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THE JOURNAL
O F
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.
VOLUME XIV.
EDITED BY WM. T. HAREIS
NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
ST. LOUIS: George I. Jones and Company; LONDON: Trflbner and Company.
1880.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by
WM. T. HARRIS. In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
CONTENTS
Ars Poetica et Humana, John Alhee, 204
Atomic Collision and Non-Collision, Payton Spence, 286
Caird on Kant, /. Hutchison Stirling, 49
Criticism of Kant's Main Principles, J. H. Stirling, 25*7, 363
Educational Psychology (Outlines), The Editor, 225
Grimm on Raphael and Michael Angelo (Tr.), Ida M. £liot, 1&9, 306
Kant's Anthropology (Tr.), A. K Kroeger, 164
Kant's Critic of Pure Reason, Criticised and Explained by Himself (Tr.),
A. E. Kroeger, 1 Kant's Deduction of the Categories, with Special Relation to the Views of Dr.
Stirling, Edward Caird, 110
Kant's Principles of Judgment, John Watson, 376
Laws of Creation — Ultimate Science, TJieron Gray, 219
Method of Thought, Aleeds Tuthill, 13
Philosophic Outlines, H. K. Jones, 399
The Psychology of Dreams, Julia H. Gulliver, 204
Schelling on Natural Science in General (Tr.), Ella S. Morgan, 145
The Science of Education (Paraphrase), Anna C. Brackett, 191
Notes and Discussions, 134
(1) Edwin D. Mead's Translation of Hegel's "History of Philosophy;"
(2) The Concord Summer School of Philosophy ; (3) Lessing's Centennial
Birthday.
Notes and Discussions, 240
(1) Sentences in Prose and Verse ; (2) The Ideas of the Pure Reason ; (3)
An Oriental Mystic; (4) Mind to. Matter; (5) Ahnung; (6) The Prospec- tus of the Concord School.
Notes and Discussions, 32'7
(1) Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner;" (2) Thoreau's Cairn; (3) Sentences in
Prose and Verse; (4) Schelling on the Study of Physics and Chemistry; (6)
Professor John Watson on Kant's Critique and its Critics.
Notes and Discussions, 421
George Spencer Bower on the Philosophic Element in Shelley.
iv Contents.
Book Notices, . . . • 140
(1) La Psychologie Allemaade Contemporaine, par Th. Ribot; (2) La Science Politique. Revue Internationale ; (3) Verhandlungen der pbiloso- phischen Gesellschal't zu Berlin.
Book Notices, 254
Delphic Days. Books Received, 148, 350, 455
THE JOURNAL
OF
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.
Vol. XIV.] January, 1880. [No. 1.
KANT'S CRITIC OF PURE REASON, CRITICISED AND EXPLAINED BY HIMSELF.
[translated from rant's appendix to his prolegomena.] BY A. E. KROEGER.
Since all the methods heretofore pursued to constitute Metaphysics a real science have proved fruitless, and since it is most likely that such endeavors will never be realized unless a preliminary Criticism of Pure Reason^ be established, it seems to be not an unfair request that the attempt to estab-
1 "Science of Knowledge." [The translator desires to remark that the term Critik der reinen Vernunft is literally translated Oriticism of Pare Reason, and that the words " Pure Reason " signify, in Kant's terminology, the purely intellec- tual faculty of the human mind, to the exclusion of the moral faculty, which Kant treats in his Critic of Practical Reason, and also of the faculty of judgment, which he treats in his Critic of that name. Those three critics go together, and constitute one great work, a fact that should not be lost sight of The following article, wherein Kant, in vigorous and unmistakable language, declares the real drift of his Critic of Pure Reason, concerning which there has been — foolishly, as the translator believes — so much misunderstanding, appeared as an appendix to his Prolegomena, which is, as Kant himself expresses it, a sort of text-book of, or guide to, his Critic of Pure Reason. In short, the Prolego?nena are the Critic of Pure Reason itself, in a very condensed form (reduced to about one-eighth in bulk, I should say), and arrayed in the analytical — not, like the Critic, in the synthet- ical — method. Students of Kant cannot take hold of a better work as a general introduction to his system. — A. E. K.]
XIV — 1
2 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
lish such a Criticism be carefully and thoroughly examined ; unless, indeed, students choose rather to give up all claim to Metaphysics, in which case no objection can be made, pro- vided those students remain true to their purpose.
If we take the course of things as it is in reality, and not as it ought to be, we find that there are two kinds of judg- ments : one which precedes an investigation — which would occur in our case if the reader should pronounce a judgment on my Criticism of Pure Reason from the standpoint of his Metaphysics, the very possibility whereof my Criticism under- takes to question — and another kind, which follovjs an inves- tigation— as, where the reader is able to put aside for awhile the consequences that result from my critical investigations, and that may run very hard against his adopted Metaphysics. If the doctrines of ordinary Metaphysics were acknowledgedly certain, as those of geometry, the former kind of judgment would be valid ; for, if the results of certain principles are in conflict with established truths, those principles are false, and to be rejected without further investigation. But if this is not so ; if in Metaphysics there is not a hoard of indisputably certain synthetical propositions ; and if it should turn out to be that a number of its propositions, seemingly as valid as the best of them, are yet at variance with each other as to their results ; and that the science of Metaphysics, indeed, does not show us at all a sure criterion of the truth of really metaphysical (syn- thetical) propositions — then the former mode of passing judgment is not allowable, and an investigation of the prin- ciples of my Criticism must precede any attempt to judge of its worth or worthlessness.
Specimen of a Judgment on waj Critic of Pure Reason Pre- ceding an Investigation.
Such a judgment maybe found in a review published in the Goettingischen Gelehrten Anzeiger, third supplement, of date January 19, 1782, page 40 : —
" When an author, who is well acquainted with the subject of his work, and has generally been anxious to put down the result of his own thoughts in its elaboration, falls into the
KanVs Critic of Pure Reason. 3
hands of a reviewer who, on his part, is sharp-sighted enough to spy out the points on which the worth or worthlessness of the work is chiefly dependent ; who does not cling to phrases, but goes to the root of things, and not merely examines the principles from which the author started, it may very well happen that the author should be displeased at the severity of the judgment. The public, however, remains indifferent, since it gains thereby, and the author ought to be content that he obtains an opportunity to correct or explain his work, thus timely reviewed by a competent judge, and in this way, if he believes himself to be in the right, to remove in time the bone of contention, which afterwards might be in the way of the success of his work."
I am in another predicament with regard to my reviewer. He appears not to have comprehended at all what I wished to arrive at in the investigation which I — luckily or unluckily — undertook ; and, be it ascribable to impatience in having to think throuo-h so voluminous a work, or to ill-humor at the threat of reform in a science which he imagined to be flxed on a permanent basis long ago, or, which I very reluctantly assume, to a really narrow-minded faculty of going beyond the ordinary School-Metaphysics — in short, he wades floun- deringly through a long series of propositions, in reading which one cannot think any thing at all, unless their premises tire known. Here and there he scatters his censure, of which, again, the reader perceives no ground or reason any more than he understands their meaning, except that it is directed against my work. Hence his review is of no advantage to the public, and cannot do me any harm in the judgment of competent critics ; and I would have passed the review alto- gether in silence, if it did not give me occasion for some ex- planations that may protect the reader of these Prolegomena against misinterpretation.
My reviewer, in order that he may be able to place himself on a standpoint from which he can place my whole work be- fore the e3^es of the public in the manner most unfavorable to myself, and at the same time escape any special investigation
4 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
thereof, begins his review, as he ends it, by saying : "This work is a system of transcendent [or, as he translates it, higher^] Idealism,"
At reading these lines I saw at once to what sort of a review they would lead ; just about as if a person who had never heard or seen anything of geometry were to alight upon a copy of Euclid, and were asked to give his judgment upon it. After turning over some leaves and examining the figures, he would probal)ly say : "This book is a systematic school of drawino-. The author makes use of a particular mode of speech, in order to give mysterious, incomprehensible rules, that, after all, can accomplish no more than any person can achieve by means of good natural eyesight, etc."
Let us see, however, what sort of an idealism that is which runs through my whole work, although it by no means con- stitutes the soul thereof.
The proposition of all genuine Idealists, from the Eleatic school down to that of Bishop Berkeley, is contained in this formula: "All cognition through our senses and experience is nothing but pure appearance, and the ideas of pure under- standino; and reason alone contain truth."
But the proposition which governs and determines 7iiy Idealism all through is, on the contrarv, as follows: "All
1 On no account higher. High steeples, and their similars, metaphyically- high men, are not for me. My place is in the fruitful Bathos of experience, and the word transcendental,* the significance whereof I have so often explained, seems not even to have been looked at by my reviewer. Something transcendental does not signify anything which transcends all experience, but which, although it — h pnoi-i — precedes it, has yet no other mission than to make empirical cognition possible. Whenever those conceptions go beyond experience, their use is called transcendent, and must be distinguished for their immanent use — that is to say, their use limited to experience.
* [Kant here again alludes to the vital distinction between transcendental and transcendent, a distinction to which I also have had occasion to refer on various occasions. I take this opportunity to state once more that "^ra«scertaJenteZism," as the word is used by Kant, is so much distinct from transcendentism, that the transcendental philosophy of Kant expressly negates the possibility of tran- scendent reasoning, and would throw all such argumentations or mystic utterances as constitute what is generally known in this country as Transcendentalism into the rubbish chamber of illegitimate synthetical d. priori propositions. — A. E. K.]
Kant 's Critic of Pure Reason. 5
cognition of things resulting from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but mere appearance, and only experi- ence gives truth."
Now, this is the very reverse of that " genuine " Idealism. How, then, did it happen that I made use of the expression Idealism for an utterly opposite purpose, and that the reviewer never perceived the distinction ?
The solution of this difficulty rests upon a matter that might easily have been gathered, if he had been so disposed, from the context of the work itself. Space and Time, together with all that they contain, are not the Things or their Quali- ties in themselves, but belong merely to the appearance thereof; and up to this point I entirely agree with the com- mon Idealist. But the}^ and amongst them, specially, Berk- eley, consider Space as a merely empirical representation, which is made known to us altogether like the appearances within it, and only l)y means of experience or perception. I, on the contrary, show that Space — and Time also — though Berkeley paid no attention to the Time fact — can be cognized by us, with all their «^9r/or/ determinations, because Space and Time are inherent in us in advance of all perception or expe- rience, as pure forms of sensuousness, and hence make possi- ble all contemplation thereof, and hence also all phenomena. From this it results, that since truth rests upon universal and necessary laws as criterions, experience can have no criterions of truth in Berkeley's system, since his system furnishes no a priori basis for the phenomena thereof; from which it follows, again, of course, that experience is nothing but a mere phe- nomenon (appearance). But with me, Space and Time (and the pure conceptions of the understanding therewith con- nected) prescribe the \ii\\ a priori to all possiljle experience, and thus furnish at the same time a sure criterion where])y to distinguish truth from appearance in experience.^
1 Genuine Idealism always has its fantastic purpose, and, indeed, can have no other ; but my Idealism has no other purpose than to comprehend the possibility of our cl pnoi-i cognition of objects of experience — a problem which has never as yet been solved, if, indeed, it has ever been proposed. Now, this my Idealism utterly overthrows '.the whole of that fantastic Idealism which always draws con-
6 Tlie Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
My so-called, properly named critical-Idealism is, therefore, of a very peculiar kind — namely, in this way: that it over- throws the common Idealism, and that it iirst gives objective reality to '^^\ a priori cognition — even that of Geometry — which the most zealous of realists would not have been able to maintain without this my proof of the ideality of Space and Time. In such a state of affiiirs I was anxious, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, to attach another appellation than that of Idealism to my system, but it did not seem practicable to change the name altooether. Hence I be^ that I may be permitted to call it in future, as I have done heretofore, formal, or, better still, critical Idealism, in order to distinguish it from the dogmatical Idealism of Berkeley and the skeptical Ideal- ism of Descartes. * * *
There is still much in the way to explain why a scholarly periodical, let its contributors have been selected with ever so much care and precaution, cannot keep up its otherwise well- deserved standing on the field of Metaphysics. Other sciences and branches of knowledoe have a standard. The science of Mathematics has that standard within itself ; History and The- ology have their standard in profane and sacred writings ; Physics and Medicine in Mathematics and Experience ; Law in Statutes; and even matters of Taste (Esthetics) have a standard in the models of the ancients. But to find a stand- ard for the measurement of what we call Metaphysics is still a matter of the future. I have attempted, however, to deter- mine it, as well as its application.
But, what is to be done in the meanwhile, and until such a standard is adopted, in order to make possible judgments on this kind of writings — books on Metaphysics? If they are of a dogmatic kind, every critic may do as he pleases. No one will remain master for a Ions; time, since some other one will arise to block his game. But if they are of a critical
elusions — as can be seen even from Plato — from our d, pHot-i cognition (even those of geometry) to another — namely, intellectual — contemplation than that of our senses ; and simply because not one of those Idealists has ever as much as dreamed that the senses also could contemplate d, priori.
KanVs Critic of Pure Reason. 7
kind — and not merely in regard to other writings, but in regard to reason itself, in which case the standard of judgment cannot be already assumed as generally admitted, but must first be discovered — we may very well beg that objections and blame be set aside ; and still there must be at least a desire for harmony at the basis, since the need of a common under- standing is mutual, and the lack of required insight causes a judicially decisive tone to appear improper.
But, in order to connect this, my defence, at the same time with the interest of the philosophical commonwealth, I hereby make a proposition which is decisive as to the manner in'which all metaphysical investigations must be directed to their com- mon object. This is nothing else than what mathematicians have done in other cases, to decide the advantage of their res- pective methods in a contest ; that is to say, a challenge to my reviewer to prove by a priori reasoning, in his own way, any single one truly metaphysical — namely, synthetical — propo- sition, cognized a priori through conceptions ; nay, were it but the most indispensable — as, for instance, the principle of the permanency of substance, or of the necessary determina- tion of the events of the world throuo;h their cause. If he cannot furnish this proof — and silence is consent — he must admit that (Metaphysics being altogether impossible without an apodictical certainty of propositions of this kind) the pos- sibility or impossibility of Metaphysics must first be decided in a Criticism of Pure Reason. He is, therefore, bound either to confess that the principles of my criticism are right, or to prove their invalidity. But since I see in advance that, however recklessly he may heretofore have relied u^^on the certainty of his propositions, he cannot now, where a strict proof is required, find a single proposition within the whole realm of Metaphysics which he can boldly advance, I am ready to grant him the most advantageous condition that can be granted in a contest, namely, to relieve him of the onus pro- handi, and take it upon my own shoulders.
First, He will find in these Prolegomena and in my Criti- cism of Pure Reason (Theses and Antitheses of the four Antinomies) eight propositions, each two of which contradict
8 The Journal of Speculative Pliilosopliy .
each other, and yet each whereof belongs necessarily to the science of Metaphysics, which science must either accept or refute them — although there is not one of them which some philosopher or another has not accepted in his turn. Now, my reviewer is at liberty to clioose, at his pleasure, any one of these eight propositions, aud to accept it without proof — (which I shall grant him), but only one, since a waste of time will be as obnoxious to him as to me — and then to attack my proof of the very opposite proposition. If, then, I shall nev- ertheless be able to save my proof, and thus be able to show to him that, in accordance with principles which every dog- matic science of Metaphysics must recognize, the very oppo- site of the proposition chosen by him can be proved quite as clearly as his own, the conclusion is that there is in the science of Metaphysics an original sin, which cannot be ex- plained, and much less solved, unless we ascend to its birth- place, pure reason itself; and hence it will be necessary either to accept my Critic of Pure Reason or to substitute a better one ; in which latter case, however, mine will at least have to be studied, which is all that I demand at present. If I, how- ever, can not save my proof, then a synthetical proposition a priori is established by dogmatical principles on the part of my opponent ; my accusations against the science of Metaphysics have, therefore, been wrong, and I am ready to acknowledge his censure of my Critic of Pure Reason to have been legiti- mate (though that is by no means a consequence).
Proposition to arrive at a Judgment on the Critic of Pure Reason, following an Investigation.
I am under ol)ligations to the public for the silence with which it has honored my work for a considerable time, since this evinces at least a postponement of judgment, and hence some presumption that in a work which abandons all old tracks, and strikes out an entirely new one, not at first easily to be fol- lowed, there may, after all, be contained some thing by means of which an important, but now died-out branch of human knowledge may receive new life and fruitfulness. It thus
Kanfs Critic of Pure Reason. 9
evinces carefulness not to break off and destroy the tender graft by an over-hasty judgment. A specimen of such a re- view, dehiyed on account of the above reason, has just now reached me.
And now — since an extensive building cannot possibly be judged by a casual glance, in its entirety — I propose that my work should be examined piece by piece, from its basis up- ward, and that in so doing use be made of the Prolegomena, as a general text-book, as it were, with which to compare the work itself, as occasion may arise. If this suggestion were nothing more than my imagination of an importance which vanity usually attaches to our own productions, it would be immodest, and deserve to be indignantly rejected. But, in the matter of speculative philosophy, things are now at a point where they threaten to become extinguished altogether, al- thouofh human reason clinics to them with a never-to-be-ex- tinguished inclination, and endeavors to change itself into indifference now only because it is being incessantly deceived.
In our age of thought, it is not to be presumed that men ol merit will not improve every occasion to contribute toward the common interest of the constantly growing self-enlighten- ment of reason, if there is any hope visible that the desired object may be attained. Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Laws, Arts, even Morals, etc., do not completely absorb the soul ; there always remains a space in it, left for the occu- pancy of pure and speculative reason ; and the emptiness of this place forces us to seek, apparently, occupation and enter- tainment, but, in point of fact, only mental dissipation, in caricatures, play-work, or phantasms, so that we may deafen the annoying call of reason, which, by its very nature, de- mands some thing that may satisfy itself on its own account, and not cause it to work merely on behalf of other purposes, or in the interest of other inclinations. Hence it seems to me that a work which busies itself solely with this sphere of in- itself-existing reason,^ must, on that very account — namely, because in it all other cognitions, nay, even all other pur-
^ [A Science of Knowledge, in Fichte's terminology. — A. E. K.]
10 The Journal of Sjjeculative Philosophy.
poses — unite into a whole — have a great charm for every one who ever has attempted thus to enhirge his conceptions — a greater charm, indeed, I think, than any other theoretical knowledge holds out, since no one would likely exchange the former for the latter.
I propose these Prolegomena rather than the Critic of Pure Keason itself, as such a text-book, for the following reason : Although I am still quite satisfied with the latter work, so far as its contents, arrangement, method, and the care bestowed on each proposition are concerned — for each proposition had to be carefully examined and tested ; and it took me years to satisfy myself fully, not of the Avhole work, but sometimes even of a single one of its propositions, in regard to its sources — I am not fully satisfied with my expositions of some of the chapters of its Elementary Part — as, for instance, the Deduction of the Conceptions of the Understanding, or the chapter on the Paralogisms of Pure Reason, a certain ampli- tude therein obscuring clearness. In their place, therefore, the chapters of the Prolegomena that relate to the same sub- ject may^be used as a basis of investigation.
It is said of the Germans, in their praise, that, in matters wherein pertinacity and diligence are required, they are able to excel all other nations. If this impression is correct, there is here an opportunity to confirm it by completing a work, concerning the happy termination of which there cau scarcely be a doubt, and in which all thinking men have an equal inter- est, though it has never yet been achieved. This is especially the case here, since the science which it concerns is of so peculiar a character that it can be established at once in all its completeness, and in such a permanent condition that it cannot thereafter be advanced in the least, or amplified by later discoveries,^ (I do not count in any ornamentation that might be appended in the way of increased clearness or prac- tical usefulness) — an advantage which no other science pos-
1 [This same statement has been even more emphatically put forward by Fichte, and seems to have been made then, as it is now made, one of the main objections to the general recognition of a universal Science of Knowledge. — A. E. K.]
Kant's Critic of Pure Reason. 11
sesses, or can possess, since no other science relates to so isolated a facnlty of cognition, one so independent of and unmixed with any other faculty. At the same time, it appears to me that this suggestion of mine does not hit upon an unfavorable period, since people in Germany seem nowadays not to know wherewith to employ themselves, unless it be the so-called useful sciences — provided it does not seem to be mere play, but also business, whereby a permanent object may be attained.
I must leave it to others to devise the means by which the efforts of scholars can be united for such a purpose. It is not, however, my intention to request any one to merely fol- low my propositions, or merely flatter me with a hope of their success. On the other hand, there may be attacks, repeti- tions, limitations, or perhaps confirmations, corrections, or extensions thereof. All I want is, that the matter be inves- tigated from its very basis, and then it can no longer fail that a system — though it be not mine — be thus established which will be an inheritance to our posterity for which it must be grateful.
It would be useless to show here what might be expected of a science of Metayhysics, if scholars were first agreed as to the correctness of the fundamental principles of the Critic of Pure Reason, and how that science would by no means appear so poor, and be reduced to so small a figure as men think — though deprived of its false feathers — but rather shine forth in another respect, respectably and grandly. But all other practical uses which such a reform would bring about are too evident to need pointing out.
The general science of Metaphysics was useful at least in this : that it looked up the elementary conceptions of the human understanding, in order to make them clear, and in explaining, to define them by analysis. In this way that science became an educational school for reason, in whatever direction reason might choose to employ itself. But, then, this was really all the good that science did accomplish ; for it annihilated again this, its merit, by favoring in the manner of reckless assertions the conceitedness ; and in the manner of
12 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
subtle evasions and embellishments the sophistry ; and in the manner of the ease whereby it sought to get over the most dif- ficult problem of thought, through means of a little schoLasti- cism, the general emptiness of thought (which is all the more seductive in that it has the choice of borrowing, on the one side, from the lauiruaffe of science, and on the other side from that of popularity ; and which is, therefore, a Jack of all Trades, but a master of none). The Critic of Pure Reason, on the contrary, first establishes the standard for our judgment whereby real knowledge can with certainty be distinguished from pretended knowledge ; and, by applying it to its fullest extent in the science of Metaphysics, gives rise to a mode of thinking which subsequently extends its beneficial influence to all other fields of reasoning, and thus inspires them all with true philosophic spirit. But even the service which it confers upon theology in making it independent from the judgment of dogmatic speculation, and thus placing that science in a position of abso- lute security against the attacks of such opponents, is surely not to be underrated ; for ordinary Metaphysics, although promising theology great support, was not able subsequently to fulfil its promise, and rather placed weapons in the hands of the enemy when it called dogmatic speculation to its assist- ance. Fantastic vagaries, finally, which can pass current in an enlightened age only when they take refuge behind school metaphysics — under whose protection they may dare to rave, as it were, rationally — are driven by critical philosophy out of this, their last hiding-place. Above all, however, it must surely be of great importance to a teacher of metaphysics to be able to say for once, with general consent, that what he teaches is now at last a Science, and hence of real use to the Commonwealth .
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 13
THE MATTER AND THE METHOD OF THOUGHT.
BY MEEDS TUTHILL.
H. The Method.
Now, as Man thus finds himself to be a likeness to, and not an " identity " with, God — finds himself " substantially " free in the physical and moral spheres only in his imitation and use of the Divine methods, laws, substance — so, in the intellectual sphere, in knowing, must he model his activity on the Divine pattern, to render it truly free and efficient. He must " know himself," therefore, as God knows Himself — by expression, by activity — which ends in a synthetic process to which all mere analysis can only be preparatory, and may be likened to that universal distribution of the Divine activity into its differential element of the " last relation " of things. Hegel has furnished the full analysis of this method, but has seemed to conceive of it as end, instead of means ; has miscalled mere likeness "identity;" has neglected Swedenborg's better word, "cor- respondence," and used instead the words "unity" and "sameness," "one and the same," which he confesses to be ambiguous, and which he certainly applies in a way that con- founds all distinction between the abstract and the concrete. For that relation of parts which constitutes a whole is like a self, but is not a self unless it be the vital relation of real activity.
Plato, on the other hand, first used this method consciously, with the concrete instinct of a poet, and also with a philo- sophic grasp (^Begrif) of analysis into its true unity; for, in his language, " idea " means " a form," whether in an external object or in our own conceptions (a "form" is merely that in which we see relations) ; and he did not call this mere " form " identical with that substantial essence or activity which produces it, and of which, in his view, we " partake," and can, therefore, also produce it in ourselves and recognize it elsewhere.
14 The Journal of 8]}eculative Philosophy .
This true synthetic method has for its oflSce to unite in the real relation — in its differential element — Spirit and Matter; in the Universal phase, God and the Universe ; in both, God and Man. Tims also, as matter of Science, it reconciles and unites, as a dissevered one, Spiritualism and Materialism. Practically, all the secret of it lies in Expression. Expression is Art ; and indeed this is the Divine Art of Thinking, which we can learn best by imitation of Divine methods, as we learn to be free physically and morally.
For Thinking, itself, is only an Expression of our percep- tions into forms — giving them relation, and thus form, more or less complex. This inevitable element of Relation is in- volved in the very existence of Consciousness, and at once gives form and being to idea. Our very first knowledge must be a concrete conception — a sense of Self in relation to some thing else — and all subsequent real knowledge is built on that. Self-consciousness can exist only in this Expression of Idea — i.e., in some act, if it be only the first act of Perception — and it grows vivid only in proportion to subsequent expression, by which the Knower learns his relations to other things. Ab- straction is part of the Art by which we build up larger conceptions of Act and Actor, by first severing the original concrete idea into its related elements ; elements, however, which, as naturally correlative, irresistibly seek each other again in concrete unity, though we part them to infinity with interrelation of " laws," " secondary causes," or whatever we choose to call these intermediates. The synthesis is inevitable, not because of the reaction, the "moment" of return upon itself in the " Idea," as Hegel describes it, as though it had a movement of its own (though that answers well enough as a ' ' figurate expression ' ' to give life to an abstraction ) , but because we have no consciousness of reality, no evidence of truth, no sense of completeness, till this synthetic unity of conception is achieved. Hence we cannot fully know any thing external till we realize its unity of relation in ourselves. Hence, too, Man's impulse to express himself outivardly ; for that is realizing his thought, and testing it ; it shows where the inner Expression lacks, and helps to give it completeness.
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 15
AikI hence, lastly, Science and Philosophy seek in theory for a completeness not furnished by tacts, and are not loath to thus satisfy the " inner man " at the expense of the outer Universe.
Hegel has perfectly analyzed and synthesized this process as to abstractions, but has left it in abstractions. The concrete Act and Actor are drawn by him in vague and vanishing out- lines, all Reality being resolved into a Shadow, which is figured by pure light upon inky darkness, as Being fitfully flickers in and out of Nothing. Let us see : —
" Spirit is the Idea, which from its Otherness returns into itself." There is a " Spirit of a Nation," a "World-Histori- cal Spirit," etc. And in this sense, as well as others, the term is thus defined: "The very essence of Spirit is Activity ; it realizes its potentiality ; makes itself its own deed, its own work, and thus becomes an object for itself — contemplates itself as an objective existence." " Spirit is essentially the result of its own activity." "Man's consciousness imports this : that the individual comprehends itself as a person — i.e. , recognizing itself in its single existence as possessing universality, as capable of abstraction from, and of surrendering all speciality, and therefore inherently infinite." Is it not difficult to see how this capacity for " abstraction," which makes Man " in- finite," differs at all from the Hindoo conception of absorption in Brahma?
