profane to examine too closely, Datur non intelligi. tur. But a revelation unconfirmed by miracles, and a faith not commanded by the conscience, a philosopher may venture to pass by, without suspecting himself of any irreligious tendency. But it is not either the nature of man, or the duty of the philosopher, to despair, concerning any important problem, until, as in the squaring of the circle, the impossibility of a solution has been demonstrated. How the esse assumed as originally distinct from the scire, can ever unite itself with it; how being can Thus, as materialism has been generally taught, it transform itself into a knowing, becomes conceivable is utterly unintelligible, and owes all its proselytes on one only condition; namely, if it can be shown to the propensity so common among men, to mistake that the vis representativa, or the sentient, is itself a distinct images for clear conceptions; and, vice versa, species of being; i. e. either as a property or attri- to reject as inconceivable whatever from its own nabute, or as an hypostasis or self subsistence. The ture is unimaginable. But as soon as it becomes former is, indeed, the assumption of materialism; a intelligible, it ceases to be materialism. In order to system which could not but be patronized by the phi- explain thinking, as a material phenomenon, it is losopher, if only it actually performed what it pro- necessary to refine matter into a mere modification mises. Put how any affection from without can me of intelligence, with the two-fold function of appeartamorphose itself into perception or will, the mate-ing and perceiving. Even so did Priestley in his conrialist has hitherto left, not only as incomprehensible troversy with Price! He stript matter of all its maas he found it, but has aggravated it into a compre- terial properties; substituted spiritual powers, and hensible absurdity. For, grant that an object from when we expected to find a body, behold! we had without could act upon the conscious self, as on a nothing but its ghost! the apparition of a defunct consubstantial object; yet such an affection could substance! only engender something homogeneous with itself. Motion could only propagate motion. Matter has no inward. We remove one surface but to meet with another. We can but divide a particle into particles; and each atom comprehends in itself the properties of the material universe. Let any reflecting mind make the experiment of explaining to itself the evidence of our sensuous intuitions, from the hypothesis that in any given perception there is a something which has been communicated to it by an impact or an impression ab extra. In the first place, by the impact on the percipient or ens representans, not the object itself, but only its action or effect, will pass into the same. Not the iron tongue, but its vibrations, pass into the metal of the bell. Now in our immediate perception, it is not the mere power or act of the object, but the object itself, which is immediately present. We might, indeed, attempt to ex-dream-world of phantoms and spectres, the inexpliplain this result by a chain of deductions and conclusions; but that, first, the very faculty of deducing and concluding would equally demand an explanation; and, secondly, that there exists, in fact, no such intermediation by logical notions, such as those of cause and effect. It is the object itself, not the product of a syllogism, which is present to our consciousness. Or would we explain this supervention of the object to the sensation, by a productive faculty set in motion by an impulse; still the transition, into the percipient, of the object itself, from which the impulse proceeded, assumes a power that can permeate and wholly possess the soul, I shall not dilate further on this subject; because it will (if God grant health and permission) be treated of at large, and systematically, in a work, which I have many years been preparing, on the PRODUCTIVE LOGOS human and divine; with, and as the introduction to, a full commentary on the Gospel of St. John. To make myself intelligible as far as my present subject requires, it will be sufficient briefly to observe-1. That all association demands and presupposes the existence of the thoughts and images to be associated. 2. The hypothesis of an external world exactly correspondent to those images or modifications of our own being, which alone (according to this system) we actually behold, is as thorough idealism as Berkeley's, inasmuch as it equally (perhaps, in a more perfect degree) removes all reality and immediateness of perception, and places us in a cable swarm and equivocal generation of motions in our own brains. 