We may be deceived in believing that we ourselves exist—that there is any permanent being we call ourselves—but there is no demonstrating that we are so deceived. The two cases are strictly analogous. We have just the same proof of the existence of the external object as of the thinking and percipient subject. The very first sensation or perception we experience brings with it instantaneously the two correlates, object and subject; they are made known in the same act or feeling; they are made known the one by means of the other—for unless through the means of the antagonist idea of object we should not have that of subject, nor vice versâ. In our judgment, therefore, there is as little philosophy in denying the external existence of matter as the internal existence of mind. The two ideas, as we have said, rise instantaneously, synchronously, and are in such manner correlates that it is only by the presence of the one that the other reveals itself.[6]
When Kant advanced from doubting of the objective truth of our knowledge of space, to deciding against it—to asserting that it was purely subjective—he was exceeding the limits of the human faculties, and offering a mere dogmatism which can never be brought to any test whatever. He was asking us to judge of the trustworthiness of our faculties of cognition—by what?—by our faculties of cognition. He was elevating what is at best a strange suspicion, a mere guess, into a doctrine.
And the whole superstructure of the systems of idealism which his German followers have reared, rests upon this guess!
Kant left nothing of the material world but an indescribable noumenon, which did not even exist in space. Of course the categories of Aristotle, classifying as they did those relations which constitute our knowledge of this world, were converted by him into mere forms of the understanding, moulding the given products of the sensibility. Certain other regulative modes of thought predominating, in their turn, over the products of the understanding, he called ideas of the pure reason.
His successor, Fichte, it will be seen, advanced but little further when he pronounced for a system of idealism. The subjective nature of our knowledge had been laid down; there was nothing left of the real world but this noumenon which had been ejected from the realm of space; he acted, therefore, a consistent and charitable part, in taking this forlorn and banished entity into the region, at least, of thought. All the external world is now but a projection from the individual mind—the non-ego is but another development of the ego—the object is nothing but a sort of limitation or contrast which the subject throws out, to make a life for itself; the web it spins in the blank infinitude. Of the whole material world we have for ever got rid.
Here it might be supposed that speculation in this direction had reached its extreme point; and as idealism is a system in which the mind cannot long rest, contradicting, as it does, its ineradicable convictions, that here would commence a philosophical revolution, and a return to a more sober and accurate method of investigation. But the German mind has put forth at this point an astonishing fertility. It has played with this idealism, refined upon it, varied it, produced new phases of it; reviving the strangest paradoxes of the Alexandrian school; and teaching—in this, the nineteenth century—with the gravest confidence in the world—with all the assurance of an ancient Scald chanting forth his mythological fables, a whole system of idealistic cosmogony!
Schelling, in his idealism, in some measure reinstated the object; not by reviving the vulgar notion of its reality, but declaring it to be in its essence identical with the subject, and pronouncing both to have an equally real or equally ideal existence. He thus got rid of the embarrassment which encounters us in the ordinary systems of idealism, of the subjective Ego producing the objective Ego. Thought and thing are identical. But this identity is to be recognised only in the mind of God, in the absolute—which develops what in itself is unity in the form of a duality. As if (to use a rude illustration) the same image should be shot from the interior of a magic lantern through two diverging tubes, making that twofold which was itself identical.
As it is hard for common apprehension to conceive this absolute, and seize upon this identity of thought and thing, Schelling invented a faculty of mind expressly for the comprehension of such profound doctrines of philosophy. He called it intellectual intuition. Those who possess it not—and it is by no means general—must be content to live without philosophy. Nor can those on whom nature has failed to bestow this intellectual intuition, acquire it by any study or industry of their own. Philosophus nascitur, non fit.
Viewed from one aspect, Schelling's philosophy is not without a certain charm. "Spirit is invisible nature, nature is visible spirit." In this view of things, if mind loses its pre-eminence, nature, or the visible world, is exalted and spiritualised. It is a system likely to fascinate the poet and the artist, and we believe it has had a recognised influence on the cultivation of the fine arts in Germany. It awakens our enthusiasm for nature. More than ever is mind, is deity, seen in the visible world. Nature is, in fact, deified, whatever other sacrifices are made.
But if there was something for enthusiasm to lay hold of in the system of Schelling, there was much wanting, it seems, to satisfy the rigid demands of philosophy. His cosmogony, his manner of tracing, a priori, the development of all things from the absolute, was considered, by those who understand such profundities, to be deficient in accuracy. Hegel next trod