Hence, though Hegel has reached a logical synthesis of marvellous completeness, it is itself but a synthesis of abstrac- tions — only a likeness to real developments — and therefore applicable as means and method of knowledge, but by no means as Reality itself. Here is the fundamental error of Idealism : to mistake knowledge of a thino- for the thins; itself. Hegel seems, at least, to fall into this error of considering Logic a "complete Science," because it contains all abstrac- tions in their simplicity and in their systematic concretions, although it does not give any real knowledge of any thing except of the operations of the mind itself, and that chiefly as a means of real knowledge of Self, and of other things. Hence Hegel himself is far more comprehensible in those poetic moods which now and then flash through his conscientious
16 27^6 Journal of Speculative Philosojihy .
abstraction in " pure thought," and prove, what we might well suspect from even his ordinary style, that an imagination of no ordinary power works the concrete in his own thought, how- ever he may strive to disguise or to escape it. His guiding principle is, however, that he has found the Universal Idea in the last possible abstraction, and such a Universal must, of course, have an abstract Particular, in mere Relation. This is perfectly true of mere "philosophical" Knowledge; and in this view of it, Hegel is consistent in his exposition of "Logic, Nature, and Spirit," though he uses his terms sa picturesquely as to give the impression that he believes he is speaking of Realities.
Thus, " The Idea " is nothing more than a ffmnd concretion of Truth in its universality and in its detail, as if it were wholly comprehended in one simple formula, from which all other truths are derived, and in which, therefore, they have their roots, and their placing as Particular parts or develop- ments ; so that they can be seen, as it were on a map, as contained in and springing from this One all-comprehensive and all-genetic " Idea," as " Begrifls." Now, this is all very w^ell as a description of universal knoivledge ; for that is mere abstraction, and its "Self" is nothing but this element of Relation w4iich reason finds. And w4ien called to apply this as mere " ideal " knowledge of " Nature," it is proper to con- sider mere form in Nature as all we can put in this form of knowledge, and comprehend by abstract relation. So, in. "Spirit" our abstract knowledge is only formal, — resolves itself into mere perception of this Reason, which relates things and forms a whole.
But, having thus faithfully absorbed ourselves in Abstraction as the only " Real," and put the Brahminical ban of " pariah " on all the faculties which connect it Avith " Self," it is natural that we here see that concrete Self vanish on this abstract side in mere "nothingness" of relation, and that that "Warrior," Imagination, revenges himself by presenting to- ns The Idea as the only " entity," and " Thought" as " the Universal Element " in which it exists and organizes " things " as merely " phenomenal and unreal." In other words. Matter
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 17
becomes abolished, because it is not this abstract " substan- tial," or formative power, Kelation — Reason. Yet were we to regard Matter as " atomistic," and treat it in this way as the "only substantial," avc could retine it awa}^ to a "mere nothing; " and by that same process it, too, becomes " every thing," genetic and universal, just as this " Idea " has become, by a similar abstraction from the Self. In either case, the relation of Suljstance to the Self is lost, and is considered only as Kelation, apart from Activity, which alone denotes and announces the real Self. But we are just as certain that some- thing exists as Substance in Matter, as we are that something exists as Substance in Self, though we cannot tind it as Substance in either, but only as Form. It does not end in Nothing in either case, simply because an Infinite cannot end in nothing — cannot end at all, but must return into itself in all its forms.
Substance is, in fact, that Other Self of the Divine — its passive side — and can be seen only in this aspect of relation to what is active (just as we can see motion only as relative). Hence, according as it takes the form of one's own activity, it seems like the real, active Self, /rrational Mankind has seen the God-Self in the Irrational ; Philosophy sees Him only in the Rational — i.e., merely as this Relation, or Reason. But why stop there, if there be a still higher aspect of the Man- Self, who thus judges that Other by himself? For this Rational judgment is only the appearance of the real Self in its first element of mere relation — our recognition of a Whole, instead of a chaos in the Universe, but only a whole. This first step, then, is mere objective knowledge; and the true integration depends upon a further use of this vanishing element of mere Relation as being, not the Self, but only like the Self. For, on due api)eal to consciousness, Man finds he is not merely a t^AoZe — a thinii: of rational relation merelv — but a consciousness which is his only real knowledge, and in which, when he looks there, vanishes again this relation, to Substance as passive, but in an opposite direction — i.e., there, he seems a mere activity, ?(nrelated, so far as he can see. But here, again, that relation, as before, does not vanish XIV— 2
18 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
into nothing, simply because its reacii is infinite ; but, as iii> the other direction of relation to the passive, Substance grew infinite and activity infinitesimal, so here, in relation to the active, substance grows infinitesimal, and activity infinite in the real Self: the former is novv the " mere relation " to God,, as Substance, of a dependent Self; and the latter is that in which this Self is to be made real — whole.
For it is not true, as Hegel says, that " the Incomprehen- sible is encountered only in Nature, for to be manifest to itself is the essence of Spirit;" for it is precisely the infinitesimal side of Self-consciousness in Man which is incomprehensible in form, as this infinitesimal side of the Divine Self as mere Relation in Nature is incomprehensible, except as mere relation, till recognized as the Thinking of another Infinite Self, whose inner Self-consciousness is another infinite depth which no- form of Reason can " comprehend," but which yet itself com- prehends all, not as mere knowledge, but as Reality.
Hence, when Hegel comes to apply this scheme of Ideal knowledge to Reality, he is forced to a more concrete concep- tion : "The material of Truth is Spirit itself — inherent,, vital movement" — of what, if not of a Self? " But what is Spirit? It is the one immutably homogeneous Infinite, pure Identity ; which, in its second phase, separates itself and makes this second aspect its own polar opposite, viz., as Existence for and in Self, as contrasted with the Universal," (Here we have the separation of the Divine being into its two "Selves" — the one, inner consciousness ; the other, external object of its activity, connected with it by mere relation as Substance. ) " But this separation is annulled by the fact that atomistic Subjectivity, as simple relation to itself, is itself the Univer- sal— the Identical with Self." (Here we have the confusion of " likeness " with " identity," by reason of the abolition of any distinction between Substance and Activity in the Self — in the Actor. This tenuity of projected " Thought," which is held objectively as an " atomistic Self" by the mere thread of relation, can become the vital and real Particular Self only by the restoration to it of the " inherent vital movement " which characterizes real Self, and by restoring also to the All-Self
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 19
the all-Substance from which this and all other forms thereof are produced, and in which they have their means of action. He then soes on to add, as if conscious of this defect of his defini- tion of Spirit as applied to God,) " If Spirit be defined as abso- lute reflection within itself, in virtue of its absolute duality — Love, on the one hand, as comprehending the Emotional ; Knowledge, on the other hand, as Spirit — it is recognized as Triune — the Father, the Son, and that duality which essen- tially characterizes it as Spirit." And so he finds Man " posited " by Spirit — i.e., God — as an opposite, but real Self, and " as the return from that opposite into its Self." Here then, as Reality, we have a really concrete scheme, of which the philosophical, or abstract scheme in mere knowledge, is only a likeness, not an identity ; in the latter, the abstract Self of mere Relation produced only an abstract and unreal Universal ; in the former, the inexorable real Self, as Par- ticular, requires and produces a concrete Universal Self. In- stead of an abstract Universe of Idea and its Begriffs, we hare the real Universe of God, Nature, Man.
Thus, to compare these results, Ave have in the abstract sphere of mere Knowledge : Idea, Nature as form thereof. Spirit as comprehending all forms in one Idea. In the con- crete sphere of Reality, as seen by Man, we have : Thought or Knowledge, as his unsubstantial non-self of mere relation or Reason; Self-consciousness as a phenomenal form of Self; and God as the Real Substantial Self, in whom all relations meet in one consciousness of Self. In the Divine sphere, we have the negative Self in Substance, as related in Natural and other objective forms ; the positive Self, in concrete free activity, as found phenomenally in Man, as reflection or return of the real Self; and, lastly, that Real and All-Self to which this consciousness everywhere returns, in God.
And it is just the glory and the grandeur of this " Idea" of Heo-el, that it thus resolves itself into the real Self-con- sciousness of God, — or into Nothing:. For we may conceive that His consciousness may at any time be actually represented by mere relation, — the Divine relation to all that exists in the Universe, thus grasped in one Whole Idea. But, what then?
20 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
As knowledge only, even this is Infinite, and would take us an eternity to comprehend in its complexity — i.e., it is incom- prehensible, even as mere Relation. But is that a Fixed Idea, unchangeable, immutable, etc., — never any thing new in that consciousness? That may be " orthodox" conception, but it is Brahm-ish ; and it is not Hegel's, nor is it Reality. This Earth has a history, so has Mankind, so has the Universe. Actual relations are changing, so far as we know, constantly, everywhere, and with them this " Idea," — unless we suppose a " balancing of the account " somewhere, so as to keep " one and the same," perpetually, this Consciousness of God. But a consciousness of that sort is none at all, — mechanical, unreal, denotes no thinking. Thus aijain we find that mere Relation is insufficient as a bond of this Divine Consciousness ; there is something else in it which makes it real, makes it Self ; — Activity. For in that Consciousness there is constant, necessary Self-development, as in this " Idea " of Hegel's con- ception. As the Past, it is God's Memory; as the Present, it is Reality ; as the Fnture, it is His Will.
And so we are assured that Reason only finds, or can find, Relation as a mere likeness, an evanescent infinitesimal of the Self, which the Self alone can integrate and make real. The whole Self must be brought to this task ; all its means of Per- ception, all its process of Abstraction, all its imaginative reflux into the Self in conception — in expression of a real and vital whole. For it is not enough to perceive all, nor to relate all to One ; we must also feel all, realize all, in Self-experience and Self-expression, in consciousness and in act. And, in this vital unity of our own, we see that God also "grasps" us, not as mere " Begrifis," not in a mere abstract relation, but as particular Selves of His Loving as well as Thinking Self.
Hence, when we recur to " Logic," we find that it is, and can 1)6, only a method of thought. Form is all it is, or has. Let us see, then, if Hegel has found here the Universal, and therefore the genetic, form or method of thinking: " In form, Loo:ic has three sides : " —
(A. ) The abstract side, or that of the Understanding, which
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 21
holds fast the fixed individual and its differences from others ; and such limitated abstract has for it the value of what is independent and Self-sustained ; " — i.e., such Logic is imper- fect classification of " thino:s ; " there is no o-enetic element recognized in all from which to produce a Universal classifi- cation.
(^B.) "The negative-rational, or dialectic side;" "the dialectic moment is the self-sublation of such individuals, and their transition into their opposites." That is, the former concrete conceptions of " things " separate into two elements which take toward each other the attitude of antithesis ; the form in the mind — the " Begrift'" — is seen to be another " grasp " of the relations which constitute the form seen in the " thino; " itself. Here the Understandinoj tends to " neo;ate " the inner form as a mere nullity, and to hold fast still to the external as the only Reality — ^.e., it clings to the particular " thing," and hence finds no Universal. But Reason tends to hold fast to the Ideal as the Reality, because in that only does it see the Universal, as form; and thus it lets go the particular "thing" to secure the Universal all. From this inability to agree or decide " arises Scepticism," as a balance-holder in the dispute between Materialism and Idealism.
( C. ) " The positive-rational, or Speculative Side," " recog- nizes the unity of the distinctions, even in the antithesis ; " it "negates the distinctions, but preserves them in the result." Thus " it has a positive result, though by negation. It sees that the forms of the Idea are its distinctions." That is, the same Idea may exist in different forms ; this distinction of mere form is therefore null in itself; the reality common to all forms is the Idea itself — that unity of relations which is expressed by them all. The " truth " of a " thing," therefore, is found in the " Begriff"" — the mental grasp of its relations in the form of idea ; for every Begriff", or concrete conception of this sort, is only a "distinction " — i.e., some particular form of the one elementary and genetic Idea in the mind ; which latter is Universal, simply because it can thus develop and exhibit itself in infinite variety of forms. And thus it is seen that the "forms" of the Lo^ic of the Understandino; — the mere
22 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
classification of "things," which is based on no common interior formative element, but on mere exterior and formal resemblance — such •' forms are not even forms of the True, but as being merely formal, are onl}^ forms of the Finite, of the Untrue " — i.e., they are mere artificial distinctions.
Substantially, this is what we are assured of by this Logic — this "thinking of thinking" — this analytic demonstration: that, in our thinking, one single and simple primitive concep- tion, because it is itself concrete and indivisible, inevitably develops itself, by this process of alternate antithesis and synthesis, into an infinite variety of " Begriffs," or subordinate forms of its own essential unity ; that these forms of our thought are applicable to interpret similar thinking any- where— in others, in Nature, in God.
For let us remember that "thinking" and "thought" (whether we write them with capital initials or not) imply a Thinker ; and it is because we find correspondence to our Thinking in Nature that we conclude to a Thinker there, whom we call God, and infer that His thinking is like ours — a development of simple genetic idea into infinite variety of forms. Hence, a "thing" (the word itself is a compression of "thinking") is only a development of the Universal or primitive idea in that particular form ; and if we can evolve from the Universal o-enetic element in our thinking, the Begriff — the particular form of our thought which "grasps" all the relations of that " thing " {that " thinking " ) — we shall have, in such conception, not only the ideal form of that thing, but also the placing of it in its Universal relations. In other words, we thus repeat within us the genesis of things, and thereby realize them ideally, or know them, without thereby destrovins; them.
These " three sides " of Logic, says Hegel, " are not three parts, but three moments of every Logical Real — i.e., of every Begrifi", of every True in general. They may be set under the first, or dianoetic moment, and thereby held asunder ; but, so held, are not considered in their truth." That is, we are not content with mere severance into particulars and artificial classification ; we wish to relate everything universally, and we
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 23
feel that, otherwise, we do not comprehend its reality ; real knowledge of it escapes us till we can thus relate it to the Uiiiversal, and see its genesis from that. To make this clearer, let us state the process in ditferent language, and from a dif- ferent point of view.
(1.) The first tendency of thinking is toward mere percep- tion, or reception, of things and relations — i.e., the Self is in passive mood, and every reality seems to it objective. If thinking end here, its Logic is mere classification ; and knowl- edge naturally divides itself, in consciousness, into the imperfect classification of external facts and an imperfect realization of Self, which is confused and dizzied in this multitude of par- ticulars. Hence, in feeling, the tendency is to mere Object- worship.
(2.) The next moment or tendency of thinking is a return inward of this act of perception, a study of Self, and of ex- terior ol)jects as found there — i.e., of the phenomena of mind ; for a New World is here discovered, but whether real or unreal, IS a question which gives rise to two philosophies, one of which " negates " the material world to preserve the inner one, and the other does just the contrary. To the one, Knowledge is wholly of external facts, and is thence derived ; the other says all Knowledge, and all real facts, too, are internal, and there- fore "identical." There is a complete stagnation of both parties in the marsh of abstraction, in this " sublation " of things into their opposites, and their obstinate refusal to return from that flight. The Logic either finds no Universal, or finds it in Self; hence the tendency ends in worship of Nothing or worship of Self, which is practically the same result, for inipaitial Scepticism bows down at the same shiune.
(3. ) The final tendency is back from this negative or abstract Universal into the concrete Self, to find there the element which has been lost in this mere abstraction. For, if consciousness has become conscience, the case begins to look serious wiien a man has " reasoned" himself either into a nonentity or into an " infinite." In either case, there is no God ; and whether a man calls himself a non-Self or an All-Self, he can scarcely •come for an instant out of his abstractions into Realit}', with-
24 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
out hearing, aroiind, above, within, without him, a universal chorus of contradiction . Especially does that vast overhanging- canopy of Heaven trouble him with its infinite depths, and there comes rushing upon him an overpowering sense of that Divine Self which must correspond to his own ; at least, as centre and life of all this outer Universe, as he finds his own Self to l)e the centre and life of his own inner World. And this intuitive sense of that Infinite Self (though concrete in feeling only) makes concrete and vital his own Self, even while seeming to amiihilate it ; for he is conscious that his world of "Thought," his Creation, has not even the regular round of sunset and sunrise, but flashes up and flashes out of existence like an electric aurora. Even now it is extinguished in pres- ence of this permanent Creation, or exists only as knowledge of that ; yet in this very constancy and persistency of capacity to reproduce God's World in his thought, he recognizes his very Self — the verity of his nature.
And then comes to him, not in a mighty, rushing wind, but in a still, small voice : " My child, learn to know thyself that thou mayest know me. Thou art not a mere Idea; thou hast a heart, thou knowest what Love is ; learn to synthesize, as that does, by losing thyself in another in order to find thyself. Thy true negation, and thy true being, consist in loving what is good with all thy heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. So shalt thou know me. Express this love in thought, in word, and especially in outward deed, and thou shalt surely grow in the image of the Divine. To thee have I given the capacity, both to comprehend and to continue in my name this work of mine — to recreate this Creation in its ideal character, to repeat my thoughts, to be my Providence in acts — that so I may fully see nn^self in thee. Take freely my substance ; I am near unto thee always, even in thy very heart, as thou in
o
mine."
Such counsel receives this self-" annihilated " Self when it communes in feeling with its overshadowing, but life-giving Universal Self — its concrete counterpart. When this feeling is fully (if it ever is fully) "translated into thought," it sio-nifies that to Man is given the capacity to follow in the foot-
' The Matter and the Method of Thought. 25
steps of an Almighty Father, and by imitating His work, to understand Him.
And this revulsion from our strained expansion in abstrac- tions back into the very depths of our being, where we float upon the elemental ocean of Divine concrete feeling, indicates that it is there, in the very elements of our concrete conscious- ness, that we are to find the basis of all our knowledge, the test of all our artificial systems, and the completion of the true one. It is not in our elementary beliefs that faith wavers, but in the complex structures we build thereon, and wherein we err by not recurring to our test of concrete completeness and correspondence with God's Reality. It is our ofiice and our duty to build on these elements — Heaven-high if we can. But, if we proceed by mere analysis, it is only an infinite progress, or an absurdity, never rounding into itself and becoming con- crete as a real Self. Man is never to reach God by a Tower of Babel, even if it be built of the "purest" thoughts, i.e., abstractions ; simply because God is not so far ofl', after all, but right here, in the heart; every truly real, ^.e., concrete thought, though it be of the simplest, finds Him there.
It is evident, indeed, that Man can never know the Infinite by mere classification, nor by actually seeing all the relations of this Totality of Thino;s : nor even bv dialectic dealing with the most profound analysis of his own thoughts. All that comes to nothing, or to a " bastard infinite," which is also a nothing. If, indeed, we were condemned to get a satisfactory conception of our relations in such ways as these alone, pitiable would be our lot. We must in that case agree with Spinoza, that we cannot know God till we know all about Him ; that we cannot aspire to immortality unless we have climbed the highest rounds of Reason's ladder into Heaven — that is, that we have otherwise no real Self, no entelechy, nothing worth preserving, but are the worm-eaten buds on Nature's tree. As Guizot wittily observes of this, it will hardly do, in these anti-privilege days, for philosophers to claim a monopoly of immortality ; nor, we may add, of such uncommonly plenti- ful and universally claimed "property" as Self and Selfish- ness.
^6 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
Hence the essential thing (or thinking) in thinking is this revolt from abstraction — this refusal to part, except momen- tarily, the vital unity of the Consciousness — this return to the whole consciousness, and recognition of it as the place where every thinking must have its reality tested, whether it present itself as Truth, Beauty, or Goodness. That is just why a true method of thought must appeal to, and can be developed in, the humblest as well as the highest ; for it is this vital unity of the Self which gives " Common Sense," whether it be called "hard sense," or aBsthetic sense, or conscience; and in any of these forms it recognizes that a man is no more sane — whole — when he " reasons " himself out of his senses, than when he sensualizes himself out of his Reason. As Dante's poetic eye saw in the Divine Trinity " now One, now Three," so in Self-consciousness there is a trinity in unity which cannot be severed in complete thinking. A true method of thinking, then, will not permit the Self to be regarded as whole, except in its unity of action as Feeling, Imagination, and Reason ; nor as otherwise capable of full realization in any of its spheres of action, Science, Art, and Philosophy, which are all one in Relimon.
That one, in all these trinities, of which its mates are apt (in their abstracted mood) to speak with the most condescen- sion, as "powerless Beauty," or "sensuous Imagination," or "Art which iinds its material in feeling " — that " one and the same" is yet the Mediator of the others, and the greatest of them all, for it is Love — that which unites, synthesizes.
The patronizing air with which "Philosophy" is wont to speak of Art is particularly refreshing to behold, especially in one who has gone daft with "Reason," for lack of Imagina- tion. For Art, simply because it must be this concrete Self- expression, and can restore those perceptions which are present in "feeling," but which cannot be thence taken as abstract, has always led the van of human progress. In that, Man iinds his initial freedom ; and therein he always will express his highest ideal conceptions, in a form not merely rationalized by relation as a whole, but vitalized by feeling as a Self. It is in Art that he first discovers this correspondence between
TJie Matter and the Method of Thought. 27
human and Divine ideas, and taiies heart. Man works in Art from Love, and as by inspiration ; for he is on the right path — that of imitation — and instinctively his thought reaches out from his own creation to a Divine Creator. One is reminded of that " Ode to the god of the festival " which compunctious Socrates spent his last days in toiling at, warned by his " monitor " that he had always been a mere reasoner, and had never before trie^i, from "poverty of invention," to lay a tribute on the altar of Art.
Science follows after, allured by Art's ideals — inspired to realize what somebody has imagined. And the true office of practical Science is to complete the data of human experience, as it is in reality, so that the mere abstractions of Reason shall not be taken for that reality ; that is to say, nothing can be fully realized or known without actual self-experience of it, by sympathy or otherwise. We cannot know all the *' rela- tions " of a flower, unless, by some subtle alchemy of feeling, we can put ourselves in its place, and, as it were, feel in our- selves the throb of the Divine life in its tender petals. So, we cannot fully " diagnose " another Self, till we sympathize with its pain or its pleasure. The physician must take his " case " to heart, before it fully conies to his head, unless he can know it as one of those "parallel cases" which experience itself proves never occur. Now Science is that which gathers in the lost threads of personal and general experience, in its "statistics," its "memoranda" of inductive "succession," as cause and eftect. Thus it restores to individual, and espe- cially to public judgment, what its own sympathy may fail to supply. And as all vital Sciences — physiology, sociology, politics — escape the reach of mere abstract relations, they must necessarily be thus empirical. The Family, State, Church, are those larger selves, modelled on the pattern of the average individual Self in them, it is true, and hence happy, or wise, or godlike, only as he is good ; yet, in all of these, empirical Science — as Statistics, History, all forms of experience — tends to bring men out of their abstract, incomplete, partial judg- ments, and restore to them the vital and real judgment of that concrete Self, which thus finds it must know and care for the
28 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
whole man. In short, Science may thus find " the golden rule," as Confucius did, in this purely practical direction. China is a statistical empire, and illustrates both the virtues and vices which will result from exclusive use of the empirical ; it is conservatism without progress — a taking forever to know the self, because not finding God.
Last of all comes Philosophy ; but, to be true to its name and its duty, it must be a poetic philosophy, creating in love of Reality, concrete in heart and soul, recognizing and using the whole Man. Hence it cannot be that " Positive Philosophy " of Comte, based on sense alone, where sentiment itself grows sick and perishing, and can find the " complement " of this zero, Man, only in that " bastard Infinite," " Humanity," as V Eire Supreme. Nor is it that opposite abstraction of Idealism which reduces all to fog, or mystery. It must be that Real Philosophy which recognizes that the Soul can be " reconciled with the Body" in the Present, and still, and even thereby, be also "reconciled with the Divine" in the Present and Future. For it is in this Earthly Beauty, and this Earthly Love, that we may divine, as Plato did, that the immortal Beauty and the Ideal Truth are One and Real in God. " Grant me," sighed Socrates, "grant me only the existence of the Absolute Beauty, and I will prove that the Soul is immor- tal; " — thus showing the inevitable vivification of the real Self in that conception, and its pathetic sorrow at not being able to fully realize itself in that philosophy which sees trans- figuration promised in this Human likeness to and longing for the Divine. For man is transformed into that which he loves, whether it be sensual or spiritual. Likeness is not liking ; indeed, one loves what he lacks — his opposite ; but it is a maxim that two who love srrow like.
As true thinking recognizes Science, Art, and Philosophy as only a triunit}', so does it regard Feeling, Reason, and Imagina- tion as the necessary triunity of every act of the Self — Feeling, as its passive state of receptivity ; Reason, as its active state of Perception ; Imagination, as its formative act in conception. Hence, Feeling is the very consciousness itself, where all the thinking, or other acts of the Self, must come back for realiza-
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 29
tion in form. But it is more — it is also consciousness of the non-Self; and in this passive mood it says, "I am the stuff that dreams are made of ! ' ' That is, it recognizes its capability of being. acted upon — of being transformed by others into all forms, vague or monstrous, as well as definite or beautiful. In this deepest deep of Consciousness, what we know we know not — can know, in part, only by searching for its form actively. Hence, though all we know, or can know, is there in solution. Self itself is known only as activity shaping itself into form by act of Will.
Reason is this active effort to perceive more ; and that is all it is, alone. It is the opposite of the concentrative passive reception of Consciousness in Feeling, its expansion and dis- sipation by analysis. It is itself a consciousness of relations, and an active dissolution of "things" thereby — a severance of the concrete whole into parts, of the Self from the non-Self. As this seclusion in the Abstract, it is the most difficult and refined use of the mind, and requires the most careful culture ; and hence it is liable to be the most conceited, and disposed to tear itself loose as an independent entity, "to be by itself, alone — for that is Freedom." Yet, in itself it is only percep- tion of relations. It brings nothing into the mind, and can perceive only what is there ; if anything is lacking to form a whole, it can be supplied only by Imagination. Hence Reason is only Simple Perception in what it perceives, and Imagination in what it conceives ; its oflice is only to Separate. Reason is helpless, therefore, as Newton admits, without Imagination — cannot, without that, complete a theory or any other synthesis. Thus, in itself, it is " negation " personified — the mere expan- sion of the act of thought, and a finding of numberless parts, but no whole.
If any faculty might assume to be complete in itself, it is Imagination ; for that will have nothing to do with incomplete- ness— except to complete it. It is the royal faculty. It rises like an Alpine peak, based on all-comprehensive, tropical con- sciousness, and crowned with eternal snows ; for, even in the frio'id reg-ion of Abstraction, it is what concretes and unifies and forms. It is the " closing-in," the return " moment," in
30 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
all forms of thought, whether as complete Simple Perception of Self or another, or as the " positive-rational dialectic," which includes a Universe in its grasp. It is on the wings of Imaofination that Reason oroes out from finite Self into the Infinite ; and, unless it is wholly unreasonable, thus will it be brought back again to that deepest Consciousness from which Imagination takes its flight. Hence a man may as well put out his eyes in order to see better, as to cripple his imaginative power ; that is his insight, and also his necessary means of realizing anything, either in thought or in action. Yet, alone, like the others, it is null ; it grasps a nothing, or an illusion, unless it unites with them to find God's Real. A true poet will be a philosopher, but not " in spite of himself; " he must have common sense.
A complete Philosophy is, indeed, in itself, only a complete method of thinking ; and it may be asked what claim this synthetic method has to be such a philosophy. Does it not, like others, base itself upon some assumption? the assumption here being this : that our thinking is, not the same, indeed, but like the Divine thinking, and therefore able to interpret "things."
The answer is, that, as Philosophy, this method does not claim to be a " system," except in those large, general out- lines, those few and simple features, which every one admits, if he admits the validity of his Self-consciousness, and which are thus within the grasp of all. All the rest — the details of system — it leaves where they should, and must be left : to the interpretation of self-development in the individual, and of advancing knowledge in general.
