has no immediate consciousness of the Non-Ego as existing, but that the Non-Ego is only represented to us in a modification of the self-conscious Ego, and is, in fact, only a phenomenon of the Ego,"—a plain, practical Englishman, little tolerant of these subtle distinctions, might be ready, if not deterred by the mere sound of the words, to test them by a particular example. What am I to think, he might say, of my own father and mother? They are familiarly known to me. I have seen them, and talked with, them, and loved them as my own soul. I have hitherto believed that they existed, and that they were really a father and mother to me. But now I am taught that they are—mere modifications of my own mind; that they are nothing more than simple phenomena of the self-conscious Ego; and that, so far from being the earthly authors of my existence, they are themselves—the creation and offspring of my own thought. And on what ground am I asked to receive this astonishing discovery? Why, simply because I can be sure of nothing but the facts of consciousness. But how are these facts proved? They "need no proof; they are self-evident; they are immediately and irresistibly believed." Be it so. I can just as little doubt of the existence of my body, of the distinct personality of my parents, and the reality of an external universe, as of any fact of consciousness. May it not be, whether we can explain it or not, that the one set of facts is as directly presented, and needs as little to be proved, as the other?
2. The doctrine of "Identity" constitutes a prominent and indispensable part of the theory of Idealism, and is the ground-principle of Philosophical Pantheism. It amounts, in substance, to the proposition, that Existence and Thought are one, that the "subject" and "object" of knowledge are one. "If the doctrine of Identity means anything, it means that Thought and Being are essentially one; that the process of thinking is virtually the same as the process of creating; that in constructing the universe by logical deduction, we do virtually the same thing as Deity accomplishes in developing himself in all the forms and regions of creation; that every man's reason, therefore, is really God; in fine, that Deity is the whole sum of consciousness immanent in the world."[137] It is through the medium of this doctrine of Identity that Idealism passes into Pantheism,—not, indeed, the Idealism of Berkeley, which recognized, consistently or otherwise, the existence of the human mind and of the Divine Spirit, while it denied the independent existence of matter,—but the Idealism of Fichte and others, which resolved mind into a mere process of thought, a continuous stream or succession of ideas. To such a theory the doctrine of Identity was indispensable. Its advocates were bound to show that nothing existed, or could be proved to exist, in the universe but thought, and that, in every case, the subject and object of thought might be identified as one. We find, accordingly, that from the earliest ages down to the present time, the idea of "absolute unity," or "universal identity," has been frequently exhibited in connection with the speculations of philosophical Idealists. The disciples of the Eleatic school in ancient Greece, not less than those of the modern schools of Germany, insisted on the identity of thought and its object, and regarded everything that might seem to be external to the mind as a mere illusion.
It may be difficult for the British mind, familiarized from infancy with the philosophy of common sense, to grasp the idea which this doctrine involves; but, on the principles of absolute Idealism, it may be easily explained, and may even seem to have some foundation in facts that must be acknowledged by all. There are two cases, particularly, which may serve to illustrate, if they cannot suffice to prove, it. The first is that of the Supreme Intelligence, conceived as existing before the production of a created universe, when He was himself the sole "subject" and the sole "object" of thought; in other words, the absolute "Subject-Object." The second is that of the human consciousness, conceived as occupied solely with certain subjective mental states, when the mind may be said to be at once the "subject" and the "object" of its own thought. There are cases, then, in which mind may be regarded as a "subject-object;" the case of human consciousness, when the mind takes cognizance of its own states or acts, and the case of the Divine consciousness, while as yet the created universe had not been called into being. But the question is, whether, in all cases, the "subject" and "object" of thought are the same? or, whether existence and thought are universally identical? An affirmative answer to this question would imply, that nothing whatever exists except only in the mind that perceives it; that, according to Bishop Berkeley, "the existence of unthinking things without any relation to their being perceived" is an absurd or impossible supposition; that "their esse is percipi," that is, that their being consists in their being perceived or known; whence it would follow, as Berkeley himself admits, that we have no reason to believe in the continued existence of the desk at which we write, after we have left the room in which we see it, excepting such as may arise from the supposition, that if we returned to that room we might still see it, or that in our absence it may still be perceived by some other mind. Existence is identified with thought, and nothing exists save only as it is thought of. Why? Simply because it can become known to us only through the medium of consciousness, and that, too, in no other character than as a phenomenon of our own minds.