CONTENTS OF THE JOURNAL.
Thus far the articles of this journal have given most prominence to art in its various forms. The speculative content of art is more readily seen than that of any other form, for the reason that its sensuous element allows a more genial exposition. The critique of the Second Part of Faust, by Rosencrantz, published in this number, is an eminent example of the effect which the study of Speculative Philosophy has upon the analytical understanding. Is not the professor of logic able to follow the poet, and interpret the products of his creative imagination? The portion of Hegel’s Æsthetics, published in this number, giving, as it does, the historical groundwork of art, furnishes in a genial form an outline of the Philosophy of History. Doubtless the characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon mind make it difficult to see in art what it has for such nations as the Italians and Germans; we have the reflective intellect, and do not readily attain the standpoint of the creative imagination.
STYLE.
In order to secure against ambiguity, it is sometimes necessary to make inelegant repetitions, and, to give to a limiting clause its proper degree of subordination, such devices as parentheses, dashes, etc., have to be used to such a degree as to disfigure the page. Capitals and italics are also used without stint to mark important words. The adjective has frequently to be used substantively, and, if rare, this use is marked by commencing it with a capital.
There are three styles, which correspond to the three grades of intellectual culture. The sensuous stage uses simple, categorical sentences, and relates facts, while the reflective stage uses hypothetical ones, and marks relations between one fact and another; it introduces antithesis. The stage of the Reason uses the disjunctive sentence, and makes an assertion exhaustive, by comprehending in it a multitude of interdependencies and exclusions. Thus it happens that the style of a Hegel is very difficult to master, and cannot be translated adequately into the sensuous style, although many have tried it. A person is very apt to blame the style of a deep thinker when he encounters him for the first time. It requires an “expert swimmer” to follow the discourse, but for no other reason than that the mind has not acquired the strength requisite to grasp in one thought a wide extent of conceptions.
THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.
Vol. I. 1867. No. 3.
THE MONADOLOGY.
[Translated from the French of Leibnitz, by F. H. Hedge.]
1. The Monad, of which we shall here speak, is merely a simple substance entering into those which are compound; simple, that is to say, without parts.
2. And there must be simple substances, since there are compounds; for the compound is only a collection or aggregate of simples.
3. Where there are no parts, neither extension, nor figure, nor divisibility is possible; and these Monads are the veritable Atoms of Nature—in one word, the Elements of things.