8. We may further remark, that though by successive steps in science, successive Facts are reduced to Ideas, this process can never be complete. However the point may shift which separates the two poles, the two poles will always remain. However, far the ideal element may extend, there will always be something beyond it. However far the phenomena may be idealized, there will always remain some which are not idealized, and which are mere phenomena. This also is implied by making our expressions refer to the fundamental antithesis: for because the antithesis is fundamental, its two elements will always be present; the objective as well as the subjective. And thus, in the contemplation of the universe, however much we understand, there must always be something which we do not understand; however far we may trace necessary truths, there must always be things which are to our apprehension arbitrary: however far we may extend the sphere of our internal world, in which we feel power and see light, it must always be surrounded by our external world, in which we see no light, and only feel resistance. Our subjective being is inclosed in an objective shell, which, though it seems to yield to our efforts, continues entire and impenetrable beyond our reach, and even enlarges in its extent while it appears to give up to us a portion of its substance.
II. Successive German Philosophies.
9. The doctrine of the Fundamental Antithesis of two elements of which the union is involved in all knowledge, and of which the separation is the task of all philosophy, affords us a special and distinct mode of criticizing the philosophies which have succeeded each other in the world; and we may apply it to the German Philosophies of which we have spoken.
The doctrine of the Fundamental Antithesis is briefly this:
That in every act of knowledge (1) there are two opposite elements which we may call Ideas and Perceptions; but of which the opposition appears in various other antitheses; as Thoughts and Things, Theories and Facts, Necessary Truths and Experiential Truths; and the like: (2) that our knowledge derives from the former of these elements, namely our Ideas, its form and character as knowledge, our Ideas of space and time being the necessary forms, for instance, of our geometrical and arithmetical knowledge; (3) and in like manner, all our other knowledge involving a development of the ideal conditions of knowledge existing in our minds: (4) but that though ideas and perceptions are thus separate elements in our philosophy, they cannot, in fact, be distinguished and separated, but are different aspects of the same thing; (5) that the only way in which we can approach to truth is by gradually and successively, in one instance after another, advancing from the perception to the idea; from the fact to the theory; from the apprehension of truths as actual to the apprehension of them as necessary. (6) This successive and various progress from fact to theory constitutes the history of science; (7) and this progress, though always leading us nearer to that central unity of which both the idea and the fact are emanations, can never lead us to that point, nor to any measurable proximity to it, or definite comprehension of its place and nature.
10. Now the doctrine being thus stated, successive sentences of the statement contain successive steps of German philosophy, as it has appeared in the series of celebrated authors whom I have named.
Ideas, and Perceptions or Sensations, being regarded as the two elements of our knowledge, Locke, or at least the successors of Locke, had rejected the former element, Ideas, and professed to resolve all our knowledge into Sensation. After this philosophy had prevailed for a time, Kant exposed, to the entire conviction of the great body of German speculators, the untenable nature of this account of our knowledge. He taught (one of the first sentences of the above statement) that (2) Our knowledge derives from our Ideas its form and character as knowledge; our Ideas of space and time being, for instance, the necessary forms of our geometrical and arithmetical knowledge. Fichte carried still further this view of our knowledge, as derived from our Ideas, or from its nature as knowledge; and held that (3) all our knowledge is a development of the ideal conditions of knowledge existing in our minds (one of our next following sentences). But when the ideal element of our knowledge was thus exclusively dwelt upon, it was soon seen that this ideal system no more gave a complete explanation of the real nature of knowledge, than the old sensational doctrine had done. Both elements, Ideas and Sensations, must be taken into account. And this was attempted by Schelling, who, in his earlier works, taught (as we have also stated above) that (4) Ideas and Facts are different aspects of the same thing:—this thing, the central basis of truth in which both elements are involved and identified, being, in Schelling's language, the Absolute, while each of the separate elements is subjected to conditions arising from their union. But this Absolute, being a point inaccessible to us, and inconceivable by us, as our philosophy teaches (as above), cannot to any purpose be made the basis of our philosophy: and accordingly this Philosophy of the Absolute has not been more permanent than its predecessors. Yet the philosophy of Hegel, which still has a wide and powerful sway in Germany, is, in the main, a development of the same principle as that of Schelling;—the identity of the idea and the fact; and Hegel's Identity-System, is rather a more methodical and technical exposition of Schelling's Philosophy of the Absolute than a new system. But Hegel traces the manifestation of the identity of the idea and fact in the progress of human knowledge; and thus in some measure approaches to our doctrine (above stated), that (5) the way in which we approach to truth is by gradually and successively, in one instance after another, that is, historically, advancing from the perception to the idea, from the fact to the theory: while at the same time Hegel has not carried out this view in any comprehensive or complete manner, so as to show that (6) this process constitutes the history of science: and as with Schelling, his system shows an entire want of the conviction (above expressed as part of our doctrine), (7) that we can never, in our speculations reach or approach to the central unity of which both idea and fact are emanations.