As Method, its justification is in the very ntiture of our Con- sciousness, and in the confirmation, by experience, of its use ; in the fact that Man finds his Thought is broadened by imitation of God's thinking, as he finds his physical power widened in use of Divine laws, and his moral freedom in imitation of Divine goodness. It is justified, also, as calling for the educa- tion and use of the whole man. It has the highest reach, because it goes to the deepest depths of human nature ; because it includes all its powers, all its means of perception, and does
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 31
not seek to cleave asunder that which God has joined together. It has its special vitality as means in that which is most vital, most concrete, most universal in mankind — sympathetic feel- ing— without whose aid it does not pretend to work its synthesis. Finally, it is justified by the necessity of the case ; there is no other method which meets the exigencies, either of the simple, unphilosophic mind, or of the last refinements of human intellijrence. If knowledo;e of God is shut out, and immor- tality denied to all l)ut philosophers, as Spinoza would have it, then must God and Heaven be mere abstractions which exist only in the human mind ; for they are not humane — i.e., con- cretely human, really Divine. And as Geometry, which deals merely by comparison of like with like (not assuming them to be "identical"), preceded analytic Mathematics, which assumes to measure everything, and take exact account, so this synthetic philosophy always did and will precede the analytic ; and just as Mathematics failed to " measure " the Infinite, and found all analytic methods powerless in its presence, and was obliged to generate it in a comparative synthesis as a " like" (by a process which its originators vainly sought to explain as analysis, and therefore could not demonstrate), so Philosophy, in its last resort, finds this synthetic method of " likeness " — of comparative integration — its highest means of compre- hension.
And so Man's every real thought, his every complete con- ception of things, is, we may say, an integration by corre- spondence. In imitation of the Divine activity in Nature, he builds up within him complex ideas — relations of thought. Just so fast as he can thus realize in himself the relations of things, can he understand Nature, by repeating her ideal forms. His ideas and their relations are the " differential equations " by which he "integrates " Nature when he finds there the same elements similarly related. But, as in the Calculus we are stopped by our inability to construct differential equations — correspondences in relation — beyond a certain point, so in our interpretation of Nature are we unable to realize in ourselves conceptions of sufficient complexity to apply for the resolution
32 The Journal of Speculative Pldlosopliy .
of all the interrelations of God's thought. Yet, in either case, our capability has proved itself far beyond the call of practical needs.
Heo:el has furnished, for this use, " formulas " of the hisrhest order yet achieved, and has actually verified the method itself in the abstract field, and applied it with great success practi- cally, —though apparently with something of the same uncon- sciousness of the real character of the method he is using, as in the case of Newton, Leibnitz, Lagrange, Comte, and others, with the Calculus. With Hegel, the Self is always an abstraction, though it "moves itself," etc., etc. Give it vitality, make it this real Self of ours, and the method is seen at once to be one of comparison, likeness, correspondence of synthesis, and it escapes the shoal of " identities."
A complete method of thought must apply to the concrete as well as to the abstract. Now, the application of this method to mere abstractions is patently evident ; otherwise, language would be no means of communication. The thought is not the words ; I can have it in another lanijuao-e, or without words at all, in the relations of an image-form. Forms may differ vastly, yet express the same thing — thinking, relations, reason- ing. They may be, the one natural, the other purely conven- tional, and yet do this. So, in the Calculus, the equation of a curve is not " identically " a curve, but like a curve — i.e.^ the algebraic terms express the curve, and the genesis of a curve, when they are ranged and dealt with in the same formal relations as those of the curve, down to the genetic " point" in that curve represented by the corresponding relation of infinitesimals in the genesis of the equation. For if you have a like formative relation between the parts of a whole, you can conclude to the same likeness between the wholes thus differ- ently represented. And so, when we treat the Infinite in any form, our integration must not spring from a " nothing," but from a real, though formal, element of relation — from that " last relation " of the elements which compose that Infinite, and from which it returns into itself. For a really infinite must be concrete; if it were wholly abstract, "pure identity," it
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 33
would itself be nothing. If you call it " simple relation to itself," that implies at least duality; otherwise, there can be no relatioji.
Still further (and right here is the place to draw again the contrast between our " three methods " of thought) , there can be no infinite realized in conception without the accessory of "motion" as working its genesis. Hence, in the purely abstract methods, even in the Calculus, we have the progressive and continuous evolution of the circle by motion ; so, in the Universe of Materialism there is a "correlation of forces," and in Hegel's correlation of Ideas there is a necessity for " Self-movement," or we have a Fixed Idea. In either case, there is a failure to exhibit or recognize any real activity ; and hence, just as much as in the Calculus, we have a merely abstract, conceived-of force, or movement, to help out the synthesis. Now, these methods both neglect, as null, the only "force" of which we know the reality — this vital activity of the Self and endeavor to make a Universe out of Substance alone, the one calling it mysterious Self-moving Matter, the other, mysterious Self-moving Thought ; and, truly, it is " in- comprehensible " in either case, and wholly incapable of forming an Infinite with its "identity" alone, or until that name " Self" is made a real Self.
No, in this concrete and real Universe, the formative element of relation is found, not in a mere static relation of the whole to its parts, as in an idea, or a material universe without a Mover, but in this concrete and real Self which we know has the power to form the idea and to move Matter, in this actual trinity of the active Self, as related to an Inner and an Outer 6?/ its activity, and therefore genetic of the real Infinite. Hence the whole Real cannot be known except by preserving this real, though infinitesimal, relation of the Self in us — in the inteofration. And thus it results that this method cannot con- sistently annihilate either God or Man ; not the former, because it must have an Infinite Self, and not an infinite abstraction ; not the latter, because his Self-consciousness is the basis of the whole thinking. As there can be no real genesis of things XIV — 3
34 J'he Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
without a Real Self, so there can be no conceptive genesis of thinking except in and by a real Self.
Hence, a true method of thinking implies, in the case of its application to concrete things, not merely " reasoning," but also " feeling," " sentiment ; " for it must be the full realiza- tion of another Self, and hence must include the whole Spiritual activity in all its forms. There can be no complete thinking otherwise, simply because there is a failure of complete per- ception ; and no complete expression, for want of full concep- tion. Thus, Christ " spoke in parables," not in philosoj^hical abstractions ; for he spoke from and to the feeling, the conscience, the whole man; and, for this utterance, figure of speech is absolutely necessary to restore the vital, real, and active " Spirit" of things.
"Feeling" is often spoken of contemptuously as incomplete, vague, or indefinite, and therefore worthless. But the fact is that Feeling, only, is that in us which is complete in itself — contains all — and its vagueness is merelv want of form. It is Reason which fails because of incompleteness ; it does not extract from Feeling or Sentiment all that is really perceived ; and it is thus that its "definite forms" (which it owes to Imagination) become abstract and unreal. True concrete conception must restore these neglected perceptions which are "felt," but not seen. (And we may note, also, that while Reason rids us of our Superstitions, it also tends to deprive us of our keenest intuitions and instincts. The savage, and even the brute, retains those " divining" perceptions of the senses which civilized man has lost by non-use, or whose monitions he neglects as " unreasonable.") Hence it is perfectly true that one may "feel" what he cannot "think" in any other form. The emotions have their forms in flittino; images, which sometimes express all that one perceives truly and concretely, but vanish before we have fixed their outlines ; such is their urgent procession through the mind. And it is that " common sense " which refuses to surrender its real and concrete percep- tions, no matter how evanescent or changeful they may be in these " forms of thought," which enables " common people "
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 35
to understand, even better and deeper, the reality of things, than does the " philosopher," who refuses to employ his whole Self in the task, and hence fancies he has reduced the Universe to a mere abstract formula. For to the true comprehension of living realities we must bring, not merely " thought," so- called, but that inner realization, by " sympathy," with which alone we expect to be understood, by others, or can expect to understand them. This will "give us the idea," as it is in " that other;" for it completes our perceptions of what is — restores the life to things, gives them their real being, and at the same time preserves and very eftectually " connotes " our differences from them.
Hence, " thought," which seeks to part itself from " feeling," or from Imagination, which is its own feeling for forms, in the vain tancy of shunning Nature as impurity, is not only ungrate- ful and impious in thus discarding its most intimate relations with the Divine thought, but deprives itself of the perceptions most vitally necessary to concrete conception, and is very sure to reap the reward of its vanity by feeding on the dry husks of unnatural abstraction.
The " purity " of thought which consists in its being abstract is of the sort which never purities anything. For abstract thought is notoriously inefficient morally ; it has no effect upon the act, the life ; we can swallow a Universe of it, and be wicked still. On the contrary, a thought or conception which corresponds to anything real has such affinity with the whole man that it finds its expression in all the forms of his percep- tion, down to and including those relations of nerve-vibrations in the senses where pathos melts itself in tears, and incongruity of conception shows itself in laughter. Nay, the sense-per- ception itself, in its actual experience of pleasure and pain, is more really cognizant of Heaven and Hell than any "pure thouo;lit " which divorces itself from sensation. Hence the power of Music and its vast scope, so much a mystery to "philosophers" because it deals only with the "feelings." Take, for example, on one hand, Beethoven's celestial synthesis of thought, and his maxim that "the true secret of Art lies in the Moral;" on the other, the immense complication and
36 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
truth of expression in Wagner's "Bacchanals" — a furious maniacal orgie, where Music reaches its very antithesis of being not music, like the cavalry charge at Balaklava, which was " grand, but not war."
This exterior effect of thought, far from impeaching the purity of the thought, is, on the contrary, a test of its real character — i.e., of its capacity for real application — which requires that thought should end (like Infinity) where it begins, in its primitive spring, in its means of application. It is never too large for its birthplace, nor too good. There is plenty of room for it there, and there is precisely where it is wanted. That genetic element of sense-perception, from which has sprung all this Universe within us, is also capable of translating it into an outer creation of ours that shall express all that is lovely, or good, or true, in it. For this " last rela- tion " of thought, in the senses, contains in itself the whole round of the Hegelian " moments," or tendencies of perception, between the " Self" and the " not-Self," and their positive and concrete resolution ; and it contains them in such simplicity that the conception there urges itself into act, in Art, in Politics, in Religion.
When we compare the relative merits, therefore, of Thought, in its three forms of Abstract Reason, Imagination, and Simple Perception, we see that Reason has more breadth of scope in the sphere of relations, while Simple Perception has more height and depth in the same sphere ; for the abstraction of Reason separates it from both God and Man, while Simple Perception goes from the nadir to the zenith of all we know. Thus, while Reason seeks the Universal, the fundamental simplicity of Perception preserves the Particular, and restores us to Reality. Imagination is a medium between these two — unites them, reflects the sense-perception in varied images, completes the rational synthesis by its flashes of illumination, its electric discharges of these "negative" and "positive" quantities through its subtle feeling of Relation. The sphere of this creative faculty, based on the primitive genetic element of that "last relation" of Spirit to Matter which is Universal, rises pyramidal through all the depth and breadth and height of our
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 37
thinking. Hence the immense power of Art, both to develop and to inform ns. Take it in its most sensuous form — Music — and there, just because it deals only with the primitive element of mere motion, in its natural, or least conventionalized forms, is it most varied and universal in its scope. As Melody, it is 11 particular Self; as Harmony, it is a Universal Self; for a melody is such only because it is a successive harmony, and a harmony is such because it is made up of successive melodies. Each is the other, in its particular way, while the harmony includes the others, as parallel, and also as changeable, in the •" parts."
And here we see another distinction between the op})osite -sides of this sphere of Thought : that of mere sense being particular, yet indefinite, and in that respect touches the abstract Universal, the Rational, seeking the definite in the Universal, and for that returning necessarily to the Particular, the embodiment of both is Art — true Self-expression in infinite variety of forms.
Hence we must return at last to the Platonic S>'nthesis, the poetic philosophy, the Christian principle of the Divine Manifest in the Particular as well as in the Universal, in Substantial Form as well as in active Spirit, complete and •conci'ete only in an Actor — a Self, which is real, emotional as well as thoughtful. Heart as well as Head, and chiefiy Divine because it is thus Loving and Lovable.
" God is Love," may be, in itself, an insufficient, or a much misunderstood definition of the Divine Nature ; but it is an ■utterance which springs from the intensest Self, from the very heart and whole of the human being. In fact, it is true only because it is not a definition, but recognizes the impossibility of defining what is infinite, and so only names it in that aspect which corresponds to this Self, in what alone it knows itself to be — activity.
For, if God is Love, so also is the Self. Love may be ■described as " being " in its immediacy — i.e., abstractly or initially — only that infinite cohesion of the Self which gives and preserves its unity. But in this mere selfishness, this isolation. Love "negates" itself; in this guise it is only an
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abstraction — a not-Love — an imrealized Self; the "like- ness" it finds there is unlike itself. There is, therefore, an "immanent going out of Self" involved in it; it can find itself only in its opposite of Self-separation — partially finds itself in objectivization as real activity, but wholly only in another Love, which restores to it its own full nature as both Object and Subject. Here we have again these mysterious " moments " of Thought itself in all its forms. Is " Thought " itself, then, a mere " feeling?" It would never do to "think" that !
Hegel has spoken passingly of this Love, especially in its religious aspect, as "a feeling complete in itself and satisfy- ing ; " as if he were conscious that here was something insoluble into mere abstractions, something Divinely and perpetually real, something that can exist outside the sphere of abstract "Thought," and, in fact, everywhere else but there. His searching analysis has served to rescue this vital conception from the vagueness of mere mysticism, but not to explain the unsearchable mystery of this inseparable unity of the Self, which preserves itself through all change, all development, all Self-contradiction .
Antithesis, however, is no mystery, in describing our self- inspection, for it is obviously a necessity. If we choose to regard the Self in any of its phases — whether as Love, or Thought, or Activity — this antithetic necessity of "going out" of the abstraction in which we have put it, in order to become its real self, will result. We are not to be cheated out of our common sense, then, by Hegel's constant habit of speaking of abstractions as doing this or that. We recognize this as mere figurative expression, good to give life to style, and even necessary to representation of what is signified. But, in stern Logic, one cannot pass from this figurative to an absolute use of words, without simply begging the question. Thus, to say, "Thought alone has Unity, and therefore is All," is no argument ; we can boldly deny that Thought has anything whatever ; it is had, by a Thinker. It is we, our little selves, that have and do all these beautiful things, and are responsible for their being loell done. We describe our acts of thought by
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 39
representing them as so many dramatic personages playing their parts on this inner stage ; but it is another singuhir meet- ino- of contradictions that only those who decry tigurative speech are deluded by it. Just because they seek to avoid such speech, and fancy they do, but cannot, they take these fictitious personages for real actors or entities.
And, really, to clear up all this confusion of entities, which is somewhat akin to the old Scholastic and older Hebrew worship of Verbalism, we must perhaps show that this real Self of ours is capable of all this tigurative transformation — this innering and outering, " sublation," etc. But if, in so doing, we are obliged to use figure of speech, let us recognize the necessity or convenience of so doing, and thus save ourselves from illusion.
In fact. Self cannot see its very Self in itself; that is just why there is in it this latent antithesis, this inborn necessity of going out of itself to find itself. Hence self-inspection — seeking self within — is by no means the first or the habitual act of human nature. Introspection is a habit acquired with diffi- culty ; and even so, as we see, is quite apt to fix upon what it sees within, in particular forms of thought as entities — other selves — rather than to recognize them as merely particular forms of its own creation. Self, indeed, has no real conscious- ness of being anything but its own activity. Now Activity, also, is abstractly — i.e., as §'was^-quiescent — an "immanent going-out." But Self cannot " go out " in activity without findinjy some result of this activitv ; and this result first seems to it, or is regarded by it, as objective. But, on further appeal to Consciousness, only the activity itself is found to be all real or permanent. The result is only Self, again, in some particular form of its transient activity, which hal)itual repetition, however, makes easier for it to again assume ; in this aspect the Self finds itself developing into a slave of its own acts, and a victim of its own objects, if they are false or bad. Thus the real Self is the unknown " Substance " of the process all along, and the activity is its " content," taking various voluntary or involuntary forms in and of that same Self (involuntary, e.g., in dreams). The Self naturally does not recognize itself fully
40 The Journal of Speculative Pltilosophy .
in any particulur oi'ie of these forms of its activity, which are constantly increasing in number and variety ; especially not in those which are involuntary, or quasi-\ oXwntAvy — its mere let-be's, but only in some general or complete form — some photograph of all these varied features in one whole. Or, indeed, fain would it recognize its real Self only in that which is selected, composed, and idealized as what Self would be, and seeks to be, in its perfection. This eftbrt to realize a perfect Self — i.e., to comprehend one's Self in a form which shall rationalize all other forms as subordinate, and thus be, in itself, beautiful in form and lovable in nature — inevitably leads to the conception of God as that Self; by way of sentiment most speedily, from sense of imperfection, and longing for that which is perfect, but also, though more slowly and stum- blingly, by way of "thought;" because all these particular forms are transient and fleeting (or else are cruel masters), the activity of Self is Saturnian — all-devouring — till it rests upon that Divine conception, for there alone it can see a real and substantial Being, for all — a Universal One, having a Substance which this Self-seeker is not conscious of having, or at least of knowing, and upon whom, therefore, it recognizes its dependence. Thus, that which, till then, has known itself only as activity, now knows itself as rest — reconciliation with God — as in fellowship with Him in that universal Substance, of which it has not yet been conscious, nor known in any or all of the particular forms of its activities, because it can know it only as its union with God, as its static condition, or status in the Universe.
This seekins: and finding one's restful, static Self is also sub- stantially Hegel's description of Love ; an internal condition, at first, of restful i»iconsciousness of Self, which is developed, as above detailed, till it finds, not merely longing, and eager consciousness of unsatisfied activity, but full consciousness of Self-substance in another.
But can we apply this also to God, the Universal Self? Yes ; only here the process is exactly the reverse. As the par- ticular Self, conscious only of activity, can find its substantial Self only in the Universal, so the Universal, which begins with
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 41
full consciousness of Substantial Self, can fully realize its ■activity .only in the Particular, and in various Particulars according to the modes of that activity ; hence the character- istic Self-activity will develop itself in a Self — free activity. The case here is not that of a Particular Self coming to full consciousness, or knowledge, of Self, in love of a perfect Universal, upon which it is dependent, both for substantial being and for satisfaction of Self, but that of One seeking to realize in a lovino; Beino; — a Beino; conscious of love as its highest and fullest activity — a full and complete expression of this Universal Activity, thus characterized as working in love, and with Love for its highest and fullest manifestation. As the Universal comes down to meet the Particular in all its forms, and according to the form, so, as Love itself it comes down to meet Man as Love ; and only thus does it wake him to full consciousness of himself, for in Thought, it meets and wakes him only to consciousness of his activity.
Love and Thought may, in abstract phase, be considered as the intension and the extension of Self; the contractility is as infinite as the scope, and inevitably unites the Universal with the Particular. For Love alone is that which enables us to conceive of an infinity of weal or wo as real or possible for us. That alone reads and knows as by instinct, and needs no other revelation than itself. That alone understands this absurdity of finding one's Self in another, and in an Only other; for when Love scatters its regards over numl)erless others, it is as lost a child as Science itself, similarly unclassified ; it does not recognize itself in them : they are only other Particu- lars.
And let us hasten to add that this Love, like all other poetic personations of thought, and other subordinate actors within us, is only an act of contemplation by the Self; otherwise, its "acts" would not be of the slightest consequence to us. Hegel describes it as a state, a condition of the Soul (and we will not too curiously inquire how a mere " internality " can do this or that). So it is ; a state of full contemplation, in which the Soul refuses the aid of none of its faculties — (unless it be " Reason " ) — cannot so refuse, but seems forced
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to open itself passively, on all sides, to the Universal ; and the inflow upon it of impressions is real as it is universal. It is a full reception and acceptance of all the perceptions in an infinity of detail, yet in a felt one-ness, in Self. Hence it is the intensest state of Self-consciousness, and its progress is neces- sarily through suffering ; this static side of it is its Passion. But every state has its active side in Self, for it is only a state of activity. So every act has its static side ; and here is where Love differs, as an act, from Thought ; it is a complete act of the Self, and has a real object, while the latter is only a partial act and has a fictitious object — the mere forms of thought. Thought, particularly in its " higher,"' i.e., abstract forms, is selection — choice of some, and discarding of other objects of perception ; that is what gives it its special power, but also is its special weakness ; it is not a full embodiment of Self as act, nor a full consciousness of Self as state. But that is precisely what Love is, as act and state. It is a suftering not to find, a looking to find, a joy of all joys in finding, that substantial and real Self in which Activity (which is all it has known or can know as its particular Self, and which is now mere imprisoned chaos) has its wholeness — that Infinite and Divinely ordered expansion which is its only rest, its released and unbounded Freedom.
Thus Love, from first to last, is a realizing. As state, it receives all ; as act, it perceives all ; as result, it conceives all, in One — i.e., has its object completely imaged in conception of it, can there retain it always, repeat it at will, and thus grow like it.
From an abstract point of view, we may say there is no sentimental mystery about this Love which thus embraces the All in One, for the nature of it applies to small things as well as great ; it will have the lohole of any thing. The feeling in it is just that subtle reentry of perceptions which are real, and cannot be shut out by mere abstraction. It is our love for the Real, the True, which makes us revolt at cadaverous abstrac- tion claiming to be Truth, and insist upon the Particular and the Universal being brought into their actual relations in things. This Love of ours sees very clearly, and feels very
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 43
rationally, that a living thing with the life left out of the Synthesis is not itself, and cannot be thus known.
And so, indeed, let us not dissever the ^elf itself into mere names, where all is really one — one activity in Sentiment as well as Reason, Feeling as well as Abstraction. Feeling finds the whole ; Reason, the parts ; Imagination, the Form.
Feelino-, as concentrated thought — consciousness — sees itself, first, only in the Body, and as the Body — as suffering, passive, receptive, unconscious of its own activity ; next, as an active and conscious out-looking at objects, as being the Body only passively — disposed to reject it as non-self; lastly, as mystic, it consumes, yet wholly lives for the first time, in a flaming, formless Universe of Love.
Thouo-ht, as the radiation of feeling — the diffusion ad infinitum of consciousness — is another name for activity, a name which seeks to sever the Self from its being-aCted-upon. But such abstract separation of the Self as mere Activity destroys all basis of passivity, or state, or receptivity, and all which results therefrom in conception, viz., Substance as Object, and thus "Thought" is a severance of Spirit from Matter; Substance as means of realization, and thus it parts Soul from Body ; and, finally, it abstracts its own activity from all real or imaginable Form — i.e., denies to it any capacity for Expression — and so reduces it to the mere abstraction of " Thought," as activity in and upon Nothing. Thus God is parted from Man, and Thought, in this guise, has negated itself even as Activity, and finding itself and all to be nothing in this abstract Infinite, returns with a shock to its feeling of Reality.
But Imagination, as feeling of wholeness (whether in Beauty, Truth, or Love), is ever uniting Thought and Sense, Soul and Body, God and Man ; " reconciling" the two by showing that the latter is capable of expressing all the conceptions of the former — its most abstract thou^'ht easiest of all — since that is a "thing" of the simplest possible relations, with Matter as Substance-form of motion.
This Spirit is reconciled with Matter as its own static form — i.e., its substance, its means of formal expression. Soul is
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reconciled with Body as its temporary form, its substantial means of realizing all the feeling, thought, activity of which the Soul is capable ; and also as its means of education. Self- development, and this as much by the Body's own activity as by that of the Soul ; for the former shows that health, beauty, love, give sanity, joy and goodness, while disease, deformity -and vice enforce this lesson by their penalties. So, lastly, God is reconciled with Man as the Spiritual, full form of His activity, developed in Man's Love — i.e., in that full reception by Man's Spirit of the Divine activity — which now transforms him from a mere passive Beholding, Thing, or Thinking of God's Creation, into a living, free Beholder, Lover, and Like- ness of the Divine Self.
And so "Thought" has no Form, or rather an intinity of unknown forms, in its concentration as Feeling in inmost Con- sciousness ; while in its uttermost of abstraction there is a mere radiation into abstract Particulars, for which even Imag- ination can find no whole except in an abstract Universal — a mechanical, lifeless, static relation of whole to parts — and this Reason itself declares a nullity and revolts from. But Thought, as Love, is reunion — return from this negation of Abstraction into Reality ; it finds its Particulars, its Genera, its Universal, only as concrete triunities, from first to last — e.^., as Self, Family, State, Church, God.
That "Self-contradiction," as "Reason" calls it — the Trinity — is, in fact, that without which nothing real can exist at all. Li all "things," or " thinkings," there is this vital tri-unity, which it is impossible to reduce to an abstract unity, a " pure identity ; " for that is an isolated, helpless Nothing.
Thus, as even in the conception of the least things, the Self insists upon finding their entirety, and especially that which is most vital and unifying, so does Self, recognizing its own unity or wholeness only in Love, except only the All-Loving as the One in whom it can lose itself wholly, and yet find itself real.
Hence, only in the love of Truth can a man realize Truth as it is ; when he loves it as an object for its own sake, then will he find it as a sunrise in his own Consciousness, in all its primitive and essential features. So, in the love of God, only,
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 45>
does one find God, real and present, another Self, yet not Self, in a communion ever intimate as the heart, ever broadening with the thouo;ht.
We see, then, that Hegel himself has really fallen upon this constructive, this poetic Philosophy, " in its immediacy," as he would say — i.e., in its al)stract form. He has reached the- constructive element of self -relation, and illustrated how it operates by these necessarily returning rounds of self-inspec- tion, self-sublation and self-reference, to transform our thought,, from stage to stage, into all possible concrete varieties, as from a Universal germ.
For let us note that Hegel himself uses this method, though in a peculiar way, not readily apprehended, and which has beem sufficiently illustrated, perhaps, in the foregoing examples. His guiding principle is, that the genetic is found in the abstract, in the most universal phase in which we can con- ceive of a thing ; hence he always begins with that as the- "immediacy," or the "substantial" of it. But he at once calls it Nothing, or " not-itself," in that mere static form, and hence goes to its direct opposite — its active " going-out " from- this null passivity — to find its definition, its formal Reality. This is an awkward, and perhaps unconscious, way of saying that the Abstract is not real, and that there is nothino- o-enetic in it at all until the active principle is added to it to bring it back to Reality. The fundamental necessity for all this artifi-- cial machinery lies in the first conception that abstract " Being," which is exactly Nothing, is the uttermost abstraction of Thought, and therefore the genetic Reality of which Change is- mere passing and wnreal Form. But, in fact. Change is nothing but the constant transformation of Reality, and does not come from abstract "Being," nor go to Nothing, but to Something else Real. For, as infinity cannot end in Nothing, nor at all, so it cannot begin at all. It is only our finite habit which insists upon "a Beginning;" that exists only for- Change, and not for Eternal Reality.
How, then, does this aspect of things affect Hegel's method? Not at all as to its " Substance," but it removes the apparent absurdity of it, and renders it more "active" practically..
46 The Journal of Speculative PhUoso'pliy .
For we see that his abstract " substantiality" of a thing is really the Substance of that thing in its most oeneral aspect. Take our Body, for example ; it is like Descartes's lump of wax, which he watched melt and show capacity, as substance, for infinite variety of form — a fact from which he inferred that this "general idea" the mind gets of a thing as existius; in many forms is a conception that is really " thought," and quite free from the infection of " Sensuous Imagination ! " — l)ecause, in its last result, it quite loses the " idea'-' of the wax itself! Hegel fell into the same absurdity of regarding a mere ivhole as "Thought," and not at all a Form of the Imao-imition. Hence, by him, this Body of ours would be dissipated, at once, as "Substantially" something which the ugliest Body in Christendom would never recognize as " itself" in a lookins;- glass; and yet, just Substantially what it is "in itself" — mere Matter. But what is Matter? Hegel would say, " Nothing ; " but then he would make it "go out of itself to find itself," as mere form of transient Change. But suppose we stop before we get to Nothing — i.e., recognize that Infinity does not end at all. We shall then see that Matter, just because it is " infinitely divisible," is in fact capable of remaining " substantial " in an infinite variety of forms, and that its disappearance is not into Nothing, but into some trans- formation on this infinite round it is travelling. But we see, also, that Form itself is a reality, and not an illusion — it is just the Reality of Substance, joined to the Activity, which produces Change. And now we have " terms " that we can handle with some assurance of their not disappearing in some mist as " Self-sublation," or other mysterious movement, where we had ignored movement ; for we are not now dealing with an abstract Nothing. Once we have Substance and Activity thus joined in every Form of this Matter, we see that our process of abstraction is only finding the "last relation" of these two in that Formal connection ; and from this we make our integration.