3. That this hypothesis neither involves the explanation, nor precludes the necessity, of a mechanism and co-adequate forces in the percipient, which at the more than magic touch of the impulse from without, is to create anew for itself the correspondent object. The formation of a copy is not solved by the mere pre-existence of an original; the copyist of Raphael's Transfiguration must repeat more or less perfectly the process of Raphael. It would be easy to explain a thought from the image on the retina, and that from the geometry of light, if this very light did not present the very same difficulty. We might as rationally chant the Brahmin creed of the tortoise that supported the bear, that supported the elephant, that supported the world, to And how came the percepient here? And what is the tune of "This is the house that Jack built." The become of the wonder-pressing MATTER, that was to sic Deo placitum est we all admit as the sufficient perform all these marvels by force of mere figure, cause, and the divine goodness as the sufficient weight, and motion? The most consistent proceeding reason; but an answer to the whence? and why? of the dogmatic materialist is to fall back into the is no answer to the how; which alone is the physicommon rank of soul-and-bodyists; to affect the mys-ologist's concern. It is a mere sophisma pigrum, and terious, and declare the whole process a revelation (as Bacon hath said) the arrogance of pusillanimity, given, and not to be understood, which it would be which lifts up the idol of a mortal's fancy, and com "And like a God, by spiritual art, Cowley. mands us to fall down and worship it, as a work of divine wisdom, an ancile or palladium fallen from heaven. By the very same argument the supporters of the Ptolemaic system might have rebuffed the Newtonian, and pointing to the sky with self-complacent grin, have appealed to common sense whether the sun did not move, and the earth stand still. CHAPTER IX. Is philosophy possible as a science? and what are its conditions?-Giordano Bruno-Literary aristocracy, or the existence of a tacit compact among the learned as a privileged order-The author's obligations to the Mystics-To Emanuel Kant-The difference between the letter and the spirit of Kant's writings, and a vindication of prudence in the teaching of philosophy-Fichte's attempt to complete the critical system-Its partial success and ultimate failure-Obligations to Schelling; and, among English writers, to Saumarez. initio, identical and co-inherent; that intelligence and being are reciprocally each other's Substrate. 1 presumed that this was a possible conception (i. e. that it involved no logical inconsonance) from the length of time during which the scholastic definition of the Supreme Being, as actus purissimus sine ulla potentialitate, was received in the schools of Theology, both by the Pontifican and the Reformed divines. The early study of Plato and Plotinus, with the com mentaries and the THEOLOGICA PLATONICA, of the illustrious Florentine; of Proclus, and Gemistius Pletho; and, at a later period, of the "De Immenso et Innumerabili," and the "De la causa, principio d uno," of the philosopher of Nola, who could boast of a Sir Philip Sydney and Fulke Greville among his patrons, and whom the idolaters of Rome burnt as an atheist in the year 1660; had all contributed to prepare my mind for the reception and welcoming of the Cogito quia sum, et sum quia Cogito; a philosophy of seeming hardihood, but certainly the most ancient, and therefore, presumptively, the most natural. AFTER I had successively studied in the schools of Locke, Berkeley, Leibnitz, and Hartley, and could Why need I be afraid? Say rather how dare I be find in neither of them an abiding place for my rea- ashamed of the Teutonic theosophist, Jacob Behmen? son, I began to ask myself, is a system of philosophy, Many, indeed, and gross were his delusions; and as different from mere history and historic classifica- such as furnish frequent and ample occasion for the tion, possible? If possible, what are its necessary triumph of the learned over the poor ignorant shee conditions? I was for a while disposed to answer maker, who had dared to think for himself. But the first question in the negative, and to admit that while we remember that these delusions were such the sole practicable employment for the human mind as might be anticipated from his utter want of all inwas to observe, to collect, and to classify. But I soon tellectual discipline, and from his ignorance of rational felt, that human nature itself fought up against this psychology, let it not be forgotten that the latter defect wilful resignation of intellect; and as soon did I find, he had in common with the most learned theologians that the scheme, taken with all its consequences, and of his age. Neither with books, nor with bookcleared of all inconsistencies, was not less impracti- learned men, was he conversant. A meek and shy cable, than contra-natural. Assume, in its full extent, quietist, his intellectual powers were never stimathe position, nihil in intellectu quod non prius in lated into feverous energy by crowds of proselytes, or sensa, without Leibnitz's qualifying præter ipsum in- by the ambition of proselyting. JACOB Behmen was tellectum, and in the same sense in which it was an enthusiast, in the strictest sense, as not merely disunderstood by Hartley and Condillac, and what Hume tinguished, but as contra-distinguished, from a fanatic. had demonstratively deduced from this concession While