11. This view of the relation of the Sensational School, of the Schools of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and of the fundamental defects of all, may be further illustrated. It will, of course, be understood that our illustration is given only as a slight and imperfect sketch of these philosophies; but their relation may perhaps become more apparent by the very brevity with which it is stated; and the object of the present chapter is not the detailed criticism of systems, but this very relation of systems to each other.
The actual and the ideal, the external and the internal elements of knowledge, were called by the Germans the objective and the subjective elements respectively. The forms of knowledge and especially space and time, were pronounced by Kant to be essentially subjective; and this view of the nature of knowledge, more fully unfolded and extended to all knowledge, became the subjective ideality of Fichte. But the subjective and the objective are, as we have said, in their ultimate and supreme form, one; and hence we are told of the subjective-objective, a phrase which has also been employed by Mr. Coleridge. Fichte had spoken of the subjective element as the Me, (das Ich); and of the objective element as the Not-me, (das Nicht-Ich); and has deduced the Not-me from the Me. Schelling, on the contrary, laboured with great subtlety to deduce the Me from the Absolute which includes both. And this Absolute, or Subjective-objective, is spoken of by Schelling as unfolding itself into endless other antitheses. It was held that from the assumption of such a principle might be deduced and explained the oppositions which, in the contemplation of nature, present themselves at every step, as leading points of general philosophy:—for example, the opposition of matter as passive and active, as dead and organized, as unconscious or conscious; the opposition of individual and species, of will and moral rule. And this antithetical development was carried further by Hegel, who taught that the Absolute Idea developes itself so as to assume qualities, limitations, and seeming oppositions, and then completes the cycle of its development by returning into unity.
12. That there is, in the history of Science, much which easily lends itself to such a formula, the views which I have endeavoured to expound, show and exemplify in detail. But yet the attempts to carry this view into detail by conjecture—by a sort of divination—with little or no attention to the historical progress and actual condition of knowledge, (and such are those which have been made by the philosophers whom I have mentioned,) have led to arbitrary and baseless views of almost every branch of knowledge. Such oppositions and differences as are found to exist in nature, are assumed as the representatives of the elements of necessary antitheses, in a manner in which scientific truth and inductive reasoning are altogether slighted. Thus, this peculiar and necessary antithetical character is assumed to be displayed in attraction and repulsion, in centripetal and centrifugal forces, in a supposed positive and negative electricity, in a supposed positive and negative magnetism; in still more doubtful positive and negative elements of light and heat; in the different elements of the atmosphere, which are, quite groundlessly, assumed to have a peculiar antithetical character: in animal and vegetable life: in the two sexes; in gravity and light. These and many others, are given by Schelling, as instances of the radical opposition of forces and elements which necessarily pervades all nature. I conceive that the heterogeneous and erroneous principles involved in these views of the material world show us how unsafe and misleading is the philosophical assumption on which they rest. And the Triads of Hegel, consisting of Thesis, Antithesis, and Union, are still more at variance with all sound science. Thus we are told that matter and motion are determined as inertia, impulsion, fall; that Absolute Mechanics determines itself as centripetal force, centrifugal force, universal gravitation. Light, it is taught, is a secondary determination of matter. Light is the most intimate element of nature, and might be called the Me of nature: it is limited by what we may call negative light, which is darkness.