"with wandering feet
The dark, unbottomed, infinite abyss."
And we are told gravely, by grave expositors, how, beginning with nothing, he showed, with logical precision, how every thing had regularly proceeded from it!
In the system of Hegel, object and subject are both lost sight of: nothing exists but the relation between them. As the thing and the thought of it are identical, and as the essence of a thought is the relation between two terms, it follows very logically that this relation is all, and that nothing really exists but relations. We should have supposed this to be a fair reductio ad absurdum, proving (if the matter could need of proof) that the thing and the thought were not identical. But the march of ideal philosophy was not to be so easily arrested.
We have now reached what is distinguished as absolute idealism.
"They (the three idealisms) may be thus illustrated," (writes Mr Lewes in his History of Philosophy.) "I see a tree. Fichte tells me that it is I alone who exist; the tree is a modification of my mind. This is subjective idealism. Schelling tells me that both the tree and my ego are existences equally real, or ideal, but they are nothing less than manifestations of the absolute. This is objective idealism. But Hegel tells me, that all these explanations are false. The only thing really existing is the idea—the relation. The ego and the tree are but two terms of the relation, and owe their reality to it. This is absolute idealism."[7]
If Martinus Scriblerus were alive, he also might be tempted to give an illustration of these three forms of idealism.
The crowd of spectators at a fair, he might say, if they see a man dancing upon the tight-rope, strained between two posts—have no doubt in the world that the rope, and the man on it, are equally supported by the same two posts, which, moreover, they presume to stand up there in veritable substantiality before them. Were our three sages at the fair, they would reason otherwise. Fichte would say—these people think there are two posts! There is but one. That left-hand post is but the shadow of the other. It is the right-hand subjective post which has projected it forth.
Schelling, gravely looking on, observes they are both shadows: nay, they are identical. If you were to stand in the centre of the rope, in the point of indifference between them, and to turn round till the intellectual intuition were sufficiently excited, you would find the right-hand and the left-hand post blended together—undistinguishable—you would perceive their absolute identity.
Shadows! identical! Very true, says Hegel, slowly stepping forward, but what a mistake have both philosophers and the vulgar been making all this time! They have presumed that these posts support the rope! It is the rope which upholds the posts; which are indeed but its opposite ends. You may see that, separately, each post is good for nothing; it is the relation between them that is every thing; the rope is all. This alone can be said to exist. Every thing about us is plainly at one end or the other end of this, or some other rope. There runs, he would add, a vulgar tradition that man made the rope. I will demonstrate that the rope made the man and every thing else in the whole fair.