Thus this Body of ours proves God, not less than does our Soul ; for this evanescent Matter of which it is " formed " so actively, is, even in the last possible remove of it in the mist
The Matter and the Method of Thought. 47
of Abstraction, but ti Substance form of the Divine, the Universal activity in its simplest relations therein as Real. And this Body itself is not a mere phantasmal " opposite " of Nothing, but a real and marvellous work of God's craft, as we see ; not to be despised, nor shunned as deadly poison to "pure thouglit," but rather to be studied with awe of that skill and complexity of Divine thought which is disphxyed in it. In fact, " the inner man " has been employed now for some thousands of years in trjnng to form a " diiferential equation " which is adequate to fully effect the "integration" of that Body. It is much easier for us to build a Universe in our thoughts (for there the " ideas" are more " general," because the relations are more simple) than to fully comprehend any of these infinitesimal works of God's fingers. Not the teles- copic, but the microscopic, is what thwarts us most. Does it not seem as though the capacity of Matter were tested quite as much in furnishino- the "Substance" of an organized animalcule as in supplying our own Spiritual "Substance?"
And so, when we call Hegel's " abstract," or " Substantial," or "immediate" aspect of anything its real Substance or static condition only, and then deny, as we must, that it has any reality so, but must be joined with activity, the mystery of its " Self-sublation " is itself sublated ; for then we join it in Reality with the Divine or other activity which iniovms. This is simply putting things first in their most general aspect in a class, in order to project them thence, according to the form of their activity (which alone characterizes them), into their particular species or sort ; and it is doing so in a picturesque and striking way.
Hegel's way of using this method is vague and self-illusory, with its artifices of activity ; yet it answers well for very o;eneral outlines — for " thinkino; in Universals." But he o-ives it up himself in smaller details, and, in fact, in nearly all practical Sciences, where he charges its failure to the presence of " infinite contingency." And truly it is not easy to find explanation of an ant, for example, in the " opposite " of the abstract formica !
As to the vast majority of things, then, the method must take
48 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
its true form of practical integration, dependent on improve-, ment bj experience in its means of application. Hegel's form of it applies obviously to all aspects of our own mental activity ; for there it is literal. It applies also, by analogy, to all enlarged phases of human activity, as in State, in History, etc. ; but if we take it literally there, it is a species of Comte-ism, showing how extremes of " positive " and " negative " meet. But, as all things may be regarded as forms of the Divine- Activity, and as this activity is seen to be like our own activity in thinking — formative and seeking form in Expression — there is the true starting-point for real integration, in that last but real relation of Activity and Substance as Form ; for from this we must inevitably reproduce Reality, and not mere Shadows.
What is now lacking, therefore, is to recognize this Philos- ophy in its real character, as vital, and not abstract ; and to apply this generating power of self-relation in our thought, as the true and vital interpreter of Nature. For it is such an interpreter, simply because it is artistic, creative, imitative of the Divine in Nature, which always reproduces itself to mark the round of its every finite activity, and in man has produced a Thinking, Loving Self — an endless activity, itself capable of re-soundino; all the harmonies of the Divine Poet.
For Man may be defined (in likeness, to this Self-return of our own Thought) as a reaction of God's act, an Echo of His Thought coming from the very confines of the Creative Sphere ;: as a continuation of that reaction which, beginning in chaos, as the last extreme of Creative Energy in its utter, and even dis- orderly simplicity, has reverted into physical order in the Material Universe, and goes on its way Imck to God, through all subordinate and partial forms, to attain its ideal form in Man's purest, and most loving thought; not that "pure thought" which dissipates itself in mere abstraction; not that idle thought which floats in and out, truly a Universe which comes from nothing and goes to nothing ; none of these is the thouoht which the Creator can recoonjze in us, as reconstructive or continuative of His Creation. No, our think- ing, "as such," is only our means to our End.. That End,.
The reader of Dr. Stirling's article will please note carefully tlie following corrections made in the author's revision of tlie proof sheets: —
Page 49, line Zfrom hottom, for three read six " 60 " 6 " " " the " my " 51 " 9 " top " as far " so far " " " 12 " " " then " then " 53 " 11 " " " of A. li. C. D.
read A B C D Page 53, line 11 from hottom, for more read
even more Page 55, line 20 from bottom, for be a read be
at once a Page 55, line lOfrom bottom, for own read one. " 56 " 6 " " " the denial rearf
denial Page 57, line 34 from bottom, for expressions
read expression Page 57, line 10 from bottom, for olijects read
object Page 58, line Id from bottom, for should read
sliould ever Page 58, line 11 from bottom, for the 7-ead
Kant's Page 59, line 27 from bottom, for should read
should now Page 59, line 6 from top, for topics read topic " " " 30 " " " in " is " 60 " 2 " " " had " had
expressly PageW, line 21 from tojy,for\\e read we now " 61 " 23 " fcoiiOHi " strained reof/ de- nied Page 61, line 14 from bottom, for accessary
read accessory Page&2, line 32 from bottom, for objectivity.
read objectivity? Page 63, lines 14, 15 from top, for the part by
part read the, pai't by part. Page 64, line 34: from top, for those read these. " " " 34 " bottom. " for " for to
him Page 05, line 39 from bottom, for also read
, also. Page G5, line '2d from bottom, for series read
secjuence Page 65, line l(\from. top, for objectivity read
objectivity is Page 66, line 23 from bottom, for ship -series
read ship-sequence Page 66, liiie 9 from bottom, for with read to " 67 " 39 " " " production
read the production Page 67, line 39 from bottom, also read " of a
judgment of objective" Page 67, lines 32, 21 from bottom, for Herr read
the Herr Page 67, line 2i>from bottom, for all rend all " " " 25 " '' " not " not
Page 68, line 15 from bottom, for this proof
read the proof
Page 68, line 14 //-o^rt bottom, for would read
could Page 69, iijie 36 .A'077i bottom, for subjectively
read only subjectively Page 11, line SI from bottom, for Caird's read
Caird's doing so Page 71, line 11 from bottom, for all read all " " " 4 " " " generally re«rf
genetically Page 71 , line 1 from top, for alway read always " 72, "26 " " " time; " time — • " 72, " 14 " bottom for uonseuiie i-ead
obvious nonsense Page 72, line 6, from bottom, for could read
may Page 73, line 35 from bottom, for the universe
read this universe Page 73, line 11 from bot!om,for on read on the " 73, " 33 " top, for causality. The
read causalit}' — the PageH, line 2S from top, for time; read time, " 74, " 41 " " " Meta.,994, a, 221
read Jleta. 994 a 22 Page 74, line 13 from 6of#o;H /or Aphrodisceu-
sis read Ai)brodisieusis Page 75, line 6 from top, for 1023, b. 5 read
1023 b 5. Page 77, line ifrom top, for propter read projier " 77, " 27 " " " , whose " whose " 79, ''25 " bottom, for actual read ab- solute Page 80, line 21 from top. for of read of " 81, " 9 " bottom, for a caui^e read
a cause Page 82, line 2f>from bottom, for and read and
the Page 88, line 2 from top, for There read Here " 89, "18 " 6o<fo?«,. A"' consciousness
read self-consciousness Page 90, line 34 from bottom, for expand read
expand Page 93, line 5 from bottom, for surely read
surely, too Page 91, line22 from bottom, for him ?-ea(/ him- self Page 98, line 42 from bottom, for third read
fourth Page 100, line 16 from toj), for mind ; rend
mind; he has not actual events before
his mind ; Page 102, line 31 from bottom, for succession
read extension Page 103, line Wfrom top, for by the by read
by the bye Page 105, line 9 from bottom, ./or obligation
read obligations
Professor Caird on Kant. 49
or design of God in and through us, is that this marvellous means should result in real thought, in thought expressed in loving act, which it is competent to do at once and in all. God will not recognize Himself in our floating Universes, our *' systems of thought," our philosophies — all these He re- gards kindly, perhaps, though smilinglj^ as enlargement of our means, if indeed they are capable of inspiring one good deed — but it is in Goodness alone that the Divine sees itself fully expressed ; that is what makes of Man God's Providence here, and seals him with the immortal promise. For a loving deed — that is verily, and alone, a Divine thought, concrete, complete, expressed — an Act.
PROFESSOR CAIRD ON KANT.
BY J. HUTCHISON STIRLING.
Before proceeding to the second of my objections in allusion, it woukl throw light, and assist understanding, did I refer to Mr. Caird' s views on this, the most important question in the entire Criticism of Kant; for to mistake causality is to mistake the system.^
It will be obvious to every one whose opinion is relevant, that Mr. Caird's views on causality must be sought where Mr. Caird treats causality, and that it is only wilfully vexatious to get up a hue and cry against what a man truly finds there, or, with an air of indignation, point to an elsewhere that exists not, or is iaiapplicable, or that is simply hoped to be taken on trust. To every one so quaUfied, it will also be equally obvious that what a man finds there, and truly finds
1 In reference to this "allusion," I have to explain that Mr. Caird's reply, in this .JouRXAL, to certain remarks of mine in my Kant-Schopenhauer article, found me busy with preparation of a continuation to that article. Into this continuation I saw it would be advantageous to it, if permissible for me, to introduce what might be said in rejoinder to Mr. Caird. Accordingly, I occupied myself for some time in this direction. The result, however, was a paper so long that I have been obliged to divide it. The half now given (which regards Mr. Caird), had it been alone concerned, might have appeared three months ago. "Why it should precede the other half — publication being once determined upon — will be understood without diflBcultj'.
XIV— 4
50 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
there in Mr. Caird, is a taking for granted of the correctness of Schopenhauer in his objection to Kant, at the same time that a justi- fication is tendered for Kant, which, tliough simply warping the one vice into an ultimate exquisite extreme, proceeds, surely — - with due recompense of resultant glor}' — onl}- from the deeper insight of the more accomplislied student! In view, then, of such things — even with discount of the factitious cry of misrepresentation, misrepresen- tation, that is on their credit risked — further reference to Mr. Caird on my part may not only "• to many appear superfluous," but actually unworthy. Nevertheless, like the writer quoted, I aim at public iitilit}', and shall allow myself, so far as concerns Mr. Caird's refer- ence to Kant's causality, a discussion in detail. And yet I have, in truth, amply indicated above the entire state of the case.
When a man is caught luifortunately blundering, he is apt — espe- cially perhaps in these days of unscrupulous party-trickery — to "kick up a dust," as the phrase goes, and ''die hard," or even, as it were, to throw into the air a handful of such dust, trivial dust, hard-won, with the hope that the default — appearances being kept up, and the look of saying something — may in this way obtain a cover at least from the eyes of the groundlings. The expedient, for the most part, however, only baffles itself, and magnifies exposure. Better, far better, it were, in such circumstances, when one is not great or gener- ous enough simply to kiss the rod, then, instead of resorting to an expedient at all, just to hold one's tongue.
Mr. Caird opens his reply by asserting that ''Dr. Stirling's remarks contain an entire misrepresentation of my views ; and I should never have supposed that an}^ one could ascribe such to me, had not Dr. Stirling actually done so." Mr. Caird refers also to Dr. Stirling's "attack," but is good enough to declare that he has "no wish to retaliate." Now, if I am to be regarded as a proper object for such words, I must, perforce, be regarded also as something ver}^ equivo- cal ; and the dut}^ of defence, accordingly, would seem imposed upon me, so far at least as the words are demonstrably unjust. Neverthe- less, I should probably say little or nothing in that direction but for the prospective service to Kant.
In the article in question, out of fifty pages, only eight concern Mr. Caird; and they are certainly not an " attack." Neither, then, properly, do the3' admit of " retaliation." But, so far as writing of mine is before the public, Mr. Caird is as free as any other man to remark upon it. I deprecate no man's speech, and expect always the usual mishaps.
Professor Caird on Kant. 51
Mr. Caird was the single professor in Scotland who was currently understood to make common cause with myself in philosophy; while otherwise, at least as I took it, we were on terms of amity. It is not easy to describe, therefore, in what unwelcome quandary I felt myself when I opened Mr. Caird's book. What appeared to me to be before me was not — at least as I had instructed myself, and so far as I saw — Kant, but an inapplicable myth, an alien and isolated dream, an unfortunate, but unmistakable fiasco. Let it be observed, how- ever, that I say, as I had instructed myself, and as far as I sato (read). Going no farther than the one consideration, I explain that the other concerns only what to me is Kant's centre, the cateo-ories. I was surprised, then I grieved, and I disapproved ; but I held no patent of chamberlain or censor in philosophy ; it was not for me, unless on special call, to open my mouth. Accordingly, I staved off speech, till accident rendered such call too audible to be longer resisted ; but even then — after some two years — I was at ex[)ress and very real pains to say (in the before-mentioned eight pages) only the least pos- sible. And now this is the result. I shall have "• attacked " Mr. Caird; I shall have "entirely misrepresented" Mr. Caird; and I am to be thankful that I am spared the " retaliation " of Mr. Caird ! The position is sufficiently grave. I do not see that anything is left me but to act gemdnehi up to it. I shall still sa3% however, the least possible — restricting myself, too, to what is immediately before me. Nay, as intimated, in what I may say I shall rather have in view what is to me the true understanding of Kant than any opposition to Mr. Caird.
Mr. Caird conditions his reply in this way: that he "passes over some almost verbal criticisms," denies one allegation, justifies another, ignores Schopenhauer, and winds up magnanimously abnega- tive, with renunciation of the right to "retaliate." We may allow such surface as this the praise of ingenuity; but, alas! surface is surface, and ingenuity, when it is only ingenuity, a smoke that dis- appears even as it is looked at. But, be that as it may, the account, as it stands, seems to contain but one element that calls for notice on my part. There is only one allegation of mine, namely, that Mr. Caird denies ; everything else that is said by me, Mr. Caird either justifies or passes over as verbal. But if, out of several allegations, only one be excepted to, does not such a phrase as "Dr. Stirling's remarks contain an entire misrepresentation of my views," look rather like a contradiction in terms? But there is more than that. The allegation denied by Mr. Caird is nowhere made by me; it is an inven- tion of Mr. Caird's oion. Never, consequently, was a charge of
52 TJie Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
"entire" misrepresentation, or of "misrepresentation" at all, more insecurely situated,
Mr. Caird charges me with accusing him of "asserting, and asserting as the doctrine of Kant, that objects are known as objects through the category of causality alone." I cannot f.nd a word of this in anything that I say of Mr. Caird. All through my article on Schopenhauer, all through my remarks on Mr. Caird, I talk of " suc- cessions," " sequences," only. I know not that the word "objects " ever occurs, even in what relates to Schopenhauer ; but I know well that if ever it does occur, and surely it must, it refers only to the successions and sequences with which every other sentence positively bristles. In what relates to Mr. Caird in this connection, however, this word " objects " 7iever occurs — not once! There is not a single expression in all the relative pages, that could even yield to torture the allegation made for me by Mr. Caird. The reader can easily make good this for himself. The last three pages (of the eight) alone refer to any allegation of Mr. Caird's in connection with causality. A glance will show this, and it will require little more than a glance to do the necessary reading. The phrase, " assertion that objectivity results from the category of causality alone," occurs certainly once; but, though the only one that might seem as much as to approach the relative suggestion, it would not, as I say, even yield to torture the allegation made for me. The bare word "objectivity" cannot be replaced at will by the word " objects; " and, as it stands, it is no bare word. On the contrary, even in that position it is, with quite a superfluity of expression, made known to the reader as the objectivity of succession. Look to all the connections in which it stands! The first sentence, in the same reference, immediately above, runs thus : "These are successions — necessary successions, too — and they are absolutely independent of causality, whether as existent or cognized." The first sentence, likewise, in the same reference, immediately below, runs again thus: "Kant, consequently, cannot even dream of making cognition of succession, as such, conditional on presupposition of succession causal." The words almost directly next, too, are: "bestow objectivity, and so bestow objectivity that even the suc- cession of a house is not subjective," etc. In short, while " objects " are never once mentioned, there is no "objectivity" spoken of that is not the objectivit^'^ of "successions." Repeated more than once, and repeated always in the same wa^^ this is my charge against Mr. Caird : —
"It was a fearful blunder on the part of Schopenhauer to suppose Kant con- sidered the succession of the house subjective, and no succession objective but
Professor Caird on Kant. 53
that of causality alone. As we see, Mr. Caird fully indorses that blunder — the radical blunder that is the theme of this essay; but then, further, he out-Herods Herod. Schopenhauer, even making the prodigious blunder he did, was never so far left to himself as to conceive the cognition of succession, as succession, only possible to Kant on presupposition of causality. Following on was to him as much sui generis as following from. One vainly turns the eye round and round in search of how and where Mr. Caird could get even the dream of such things. Kant shall have held it impossible to cognize the rows on his book-shelves, the steps on his stairs, the laths in his Venetians, etc., endlessly, unless on presup- position of the category of causality ! Why, there are successions even necessarily in the form of A. B. C. D., etc., which are not causal, and utterly independent of causality in anv' reference," etc.
But if these sentences contain, as they do, the whole charge (and on all its aspects) ever made by me, in a causal reference, against Mr. Caird — if every sentence that I write in that connection (even of rows, steps, laths) concerns successions, explicitly concerns suc- cessions onl}' — why has Mr. Caird, of his own motive and free will, converted "successions" into "objects," and, denying me the propo- sition that is mine, gratuitously complimented me with another that is his?
Perhaps some light will be obtained here if we consider Mr. Caird's second ^ proposition, — the one, namely, which he justifies. It is this: "Objective sequence cannot be known except by a mind that connects phenomena as causes and effects." Let us compare with this, now, his first proposition ("objects are known as objects through the category of causality alone"), when corrected. Let us replace, — that is, " objects " by objectivity of sequence, or, what is palpably the same thing, objective sequence, which was what Mr. Caird, of his own act, removed, and we shall have this proposition : "Objective sequence is known as objective sequence through the category of causality alone." Would not one require some instru- ment more powerful than microscope or telescope, to discover wherein the one proposition differed from the other? And 3'et, on the strength of Mr. Caird's own wilful manipulation, we have two propositions — one which is justified., and another which is denied! " I should never have supposed," says Mr. Caird, with a charming air of outraged, but meekly forgiving virtue, "that any one could ascribe it to me, had not Dr. Stirling actually done so! "
Now, the reader will be pleased to observe that the result before us is not owing to any intercalation of mine ; it is the result simply of
1 I find I have inverted the order of Mr. Caird's propositions ; but, that being understood, no inconvenience will result.
54 TJte Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
the substitution of fact for fiction, and the whole procedure is as ohjective as any demonstration in EucUd.
Will the reader in truth be but pleased to observe, further, this : that the common proposition is Mr. Caird's one original and peculiar proposition (of unit}') in regard to Kant? In Mr. Caird's book, the title of page 456 is, "Schopenhauer's Objection to the Deduction of Causality;" and the immediately following title (458) is, ''The Judgment of Sequence Implies the Judgment of Causality." Now, this means that while, as regards the first title, Schopenhauer's objection is admitted to be relevant, yet, as regards the second title, Kant's matter in objection is expressly justified. What is alluded to as Schopenhauer's objection is, that he " denies the Kantian doctrine that objective sequence implies causality," having first pointed out inconsistency on the part of Kant for the "statement that we can have a judgment of sequence which is not objective." Schopen- hauer, as we may recollect, considered himself to prove against Kant that while, on the one hand, we could have objective sequence without causality, Kant's own case, on the other hand, of subjec- tivity in sequence for alleged want of the category of causality, was, in reality, no case of subjectivity, but, on the contrary, a case of objectivity', due, too, to the very category (causalit}') said to be wanting. Objective sequence without causality lie instanced in reference to the tile, day and night, etc., and the alleged subjectivity of the liouse he converted into objectivit}' by the movement of the eye.
Well, now, Mr. Caird is quite in agreement generally with Scho- penhauer— only that his peculiar doctrine of unity obliges liim to go a little farther. To Mr. Caird, for instance, it is inconsistent on Kant's part to suppose sequence (as in the house) possibly subjec- tive, at the same time that the Kantian doctrine truly is (for him) what Schopenhauer says it is — "that objective sequence implies causality." So far he is quite as Schopenhauer — blunders quite as he about the house, and causality being alone the category of objectivity — thankfully accepting, also, the brilliant conceit of the eye (and just these things constitute that wherein I shall have "entirely misrepresented" Mr. Caird!); but, then, there comes the step farther, that, against Schopenhauer's objection to the Kantian doctrine of objective sequence implying causality, he justifies Kant! Yes, at page 458, under the title, " The Judgment of Sequence Implies the Judgment of Causality," Mr. Caird is at express pains directl}' to justify Kant for maintaining that very dictum; and his reason is that
Pi'ofessor Caird on Kant. 55
universal ciyptic unity which, for him, Kant attributes to all things. No wonder, then, that we have (in his repl}') Mr. Caird's second proposition, together with the perception on his part, that, in conse- quence of such out-and-out and undeniable breadth of doctrine, iterated and reiterated in his book, said proposition must at all hazards be acknowledged, and if possible vindicated. " Objective sequence cannot l)e known except by a mind that connects phenomena as causes and effects." Or again, "The judgment of sequence implies the judgment of causality." Or yet again (omitting the various other forms already seen about the i^osi hoc, the jyropter hoc, etc.), '' 01)jec- tive sequence implies causality." Compare with these propositions that other, "Objective sequence is known through the category of causality alone." As already said, surely no instrument that ever was invented will enable us to discover this last proposition — "but in the estimation of a hair" — to differ from the rest. Vet this last proposition is that with which I charged Mr. Caird ; I certainly did not charge him with "objects are known as objects through the category of causality alone." How the one proposition ever became the other, it is not for me to explain. Neither do I make any accusa- tion ; I onl_y point out the advantage which has l)een obtained by the possession of two propositions, such that, though in import identical, there could be a face of denial for the one, and equally a face of justification for the other. If any possible difference, indeed, can be found between them, the latter it is that must be pronounced the more flagrant ; for while the one that is denied asserts of objective sequence only that it is known by causalit}^ the other, that is justified, asserts the same thing of sequence at all. In two of the forms given above, the word "objective " appears ; but the formal justification that, under the title "The Judgment of Sequence Implies the Judgment of Causality," occupies two pages, is to the effect that sequence at all, as known or experienced, presupposes causality. That is Mr. Caird's own proper and peculiar doctrine.
But, however this be, and attributing the conversion of objectivity (of succession) into "objects" to what cause we may, there is no reason, so far as I am concerned, why Mr. Caird should be balked of a meeting, even on his own terms. I have not accused Mr. Caird of " asserting, and asserting as the doctrine of Kant, that ol)jects are known as objects through tlie category of causality alone." But I will now do so. In short, I will now accuse Mr. Caird of asserting, and asserting as the doctrine of Kant, first, "that objects are known as objects through tl»e category of causality alone; " and, second, that
56 The Journal of Speculative Philosoplty .
" objective sequence cannot be known except by a mind that connects phenomena as causes and effects." I will now, I say, so accuse Mr. Caird ; and I will further assert that what he assumes to deny, he can not deny, and what he assumes to justify, he can not justify. The issues here, then, are unmistakable, and they are expressed in Mr. Caird's own words.
At first sight, this may have a very equivocal look on my part. Why, it may be thought, should I have made so much of Mr. Caird's conversion of a phrase, at the very moment that I was about to justify it? Is not this conduct glaringly contradictory, and how can we be expected to give attention to what, in such circumstances, may be a tour de force, but cannot be serious? The objection is not unnatural, but it will not be found to lie. Observe how differently we are placed, Mr. Caird and I. It will not be denied that I was quite within my rights to object to the conversion as a conversion. Still less will it be denied that I was all the more justified to object to this conversion, in view of the use to which Mr. Caird turned it. Again, it is quite possible for me, without inconsistency, to regard the two propositions as identical ; but that is impossible for Mr. Caird, unless with immer- sion into a very Maelstrom of contradiction. Mr. Caird's two proposi- tions, for example, are either identical or different. If they are identical, then Mr. Caird must either deny what he justifies, or justify what he denies. If different, again — why, I fear that horn is even the worst of all ! Mr. Caird could not deny his determination of things into time by causality in such manner that there was an all- pervading unity in this universe, both in whole and in part. But, reminded of the other categories, he bethought himself that he did apply them in '•'determination" of "objects," no matter what he might have taught or thought about " objectivity ; " and, so bethinking himself, he took courage to say as much, or even a little more. Why, however, he should have so completely changed my words, remains to be explained ; but it would be cruel, as it is now unnecessary, indeed, to press the point.
But, as intimated, all is differently situated in my case, the propo- sition attributed to Kant is not parcel justified and parcel denied by me — ^^it is wholly denied; and, in the denial, it does not in the least signify whether the false action on the part of causality is said of objects or of objective sequences. But it is this we have now to see.
As he so wills it, I accuse Mr. Caird of asserting, then, and " asser- ting as the doctrine of Kant, that objects are known as objects
Professor Caird on Kant. 57
through the category of causality alone." But, standing now before this plain issue, let me prefatorily touch on a general point or two. The occasion of my reference to either Schopenhauer or Mr. Caird has been already explained, and I think it will be allowed to have been sufficiently simple, natural, and irresistible. Surely, too, it will also be allowed that, once having entered on the reference, I took every care to be exact. I placed before the reader, even anxiously translated, the whole relative section of Schopenhauer ; and while resolved that there should be no mistake as to the state of my mind with respect to Mr. Caird' s work, I constrained my expressions in every possible manner that appeared to me legitimate. I confined myself, on the general merits, to mere indication ; and, as regarded the particular issues which I had necessarily to confront on causality, I was at pains to quote fully and fairly Mr. Caird's own words, and then — to say only the least possible.
In such circumstances, the charge of misrepresentation seems, again, to say the least, extraordinary. The issues raised are so unequivocal! Schopenhauer had found a certain hotise of Kant's subjective, but had volunteered to make it the objective thing it plainly ought to be, by the ingenious or ingenuous expedient of moving his eyes. That was the whole. And that — literally that, in both of its clauses — seemed adopted by Mr. Caird. Here are his own words : —
"Kant distinguishes two cases : The case of such an object as a house, where the sequence of our perceptions is reversible ; and the case of a boat sailing down a river, where it is irreversible. We can begin with either the top or the bottom of the house, but we cannot see the movements of the boat except in one order. In the latter case, therefore, as Kant argues, we give to our perception of succes- sion an objective value ; but in the former case we regard it as merely subjective ; or, what is the same thing, in the latter case we bring the sequence of our percep- tions under the categor}^ of causality, and in the former case we do not.
"Kant either forgets, or abstracts for the moment from the fact, that whether we say the sequence is due (as in the case of the house) to the movement of our organs of sense, or whether we sa^' that it is due to the movements of the objects perceived (as in the case of the boat), in both cases we make a judgment of objec- tive sequence."
