13. In these rash and blind attempts to construct physical science à priori, we may see how imperfect the Hegelian doctrines are as a complete philosophy. In the views of moral and political subjects the results of such a scheme are naturally less obviously absurd, and may often be for a moment striking and attractive, as is usually the case with attempts to reduce history to a formula. Thus we are told that the State appears under the following determinations:—first as one, substantial, self-included: next, varied, individual, active, disengaging itself from the substantial and motionless unity: next, as two principles, altogether distinct, and placed front to front in a marked and active opposition: then, arising out of the ruins of the preceding, the idea appears afresh, one, identical, harmonious. And the East, Greece, Rome, Germany, are declared to be the historical forms of these successive determinations. Whatever amount of real historical colour there may be for this representation, it will hardly, I think, be accepted as evidence of a profound political philosophy; but on such parts of the subject I shall not here dwell.
14. I may observe that in the series of philosophical systems now described, the two elements of the Fundamental Antithesis are alternately dwelt upon in an exaggerated degree, and then confounded. The Sensational School could see in human knowledge nothing but facts: Kant and Fichte fixed their attention almost entirely upon ideas: Schelling and Hegel assume the identity of the two, (a point we never can reach,) as the origin of their philosophy. The external world in Locke's school was all in all. In the speculations of Kant this external world became a dim and unknown region. Things were acknowledged to be something in themselves, but what, the philosopher could not tell. Besides the phænomenon which we see, Kant acknowledged a noumenon which we think of; but this assumption, for such it is, exercises no influence upon his philosophy.
15. We may for the sake of illustration imagine to ourselves each system of philosophy as a Drama in which Things are the Dramatis Personæ and the Idea which governs the system is the Plot of the drama. In Kant's Drama, Things in themselves are merely a kind of 'Mute Personages,' κωφὰ πρόσωπα, which stand on the stage to be pointed at and talked about, but which do not tell us anything, or enter into the action of the piece. Fichte carries this further, and if we go on with the same illustration, we may say that he makes the whole drama into a kind of Monologue; in which the author tells the story, and merely names the persons who appear. If we would still carry on the image, we may say that Schelling, going upon the principle that the whole of the drama is merely a progress to the Denouement, which denouement contains the result of all the preceding scenes and events, starts with the last scene of the piece; and bringing all the characters on the stage in their final attitudes, would elicit the story from this. While the true mode of proceeding is, to follow the drama Scene by Scene, learning as much as we can of the Action and the Characters, but knowing that we shall not be allowed to see the Denouement, and that to do so is probably not the lot of our species on earth. So far as any philosopher has thus followed the historical progress of the grand spectacle offered to the eyes of speculative man, in which the Phenomena of Nature are the Scenes, and the Theory of them the Plot, he has taken the course by which knowledge really has made its advances. But those who have partially done this, have often, like Hegel, assumed that they had divined the whole course and end of the story, and have thus criticised the scenes and the characters in a spirit quite at variance with that by which any real insight into the import of the representation can be obtained.
If it be asked which position we can assign, in this dramatic illustration, to those who hold that all our knowledge is derived from facts only, and who reject the supposition of ideas; we may say that they look on with a belief that the drama has no plot, and that these scenes are improvised without connexion or purpose.
16. I will only offer one more illustration of the relative position of these successive philosophies. Kant compares the change which he introduced into philosophy to the change which Copernicus introduced into astronomical theory. When Copernicus found that nothing could be made of the phenomena of the heavens so long as everything was made to turn round the spectator, he tried whether the matter might not be better explained if he made the spectator turn, and left the stars at rest. So Kant conceives that our experience is regulated by our own faculties, as the phenomena of the heavens are regulated by our own motions. But accepting and carrying out this illustration, we may say that Kant, in explaining the phenomena of the heavens by means of the motions of the earth, has almost forgotten that the planets have their own proper motions, and has given us a system which hardly explains anything besides broadest appearances, such as the annual and daily motions of the sun; and that Fichte appears as if he wished to deduce all the motions of the planets, as well as of the sun, from the conditions of the spectator;—while Schelling goes to the origin of the system, like Descartes, and is not content to show how the bodies move, without also proving that from some assumed original condition, all the movements and relations of the system must necessarily be what they are. It may be that a theory which explains how the planets, with their orbits and accompaniments, have come into being, may offer itself to bold speculators, like those who have framed and produced the nebular hypothesis. But I need not remind my readers either how precarious such a hypothesis is; or, that if it be capable of being considered probable, its proofs must gradually dawn upon us, step by step, age after age: and that a system of doctrine which assumes such a scheme as a certain and fundamental truth, and deduces the whole of astronomy from it, must needs be arbitrary, and liable to the gravest error at every step. Such a precarious and premature philosophy, at best, is that of Schelling and Hegel; especially as applied to those sciences in which, by the past progress of all sure knowledge, we are taught what the real cause and progress of knowledge is: while at the same time we may allow that all these forms of philosophy, since they do recognize the condition and motion of the spectator, as a necessary element in the explanation of the phenomena, are a large advance upon the Ptolemaic scheme—the view of those who appeal to phenomena alone as the source of our knowledge, and say that the sun, the moon, and the planets move as we see them move, and that all further theory is imaginary and fantastical.
CHAPTER XXV.
The Fundamental Antithesis as it exists in the Moral World.
1. WE HAVE hitherto spoken of the Fundamental Antithesis as the ground of our speculations concerning the material world, at least mainly. We have indeed been led by the physical sciences, and especially by Biology, to the borders of Psychology. We have had to consider not only the mechanical effects of muscular contraction, but the sensations which the nerves receive and convey:—the way in which sensations become perceptions; the way in which perceptions determine actions. In this manner we have been led to the subject of volition or will[297], and this brings us to a new field of speculation, the moral nature of man; and this moral nature is a matter not only of speculative but of practical interest. On this subject I shall make only a few brief remarks.
2. Even in the most purely speculative view, the moral aspect of man's nature differs from the aspect of the material universe, in this respect, that in the moral world, external events are governed in some measure by the human will. When we speculate concerning the laws of material nature, we suppose that the phenomena of nature follow a course and order which we may perhaps, in some measure, discover and understand, but which we cannot change or control. But when we consider man as an agent, we suppose him able to determine some at least of the events of the external world; and thus, able to determine the actions of other men, and to lay down laws for them. He cannot alter the properties of fire and metals, stones and fluids, air and light; but he can use fire and steel so as to compel other men's actions; stone-walls and ocean-shores so as to control other men's motions; gold and gems so as to have a hold on other men's desires; articulate sounds and intelligible symbols so as to direct other men's thoughts and move their will. There is an external world of Facts; and in this, the Facts are such as he makes them by his Acts.
3. But besides this, there is also, standing over against this external world of Facts, an internal world of Ideas. The Moral Acts without are the results of Moral Ideas within. Men have an Idea of Justice, for instance, according to which they are led to external acts, as to use force, to make a promise, to perform a contract, as individuals; or to make war and peace, to enact laws and to execute them, as a nation.