I in part translate the following observations concerning cause and effect, will apply with equal from a contemporary writer of the Continent, let me and crushing force to all the other eleven categori- be permitted to premise, that I might have transcribed cal forms, and the logical functions corresponding to the substance from memoranda of my own, which them How can we make bricks without straw? Or were written many years before his pamphlet was build without cement? We learn all things indeed given to the world; and that I prefer another's words by occasion of experience; but the very facts so learnt to my own, partly as a tribute due to priority of pubforce us inward on the antecedents, that must be pre-lication, but still more from the pleasure of sympathy, supposed in order to render experience itself possible. The first book of Locke's Essays (if the supposed error, which it labors to subvert, be not a mere thing of straw; an absurdity, which no man ever did, or, indeed, ever could believe) is formed on a Zápisμa Ereponτnséws, and involves the old mistake of cum hoc: ergo propter hoc. in a case where coincidence only was possible. Whoever is acquainted with the history of philosophy, during the two or three last centuries, cannot but admit, that there appears to have existed a sort of secret and tacit compact among the learned, not to pass beyond a certain limit in speculative science. The privilege of free thought, so highly extolled, has at no time been held valid in actual practice, except within this limit; and not a single stride beyond it has ever been ventured without bringing obloquy on the transgressor. The few men of genius among the learned class, who actually did overstep this boundary, anxiously avoided the appearance of having so done. Therefore, the true depth of science, and the penetration to the inmost centre, from which all the lines of knowledge diverge, to their ever distant cir and so unusual, the man's body should sympathize with the struggles of his mind; or that he should at times be so far deluded as to mistake the tumultuous sensations of his nerves, and the co-existing spectres of his fancy, as parts or symbols of the truths which were opening on him? It has indeed been plausibly observed, that in order to derive any advantage, or to collect any intelligible meaning, from the writings of these ignorant mystics, the reader must bring with him a spirit and judgment superior to that of the writers themselves: " And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek ?" umference, was abandoned to the illiterate, and the simple, whom unstilled yearning, and an original ebulliency of spirit, had urged to the investigation of the indwelling and living ground of all things. These, then, because their names had never been enrolled in the guilds of the learned, were persecuted by the registered livery-men as interlopers on their rights and privileges All, without distinction, were branded as fanatics and phantasts; not only those whose wild and exorbitant imaginations had actually engendered only extravagant and grotesque phantasms, and whose productions were, for the most part, poor copies and gross caricatures of genuine inspiration; but the truly inspired likewise, the origin--A sophism, which, I fully agree with Warburton, als themselves! And this for no other reason but because they were the unlearned men of humble and obscure occupations. When, and from whom among the literati by profession, have we ever heard the divine doxology repeated, "I thank thee, O Father! Lord of Heaven and Earth! because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes?" No! the haughty priests of learning not only banished from the schools and marts of science all who had dared draw living waters from the fountain, but drove them out of the very temple, which, mean time, "buyers and sellers, and money-changers" were suffered to make "a den of thieves." And yet it would not be easy to discover any substantial ground for this contemptuous pride in those literati, who have most distinguished themselves by their scorn of BEHMEN, DE THOYRAS, GEORGE Fox, &c.; unless it be, that they could write ortographically, make smooth periods, and had the fashions of authorship almost literally at their finger's ends, while the latter, in simplicity of soul, made their words immediate echoes of their feelings. Hence the frequency of those phrases among them, which have been mistaken for pretences to immediate inspiration; as for instance, “it was delivered unto me," "I strove not to speak," "I said, I will be silent," "but the word was in my heart as a burning fire," "and I could not forbear." Hence, too, the unwillingness to give offence; hence the foresight, and the dread of the clamors which would be raised against them, so frequently avowed in the writings of these men, and expressed, as was natural, in the words of the only book with which they were familiar. Woe is me that I am become a man of strife, and a man of contention - I love peace: the souls of men are dear unto me: yet because I seek for light, every one of them doth