Evidently, whether as concerns Schopenhauer or Mr. Caird, the house, in regard to which they both perfectly agree, is the centre of the whole business. Let us quote now from II., 753, and see how it is situated with Kant in the same reference : —
"If, for example, therefore, I take into observation the empirical perception of a house, through apperception of its complex of parts, there underlies it for me the necessary unity of space and of external sense-perception generally —
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and I limn, as it were, its shape in accordance with this synthetic unity of the parts in space. But just the same synthetic unity has its seat in the understanding when I abstract from the form of space, and is the category of the synthesis of the homogeneous in a perception in general — i.e., the category of quantity; completely in accord with which must be, therefore, said synthesis of apprehen- sion — i.e., of perception."
This, evidently, is an example of how the category quantity acts on the perceptive complex of a house. It is followed by another in reference to the freezing of water, which illustrates the action of the category cause. Both examples are, so to speak, conducted in the very same way, and on the very same principles. No preference is given to the one category over the other ; the word "objective " does not happen to be used of either ; but both are named, and equally named, and in the same way named, "synthetic unities of the under- standing," which again are also equall}^, and in the same way, named " conditions a ^rto?-/." There can be no doubt whatever that, con- sidering what these phrases mean, both examples are regarded by Kant as equally objective. There is a note, indeed, that directly says this. This note, moreover, is not referred to the conclusion of the common passage, but directl}' and expressly to the paragraph on the house. It proceeds thus: "In such way it is proved that the synthesis of apprehension, which is empirical, must be necessarily in accord with the synthesis of apperception, which is intellectual, and completely contained in the categor3\" And that names the process quite generally whereby a category'' raises a subjective multiple in apprehension into an objective unity in apperception. The house, then, is objective to Kant ; and it is quite inexplicable why it should have been considered subjective by Schopenhauer. No one, at least as I think, can read the passage even in the second analogy without seeing that the ship-series is not regarded by Kant as one whit more objective than the house-series. Schopenhauer's mistake, however, arises from the first words in tlie immediately following paragraph : "I shall, therefore, in our case, necessarily derive the subjective sequence of apprehension from the objective sequence of the percep- tions," etc. ; where, to have known that all sequence in apprehension., when apprehension, as mere susceptivity of sense, is opposed to the apperception of understanding — to have known that all such sequence is only subjective, would have been of small credit even to a first year's student of Kant.
As for Mr. Caird's mistake, its origin lies in the mistake of Scho- penhauer. How it was that, in matters so glaring, Mr. Caird allowed himself to be imposed upon is another question.
Professor Caird on Kant. 59
It is a glaring error to say the house was subjective to Kant ; and it is a more glaring error — it is even a terrible error — the most terrible eiror possible in a student of Kant — to say that Kant holds causality to be singly, alone, and in exception to all the rest, the category of objectivity. Why, when directly, and expressly, and «lone considering such topics generally, was Mr. Caird silent on a misunderstanding, on the part of Schopenhauer, so glaring, on a misunderstanding so terrible? Nay, seeing that he himself had actually adopted the glaring misunderstanding, would one have very heinously erred, had one attributed to Mr. Caird, if for nothing hut his extraordinary silence in such a case, the terrible misunderstanding as well?
It is very curious to think, with all that before one, that Mr. Caird, once for all so very peculiarl}' implicated in merely following the lead of Schopenhauer, should (in his reply) not attempt to justify Scho- penhauer in any one single point whatever. On the contrary, he indirectly admits the whole burden of transgression that has been proved against Schopenhauer, His words are these: "Dr. Stirling's charge is based upon the fact that I refer to Schopenhauer, on one occasion, in connection with the category of causality. But surely one may refer to an author without adopting, or (as was the case here) without even remembering, all his opinions." One wonders what Mr. Caird can refer to as not remembered, when he was writing the pas- sage in question ; for that there was something he did not remember is positively asserted; it was "the case here," he says. It is suffi- ciently strange, however, that Mr. Caird should not have " remem- bered " all about Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's name is in Mr. Caird's preface as that of one to whom he " owes most; " Schopen- hauer's name is in the contents ; Schopenhauer's name is in the index ; Schopenhauer's name in on his page-margin ; Schopenhauer's name is again and again in his text. Nay, Mr. CaircT was not, so to speak, asJced to remember "a?? Schopenhauer's opinions;" Mr. Caird was referred to as considering " Schopenhauer's objection to the deduc- tion of causality ' ' — as considering that objection alone — the precise one point that, in Mr. Caird's regard, I brought in question. When Mr. Caird discussed "Schopenhauer's objection to the deduction of causality," surely that was what he did discuss, and surely that alone was what he could be expected, what he could be asked to remember. All that he mentioned he surely remembered ; and he certainly men- tioned those opinions of Schopenhauer which were the express objects of my discussion. Non mi ricordo is not a plea that can be admitted
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to record here, then. Mr. Caird had expressly to do in Schopenhauer with what I had to do, and both by silence and by speech — however extraordinary that was, howev^er damning that was — he gave it the most significant support. In very fulness of his lieart, indeed, view- ing Schopenhauer's assistance in the composition of his work, Mr. Caird, when that work is accomplislied, cannot help tendering express thanks to Schopenhauer as one to whom he '" owes most." And what did Mr. Caird owe to Schopenhauer? What could Mr. Caird owe to Schopenhauer — what but these same extraordinary deliverances on causality? That reference — the reference to Schopenhauer on causality — is express, and full, and at large. There is only one allusion to Schopenhauer elsewhere in Mr. Caird's whole book, and it is a trifle about weight, which is rejected by Mr. Caird himself, and dispatched in a clause. The conclusion is inevitable, then, that the contributions for which Mr. Caird so expressly thanks Schopenhauer concerned causality alone. Perhaps it was they, indeed, that sug- gested to Mr. Caird that original step beyond Schopenhauer. All the more curious it is, then, that he should not have remembered this ; the rather, too, that it was the only thing he was, so to speak, asked to remember. But let us come, now, to the two allegations.
Mr. Caird complains that he is accused of " asserting, and asserting as the doctrine of Kant, that objects are known as objects through the category of causality alone;" and his reply is: This "assertion has never been made by me ; it is inconsistent with many express statements of m^'^ book ; and I should never have supposed that any one could ascribe it to me, had not Dr. Stirling actually done so." To this, discounting all that we know about such words not being mine, my rejoinder is that I homologate the accusation. Mr. Caii'd's language, as discussed in my Schopenhauer article, directly contained the assertion ; and what he brings forward now, whether by quotation or by reference, as proof of the contrary doctrine, contains no such proof.
Had a contrary doctrine really existed elsewhere in Mr. Caird's book, it would have been no misrepresentation on my part only truly to represent what was then and there before me ; and that I did. The expression of an opposite doctrine may exist in Mr. Caird's book ; but it seems even yet to be beyond Mf. Caird's consciousness. Mr. Caird does not succeed, in his reply, to refer to a single true case of it ; and that such expression should occur, or even must occur, we have at once the explanation and the guarantee in the fact that Kant's own language must at times not only be directly referred to, but actually
Professor Caird on Kant. 61
quoted. The existence, in fact, of any number of contrary doctrines in Mr. Caird's book would be no surprise to me — in view, that is, of his own equipment for the work, and the principles on which it appears to have been conducted. It is said of Schelling, in reference to his successive publications of varying systems (to call them so), that he carried on his studies "before the public;" and, perhaps, something similar may be relevantly said of Mr. Caird and the suc- cessive chapters of his Kant. Mr. Caird, namely, does not seem, if we may be allowed to judge from what we see, to have first articulated Kant to his own self, and then to have re-articulated him for the public. On the contrary, one would figure him to have studied Kant simply from chapter to chapter, and to have written down his results just as they came to hand, without referring them the one to the other, and all together to any correlating ground-plan of the whole — a ground- plan which he had previously been at the pains to put together for himself. But, such considerations apart, what alone occupied me (in my former article) was Mr. Caird on " Schopenhauer's objection to the deduction of causality," at pp. 456-460. The reader can examine these for himself, and draw his own conclusions. I, for my part, assert them unequivocally to contain the doctrine with which I charged Mr. Caird, even as by him strained ; and what satisfies me in proof, are considerations both of silence and of speech. To call Kant's iLOuse subjective was a monstrous error on the part of Schopen- hauer ; but to hold Kant to regard his category of causality as alone the agent of objectivity in perception, was an error infinitely more monstrous — an error that struck at the foundation of the whole building — an error that summarily sisted any pretending expositor's entire case — an error that was simply ruin at once both to principal and accessary. Now, both errors being the matters — wholly and solely the matters — expressly and directly viewed, it never once struck Mr. Caird — even in passing — to call Schopenhmier wrong! On the contrar}^ like Schopenhauer, he directly calls the house sub- jective ; and, like Schopenhauer, he unequivocally expresses himself as implying the conviction that causality is alone, of all Kant's cate- gories, the objectifying minister. Surely that silence, in such a case, is not less significant than this speech ! But what does it imply that Mr. Caird finds himself obliged, with Schopenhauer, to regard the house, as in spite of Kant, objective — obliged, therefore, further, and still with Schopenhauer, to 7nake the house objective, and show it objec- tive? Schopenhauer, as there is, to his behef, but one category of objectivity to Kant, thinks himself under a necessity, for the due effecting of the operation and the proof required, to have recourse to
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that category — the category of causaUty alone. And Mr. Caird^ whatever the state of his belief, certainly is at pains, though without alluding in this particular to Schopenhauer, to objectify the house in the same preposterous and amusing manner as Schopenhauer ! The illustrations of house and freezing water were actually previously before him — a good way back, however — and he seems to have for- gotten them. Or did he not forget them, and is it not rather, that though he applied, then, quantity to the house and causality to the freezins: water, he was not aware of the full force of what he himself did ; but that, determining the house by quantity, he yet left it subjec- tive, and only in the other case produced objectivity. For it is vain to point to the other categories and ask, What could be meant, if by their determination there was not meant objectivity, or what could it be supposed that the other categories were there for? Such question, I say, in its vei-y suggestion (and I suppose it is, on the whole, ray own), ought to carry great weight with it ; but it is wholly vain in the circumstances. If it could bestead Mr. Caird, for example, it ought equally to bestead Schopenhauer, who speaks of all the other cate- gories a hundred times, and yet holds causality to be Kant's sole agent of objectivity! Mr. Caird, indeed, uses the other (mathemati- cal) categories for determmation ; but the determination is only in imagination, it is not objective. But, be all that as it may, it is quite certain that Mr. Caird did at one time determine the house by quantity. Now, however, that he is a hundred pages farther, it is equally certain that the house is to him only subjective, and that he finds himself under the same obligation as Schopenhauer to make it objective by the same expedient of causality alone ! Is the conclusion at all unfair that Mr. Caird must, like Schopenhauer, have regarded quantity — and if quantity, surely other categories — as ineffective of objectivity, but causality, on the contrar3% as in that function, alone effective? No one, as it appears to me, can read these four pages (complemented, say, by what concerns causality on 451 and 455) without finding this .conclusion formally supported by every consecutive sentence.
Mr. Caird begins his consideration of Schopenhauer's " objection " by the passage that declares the reversible house-series subjective, and the irreversible ship-series objective. " In the latter case, therefore, as Kant argues, we give to our perception of succession an objective value," he says, "but in the former case we regard it as merely subjective ; or, what is the same thing, in the latter case we bring the sequence in our perceptions under the category of causality, and in the former case we do not."
Now, there is much here that is instructive to us, and that must be
Professor Caird on Kant. 63
borne in mind as we proceed. It is to be observed, for example, that the words sequence and succession are synonymous. They both mean the same thing, and are indifferently used by Mr. Caird, as by everybody else. Again, holding the views he does about the post Jioc, necessarily presupposing and depending on the propter hoc, objective sequence is to him not one whit stronger than sequence simply, nor objective succession one whit stronger than succession simply. These expressions likewise are synonymous to Mr. Caird ; and these, too, as actual extracts will probably sufficiently suggest, are indifferent to him. Lastly, in this reference, the word '"objects " is to Mr. Caird, as it is to Kant, synonymous with "objective sequences and successions," or with "sequences and successions" sim[)ly. As regards Kant, an object, we learn from II., 97, is "a one consciousness which unites Into one representation the part by part perceived, and then reproduced, many, manifold, or multiple of units of impression." Then, 108: "A presentation to sense con- tains a manifold ; consequently, in its case a multiplicity of perceptions are found in the mind, separate and single in themselves." Again, 157: "Our apprehension of the manifold of the presentation is always successive ; " as, 168 : "In the synthesis of presentations the manifold of impressions always follow each other" (i.e., the units of the manifold). The same doctrine is to be found at 733, 740, 741, and, indeed, passim. Mr. Caird's testimony and doctrine are to an identical effect. He says (339), "Ere we can perceive any individual object as such, we must have a manifold before us, and we must combine this manifold into a unity ; but to distinguish the elements of the manifold means, in the case of a successive con- sciousness like ours, to distinguish the times in which the manifold is given." That is, plainly, all objects are successions — sequences in time. The same thing is repeated again and again by Mr. Caird; but for certainty here we need not leave the "materials which are presently before us. " The sequences of our perceptions," Mr. Caird says, "in the case of such an object as a house, are reversible," while, "in the case of a boat sailing down a river" they are "irre- versible." Here the two objects (one of them a house) are plainly put upon the same level of sequence or succession. It is no objection to this tiiat Mr. Caird proceeds to call the one succession subjective, and the other objective ; for he immediately turns to causality, in order by that means to make the house-succession quite as objective, and in the same way objective, as the succession of the ship. He argues, indeed, that we must not separate the two cases ; that we must not have a judgment of sequence in our perceptions which is
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not a judgment of causality. And he illustrates this assertion by showing that, in the case of the house, we make the sequence objec- tive just in the same manner as we make the sequence oI)jective in the case of the ship. "In both cases we make a judgment of objective sequence." To Mr. Caird, as to Kant, then, all objects are successions or sequences in time of units of impression, and no one object is more so than another. Here is proof absolute that Mr. Caird did assert that "objects are known as objects through the category of causality alone; " for objectivity of sequence, plainly — that is, an object as an object — is due to causality alone. Yet, saj's Mr. Caird, this "assertion has never been made by me, and I should never have supposed that any one could ascribe it to me," etc. ! In fact, as is but too manifest, discussion at all with Mr. Caird is superfluously idle — but for the lesson as regards Kant. Should it appear, too, as I may say again, that Mr. Caird was not so very culpable in changing my objectivity of succession into his "objects," — the words now being declared synonymous by ra^'self, — let the use be once more considered which Mr. Caird made of the sem- blance of difference thereb}' gained. Like Schopenhauer, he asserted Kant to ascribe objectivity to causality alone ; he even went a step farther, and asserted Kant to ascribe sequence as sequence, post hoc as post hoc, whether as judged or experienced, to the sequence causal, the sequence propter hoc. By substitution of " objects " for objec- tivity of sequence, he was able to give the one clause, in the above common matter, the appearance of being opposed to the other ; and so, consequently, there was something to be denied ; and, again, there was something to be justified. The difference in the identity was eminently convenient, not but that it is equally easy for us quietly to put back the original identit}" — identit\^ even with a little excess in the one clause — and that the one, not that is denied, but that is expressly and laboriousU' justified !
But to return to the extract before us, in description of what suc- cession is subjective and what objective. Surely, if words are ever to be allowed a meaning at all — surely those words mean, and must mean, and can only mean that, " to give to our perception of suc- cession an objective value," is '■'■ the same thing " as to "bring the sequence in our perceptions under the category of causality ; " while, to regard our perception of succession "as merely subjective," is '■'■ the same thing" as not "to bring the sequence in our perceptions under the category of causality."
" Now, it is evident that if this were the only proof for the transcendental necessity of the principle of causality, we could have a judgment of sequence
Professor Caird on Kant. 65
(viz., in our own perceptions) which was not a judgment of causality, and thus Kant's argument against Hume would lose all its force."
It is thus Mr. Caird continues, and truly these words also contain revelations unmistakable. They assume, in the first place, Kant's contrast of the house and the ship to have been intended by him as "proof for the transcendental necessity of the principle of causality." It never even crossed Kant's brain to imagine that his simi)le contrast in illustration of difference of sense-many, under difference of cate- gorical unity, could ever be supposed a "proof," and a proof of what never as much as occurred to him in dream, that causality was alone the agent of objectivit}^ ! But Mr. Caird, for his part, has no doubt about this "proof." Seeing that the objectivity of the one series is contrasted with the subjectivity of the other, there can be nothing in Kant's mind, he thinks, but an argument in behoof of what it never seems to have occurred to Mr. Caird (following Scho- penhauer) even to question — the one sole minister of objectivity- causality. Still, Kant to Mr. Caird does not say enough for causalitj'. If this were the " only proof," he thinks, then, in view of the sequence of the house (even suppose it subjective only), "we could have a judgment of sequence which was not a judgment of causality." Evidently, the possibility of a judgment of sequence which was not a judgment of causality loomed little less at that time to Mr. Caird than a catastrophe, — a catastrophe that must prove fatal to the whole common industry. It was so sun-clear to him then that we can not have a judgment of sequence in our own perceptions other than a judgment of causality! Nor must this be limited to the house ; all objects whatever are, on the consideration of succession, situated quite as the house is. Plainly, then, we cannot have a judgment of objects, as objects, that is not a judgment of causality — again the assertion which Mr. Caird never made, and which so righteously surprises him! But, further, in what case would " Kant's argument against Hume lose all its force?" Wliy, that would happen, mani- festly, just if "we could have a judgment of sequence in our own perceptions which was not a judgment of causality." That, then, is, to Mr. Caird, Kant's argument against Hume: we cannot have a judgment of sequence which is not a judgment of causality — the post hoc depends on the propter hoc! Unless all judgments of sequence are causal, Kant's argument against Hume fails! Kant no more argues against Hume, or at all, that all sequence is causal, than I argue that Tenterden steeple is the cause of Goodwyn Sands. Kant's argument against Hume is as relevant to Tenterden steeple XIV — 5
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or to Goodwyn Sands as to the argument ascribed to him by Mr. Caird. Kant says to Hume only this : I grant all that you say, and the evidence of sense can only be contingent ; but I have discovered a whole system of Epigenesis, which, descending upon the things of sense, whether in series causal or in series non-causal, elevates them into necessity. One wonders at what Mr. Caird sees instead of this ; one wonders at what Mr. Caird denies. Hume's question is. Why is the unquestionable contingent post hoc of mere sense supposed, in certain cases, to be, after all, necessary? Kant's answer — to take it roughly, on the whole, but, on the whole, still truly — is: There are twelve post hoes, and being received, respectively, into twelve chequers of my twelvefold epigenesis, they thereby become necessary. Not a ghost of an idea of the process involved in this become ever struck Mr. Caird ; causality is to him an absolute nail in an absolutely fixed universe.
Mr. Caird, then, will save causality from the catastrophe threatened it by Kant's " forgetf ulness or abstraction for the moment." He will show that even in the house, contrary to the example made of it by Kant, causality is the minister of the sequence. We have seen the sentence more than once already, and need not quote. We know that Schopenhauer, conceiving the ship-series to be due to the move- ments of the object perceived, and to be therefore pronounced causal, and consequently objective, turned the tables on Kant (who, poor man, had only made the house objective by quantity), and proved that the house-sequence, being due to the movements of our organs of sense, was therefore equally causal, and, consequently, equally objective. We know, too, that, though without acknowledgment, Mr. Caird has repeated all this — "in both cases we make a judg- ment of objective sequence." Mr. Caird will show Kant, with gentle reproach of his oblivion for the moment, that it is a mistake to suppose sequence, as non-causal, only subjective in the house ; on the contrary, as a moment's thought will suggest, it is really causal and objective !
"And if it be true that we can date events in time only hi so far as we can put them in causal relation with each other, in both cases alike there must be a judg- ment of causality. Kant, in fact, has here made the inconsistent admission that one kind of sequence can be determined without any help from the principle of causality. But if we could determine one kind of sequence without reference to causality, it would be difficult to prove that causality is necessary to determine any other kind of sequence. Kant's argument can be valid only if it is made uni- versal— i.e., if it is shown that all judgments of sequence are implicitly judgments of causality. And the remark, mutatis mutandis, holds good of judgments of reciprocity and coexistence" — (i.e., that these, too, are judgments of causality).
Professor Caird on Kant. 67
That is perfectly in accord with Schopenhauer: that "in both cases we make a judgment of objective sequence," and "in both cases alike there must be a judgment of causality," And if that does not mean that, for production of a judgment of objective sequence, a judgment of causality is, simple as it stands there, a necessity., then it may mean Tenterden steeple, or Goodwyn Sands, or green cheese, or the plains of Marathon, or the Magellan clouds, or whatever else anybody may simply wish. It is a pity, however, to see at last the little rift in the lute — a pupil so docible showing signs to leave his master at last. At three seconds to one o'clock, Herr Dr. Schopenhauer went to his own door, and at two seconds to one o'clock — the very next second, that is — a tile bonneted him ; but that was necessarily all a dream of the worthy Herr Doctor's own, for " we can date events in time only in so far as we can put them in causal relation to each other," and that is impossible in the case of Herr Dr. Schopenhauer bonneted by the house-tile. It is the Herr Doctor, himself, has introduced the illustration, and as demonstrat- ing the fact that all sequences are not causal. Mr. Caird, however, is so pledged to the suppositious Kant that he will maintain the pos- sibility even of sequence, as sequence, to depend upon the judg- ment of causality. That is the proposition we have to see Mr. Caird justify ; and that is a proposition that, surely, may be named an a fortiori to the proposition he denies! Comment, indeed, is quite superfluous with expressions so very glaring confronting us. To be consistent, for example, Kant ought to rule that all sequence, even in a house, is determined by causality alone. Without help of that principle no sequence can be determined. If any one sequence could be determined without such help, it would be difficult to prove it for any. The argument must be made universal — all judgments of sequence are implicitly judgments of causality. Causality, indeed, is the universal agent; and it is implied, not only in the sequence of the house, but in that of reciprocity also. Causality, in short, shall determine all sequence. Nay, "the denial of causality necessarily involves the denial of all succession in time " — " sequence is equiv- alent to causality! "
When Mr. Caird proceeds to justify — and that, too, in its extremest form — the doctrine of causality imputed by Schopenhauer to Kant, we naturally strike at once on another absolutely irresistible proof of his holding the proposition which he now denies. " Schopenhauer," says Mr. Caird, " who has pointed out the inconsistency of Kant's statement, that we can have a judgment of sequence which is not objective, also denies the Kantian doctrine, that objective sequence
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implies causality. It is, he argues, absurd to say that sequence is equivalent to causality ; for, in that case, we should never recognize any sequence but that between cause and effect. But night and day have followed each other constantly since the beginning of the world, without any one being tempted to find the cause of the one in the other." But, after all that has already been said, this passage may be allowed to speak for itself. Mr. Caii-d, far from telling Schopen- hauer, as even any first year's student of Kant ought to have done, simply that such things at all are not in Kant, agrees with Schopen- hauer that Kant attributes the function of objectivity to causality alone; and even justifies the latter, as reproached by the former, for holding sequence to be equivalent to causality !
Before passing to consideration, however, of the proposition sug- gested here, which Mr. Caird justifies, we have to see what he brings forward in his reply to prove, as alleged, the fact that he, Mr. Caird, does not assert " that objects are known as objects through the cate- gory of causality alone."
We have already admitted and explained how it may be, or must be, with expressions in Mr. Caird' s book, in regard to possible occa- sional implication of a true Kantian doctrine ; but, certainly, those which he himself either actually lirings forward, or only refers to, in his own support, do not seem tantamount to even so much as that.
" In the last chapter, we have considered the principles on which phenomena are determined as objects of experience, under conditions of space and time. Taking these principles together, we reach the general idea of nature as a system of substances, whose quantum of reality always remains the same; but which, by action and reaction upon each other, are constantly changing their states accord- ing to universal laws. And this proof of this idea of nature is not dogmatic, but transcendental — i.e., it is proved that without it there would exist for us no nature and no experience at all."
Mr, Caird quotes these words from "Phil, of Kant, p. 473; c/., also, pp. 460, 470, etc." And if we examine into all that is definite in these references, I suppose we shall not be called to any very rigor- ous account should we profess ourselves to fail with the " etc." Of the passage quoted, Mr. Caird, "in these words, has declared," he says, "as clearly as possible, that the test of objective reality is to be found in the connection of experience as determined by all the cate- gories." I, for one, however, must petition for pardon if I confess myself quite unsatisfied of this. Determination of some kind on the part of the categories, we may grant to be acknowledged by any man who simply names them. So, Mr. Caird, in lumping together all the principles on which phenomena are determined in space and
Professor Caird on Kant. 69
time, might very well have conceived categories included whose action was only subjective, as well as the category whose action was only objective. We positively know that to Mr. Caird the category quantity, though a determining principle, was only a subjectively de- termining principle. And, surely, the universal reference to nature is much too general to yield any evidence as to what categories were to Mr. Caird subjectively determinative, and what other was objec- tively determinative. When the question is of so capital a doctrine as that of objectivity being function of all the categories, and when this doctrine can be so easily made perfectly explicit in these or a thousand similar expressions, it is surely unfortunate that Mr. Caird, out of seven hundred pages expressly devoted to the subject, should have been able to quote onl}' so vague and indefinite, so inexplicit and equivocal, so scanty and general a passage as tliat — the rather, too, that while attributing (what, at least, appears) exclusive objectiv- ity of sequence to the category of causality, he expressly calls the very important category of quantit}^ subjective !
But Mr. Caird continues: "My view, in fact, is just that which Kant expresses when he says that ' nothing is to be admitted in the empirical synthesis which could be a hindrance to the understanding in establishing the continuous connection of all phenomena in one experience.'" Was it as such "hindrance" that the category of quantity could not be " admitted " as an element in such connection ; and is it not certain that what we may name, par exemple, Mr. Caird's doctrine, is the attribution of the thorough-going unity in question to the category of causality alone? Why, we have just read two pages under " 1," in Mr. Caird's repl}', which are for no other purpose than to justify such exclusive attribution ! Has not this an odd look? Mr. Caird will have causalit}- the exclusive category of objective sequence, and yet, objects being to him only objective sequences^ he will still place them under all the other categories as well — that is, I suppose, quantity apart, which is subjective! Really, Mr. Caird, emphatically attributing here a wonderful unity to causality alone, and again as emphatically attributing there this same unity to all the categories, has enough to do to hold on by both arms.
I would remark, further, in this place, that in the quoted words of Mr. Caird another of his most distressing peculiarities in treating Kant extrudes itself. Mr. Caird — that is, though his own words seem to say exactly the reverse — always treats Kant " dogmatically," and never " transcendentally." The general statement of Mr. Caird is of a philosophy "dogmatically " in explanation of this universe, which is a perversion and an inversion of what it ought to be. Kant's words,
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namel}', are spoken of as a "proof" of an ''idea of nature," and he is said to have *' proved that without it there could exist for us no nature and no experience at all." That is dogmatic. We there see Kant, as some vast conjuror, coming forward to the hem of the uni- verse, and stretching out his enchanting rod in easy explanation of it. So it always is with the exposition of Mr. Caird. The point of view from which he always looks is an utter perversion ; for from that point of view Kant is always a dogmatic analj^st of facts, and not a mere hypothetical projector. " Nature a system of substances, whose quantum of reality always remains the same " — that, as it is put, is a dogmatic result — a finding — of a theticall}'^ anal3zing, thetically reasoning, positive philosophj' ; and an uninitiated reader looks on as ,at the unclosing of the book, the opening of the seals. Now, the truth is that these results, these findings, are not results, are not findings, but admitted facts of this universe now and here to hand — not proved, not found — but simply appealed to in test of the success of the hypothesis of a certain projector. Kant's work is not a IDhilosophy. It is simpl}-, on a certain assumption, a new theory of perception ; and with the assumption the theory itself disappears into vapor. This assumption, namel}', is that we know never things with- out, but always only ideas within. On which assumption, then, the question was. How, though knowing only contingent affection within, do we yet come to seem to know an objective universe without, that is plainly in possession also of necessary elements? In explanation of this state of the facts on the basis of the previous undoubted assumption, Kant, now, only offered us his hypothesis of an a priori epigenesis. The facts of experience, then, were not determined by this hj^pothesis ; but this h3'pothesis itself was from stage to stage determined (tested) by these facts. Mr. Caird gives onl_y a A^ery mis- leading view of all this. And who now will grant Kant's premises? It is simply false that the objects of perception are only affections and ideas within us ; tlieN' are actually independent things without. Then the prodigious Zmnuthung that time and space are not actual entities out there on their own account, but mere spectra within our own unity — what a prodigious call on our credulity is that! All ordinary readers are advised of this, then, that the dogmatically explanatory, the thetically interpretative, the mysteriously recondite and ultimate system of philosophy which they see in Mr. Caird's book, exists — at least, so far as it is referred to Kant — only in their own dream.
What Mr. Caird, then, actually quotes from himself, while unsatis- factorily indefinite all through, seems at the last to throw on his pre-
Professor Caird on Kant. 71
tensions an even adverse light. Let us now turn up and realize his mere references. The one of them is this: " The determination of things as in space and time implicitly contains in it a determination, not only by the categories of quantity and quality, but also by the cate- gories of cause, substance, and reciprocity — i.e., it involves ?l higher synthesis than it expresses.'' Determination by categories, as has been pointed out already, neither need be, nor alway is, to Mr. Caird objective. We know that, to Mr. Caird, quantity is subjective ; and, consequently, the other categories referred to ma}' be all equally sub- jective. As the other categories are no hindrance to Schopenhauer's holding the objectivity of causality alone, so, neither need they be any hindrance to Mr. Caird's. It is quite certain that Mr. Caird conceives certain categories to be operative only on imagination — presumably, consequently, in such element, as only subjective. Nay, in such cir- cumstances, he actually says we "represent or imagine objects without determining them as existent." It is not well possible to call anything objective that is not existent. Mr. Caird certainly attributes much more importance to the categories of relation, and he names them all ; but we have already seen him subordinate reciprocity to causality, and when he talks of substance, it is always in reference to "change," and change plainly involves causality. No; let us read as we may in Mr. Caird, what always comes to the front of the ques- tion of objectivity is causality ; and the other categories, let them be conceived as they may, are all either subordinate, or in actual terms subjective. It is a great mistake of Mr. Caird, indeed, to suppose that though he should be found to count on all the categories for a conjunct experience, he is thereby relieved of any one charge that has been made against him in consequence of his doctrine of causality as in connection with Schopenhauer. Even then, I should not with- draw one word which I have applied in that connection. Mr. Caird's position has been actually found to be very unsatisfactory as regards other categories ; but, were that not so, all that I have said would remain essentially the same ; and Mr. Caird, with determination of other categories in his eye, cannot protect himself from tlie conse- quences of his position, in regard to Schopenhauer and causality, by any denial of the assertion "that objects are known as objects through the category of causality alone."
The only remaining locus of reference in Mr. Caird's defence con- tains expression of an attempt generally to connect together the three categories of relation. But there, confessedly, Mr. Caird is not in Kant at all — there he fancies himself beyond Kant — there, indeed, it is to be supposed he fancies himself in Hegel. The simplicity or
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stolidity of self-complaeenc\', however, with wliich he alludes to the "suggestion" here, as calculated to ''free Kant from many diffi- culties," is eminently declarative — as though there were anything in it !
We pass to the proposition which Mr. Caird justifies ; and, in regard to this, no reader now can well be in any difficulty. The quotations already made from pages 456 and 457, especially the three sentences in reference to Schopenhauer pointing out Kant's inconsistency, etc., will have put every reader, in this respect, quite au fait. Mr. Caird treats this matter at considerable length in his reply, but more clearl^^ concisely, and satisfactorily in his book. These words of mine from the Schopenhauer article I suppose to state the whole case : —
" Schopenhauer, even making the prodigious blunder he did, was never so far left to himself as to conceive the cognition of succession, as succession, only possible to Kant on presupposition of causality. Following on was to him as much sui generis as following from. * * * It is in reference to the unity of the universe, and the correlation of all its parts, Mr. Caird thinks, that there is justifi- cation for Kant's (never made) assertion that objectivity results from the category of causality alone."
The reader has now before him many extracts which clearly and fully bear out the above words (where, of course, as already shown, "■objectivity" means objectivity of succession). Mr. Caird does hold, not only for Kant, but apparently also for himself, that follow- ing on is only possible by presupposition of following from. "The denial of causality necessarily involves the denial of all succession in time; sequence is equivalent to causality' — sequence implies causality." Mr. Caird, too, does solve the riddle Ijy reference to the unit}- of the universe. Here, in fact, Mr. Caird, far from turning on Schopenhauer to justify Kant //"om such nonsense, actually turns upon him to justify Kant for such grand truth ! Nor can au}^ lapsus mem- orim be gently pleaded here, for the sole consideration is of " Schopen- hauer's objection." Sequence, Mr. Caii'd thinks, always "implies" more than it " expresses " — " causality," namely; and the result is that cryptic unity of the universe which, as a doctrine, is Mr. Caird's own — his freehold, his peculiar — where he, and he alone, possesses all the droits de seigneur.
Of course, it could be argued that a mind unprovided with the category of causality could not be a mind at all, and that, conse- quentl}^ such category must, in every case, be postulated ; but I think consciousness of a simple succession of states quite conceivable, with- out any causal reference whatever. It is this latter reference, indeed, that is not presupposed by, but, on the contrary, presupposes the
Professor Caird on Kant. 73
former. And so, as yet, it has been taken by everybody except Mr. Caird. Kant himself expressly says (87) that, even were causality unapplied, " impressions would nothing the less present objects to our perception" (which, even alone, is enough!).
Again, it may be argued, let the actual consciousness or experience be what it may, causality is always at least potentially present. So much, so put, must certainly be admitted. The concrete unity and community of the universe, the presence at all times of every one of its powers, and in continuity with the rest — that cannot be denied. Emerson, in those Delphic droplets of song of his, tells us this a thousand times: "All are needed by each one, nothing is fair or good alone." Even such contraries as sense and understanding are, to Kant's mind, but twin stems from a common root. Milton, too, was of the same opinion before Kant ; " discourse," the angel tells Adam, "is of test yours, the latter [intuition, perception] most is ours, dif- fering but in degree, of kind the same." Still, distinction is distinc- tion, even in the concrete ; water is not sand, and neither is following on following from.
P^urther, it would be a simple proceeding to tell us that causality does act in determination of sequence in time. We should be as little likely to deny that, as that Kant writes in German. But that really is the question with which Mr. Caird's replj' opens! " 1. Does Kant assert that the category of causality is involved in the determination of objective sequence?" He might as well have asked. Can a duck swim? Of course, the category of causality acts in determination of objective sequence. One would like to know what else we could put it to. But that, " simply as it stands," is not the question. The question is this. Does causalit}' alone determine cognition of objective sequence? Rather, indeed, this question itself has now become, so to speak, a shade deeper, and runs thus : Does cognition of sequence at all presuppose causality? "Kant argues," says Mr. Caird, "that the judgment of sequence cannot be made except on presupposition of the judgment of causality. The judgment of sequence implies the judgment of causality." So, namely, I took the question, and so I take it. I interpolate no shade of meaning peculiar to myself ; it is Mr. Caird's meaning I mean to meet, and Mr. Caird's meaning alone. And my conclusion now, is my conclusion then. Such doctrine, taken independently, is untrue. Such doctrine, as referred to Kant, is untrue. Such doctrine, in view of his own expressions, is hardly true for Mr. Caird himself.
The doctrine, independently taken, is untrue. The cognition of the post hoc is, in point of fact, independent of the cognition of the
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propter hoc; and not only so, but the former even precedes and conditions the latter. In a word, casual succession is as much a fact cognized in time as causal succession. ; as such, indeed, it is familiar to everybody, and referred to in books an infinitude of times. Tenterden steeple was followed by Goodwyn Sands. The sacrifice of Iphigenia was followed, as is the whistling of the sailors nowadays, by wind. The small-pox in Norway was followed by the disappearance of all the fish on its coasts. Lightning is followed by thunder ; the fall of the mercury by a storm ; and burst shoe-ties by divorces. The threat of Columbus was followed by th^ eclipse. The ebb is followed by the flood ; inspiration by expiration ; and the right leg by the left in walking. A red flag is followed by the stop- ping of an engine. Tear follows tear, as one drop of rain another. Lamp follows lamp in the twilight ; and systole, diastole. The tick of the watch is followed by the movement of the minute-hand ; and the fall of the time-ball precedes the shock of the time-gun. One squib follows another in fire-works, and one man drops after another in battle. Boys in pea-scuffles or stone-scuffles get blow after blow. Minister succeeds minister in the pulpit, actor actor on the stage, and player player at the wickets. Carriage succeeds carriage in the drive, and horse horse on the ride. Look out of window, a puff of smoke, a cry of soles, a wagon, some men, a school, furniture on a cart, dust ahoy, sunshine, shadow, rain ; such units all duly follow each other. Ideas of Napoleon, Csesar, Alexander, Wine, France, Spain, Beauty, Esquimaux, Negroes, the Cape, Afghanistan, Russia, Mr. Gladstone, the Earl of Beaconsfield, follow one another in my mind, and are sequences in time. In fact, according tomodern wisdom, all my ideas follow one another in time ; not at all by the law of causality, but, principally, rather by the mere law of contiguity (Mr. Caird should reflect on that). Alexander Aphrodiscensis says: "Is it not clear that the proposition is false, that all that follows something has its cause in the same, or all that precedes something is its cause? For experience shows us, in the case of things which follow one another, that the latter are not always due to the earlier. It is not night because it was previously day ; nor winter because it was previously summer ; nor are the Isthmian games because the Olympic games were.'" De Fato (34), we find it said, Itaque non sic causa intelligi debet ut^ quod cuique antecedat, id ei causa sit; and from this it is clear that to Cicero, at all events, there were not only causal sequences, but casual ones as well. But in such things it is, as usual, Aristotle that is followed. Meta., 994, a, 221, it is said: " One thing follows another in two ways, — either as this after that,
Professo7' Caird on Kant. 75
the Olympic games after the Isthmian ; or genetically, as the man from the boy." The former mere chronological succession, remarks Schwegler, in his relative comment, '■'• belongs not properly here at all, and is not again mentioned ; we must believe, then, that Aristotle names this zpo-oc; only to dismiss it." Elsewhere in Aristotle, however (1023, b. 5), we have, as further instances of non-causal sequence in time, night after day, storm after calm, ships at sea after the equinoxes, and the Dion^^sia after the Thargelia. In short, the independence of post hoc on propter hoc exists in nature, and is universally accepted by all mankind in such shape as it occurs in Hume: "An object may be contiguous and prior to another, without being considered as its cause." Do not Aristotle, and all other logi- cians, indeed, flatly forbid us, under pain of committing a sophism, to reason from the post to the propter? And, as regards the allega- tion that the former rather precedes and conditions the latter, are not these last two references enough? Hume and the logicians both refer to the two successions in such terms that we see the one, as general, must simply precede the other as specific. It can add but the last touch to the nail here, that even Schopenhauer, whom Mr. Caird follows in so much, will not countenance any such doctrine as the necessary presupposition of pt^'opter to post, but loudly reprobates in Kant (though, of course, by mistake) the denial of casual and the affirmation of only causal succession. Who, of all mankind but Mr. Caird, could for a moment suppose that the very judgment, the very cognition, the very "experience" of pos^ hoc, would be impos- sible to us without the presupposition of propter /loc ? Knowledge of casual succession is impossible without knowledge of causal succession, and it is not the latter that follows the former ! Of course, all that is no prejudice to the fact that all change implies causality; but, surely, it is not that commonplace which Mr. Caird would discover in Kant! I acknowledge to fe^l the circumstances such that, in their regard, I can believe or conceive almost anything ; but surely, surely, I am not called upon to believe or conceive that the mysterious, deep-reaching, all-pervading, absolutely original new truth (p. 455) — "the denial of causality necessarily involves the denial of all succession in time" — amounts to no more than that ! But, in the second place here, there is no such doctrine as this in Kant. Casual sequence in time is allowed by him quite its own right in time — casual sequence in time is quite as much allowed its right in time as causal sequence itself. Experience of casuality in time, judgment of casualty in time, cognition of casualty in time, is allowed by him to be by so much less dependent on the experience,
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judgment, cognition of causality in time, as this latter must, in all cases, be at least preceded, and so far conditioned, by that former. This much, indeed, is only credible in the very terms of it.
Even suppose we had no direct comparison of the two successions, casual and causal, in Kant, as we have such comparison in Aristotle, Cicero, Alexander, Hume, and others, it would not follow that Kant was not even as they in the general reference. It is wholly with the necessary that Kant has to do. The casual or contingent, we may say, he is never called upon directly to deal with, because, as such, it is insusceptible of rule or order ; so that we might reasonably suppose Kant, like Aristotle, to dismiss the subject as not belonging to the sphere of his operations. But it is not necessary to suppose or say that. The very fact that his one object is to introduce a system of necessity — that is, of necessary order, necessary succes- sion— proves indisputably that he admits or assumes, as his very basis, a given and granted and understood element of contingency — that is, of casual order, casual succession. His whole work, indeed, is nothing but the epigenesis — the introduction of necessary succes- sion into the foregoing, plain and manifest, never supposed deniable, contingent succession (not, however, by causality alone). In fact, every object is to Kant, in the first instance, as mere Erscheinung^ mere crude sense-presentation (and Kant calls Erscheinung not a simple presentation alone, but even such compound presentation as the phenomena in any case of causality, say that of the ship) — every such presentation, I say, whether simple or compound, is always a, MannigfaUiges — that is, a succession. "In the synthesis of crude presentations," he says (II., 168), "the many or multiple of the impressions is ahvays a following of the one the other" — that is, on the part of the various units of impression, and that is a succession, a sequence. In very truth, Kant assumes twelve contin- gent successions, and the same number of categories, consequently, to introduce into the former necessary order. What quantity sub- sumes is series in time, like part succeeding like part in pure contingency of sequence till the category acts. What quality sub- sumes is succession in the filling of time, quite similarly regarded. What substance subsumes is a vicissitude of accidents, and such vicissitude is surely contingency in terms. What causality subsumes are a first and second, which to me are always necessary, but which to Kant are only contingent till subsumption has taken place. What reciprocity subsumes are an exchangeable first and second ; and these, too, though already in necessary order to me, are, in the first instance, only contingent to Kant. Then the postulates ! They are
Professor Caird on Kant. 11
three in number, and if they assume one succession as necessary, they take it for granted that one is only possible, and the other only actual. Surely, these last examples are enough. You would not say that a succession that is only actual (Kant's actual propter) is necessary, and still less that what is only possible is necessary ? Even in pure perception, Kant assumes the succession there to be only con- tingent ; the succession of the moments of time is to him no more than a succession, and, as he says again and again, a succession without causal connection. In fact, it is precisely in causality that there is least succession. Kant, to Schopenhauer's misunderstanding, even takes pains to demonstrate the presence of succession in sundry cases of causality. Are not these cases, indeed, very much examples of two things at one and the same time? Sun and stone, fire and room, capillary tube and fluid, bullet and cushion, frost and ice, are all things together. The whole contention is at once disproved by the fact of series being admitted not only to be irreversible, but reversible as well. At least these two successions are ; and what is reversible can never be causal. Of coui'se, all together are a whole ; and causality is certainly one of the most indispensable of cate- gories, but it is not the only one. Neither is its irreversible succession the only one. In fact, reversible succession is quite as much a need as irreversible succession ; and, as said, the former rather precedes and conditions the latter. Fanc}' causality alone to produce objective sequence, as Mr. Caird desires ; then there would be irreversible series only, and the world cramped into a single potence, a single potential ganglion, an illimitable intussusception, the power of a quantity, whose index were infinitude. If quite direct evidence is wanted as regards the state of Kant's mind, have we not an actual example, at the hands of Kant, of objective sequence produced, not only without the action of causality, but absolutely in special opposition to the action of causality. He opposes the house, objectified by quantity, as well to ice as the ship, both of which exemplify, and are meant to exemplify, causality alone. To pass to quite another region, too — can we not see that, when he speaks of external design, he has before him a variety of events which, following on each other, are yet without the slightest conjunction causally. But we shall see more of Kant's mind, in this connection, when we come to examine Mr. Caird' s doctrine of unity — that extraordinary doctrine of a rjediegene Einheit, a hard integration of all things, through the iron veins of causality — which has been more than once referred to.
We have alluded to certain expressions of Mr. Caird's own, that
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seem to render such doctrine as the dependence of sequence qua sequence upon causality, hardly true for himself. These are to be found where the words "reversible" and "irreversible" occur. If Mr. Caird admits that there are two sorts of succession, so different the one from the other, so opposed the one to the other, as these words ai'e, then it is plain that they cannot be both causal. To admit a reversible series at all, in fact, is to destroy his doctrine. Arev^ers- ible series can never be causal. And here we stand by the one spot which alone, perhaps, is sufficient to bring to the whole Kantian sys- tem ruin. Did not sense itself, namely, offer material irreversible sequences, the category of cause and effect would be null and void ; it would never be called into play at all ; for it is only on reception of an irreversible first and second that the logical function of ante- cedent and consequent will consent to act — will, on plea of analogy^ consent to receive such first and second into its own necessary nexus. But, allow once an irreversible series in sense, and you allow also a necesssity in sense — a necessity already in consciousness, conse- quently — which necessit}^ as independent of any artificial, intellec- tual epigenesis whatsoever, renders all such epigenesis, and by consequence Kant's whole system, a supererogatory^ superfetation merely. But, let alone Kant, surely we have here a very trying light to Mr. Caird. He is in the very midst of all these reversibJes and irreversibles, and yet remains blind to what they involve, not only for Kant, but even for himself! He is quite explicit on this, for ex- ample, that to Kant there are sequences quite as well reversible as irreversible — that is, that there are sequences in regard to which causality has no application whatever — and j^et, in the teeth of this, his own admission, he declares that the judgment, cognition, expe- rience of sequence as sequence, is impossible without previous judg- ment, cognition, experience of sequence causal, and that this is the doctrine of Kant ! How is it possible to attribute any such doctrine to Kant, at the very moment that one is canvassing statements of his in regard to a reversible sequence which Kant himself declares can- not he causal? This, certainly, seems somewhat of a dilemma; but it will occur to us how Mr. Caird got out of it, if we recollect that the reversible series (the house) was to Kant, in Mr. Caird's belief, onlj^ subjective, and it was not, therefore, necessarily a contradiction that he (Kant) should still regard the causal sequence as alone objective. More than that, indeed ; Mr. Caird was at express pains, with the assistance (unacknowledged) of Schopenhauer's "ej'^e," to make the house itself dependent on causality, and only objective so! Nevertheless, even as to that, it is to be remarked that, let the expe-
Professor Caird on Kant. 79
dient of the eye be as ingenious as it might, it left the sequence of the house, as the sequence of the house, quite untouched. The eye might rove from roof to cellar, or from cellar to roof, but that was the concern of the eye only. The coalition of myriads of stone parts and stone particles, or brick parts and brick particles, into the actual stone tenement, or the actual brick tenement, was quite inde- pendent of the eye. The eye had to take all that simply as it found it ; it had nothing to do with the putting of it together. What a futile thing, after all, then, was either the ingenuity at first hand of Schopenhauer, or even the second-hand ingenuity of Mr. Caird ! Kant, evidently, knew his own business a little better than either the one or the other of them knew it for him. He agglutinated the par- ticles of the house into the house by the category of quantity, or it was by this category that he made it objective. But this amounts to a contradiction on Kant's part of Mr. Caird 's ascription to him of the proposition that reversible sequence presupposes irreversible sequence ; he actuall}' objectifies the former quite apart from, and in actual independence of, the latter. Kant, in fact, in full possession of his own doctrine, would have only wondered, had he seen Messrs. Schopenhauer and Caird, in their self-imposed need to find an irre- versible sequence for the house — which otherwise, poor thing, would, all too plainly, as they thought, be left subjective — superfluousl}^ paining themselves to distort or contort their own organs of vision, as if thus they could agglutinate into objectivity the house itself. That they both felt such need, very delicately, but irresistibly, proves, to say it again, that to both there was for Kant but one category of objectivity, while to both, at the same time, the others in that refer- ence were simply unthought of. Both — there cannot be a doubt of it — went together so far, and then they parted, Schopenhauer to object to Kant that there were objective wo?i-causal sequences quite as well as objective causal ones, and Mr. Caird to justify Kant, and assert that even sequence, as sequence, implied causality.
We assume the true doctrine, then, to be this (as illustrated from Aristotle, Cicero, Hume, etc. ) : that, though all change implies causality, yet that the judgment, cognition, experience of succession as succession, sequence as sequence, is quite independent of, and in nowise conditioned by, the judgment, cognition, experience of suc- cession or sequence causal. Mr. Caird himself seems not unaware that this is the state of the case as vulgarly understood. He admits that it is said, "There are many phenomena which are determined as successive, and which yet we do not conceive to be related as causes and effects ; " but then he explains that " when they are so related,
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we often do not know it; " and what is said, therefore, is " not to the point!" When we do know it, he intimates, we find it causal. When one is arrested by such utterances as these, one almost thinks that, after all, what Mr. Caird has to tell us out of Kant is just the commonplace already signalized. But are we to understand that said commonplace, admitted by all mankind, instead of being simply the one thing to be explained, is, not the starting question, but the con- cluding result of the whole Kantian toil? Every change has a cause. There — that is the relieving breath — that is what Kant ends with — that is his answer to Hume? I suppose it will be "not to the point" to hint that, Wliy we believe every change to have a cause? was what Hume asked, and that Kant assumed to answer the why, and not merely to repeat the fact? Mr. Caird's own words are these : "It is, therefore, a perfectly accurate account of Kant's position to say that he met Hume's reduction of the propter hoc to t\\& post hoc by showing that no mind is capable of the cognition post hoc which is not already capable of the cognition propter hoc.''' To Mr. Caird, this — -so assured is he — is a perfectly accurate account of Kant's position relatively to Hume ; and the truth is, that perhaps anything more wide has, up to the present moment, never yet been said in print. Hume's action was not reduction of propter hoc to post hoc. We have just seen a quotation which admitted succession propter hoc to be other than succession 2>o.si hoc, and propositions to the same effect may be found passim in the authority concerned. Hume referred cognition of the difference between projiter and post to instinct naturally, and to custom philosophico-explanatorily. Hume's whole question, in fact, was of the difference . He acknowledged our belief in the necessary connection of cause and effect, but could see no origin for this belief unless, as said, in instinct naturally and cus- tom philosophically. If any one else, however, could show him another origin, he was quite willing, he affirmed, to abandon his whole contention. Kant, now, brought forward a whole system of intellec- tual epigenesis, as this other origin which Hume desiderated. Here, then, surely, to say the one reduced propter into post, and the other answered him by counter-reduction of post into propter, is, if incor- rect in the one proposition, absolutely wild in the other. Kant's enormous categorical system — the whole of which is his reply to Hume — 'Shall be demonstration of the impossibility of the judgment, cognition, experience post hoc itself, unless there be "already" judgment, cognition, experience of propter hoc. One hopes that that would have proved as satisfactory to Hume as it does to Mr. Caird. Cannot one imagine David Hume benevolently smiling here — hope-
Professor Caird on Kant. 81
lessly puzzled. The i^ost hoc never troubled me, be thinks to him- self, only the propter hoc; and now I am expected to find my- self, not at all only all the more troubled when told that even the easy jjost hoc is really the unintelligible propter hoc, but actually in absolute light at last just from that alleged fact! There is no diffi- culty in understanding propter hoc, for — jjost hoc is propiter hoc! Well, to be sure, that is an explanation; and it is the one mighty result of the one mighty Kantian labor ! Why do we know that every change has a cause? We know that every change has a cause, because we know that one thing succeeds another only because we know that every change has a cause !
As we have here Kant's answer to Hume before us, we may remark, in passing, that Mr. Caird has said the same thing, with a certain modification, in his book. "We cannot, like Hume, set succession against causality; for so soon as we 'bring to conceptions,' or, in other words, to clear consciousness, the synthesis by which two events are determined in time in relation to each other, we see that it contains or involves the category' of causalit}'." Hume, for his part, never "set succession against causality; " he only asked, as we have just seen : Is there any origin for the idea of necessary connection attrib- uted to cause and effect, except custom ? But, so soon as we " clearly conceive" the synthesis of cause and effect, we ".see" that it is the synthesis of cause and effect. One hopes that Hume would have contented himself with that also !
In presence of such things, the belief is almost irresistible, then, that Mr. Caird's reason for his, apparently, so very peculiar doctrine on succession is just the commonplace that every change has a cause. But, are we to suppose that no more is meant by such profound jsropos as, "sequence is equivalent to causality," " the denial of caus- ality necessarily involves the denial of all succession in time" — are we to suppose that no more is meant by such profound prop)Os than the one proposition with which we, not all end, but, on the contrary, all onl}' begin, no change icithout a cause? !
This leads us directly up to that iron unity of Mr. Caird's. Hav- ing seen, namely, what could be said in resistance to Mr. Caird's second proposition, on the ground that such doctrine is untrue in a general reference, untrue in Kant's, and, viewing certain expressions, hardly true in Mr. Caird's own, we have still to recognize fixture on Mr. Caird's part in this, his second proposition, that sequence implies causality ; and, without objecting Mr. Caird's emphatic denial of this identical proposition under another face, we have now to consider it
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in connection with that idea of a cryptic unity in Kant which we have so often alluded to as dominating Mr. Caird. This we shall follow, first, in his book ; and, second, in his reply.