curse me!" O! it requires deeper feeling, and a stronger imagination, than belong to most of those to whom reasoning and fluent expression have been as a trade learnt in boyhood, to conceive with what might, with what inward strivings and commotion, the perception of a new and vital TRUTH takes possession of an uneducated man of genius. His meditations are almost inevitably employed on the eternal, or the everlasting; for "the world is not his friend, nor the world's law." Need we then be surprised, that under an excitement at once so strong 36 is unworthy of Milton; how much more so of the awful person, in whose mouth he has placed it? One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own experience, that there exist folios on the human understanding, and nature of man, which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be found as much fulness of heart and intellect as burst forth in many a simple page of GEORGE FOX, JACOB BEHMEN and even of Behmen's commentator, the pious and fervid WILLIAM LAW. The feeling of gratitude which I cherish towards these men has caused me to digress further than 1 had foreseen or proposed; but to have passed them over in an historical sketch of my literary life and opinions, would have seemed to me like the denial of a debt, the concealment of a boon. For the writings of these mystics acted in no slight degree to prevent my mind from being imprisoned within the outline of any single dogmatic system. They contributed to keep alive the heart in the head; gave me an indistinct, yet stirring and working presentiment, that all the products of the mere reflective faculty partook of DEATH, and were as the rattling twigs and sprays in winter, into which a sap was yet to be propelled from some root to which I had not yet penetrated, if they were to afford my soul either food or shelter. If they were too often a moving cloud of smoke to me by day, yet they were always a pillar of fire throughout the night, during my wanderings through the wilderness of doubt, and enabled me to skirt, without crossing, the sandy deserts of utter unbelief. That the system is capable of being converted into an irreligious PANTHEISM, I well know. The ETHICS of SPINOZA may, or may not, be an instance. But, at no time could I believe, that in itself, and essentially, it is incompatible with religion, natural or revealed; and now I am most thoroughly persuaded of the contrary. The writings of the illustrious sage of Konigsberg, the founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than any other work, at once invigorated and disci plined my understanding. The originality, the depth, and the compression of the thoughts; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance, of the distinctions; the adamantine chain of the logic; and, I will venture to add, (paradox as it will appear to those who have taken their notion of EMANUEL KANT, from Reviewers and Frenchmen,) the clearness and evi himself, by declaring what he meant, how could he decline the honors of martyrdom with less offence than by simply replying, "I meant what I said; and at the age of near four score, I have something else, and more important to do, than to write a comment ary on my own works." FICHTE'S Wissenschaftslehre, or Lore of Ultimate Science, was to add the key-stone of the arch; and by commencing with an act, instead of a thing or substance, Fichte assuredly gave the first mortal blow to Spinozism, as taught by Spinoza himself; and sup plied the idea of a system truly metaphysical, and of a metaphysique truly systematic: (i. e. having is spring and principle within itself.) But this funda mental idea he overbuilt with a heavy mass of mere notions, and psychological acts of arbitrary reflection. Thus his theory degenerated into a crude egoismus,* a boastful and hyperstoic hostility to NATURE, as life less, godless, and altogether unboly: while his reli dence of the "CRITIQUE OF THE PURE REASON;" of the "JUDGMENT;" of the "METAPHYSICAL ELEMENTS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY," and of his "RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF PURE REASON," took possession of me as with a giant's hand. After fifteen years familiarity with them, I still read these and all his other productions with undiminished delight and increasing admiration. The few passages that remained obscure to me, after due efforts of thought, (as the chapter on original apperception,) and the apparent contradictions which occur, I soon found were hints and insinuations referring to ideas, which KANT either did not think it prudent to avow, or which he considered as consistently left behind in a pure analysis, not of human nature in toto, but of the speculative intellect alone. Here, therefore, he was constrained to commence at the point of reflection, or natural consciousness: while in his moral system he was permitted to assume a higher ground (the autonomy of the will) as a POSTULATE deducible from the uncondi-gion consisted in the assumption of a mere ORDO ORtional command, or (in the technical language of his DINANS, which we were permitted