I have no doubt it was not inconvenient to "pass over ' ' certain crit- icisms as " almost verbal ; " and the criticisms being left, I can hardh' have much to object to Mr. Caird' s passing over them. I have said, nevertheless, and in relation to my notice of Mr. Caird' s doctrines, that, " while resolved there should be no mistake as to the state of my mind, I confined myself, on the general merits, to mere indica- tion." Now, that "indication" is what Mr. Caird passes over, as "almost verbal." It was meant, however, as more than verbal — it was meant to indicate, indeed, almost under the one word, trans- elementation, what I found the work, on the whole. 1 began, for example, though never leaving the one eleventh chapter (almost in its first half only), tvhich specially considered caxisality^ by pointing out an essentially radical and absolutely crucial mistake in regard to the distinction between the mathematical and dynamical categories. Now, it is in aid of his peculiar unity that Mr. Caird restricts the former to imagination, and places existence under the latter. I should say, how- ever, that Kant, for his part, gives no precedence to the one categor- ical class over the other, even in reference to existence. Nay, if Kant gives, in that reference, precedence to either of them, it is certainl}- to those categories which, for Mr. Caird, are evidently only subjec- tive and confined to the imagination. These latter, for example, are actually named axioms and anticipations of ijerception^ while the others are but analocjies or ^wstidates of relation, absolutely null till the former have found objects for them. Kant (140 — 1) expresslj' tells us that, while the mathematical categories are " out and out necessary," the dynamical ones, on the contrary, are "in them- selves only contingent." While the former are " apodictic," he adds, the latter are only " mediate and indirect," not possessing the "immediate evidence which is the special property of the others." The former, further, are "intuitive," the latter only " discursive; " the former (154) "constitutive," the latter only "regulative." What all that amounts to. in regard to relative existential actuality of knowledge, every student of Kant at once knows. Surely, what is constitutive must be much more palpably an ingredient of existence than what is only regulative — what concerns an actual object, as per- ceivable, have much more the form of existence in it than a mere re- lation, which has to wait for its objects. Such considerations as these, however, seem to have wholly escaped Mr. Caird ; he thinks what
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here is constitutive has to do only with imagination, while what is merely regulative has to do with actual existence. Why, imagination itself, for that part, belongs quite as much to the dynamical as to the mathematical categories. Both sets are in apprehension, and the ve- hicle of apprehension is, to Kant, imagination. Coleridge, in reference to Kant's peculiar traffic with imagination, held that faculty to be " the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am! " That is transelementation. When we do not understand plain prose as it is there before us, it loosens under our eyes into so man}'^ Ossianic vapors of dream. That was Coleridge, however it be with Mr. Caird. "The idea of Kant," says Mr. Caird, " that imagi- nation limits knowledge, will be considered at the end of the chap- ter; " and, " at the same time, we have to remember the danger that accompanies this gift" — ha ! But I have said enough now to indicate a mist that wonderfully extends itself without — the slightest occasion. I should never end, if I took up every spot that I see. What it con- cerns us to know here is that Mr. Caird, for that unity of. his, cannot refer to any superiority, so far as Kant is concerned, in the one set of categories over the other, at the same time that a oruiclins: liffht is thrown, perhaps, on what, to Mr. Caird, is merely "verbal." We consider at present only that idea of unity by means of which Mr. Caird would prove, on Kant's part, identification of sequence, as such, with sequence causal, and would impose on causality some altogether supernatural or transelemental function of unity in reference to every moment of time, and, I suppose, point of space. Of course, no such thing exists in Kant, and it has a wonderful effect on one's mind to be asked to look at it. We quote from said eleventh chapter a few of the most salient sentences that bear on it : —
"Kant argues that the judgment of sequence cannot be made, except on the presupposition of the judgment of causality. For time is a mere form of the relation of things, and cannot be perceived by itself. Only when we have con- nected events with each other, can we think of them as in time. And this con- nection must be such that the different elements of the manifold of the events are determined in relation to each other, ;in the same way as the different moments in time are determined in relation to each other. But it is obvious that the moments of time are so determined in relation to each other that we can only put them into one order — i.e., "that we can proceed from the previous to the subsequent moment, but not vice versa. Now, if objects or events cannot be dated in relation to time, but only in relation to each other, it follows that they cannot be represented as in time at all unless their manifold is combined in a synthesis which has an irreversi- ble order ; or, in other words, unless they are so related, according to a universal rule, that when one thing is posited, something else must necessarily be posited in consequence. In every representation of events as in time, this presupposition
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is implied ; and the denial of causality necessarily involves the denial of all suc- cession in time. * * * We cannot, like Hume, set succession against causality, for so soon as we 'bring to conceptions' (p. 77; Tr., p. 63), or, in other words, to clear consciousness, the synthesis by which two events are determined in time in relation to each other, we see that it contains or involves the category of causality. For the relation of one moment to another is such, that the apprehension of one moment is the condition of the apprehension of the next; and, therefore, in attribut- ing succession to things, we are already attributing to them necessary sequence."
Preliminarily to explain : In regard to what is meant b^' the phrase, objective sequence in time, I may seem to have applied it to units of impression only, and it may possibly have occurred, in objection, that matters might be different if we applied it, not to sequences of units, but to sequences of the objects which these units compose. The sequence of units that takes place in the formation of objects may be one thing, and the sequence of these objects in each other's regard, once they are formed, quite another. It is to be said at once, how- ever, that neither Kant nor Mr. Caird has made the distinction. The sequence of the units in the case of the house is taken for granted to run parallel with the sequence of objects in the case of a ship varying place on a stream, or of ice following water upon frost. As with units, indeed, so with objects. Some are causal, and some casual, or otherwise varied. Nor is the implication of causality in change one whit stronger for the one series than for the other. Mr. Caird's words in the above quotations reflect this indifference. We there see that "events," ''objects," "things," are all openly put upon precisely the same level. In short, to Mr. Caird causality is the minister of objectivity to successions, whether implicit or explicit, and it is no matter which.
Mr. Caird's own words give his reader little difficulty as to what he holds of succession generally, and we again refer to them in con- firmation of our o^n relative statements. In fact, the moment we consider that these words are addressed — at least the latter of them — to the objection of Schopenhauer, their import becomes unmistakable. Schopenhauer, as in the case of the "tile," objects that there are sequences casual as well as sequences causal, or, to use Mr. Caird's words, that "sequence is not equivalent to causality." Mr. Caird, consequently, can only oppose that by asserting Kant to regard succession as but another word for causality. But it is with Mr. Caird's reasoning in support that we have at present to do. Nearly his first sentence maintains that " only when we have connected events with each other, can we think of them as in time." Now, if there are successions casual, that cannot be so ; we can very well think
Professor Caird on Kant. 85
of objects and events in time, and see objects and events in time, without connecting tliem tlie one with the other at all. And that at once negates Mr. Caird's next step, the " dating " of objects in time, the identification of each object with its own moment in time, so that objects must succeed each other in the same irreversible succession in which time itself flows on. I have already shown (in first, unpub- lished, part of this essay) that, let Kant's ivords seem ivhat they may, there is no such doctrine as this in Kant. Mr. Caird holds it to be impossible for objects or events " to be represented as in time at all, unless their manifold is combined in a synthesis which has an irrevers- ible order." It is true that no succession can be represented in time as an event, unless its manifold is of itself in necessary order ; but an}' succession, reversible or irreversible, or otherwise as it may, can, simply as it stands there, be represented in time. Was Kant's house incapable of being represented in time, then ; and what of series that are reciprocal, ABC D's that are quite as much D C B A's? How- ever it might be with time, it was quite evident to Kant that things themselves were not always in the same kind of succession in time. To Mr. Caird, however, it seems that " objects " "cannot be repre- sented as in time at all, unless their manifold is combined in a syn- thesis which has an irreversible order! " ■ — ^"the denial of causality necessarily involves the denial of all succession in time! "
" So soon as we 'bring to conceptions' (p. 77 ; Tr., p. 63), or, in other words, to clear consciousness, the synthesis by which two events are determined in time in relation to each other, we see that it contains or involves the category of causality." In one way, that is saying nothing, for as much lies in the very word event; so soon as we see event, we see causality. But what is meant must be, that to "bring to conceptions," or, what is the same thing, "clear consciousness," any sj^nthesis, is to see that it involves causalit}'. That is proved by the words from which the above sentence follows with a "for." "We cannot, like Hume, set succession against causality, for so soon," etc. That plainly means that succession is equivalent to causality, and that we see this the moment we " bring it to conceptions," or, what is the same thing, to "clear conscious- ness."
Suppose now, here, we turn up Mr. Caird's reference. In Kant (I have not the translation) it runs thus: "To bring this synthesis to notions, that is a function which pertains to the understanding, and whereby it first procures us cognition (perception) in proper significa- tion." Now what is this sj-nthesis? It is the "synthesis of the imagination," which, as we have seen, and mav further see in a
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thousand })laces else, means, in the first instance, no more than the initial blur of sense-impression in time and space. That initial blur, that mere raw material of special sensation, is then, in the second instance, presented to tlie categories (the functions of self-conscious- ness), to be by them objectified. That is what "bringing to concep- tions" means — simply categorizing as such — '"not," says Kant (169), "the making the perception of objects clear^ but the making the perception of an object at all j^ossible." The categories are the "conceptions" (properly, notions) meant; and, consequently, to "bring to conceptions " is to offer any mere blur of subjective sensa- tion to the categories, not to do what we mean by bringing things to " clear consciousness ! " The result, then, is a completed object of perception ; not that that result is due only to the category of caus- ality, but possibl}^ to another, or others, of the twelve. Kant him- self, in the case of the house, gives us an example of this process, in which, as he express^ demonstrates, there is no reference to causality at all. It is only under the delusion of causality being alone the minister of objectivity that both Schopenhauer and Mr. Caird think themselves under a necessity to rescue the unlucky house from the subjectivity Kant inflicted on it, bj^ vindicating (in his despite) causaUty for it, through the brilliant, but .utterly inappli- cable, device of the twist of the eye. One sees how very intimate Mr. Caird must be with the machinery of Kant, when that whole vast machiner}^ — applied to make (what Hume desiderated) an objective external world intelligible, in its necessary connection, out of a mere subjective blur — was to him onh^ a bringing of things to "clear consciousness! " But the concluding words of the passages quoted are equally wide. For, that " the apprehension of one moment is the condition of the apprehension of the next," is not, in any way the slightest, a reason for regarding the attribution of succession to things as identical with the attribution to them of necessary sequence; reversible (reciprocal) or irreversible, all successions are alike in time. Yet, to Mr. Caird, one moment in time being condi- tion to the next, '■'■ therefore" succession at all is necessary sequence, and necessary sequence is due to causality. Such things, Mr. Caird tells us, shall have been the doctrine of Kant. I think it must be evident to every reader who considers our quotations only, that, so far as the atopical, inapplicable, and objectionable is concerned, they are quite inexhaustible. Nor, in the same reference, will it strike the same reader less with wonder that Mr. Caird, having all that in his book, should still think it possible to him to say that he had been — misrepresented ! Suppose we offer Mr. Caird here to apply
Professor Caird on Kant. 87
to him a crucial test. Mr. Caird, accused of regarding causality as the only minister of objectivity, and just minded to vindicate pre- cisely^ as much as that for Kant, loudly denies it all the same, and maintains that he holds a like doctrine for all the categories. Does Mr. Caird, then, still think it necessary, for the objectivity of the house, to take the loan of Schopenhauer's eye, or will he now be content, like Kant himself, with the category of quantity? One moment of time, indeed, conditioning the next, so that all succession in time is irreversible, how ,yet could succession in the house be possibly reversible to Mr. Caird ? But we turn now from that, his book, to this, his reply.
When, after analysis of, and due familiarity with, Kant, one con- siders his own short statements of his own proceedings, and the pen- etrating and comprehensive light they at once throw into the very prose of these, one looks back with wonder on the strange, foreign- looking, unintelligible monstrosities that must have stood for doc- trines of Kant before the eyes of expositors of even not so very long ago. De Quincey, for example, in liis article in Tait's Magazine, for June, 1836 — what uncouth strangeness, under the name of Kant, looks out to us from such writing as that ! We feel spoken to in whispers, and we hold our breaths for awe. Coleridge gazes on the simple fact of consciousness as in presence of the unspeakable I Am. Mr. Buckle, sublime in self-complacency as above all in knowledge, but understanding not one single word of what he says, talks, with the characteristic puff, of that " wondei-f ul thinker" who, working out '' the difference between the transcendental operations of the reason and the empirical operations of the understanding," had, by this difference, " solved the problem of free-will and necessity." It is pleasant to think that, even as early as 1827, Thomas Carl3de could be a conspicuous exception to such mere vaporing of ignorance and pretension. In his article on ''German Literature" he has occasion to say a word or two on Kant. But each is as unpretending as, within the limits acknowledged, it is solid. It is now full half a cen- tury since that article appeared, but even yet, in England, tiie common knowledge of Kant is about as vague, shadowy, and unreal as it was in the days of the Coleridges and De Quinceys. Kant himself talks (II., 561) of a country "where the ground {instahilis tellus, inna- bilis unda) permits one neither to stand nor swim, but only to stumble a hasty step or two, of which time preserves not the shghtest trace ; " and surely these words, written in Germany a hundred years ago, are largely true still of the Critical regions, as they loom even now in the eyes of most Englishmen. These are regions that have yet to us all
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the strangeness, uncertainty, even dream, about them of some new- found land. There the dragon still watches the golden fleece, and there are brazen-hoofed, brazen-horned bulls, that vomit fire. The mouth of the Euxine is still guarded by the terrific shears of the fell Symplegades. Histor}^ has not yet cleared and fixed itself in prose, but wanders mythically, mistily, over an unstable soil. Almost no one even j^et speaks here, but his words are as convulsed, and soaind as from the bosom of nightmare.
And yet, what has there not been done meanwhile to preclude all that — not in one country only, but in several! In what short synopses, easy to see through (as already referred to), does not Kant himself — to leave out others — a thousand times repeat him- self! I have said that he who "possesses" any subject "sees all at a glance, and can tell all in one loord or a thousand; " and Kant himself is a most felicitous example of this. In his various works, from his " Kritik of Pure Reason" in 1781, and his earlier essay in 1770, down through his Prolegomena, his Practical Kritik, his Judgment Kritik, his Progress of Metaphysics since Leibnitz and Wolf, his Concerning Philosophy in General, his Streit der Facultiiten, his Anthropologic, etc., to his Logic (published) in 1800, we have specimens, again and again, both of the one word and the thousand. Perhaps as short a statement as any in Kant is the phrase (II., G74) that the whole materials of his work proper consist in "Space, Time, and the Elementary Notions of the Understanding." But that, again, in one word, is his " Epigenesis." We have onl}' to bear in mind, in tiiese references, that to Kant, so far as any perception of objects is concerned, we are only shut into our own internal affections, our own subjective sensations, which are thus, substantially, never entities without — we have only to bear this in mind intelligentl}'' to see, further, time and space, as phenom- enal dimensions, sinking into and separating affection, while the categories, as functions of synthesis, follow, to unite all again into a ^uasi-external system. That is the whole of Kant. That is the assumed necessary epigenesis on the assumed subjectivity of all that we feel or perceive. In fact, the whole of Kant is contained in the single phrase, "the possibility of experience" — tinder such condi- tions^ namely, as he thinks himself necessitated to presuppose. We are surrounded b}' an external universe. The question then is, necessarily, to Kant, how are we to conceive such show thrown up or out? Evidently, under such conditions, one must always, like the mole, work within. Time could only be within — a spectrum, so to speak, only of length within, along which affection necessarily
Professor Caird on Kant. 89
extended itself. Space, also, could only be within — a spectrum still, but this time a stereoscopic spectrum, as it were, in which affection could only stereoscopically diffuse itself as so much nebula. Now, what could make of this nebula, so situated, an object and objects? What, but an element that was also within? What, but (all that is still left us) the functions of the understanding, conse- quently, which could only, by aid of the movement of imagination, unite all manies or multiples of the sense-nebula in time and space into the single ego, and so convert it, the nebula, so constituted and so placed, into the formed world around us? Kant, as I say, feeling himself so limited by assumed conditions of which he never doubted, gives, himself, such scheme, in some such brief terms, a thousand times. In fact, he significantly tells us, from Persius, Tecum hahita, et norls, quam sit tibi curta supellex! Obliged to live within ourselves, we had better take stock within, and see how small our house-furni- ture is. Always we are to conceive that, shut into ourselves, "the conditions of the possibility of experience," on that understanding, are "the conditions as well of the possibility of objects." We are always to find, consequently, these conditions in (1) the internal prius of affection (sensation), as affection; (2) in its (affection's) two formal or pure perceptive spectra of space and time; (3) in the collocating and conjoining movementof imagination (memory) ; (4) in the functions of the understanding, that variousl^y combine multiples or manies of sense-perception, as multiples or manies of sense-per- ception, into (5) the unity of consciousness. Things in themselves are postulated as conditions (somehow) of the affection that is set up in our sense, we know not how, but it is this affection alone that is known. The postulated things in themselves are, for their part, never known ; they have indeed, anywhere in this our world, no existence. The affections themselves, as alone in consciousness, are alone what, by said internal machinery, is constructed into objects, accepted as external, and accepted, so far as independent, in" a system — the context of actual experience. Of all this there is, on Kant's part, only thousand-fold speech. "I must briefly point out," saj^s Mr. Caird, " the general bearing of Kant's Criticism of Pure Reason." It will prove belehrend to compare with such summaries from Kant, Mr. Caird's " summary' " that follows; for it is here that, in justification of what to us is his second proposition, Mr. Caird directl}- approaches (in his reply) that peculiar unity of his: —
"Kant's view of experience may be summarized thus: In the Esthetic he shows that inner and outer perception, involving as they do determinations of time and place, are possible only through the pure perception of time and space.
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For he argues, a moment in time and a place in space can be represented by us only in relation to other times and other places, and, therefore, in relation to the unity of time and space as individual wholes. We cannot perceive any object of experience, as here and now present to us, except by relating it to one all-embracing space and one all-embracing time."
This, we are to understand, is what Kant has to tell us in his Esthetic; I can hardly realize a word of it. All that Kant has to tell us in the ^Esthetic is that time and space are not, as we suppose, independent outer entities, but mere potential spectra within us, which, on hint of special sense, so to speak, expand to receive it. His arguments, again, are (what bears on mathematics apart) only these: (1) time and space, though involved in every act of special sense, are not contributions of special sense; and, (2) time and space are nevertheless not notions, but perceptions. That is the whole of the Esthetic, and I can hardly find more than an echo of any part of it in Mr. Caird's summary. Mr. Caird puts the entire stress on unity — the unity of an all-embracing space, and the unity of an all-embracing time. Kant sets no store by their unity ; his whole object is accomplished when time and space are acknowledged to be universal subjective forms of sense. Where Mr. Caird gets his unity, however, it is not difficult to discover ; he has simply misun- derstood the German equivalents of the following words : —
"Space is not a discursive, or, as we say, general notion of relations of things, but, on the contrary, a pure perception. For, firstly, we can conceive only a one space, and when we speak of a plurality of spaces, we understand thereby only parts of one and the same sole space. These parts, likewise, cannot be before the one all-embracing space, as if constituents rendering its composition possible; they can only be thought as in it. It is essentially one ; the complex of parts in it, and consequently, also, the general notion of spaces, rest solely on limitations."
Time is described almost in the same words, but still with shades of difference that throw fight — as, " different times are only parts of just the same time, but the consciousness which can be given only by a one object is perception ; " " the fact that different times are not at the same time, is inderivable from a general notion — it is directly implied in the perception of time; " "where the parts and every magnitude of an object are conceivably determined only by limitations, there the whole is one of direct perception, and not of notions, for, in the case of a notion, its parts are before it is." These last words plainly mean that individual mammals — cats, dogs, men, etc., which go to make up the general notion of the genus mammal — must existentially precede that notion itself. They afford a gloss, then, that would explain the previous phrase, " constituents rendering composition possible," not chemically or physically, but
Professor Caird on Kant. 91
logically or metaphysically. With that light we might paraphrase Kant's description of space thus: Space is not an actual object of special sense, but, as it were, an optical mirage of general sense ; no notion, but a perception, its parts being in it or only limitations of itself, and not sub-notions, like individuals under a species. We might add, indeed, did we accept the chemical or physical interpretation : Space is evidently no object of special sense, but a spectrum or mirage, as it were, optically thrown ; for its parts are all given with it, and do not precede it to make it up, as acid and base to make up a salt, or brick and mortar to make up a house. Take it as we may, it will be difficult for any one not to realize now Kant's ideas of space and time, and Mr. Caird' s relative misinterpretation.
What Kant " argues " is, that there is no special perception of any- thing whatever that does not involve time and space as already "to the fore," as it were ; and yet they are not contributions of special sense. He has not a ^ord of argument about " a moment in time and a place in space being able to be represented by us only in rela- tion to other times and other places, and, therefore, in relation to the unity of time and space as individual wholes." Neither is there any more a Kantian sense in what follows. There is no such doc- trine in Kant as, that "we cannot perceive any object of experience as here and now present to us, except by relating it to one all- embracing space and one all-embracing time." Kant says we never do perceive any object witliout perception of time and space as well, which, being no contributions of special sense, and yet always in- volved, must be, so to speak, spectra, mirages, of genei'al sense. He is quite contented that they should be taken so, and has no idea of nailing things in definite moments and places of either. In arguing that time and space are still perceptions, and not notions, he has to show that they are, like all objects of perception, wholes, unities, whose parts are only limitations of themselves. Kant's unity of time (or space) is its elemental unity as perceptive object. It is that argument for mere perceptivity, as against conceptivity, which Mr. Caird, probably, has so marvellously transelemented.
"Kant," Mr. Caird proceeds, " finds himself obliged to prove that the former determination of things, which was demonstrated in the ^-tEsthetic, is not possible except through the latter, which is dis- cussed in the Analytic.'" Here, again, it is hardly possible for a man to speak more widely of the very plain thing that is before his eyes. There was no determination of " things " in the ^'Esthetic. That may be boldly said with absolute truth. And still less is there in the ^'Esthetic a determination of things, which is not possible
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except through the determination of things in the Analytic. The Esthetic has nothing to do with determining " things " at all. It has only to prove that time and space are subjective forms, and not inde- pendent realities. Once you grant that, Kant is contented ; and his time and space, any further, are simj)ly as yours; his Esthetic has done its work, then, and that was the whole of it. Nor has anj'thing in the Analytic the slightest tendency to alter that. The Analytic has only to show that, time and space being such forms, the cate- gories objectify in them the subjective affections of the special senses. The categories concern quantitative series in time, qualita- tive filling in time, relative order in time, and relative validity in regard to time ; but they have nothing to do with determining to "definite places or times," so far as that determining is conceived to be a " dating. " The categories have really nothing whatever to do with time, but only with what is in time. They connect in time, so to speak, without thinking of time — in the same way in which ropes, and bolts, and bars, and hooks, and chains, and nails, might connect objects in so much water, without reference to the water. Nay, the categories do less than that. It is as though the objects in the water were all already connected in their own way, and the cate- gories only struck government stamps upon the various media of connection, ropes, bolts, bars, etc. All actual quantities, all actual qualities, all actual things in relation, are in time and space quite of themselves ; for time and space are forms attached to general sense, and no particular sense can act without bringing them also into pla}-. But all that is quite independent of the categories, which have posi- tively nothing to do but enhance the authority of the connections already in force ; and that too, without making any call whatever upon time, as time. Mr. Caird seems to think the categories nail things to their definitely appointed places in time and space, but it is only the things themselves do that — it is only sensation does that; the cate- gories only retouch the order of things as already existent in its own way in time. Mr. Caird expressly has it, however, that "while we cannot represent an object as existing, or an event as occurring, except in space and time, we cannot determine either to a definite place or time except through the categories, and especially through the Analogies of Experience." These latter, as shown, have no advan- tage over the other categories, and none of them have anything to do with definite places or definite times ; that is left wholly to the empiri- cal element. What have the categories got to do witii Csesar's death, on the 15th of March, 44 B. C, at the base of Pompey's statue, in the Senate-house? "Nothing can be known," says Mr. Caird, "as
Professor Caird on Kant. 93
existing or occurring at a definite place or time, unless it be also determined as standing to other objects and events in those definite relations expressed by the analogies of experience." Why should Mr. Caird be at pains to point out such commonplace as that? Noth- ing is known, or can be known, that is not in definite relations in definite space and definite time. But, surely, we are not to regard that as a discovery of Kant, or a work of his categories — surel5^, we are not called upon to admire his wisdom, or their power, for laying down, or effecting, that for us ! This comes of the false dogmatic attitude of Mr. Caird to the transcendental operations of Kant. Mr. Caird does not understand Kant's word transcendental^ and quite as little his phrase, " the possibility of experience." Mr. Caird thinks the phrase applies to a demonstration of the conditions of an absolute experience, and that that is what transcendental means. But the phrase means, what conditions can possibly explain this experience of ours on the supposition, never for a moment to be doubted, that all that can materially be known are contingent subjective sensations within? The loord transcendental, again, is used of all those a priori formal elements by which, in that they epigenetically come upon these sensations, and infuse into them a new force, Kant proposes to advance the required conditions explanator}^ of our experience under such presuppositions. These, however, are not Mr. Caird 's ideas. Kant's proposals are not to him tentative, but dogmatic; and he is constantly bringing forward the commonest commonplaces of the commonest experience as discoveries, results, of that profoundest and most recondite, absolute philosophy. " Inner and outer percep- tion, involving, as they do, determinations of time and place, are possible only through the pure perception of time and space." "A moment in time and a place in space can be represented by us only in velation to other times and other places." "No one thing or event can be known as objectively existing, or occurring, except in so far as it is definitely related to other things and" events." "We cannot represent an object as existing, or an event as occurring, except in space and time." "Every object must exist in a definite part of the one space ; and every event must occur at a definite moment of the one time." I think we knew quite well, before Kant, or his cate- gories, that objects and events were necessarily in space and time. Surely, it has been commonl}' understood all along that a thing must be in one place ; it cannot well be in two places at once. But Mr, Caird is ever thus, coming out dogmatically with the commonest things of experience as results — marvellous results — while at best they could only be tests for Kant's extravagant hypotheses, of perception
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being confined only to our own affections, of time and space being but expansible discs within us, etc., etc. Mr. Caird seems ever to have wholly lost sight of Kant's mere hypothetical stand-point, or at least to have converted it into a dogmatic one. "Kant," he says, " has an expedient of his own, which he frequently uses ; he asks what would become of the unity of experience if the truth of these prin- ciple's were denied." That is not so; that is dogmatic, and Kant never asks anything in that way. Kant's principle is certainly the possibility of experience, and he asks again and again how could there be a ruled and regulated context of experience unless so and so were. But then that is never done absolutely, but only relatively. If we know only our own internal affections which are contingent merely, how can that contingent subjective affection show to us as a context of experience — as necessary objective perception — unless on the supposition that such and such epigenesis from the functions of self-consciousness descends upon it, or enters into it? That is what the possibility of experience means to Kant, and what he proposes is only hypothetical and tentative on the ground of certain undoubted presuppositions. "Kant says that time and space cannot be per- ceived in themselves, Init only through the relation of objects and events in time and space ; and that no object or event is capable of being determined directly in relation to time and space, but only indirectly through its determination by the categories in relation to other objects and events." The same errors are rampant there also. Mr. Caird mistakes what Kant means by not perceiving time and space themselves. When Kant says that, he means that they are not abso- lute objects, which, being perceived, would by their own nature dictate this and that ; he is only speaking in allusion to his own theorj' that, being mere forms of general sense, they are not perceived by them- selves, but only when special sense, acting, brings them, too, into act. But, once brought before consciousness, they are for Kant quite as they are for us. Potential subjective discs they may be, but they are for all that precisely the same time and the same space that we know ; and Kant does not impose conditions on them, but, on the contrary, simply accepts the conditions of their peculiar nature, just as every- body else must. Evidently, then, that being so, it cannot be true that for Kant " no object or event is capable of being determined directl}^ in relation to time and space. ' ' On the contrary, all actual objects and all actual events, let the categories varnish them as they may (and the categories only varnish), are and can be only ^'■directly" deter- mined in their " separate," " definite " places, and their " separate," "definite" times. But it is impossible to follow all Mr. Caird's
Professor Caird on Kant. 95
particulars ; we pass on to his conclusion in the reference that is before us.
Objects and events, as we have seen, must to Mr. Caird be " dated " in time; the}^ must actually, and in very fact, be " determined to a definite moment of objective time." So it is that to Mr. Caird there is a one both in time and space. So assured, indeed, is Mr. Caird of this that he asks, airily, "Is it necessary to quote Kant for this?" and answers as airily, ''If so, take one passage where many are ready." What Mr. Caird quotes is a passage from Bohn's transla- tion, and I have to say at once that, let Mr. Caird take what doctrine he may from the translation, it is impossible to find any such in the original. Let the reader have the goodness to contrast the following translation (having previously verified it) with what Mr. Caird quotes in his reply at p. 218 of the Journal : —
" That something happens, is a perception, belonging to a possible experience which becomes actual when I regard the sensuous presentation with reference to place, as determined in time, consequently as an object which can always be found in the context of perceptions according to a rule. This rule, however, to deter- mine something according to sequence in time is, that in what precedes, the condition is to be found, under which the event always {i.e., necessarily) follows. And therefore the proposition of sufficient i-eason is the ground of possible experience, namely, of the objective cognition of sensuous presentations, as regards the relation of these, in sequential series of time."