exoterice to call school) the categorical imperative, of the conscience. God; and his ethics in an ascetic, and almost monk. He had been in imminent danger of persecution dur-ish mortification of the natural passions and desires. ing the reign of the late king of Prussia, that strange compound of lawless debauchery, and priest-ridden superstition; and it is probable that he had little inclination, in his old age, to act over again the fortunes and hair-breadth escapes of Wolf. The expulsion of the first among Kant's disciples, who attempted to complete his system, from the university of Jena, with the confiscation and prohibition of the obnoxious work, by the joint efforts of the courts of Saxony and Hanover, supplied experimental proof, that the venerable old man's caution was not groundless. In spite, therefore, of his own declarations, I could never believe it was possible for him to have meant no more by his Noumenon, or THING IN ITSELF, than his mere words express; or, that in his own conception he confined the whole plastic power to the forms of the intellect, leaving for the external cause, for the materiale of our sensations, a matter without form, which is doubtless inconceivable. I entertained doubts likewise, whether, in his own mind, he even laid all the stress, which he appears to do, on the moral postulates. An IDEA, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by a symbol; and, except in geometry, all symbols of necessity involve an apparent contradiction, Φώνης: Συνέτοιςεν : and for those who could not pierce through this symbolical husk, his writings were not intended. Questions which cannot be fully answered without exposing the respondent to personal danger, are not entitled to a fair answer; and yet to say this openly, would in many cases furnish the very advantage which the adversary is insidiously seeking after. Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating truth; and the philosopher who cannot utter the whole truth without conveying falsehood, and at the same time, perhaps, exciting the most malignant passions, is constrained to express himself either mythically or equivocally. When Kant, therefore, was importuned to settle the disputes of his commentators In Schelling's "NATUR-PHILOSOPHIE," and the "SYSTEM DES TRANSCENDENTALEN IDEALISMUS," I first found a genial coincidence with much that I had toiled out for myself, and a powerful assistance in what I had yet to do. *The following burlesque on the Fichtean Egoismus may, perhaps, be amusing to the few who have studied the system, and to those who are unacquainted with it, may convey as tolerable a likeness of Fichte's idealism as can be expected from an avowed caricature. The categorical imperative, or the annunciation of the new Teutonic God, EгSENKAIHAN: a dithyrambic Ode, by Querkope Von Klubstick, Grammarian, and Subrector in Gymnasio.**** Eu! Dei vices gerens, ipse Divus. (Speak English, Friend!) the God Imperativus, The form and the substance, the what and the why, (Fools, a truce with this startling!) He's a heretic dog who but adds Betty Martin! I of the world's whole Lexicon the root! ། ཟ troduced (in a more philosophical form, and freed from all its impurities and visionary accompaniments) by KANT; in whom it was the native and necessary growth of his own system. KANT's followers, bowever, on whom (for the greater part) their master's cloak had fallen, without, or with a very scanty portion of, his spirit, had adopted his dynamic ideas only as a more refined species of mechanics. With exception of one or two fundamental ideas, which cannot be withheld from FICHTE to SCHELLING we owe the completion, and the most important victories, of this revolution in philosophy. To me it will be happiness and honor enough, should I succeed in render. ing the system itself intelligible to my countrymen, and in the application of it to the most awful of sub nave introduced this statement as appropriate to the narrative nature of this sketch; yet rather in reference to the work which I have announced in a preceding page, than to my present subject. It would be but a mere act of justice to myself, were I to warn my future readers, that an identity of thought, or even similarity of phrase will not be at all times a certain >proof that the passage has been borrowed from Schelling, or that the conceptions were originally learnt from him. In this instance, as in the dramatic lectures of Schlegel to which I have before alluded, from the same motive of self-defence against the charge of plagiarism, many of the most striking resemblances; indeed, all the main and fundamental ideas, were born and matured in my mind before I had ever seen a single page of the German Philoso-jects for the most important of purposes. Whether a pher; and I might indeed, affirm with truth, before the more important works of Schelling had been written, or at least made public. Nor is this coincidence at all to be wondered at. We had studied in the same school; been disciplined by the same preparatory philosophy, namely, the writings of Kant; we had both equal obligation to the polar logic and dynamic philosophy of Giordano Bruno; and Schelling has lately, and, as of recent acquisition, avowed that same affectionate reverence for the labors of Behmen, and other mystics, which I had formed at a much earlier period. The coincidence of SCHELLING'S system with certain general ideas of Behmen, he declares to have been mere coincidence; while my obligations have been more direct. He needs give to Behmen only feelings of sympathy; while I owe him a debt of gratitude. God forbid that I should be suspected of a wish to enter into a rivalry with SCHELLING for the honors so unequivocally his right, not only as a great and original genius, but as the founder of the PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE, and as the most successful improver of the Dynamic System,* which, begun by Bruno, was re-in work is the offspring of a man's own spirit, and the product of original thinking, will be discovered by those who are its sole legitimate judges, by better tests than the mere reference to dates. For readers in general, let whatever shall be found in this, or any future work of mine, that resembles, or coincides with, the doctrines of my German predecessor, though contemporary, be wholly attributed to him: provided, that the absence of distinct references to his books, which I could not at all times make with truth as designating citations or thoughts actually derived from him, and which, I trust, would, after this general acknowledgment, be superfluous, be not charged on me as an ungenerous concealment or intentional plagiarism. I have not indeed (eheu! res angusta domi!) been hitherto able to procure more than two of his books, viz: the first volume of his collected Tracts, and his System of Transcendental Idealism; to which. however, I must add a small pamphlet against Fichte, the spirit of which was to my feelings painfully incongruous with the principles, and which (with the usual allowance afforded to an antithesis) displayed the love of wisdom rather than the wisdom of love. I regard truth as a divine ventriloquist: I care not from whose mouth the sounds are supposed to proceed, if only the words are audible and intelligible. "Albeit, I must confess to be half in doubt, whether I should bring it forth or no, it being so contrary to the eye of the world, and the world so potent in most men's hearts, that I shall endanger either not to be regarded or not to be understood."-MILTON: Reason of Church Government. *It would be an act of high and almost criminal injustice to pass over in silence the name of Mr. Richard Saumarez, a gentleman equally well known as a medical man and as a philanthropist, but who demands notice on the present occa sion as the author of "A new System of Physiology," in two volumes octavo, published 1797; and in 1812, of "An Examination of the natural and artificial Systems of Philosophy which now prevail," in one volume octavo, entitled, "The Principles of physiological and physical science." The latter work is not quite equal to the former in style or arrangement; and there is a greater necessity of distinguishing the principles of the author's philosophy from his conjec-progressive power, for the contradictory inert force, has a tures concerning color, the atmospheric matter, comets, &c., which, whether just or erroneous, are by no means necessary consequences of that philosophy. Yet even in this department of this volume, which I regard as comparatively the inferior work, the reasonings by which Mr. Saumarez invalidates the immanence of an infinite power in any finite substance, are the offspring of no common mind; and the experiment on the expansibility of the air is at least plausible and highly ingenious. But the merit, which will secure both to the book and to the writer a high and honorable name with posterity, consists in the masterly force of reasoning, and the copiousness of induction, with which he has assailed, and (in my opinion) subverted the tyranny of the mechanic system in physiology; established not only the existence of final causes, but their necessity and efficiency in every system that merite the name of philosophical; and substituting life and right to be known and remembered as the first instaurator of the dynamic philosophy in England. The author's views, as far as concerns himself, are unborrowed and completely his own, as he neither possessed, nor do his writings discover, the least acquaintance with the works of Kant, in which the germs of philosophy exist, and his volumes were published many years before the full development of these germs by Schelling. Mr. Saumarez's detection of the Brunonian system was no light or ordinary service at the time; and I scarcely remember in any work on any subject a confutation so thoroughly satisfactory. It is sufficient at this time to have stated the fact; as in the preface to the work, which I have already announced on the Logos, I have exhibited in detail the merits of this writer and genuine philosopher who needed only have taken his foundations somewhat deeper and wider to have superseded a considerable part of my labors. |