I think no Kantian student will make the comparison requested without seeing where the shoe pinches — without seeing something of the source of the strange delusion that, in a Kantian reference, pos- sesses Mr. Caird. The reader may recollect that Schopenhauer was shown (in my former article) to have referred expressions of Kant, which concerned causal successions only, to successions general. The same thing has happened here. The passage is quoted from the second analogy, where Kant is dominated by consideration of only one form of sequence in sensation, that which claims,the category of cause and effect. Mr. Caird ought to have borne that in mind. Here, however, are the words to which he has pinned his faith, and been, thereby, widely misled in regard to the teaching of Kant: "Actual experience " is " what is fixed to a definite point of time ; " an object of such experience may "by the aid of a rule," be even always " found ; " and so it is that causality is "the principle by which alone we can have objective knowledge of phenomena in regard to their sequence in time." One of the strangest things in Mr. Caird, to the student of Kant, is his extraordinaiy doctrine (already seen) on time and space. These, far from being mere subjective mirages, are
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brought by him before us as though they were actual boards, uito which events, Hke so many nails, had been immovably hammered fast. When one reads what Mr. Caird quotes, however, one wonders no longer. There, too, things are fixed to definite points in time, and causality is alone the objective principle in regard to sequence in time. Nevertheless both of these things are gross delusions, and neither the one nor the other ever crossed the brain of Kant even in a dream. Bearing in mind that there is no reference but that to the manifold or nuiltiple which applies in causalit}'^, the meaning of the clause about the definite point of time is, when something happens (is of the nature of an occurrence), what is, so far, only sensuous presentation, gets objectified when its place becomes determined relatively in time. Tliat refers only to the relation of causality : whenever something is, something else always ensues ; that being given, this is given. And it does not matter in the least whether it is given in the time of Caesar or in the time of Napoleon, in the Athens of Pericles or in the London of Wellington. Kant has not a moment's thought of time as time, and of definite points to which, being actually nailed, events can always be found if we apply a cer- tain rule ! Neither has Kant here, when he says " sufficient reason is the ground of the objective cognition of sensuous presentations relatively in sequential series," any thought of causality being the only agent of objective sequence. Sequential series means that the presentation is such as is required for action of the category of causality — it is sequential, and the rest of the phrase means only that the category has objectified the members of the series relatively. Not a very breath of the thought of any multiple but that one multiple that must necessarily present itself before the category of causality can act, has ever crossed here the mirror of Kant's mind. By that ''rule," does Kant mean a chronological table! It is only, then, by an extraordinary perversion of Kant that these extraordinary deci- sions as regards either fixed time or universal category of objectivity have been won. And yet, at the ver^'' moment that Mr. Caird perpe- trates this perversion (he had Kant's own words before him, and the translation is no excuse, but, on the contrary, an exaggeration of his offence), he exclaims, "How Dr. Stirling can find in my words any- thing like the assertion that objectivity results from the category of causality alone, I am unable to discover! " I have shown that the word " objectivity " stands in my pages, in Mr. Caird's reference, on\y once singly ; that wherever else it occurs, and it occurs again and again in every sentence which either precedes or follows, it is coupled with the word "sequence" or "succession;" and that, where it
Professor' Caird on Kant. 97
stands, and as it stands, only inteittlon could discover it to stand for aught else than objectivity of sequence. Mr. Caird' s sentence, also, that immediately precedes his declaration of l^eing unaljle to discover how Dr. Stirling can find in his words anything like the assertion that objectivity (of sequence) results from the category of causality alone, is this : " But what I contend is that, on Kant's own principles, it is not possible to determine any series, whether of perceptions or external events, as an objective or real succession, except through the category of causality." Mr. Caird's words, again, that immediatehj folloiv the ivord " discover," are, " the passage in question is concerned only with objective sequence!" I meet this just so: I assert that the state- ment of Kant's doctrine in regard to objective sequence is a greater blunder in Mr. Caird than even in Schopenhauer ; and I assert, more- over, that all these words are but a shuffle ; for what is said of objective sequences, can also be said of objects. That I have shown to be the doctrine not onl}- of Kant, but precisely, and accurately, and literally, of Mr. Caird as well. Mr. Caird, then, here, is unable to discover how Dr. Stirling could find in his words anything like such and such an assertion — Mr. Caird says this at the very moment that he admits this to have been certainly said by him of "objective seqnence " — at the very moment that he knows that my word " objec- tivity " stands there, and can stand there, only for objectivity of sequence — at the very moment that he knows that all objects, even as objects, are nothing but such sequences ! This is very gross — it is doubly gross, and more than doubly gross when coupled with the wilful alteration of my language in order to found an accusation of "entire" misrepresentation — and it is beyond all measure gross when it is considered that what is indignantly denied and angrily branded as entire misrepresentation, is the very proposition that, with a touching moral emphasis, is immediatel}^ to be — Jnstijied ! My interest, however, concerns, and concerns only, the interests of Kant, and to them I address myself.
This strange delusion about fixed and definite moments in time follows Mr. Caird ever^^where, and is of such importance that I must be pardoned for dwelling on it. I have said that Mr. Caird has failed to perceive that he has again only erred like Schopenhauer ; he has given a general reference to what concerned the peculiar sense-mul- tiple that is to be found in cases of causality alone. The paragraph quoted by Mr. Caird, indeed, immediately precedes that which con- cerns Schopenhauer in the same reference. It will be useful to refer to Kant's reasoning (168-171) in connection with both. The follow- XIV— 7
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ing paragraph, literally translated, contains the whole relative doctrine (and I shall consider here five consecutive paragraphs, of which that cited by Mr. Caird is the third) : —
"In the synthesis of sense-presentations, the units of impression alwaj's follow one another. So far, no object is perceived ; the succession is still indifferent, and such succession is common to all apprehension. When, however, I perceive or assume that there is in the suite nexus of one state with another from which the former follows according to a rule, then I have before me an occurrence, a happen- ing, an event. That is, I perceive an object which I must set in time in a certain definite position, which, b,y virtue of what state precedes, cannot be otherwise assigned to it. When, therefore, I perceive that something happens, then, there is implied in this, first, that something precedes, for just in connection with such something the presentation gets its relation in time — gets to exist, namely, after a time in which it was not. But its definite time-place in this relation it can only get by this, that, in the preceding state, something is presupposed, on which it alwaj's {i.e., according to a rule) follows. Whence it results that, first, I cannot invert the series and set what happens before what it follows from ; second, that, the precedent state being given, this certain event infallibly and necessarily follows. Therebj^ it happens that there takes place between our perceptions an order in which the present state (so far as it is a become state) refers to some preceding one ■or other, as a correlate (indeterminate as yet) of this given occurrence, which indeterminate correlate, however, refers itself determinatingly to the other as its consequent, and connects it necessarily with itself in the time-series."
This paragraph is followed by one of those which seem most stronglv to rule that the succession of time, as such succession, is a constituent in the causal judgment. Notwithstanding such an expres- sion, however, as "preceding time necessarily determines succeeding time," we have seen reason to decide that Kant never had the suc- cession of time, as such, in his mind, but only the succession of things in time — and of things, too, as he is careful to point out in parenthesis, so far as they were things (not merely passing), but "become." We saw then, too, that it was an error on the part of Mr. Caird to rule that " we can connect events as in time, only in so far as we relate them to each other in the same way that the moments of time are related^'' etc., etc. The moments of time are related, to Kant, as he expressl}' tells us, in mere indifferent succession, absolutely without hint of the succession causal. Mr. Caird says, also, "objects are perceived as in space only when the\' are related to each other as the parts of space are related; " and thus, in the same way, gives space itself a constituent place in reciprocity. Tiiat, also, is a mistake as regards Kant ; and it is specially in place to mention the one and the other here, as they largely go to confirm Mr. Caird in that board-like nailing of events and objects, so that they are to he found when wanted in time and space !
Professor Caird on Kant. 99
In the next paragraph there again occur words which appear very strongly to refer to said doctrine of fixed points in time. " The per- ception of an object in general," Kant seems to say, "only takes place in this way : that the understanding transfers the time-order to the presentations and their existence, in that it assigns to each of these, as consequent, a place in respect to the preceding presentations, a priori determined in time, without which place it would not coin- cide with time itself, which a ]}'riori determines for all its parts their positions." These words, nevertheless, however strongly they seem to make time itself an ingredient in the very virtue of causality, have no relation whatever to that virtue. They say only this : that events, as necessarily only perceivable in time, must be necessarily only so perceivable ; but not the slightest addition is made to the peculiar force or virtue of causality by any relation of part of time to part of time. By the paragraph translated, the due liglit will be found to be thrown here, and indeed the following sentence in the paragraph before us gives focus to what we have just seen: "This determination of the positions, now, cannot be borrowed from the relation of the presenta- tions towards absolute time (for that is no object of perception), but inversely, the presentations must themselves determine for one another their places in time, and make these in time-order necessary." That is, appearing in time, they obey the succession of time ; but on the rule of their places, as in the order of that succession, the constitution of time itself has no effect.
The next paragraph is the one quoted by Mr. Caird from Bohn's translation, and as it alone is cruciall}'' decisive, it is of the last importance that it should be thoroughly understood. Now, the term "actual" is capable of suggesting another light, that I wish to illus- trate. "Actual," as we have already seen, is formally defined by Kant, "what cojieres with the material conditions of experience (sensation)." Here, however (context and modifying wDrds being left out of consideration), it ajypears to be said that "a perception becomes actual when its place is determined in time, and can alwa3^s be found in the context of experience according to a rule. And it is thus that Mr. Caird has taken it. He says (450): "To determine any object or event as actual is, according to Kant, to give it a definite place in the context of one experience, or, what is the same thing, to determine it in one space and one time in relation t(f all other objects and events." Mr. Caird, evidently, has forgotten "actual" as specially defined, and has given it a meaning from this passage in the second analogy. The words, as I paraphrase them above, and still more as they appear in the translation used by Mr. Caird, present
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cevtainh' no inconsiderable resemblance to those of Mr. Caird. Nevertheless, Mr. Caird has still given them such extension and turn of phrase as prove him to have altogether misinterpreted the German. Here the word " actual " is not Kant's " actual " proper ; it has taken on such shade of meaning as makes it equivalent to objective. IMr. Caird says, "• to determine an}' object or event as actual ; " but he has no authority for the word object. The " perception " Kant has in his e3'e, as is onh' in place under the second analog}', is not an " object," but only a "happening," occurrence as occurrence, event as event. In fact, it is not the perception, but the experience, that becomes actual; and this experience becomes ''objectively actual" when the subjective sensuous facts assume in each other's regard a fixed time- relation in such manner that '-event" (happening, occurrence) presupposes its precedent determining condition. Kant has no Ei'scheinung before his mind but that of cause and effect ; he has not objects before his mind ; he has before his mind only the phenomena of event as event, the process "happening." To ''determine in time" means for Kant, here, to determine two things relatively to each other in time, and that quite generally, with reference to causal connection, or with reference to such genei'al rule of '"order in time." He has not the shadow of a thought of '"dating" in time.
It will prove illustrative to bring in now the following paragraph, the last that is to be referred to here. It is the one in which Scho- penhauer is shown to have made a mistake of meaning ; and the state- ment it contains is, to quote from my article, to the effect that, " in the first instance, the order in a sensational multiple is indifferent, but that, in the second instance, when received into the a priori machinery, it is necessary. Otherwise, says Kant, there would be a mere sport of mv own subjective fancies, and an}' assumption of objectivity would be no better than a dream," etc., — Kant's "gen- eral conception is simply this : Sensations only exhibit subjectivity ; accordingly, as required, the categories — all the categories — shall bestow on thera objecti\'it}'. Schopenhauer has actually read that passage of Kant as if it declared all objectivity to be bestowed by the single category of causality alone — -a blunder that, surely, would be astounding in even a first year's student of Kant. In the par- ticular paragraph. Kant, of coui'se, has no thought but of causality and of causal multiples ; he has not the most distant conception of enunciating it as a general rule for all sense-multiples that they can get objectivity only from causality." In fact, the whole paragraph is unmistakable, and even light-giving — light-giving, not only as
Professor Caird on Kant. 101
regards Schopenhauer, but in Mr. Caird's reference as well. For what mistake Schopenhauer made, that same mistake, here also, Mr. Caird has made. Both the one and the other ought to have reflected that there was nothing in Kant's mind but that peculiar multiple or manifold, that peculiar complexion of sense-consciousness that was called event ; and that he was not talking of objects generally, and not even of events as events. He was not confining objectivity only to causal sequences, and he had no idea of the definite places of objects or events in time, but only of the consecution in time of that general thing called event. That general thing called event constituted the "■perception," the "experience," actually named.
In short, as said, in the paragraph on which Mr. Caird builds, Kant lias not the shadow of a thought of "dating" in time. This word dating occurs again and again in Mr. Caird, and he really means it. "We cannot perceive any object of experience, as here and now present to us, except by relating it to one all-embracing space and one all- embracing time ; " "no one thing or event can be known as objectively existing or occurring, except in so far as it is definitely related by means of the categories to other things and events, and therefore to the unity of experience as one all-embracing whole; " "nothing can be knoivn as existing or occurring at a definite place or time, unless it be also determined as standing to other objects or events in those definite relations expressed by the analogies of experience ; " " deter- mined to a definite moment in objective time ; " "in dating it in short, we ipso facto, assume it to be necessarily determined; " "to date it thus in objective time would be impossible except to a mind that con- nects phenomena as cause and effect." These passages are all from the reply ; and they confirm the quotations already made from the book, where general doctrine and particular term (dating) repeatedly occur. What is meant by "determining as actual," as having "a definite place in the context of one experience," as determined "in one space and one time in relation to all other objects and events," if, for a moment equivocal in those forms, which surely it is not, must be admitted to be sun clear when we hear that " every object ??ir<sf exist in a definite part of the one space, and every event mxist occur at a definite moment of the one time ; " where, however, it strikes us that this " one " of experience, time, space, etc., is only a perversion of that repeated "one consciousness" of Kant, which is conceived by him to be the collapse to objective unity in any case of a cate- gorized manifold of impression. Nay, Mr. Caird having asked, "Now, on what does this empirical consciousness of the world as one system of objects and events depend?" actuall}^ replies, "Kant
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answers that it depends on the appHcation of the three schematized categories of substance, causality, and reciprocity," " witliout whicli there could be no emjiirical consciousness of the world as an objec- tive unity in space and time ; " and at p. 458 he begins an express and formal exposition of the necessity of such principles for "develop- ment" " clearing-up," etc., though he admits that "even our first unscientific view of the world contains already the idea of its unity, and of the correlation of all its parts." The doctrine plainly is that Kant regards even the empirical dating of objects and events in time as dependent on causality with some aid from substance and reci- procity ! Of course wliat is empirical must for Kant ai)pear onl}^ in the succession of time and the succession of space, and it is then, further, curdled by the categories, as it were, into objective singles and objective singles in connections of rule. But all that is quite general to Kant ; he has not the slightest idea of that definite empirical dating which Mr. Caird ascribes to him. This, it may be, has been suffi- ciently explained, as well as the false translation on which it rests sufficiently demonstrated ; but it may, perhaps, with advantage, be still further enforced.
The whole matter lies in this, that by determining in time, Kant only means relative determination of any become state in time, generally and indefinitely ; while Mr. Caird represents him to mean positive determination of things and events in objective time definitely and particularly, each special thing or event, that is, being conceived to be in its own special actual moment of time — a mistake, than which no other possible mistake in regard to Kant could be more absolute or more fatal. The only complete demonstration of this would be a translation and explanation of all that concerns the analogies, which of course is impossible here ; but we may add a quotation or two to what precedes. Kant expressly says (153), for example, that what is concerned is only the time-relation ; there is a necessity for every impression to undergo " synthetic unity relatively in time ; " manifolds are to be "relatively united," "a synthetic unity, a 2)'>'iori deter- mined," accrues to " all perceptions relatively in time." " Objective consecution of sense-presentations " is said (165) to " consist in the order of the manifold of impression, according to which order the apprehension of that which happens follows on that of the other which precedes according to a rule ; " where manifestly the order is what is concerned. Three pages further we are told that " our impressions (in causal cases) get objectivity' only by the necessity of their order in the time-relation ; " and Mr. Caird's "certain definite place in time " can only be a perversion from that of a term in reference to its cor-
Professor Caird on Kant. 103
relate in a general relation to the actual date of an empirical event in time.
The moment our sensations are objectified, they have all their own relative positions in time and place ; and though as sensations they are contingent, they have all taken on, in themselves, in their order, in their relation to us, a certain varnish of necessity from the intellectual functions represented by the axioms, antici})ations, analogies, and postulates. But there is nothing in the categories that nails them to certain points in space and moments in time, and all together to an iron unity, in which any member can at any time be found by a rule. That is a mere caricature of the ideas of Kant. It is not at all the business of causality, or any other category, to tell the sensations where they shall be either in time or space — even mutually, though varnishing them once they are there. That depends, wholly and absolutely, on the sensations themselves. In one way, the categories are concerned, not at all with time and space (which, by the by, rather disunite than unite), but with groups of sensation already in time and space. Once the sense-blur in time and space is presented, through imagination, to the categories (the functions of intellect), these objectify them ; but they by no means direct how or where the objects shall be in time and space. Where this table, or that window, or that falling shadow shall be in time and space does not depend upon the categories, causality or other, but upon the empirical succession itself. How an object shall be related in space, and where it shall be related in space, and so of time, is wholly conditioned by the sensation itself that determines that object, and not by the cate- gories. It is only a further error to say " especially by the categories of relation;" for, as already shown, these categories have not the virtue in them that the mathematical categories have. Kant starts with the inadmissible assumption, against which Reid directs himself, that we perceive, not things without, but ideas within, and he never quits it. That assumption is radically determinative with Kant from first to last. There is nowhere in Kant an idea of ^an absolute experience — of experience as experience — that consequently deter- mines, on absolute reason, how this world shall be. What guides him always is ''the possibility of an experience" on such and such assumptions. So it is that when he comes to reason itself, as reason, it has no constitutive prescripts whatever for us, but only two or three subjective precepts (about a God, etc.) which, as convenient for arrangement, had better be adopted. It is to be feared that others, too, are as Mr. Caird, and look to Kant, as master of an absolute philosophy, to tell us at last what the soul is ! That is particu-
104 The Journal of Speculative PJiilosophy.
larly delicious. Kant and Hume are tlie boys to tell us what the soul is !
One would think that the illustration of the house ousfht to have kept Mr, Caird relatively right. A house is an object. Mr. Caird is aware that Kant has objectified it by the category of quantity, and has opposed it to objects — ice and ship — categorized by causality. Yet, like Schopenhauer, he is quite sure that the succession constitu- tive of the house is to Kant only subjective. How, then, could Mr. Caird believe that, in that instance, Kant had connected this actual object into definite points of space or definite moments of time? That would be impossible if it remained subjective, and Mr. Caird held Kant, so far as Kant went, to regard the house as subjective. Is it not touching, in such circumstances, that Mr. Caird should take pit}'' on the house, should not leave it out in tlie cold, but should, through Schopenliauer's trick of tlie eye, all-inapplicable as it was, do for the house what Kant, evidently, had only for the moment '' forgotten? " Kant, more evidentl3% for all tliat, had not forgotten anything ; he liad objectified the house by the category of quantity, and never dreamed that it was necessary to apply causality also, in order that it might be definitely placed in space, and definitely " dated " in time. Such placing or dating, indeed, as has been so often said, never occurred to Kant, even in a dream. All this does not alter the fact, however, that, there being no forgetfulness on the part of Kant, then, in Mr. Caird' s eyes, any actual house, though actually in the world, could not be referred by Kant to the " systematic unity of experience" at all.
I sleep in a strange room, and I see in the morning a sun-spot dance on the ceiling, where one would not expect a ray of the sun ever to fall. By and by, I find that the sun-spot is a reflection from a basin of Avater in the window, on which the sun shines and the wind blows. »So far as time is concerned, both sun-spot and water are co- existent. Nevertheless, I have no hesitation in objectifying a con- nection between the two through the category of causality. But that is all. I do not, through causality, or any category, nail the sun-spot to the ceiling, and the water to the window of No. 72 in the Green Posts, Elxmouth, at half-past seven o'clock of the morning of 7th of June, 1863. But it is that, if language is to convey meaning at all, which Mr. Caird's words would have me do. I am, by my categories, so to nail sun-spot into time and space that it may at any moment actually be found — through a rule! One wonders, in such circum- stances, of what good the categories are, or of what good Kant him- self is. We know that, empirically, every man has his own father and
Professor Caird on Kant. 105
mother, his cnvn moment of birth, his own point of space at birth — that not a mote in the sun but has its own space and its own time — but what then? Did we need the categories or Kant to tell us that? or is it the categories that do that? Why, after all, this original, mythic, or cryptic unity of Mr. Caird is hut the common, prosaic, every-day unity to wliich we are all present, without a dream of phi- losopiiy ; and we all know well that, in place where and date when, all is independent of us, let us categorize into quantities, qualities, and relations as we may. It is really surprising the things Mr. Caird attributes to Kant's machinery. "■ We cannot represent an object as existing, or an event as occurring, except in space and time." It is only a transcendental philosophy that could make us aware of that grand truth. " Every object must exist in a definite part of the one space, and every event must occur at a definite moment of the one time." The prodigious discovery of Kant, that a thing is where it is! Surely, it was with some such philosophy in his eye that Carlyle ex- claimed, "With all my heart, but where is it? " Yet, is it not truly admirable with what simplicity and stolidity of conviction Mr. Caird, though supported only on misinterpretation and mistranslation, pleads for this philosophy? Whatever he may be when he manufactures the two propositions and complains of misinterpretation, he is sincere here. Justice has not been done him in that, his own feat, beyond Schopenhauer — the discovery that succession as succession is, through causality, dated into unity in time and space. He, for his part, only laments that the tlieory is, in Kant's hands, not complete enough — that he (Kant) neglected that correlation of the various categories of relation which he himself has " suggested elsewhere! !"
When one sees Mr. Caird' s success with Kant, one wonders what part in it ought to be attributed, not only to " Kant's immediate suc- cessors, especially Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Jacobi, Mairaon, and Schopenhauer," to whom he "owes most," but also as well to the numerous Drs. Bona Meyer, Cohen, Arnoldt, Holder, Paulsen, Lieb- mann, Grapengiesser, Von Hartmann, Thiele, "and Qthers," whom he onl3' mentions, as to the innumerable "special obligation," to which it is "all but impossible " to do more than refer. Of all, the result this — transcendental this — the deduction of the categories this — the answer to Hume this — - necessary connection in experience simply must be because it must be !
The truth is, however, that Mr. Caird has not understood Kant, but simply perverted and travestied him. What Kant offers is a pro- visional proposal on certain understandings, but of this Mr. Caird makes a philosophy that is absolute dogmatism. If the reader will
106 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
please to turn back to the passage which Mr. Caird quotes from him- self as "summing up the results of Kant's discussion of the prin- ciples of the pure understanding," he will there find Kant represented as bringing his principles to culmination in a general idea of nature as a system of substances whose quantum of reality always remains the same ; which idea of nature is nothing if not dogmatic. Yet, Mr. Caird actually saj's : " The proof of this idea of nature is not dog- matic, but transcendental — i.e.^ it is proved that without it there could exist for us no nature and no experience at all." We have already remarked on the misundei'standing here of the import of the word " transcendental," and such use of it on the part of Mr. Caird is not restricted to this occasion. In his book he says: "These prin- ciples are proved on the transcendental method bj-'showing that with- out them there could be no empirical consciousness of the world as an objective unity in space and time." Now, it is evident from these quotations that " transcendental " means, to Mr. Caird, a rising above experience, in order to account for it on general principles of reason ; but Kant never gave the word such meaning in his own mind. What was transcendent was an element to Kant named by us in experience, and so, perhaps, to us regulative in experience, but an element that constitutively was never to be got at in experience at all. Transcen- dental^ again, was what transcended special sense, but not experience ; on the contrary, though d priori^ it was an essential constitutive ele ment in and of experience itself. Kant had no idea of a transcen- dental method that raised him above experience, to construe and con- struct it out of absolute principles. His provisional theory of per- ception, to account for this latter, in spite of certain necessary and apparent!}' hostile presuppositions which (for him) required to be granted, does not at all answer to what Mr. Caird evidently con- ceives as the transcendental method. Consultation of III., 57, will easily satisf}^ any one that Kant's idea of nature was not at all that of Mr. Caird. We there find the empirical element allowed its own vast domain in nature, and transcendental laws of nature restricted to such conditions as make this experience of ours possible on the sup- position that ive only know states of onr own.
In fact, the whole passage is a verj' fair sample of what I call transelementation, in Mr. Caird's view of Kant. The effect of such a passage is to make us see in Kant an absolute philosopher, who has taken his measures so deep that he explains to us the very conditions, substantial and essential, on which existence can onl}- be, and, just by reason of the necessity of profoundest insight, must be. So to represent Kant is not to understand Kant in the prose and reality
Professor Caird on Kant. 107
of his own thought, but, in default of such understanding, to impreg- nate his plainness with visionariness and dream. One feels, every- where in Mr. Caird's Kant, as if one were reading from those chapters of Washington Irving or Charles Dickens, where forgotten enclosures of defunct mail coaches have suddenly become once more tumultuous with life. Or again, we are, as it were, in some vast furniture- warehouse, where nothing remains at rest in the prose of actuality, but all has become alive in a strange poetry of nightmare. Arm- chairs rub their knees ; tables stand tipsily, like a dog, on a leg or two ; wardrobes look stealthily out, and tall fire-stoves fall over in open guffaws, with their hands in their pockets and their caps awry. Mr. Caird exhibits to us Kant's machinery, piece after piece, not as though these were the tentative, and provisional, and pro re nata things they are, but as the solid beams and other materials of this absolute universe. Mr. Caird has no germ of reality for the passage I have quoted but the fact that Kant says, you see this or the other piece of mine fits. It is a fact, he continues, and you admit it, "That, in all the vicissitude of phenomena, substance endures, and its quantum in nature is neither augmented nor decreased," or, that "all changes take place according to the connection of cause and effect;" now, ray machinery in explanation of perception, on the supposition that we are never out of our own subjective affections, fits this. That is all. It is quite a perversion to take Kant, as it were, from the wrong end, and behold him, bit by bit, building up the whole vast universe, apparently, on absolute principles. This universe, in Kant's way of it, is, and is so as we know it; he only wants to make it credible that (despite our knowing only our own affections, as he is undoubtedly, though mistakenly, convinced) yet, that his theory of perception explains how it is that we see these affec- tions as this actual world of external and apparently independent objects. This point of view, which is capital, Mr. Caird altogether misses ; at every step he, to coin a verb, transeleraents Kant, so that one who, perhaps, thinks himself at home in the Kant of Jiant, feels always ivunderUch zu Gemuthe in the Kant of Caird. Nor is this wonder lessened, but, on the contrary, very much increased, when one turns to Kant himself to find out what is it that Mr. Caird is at any time paraphrasing. What astounding contrast, that little bit of every- day prose, and this whole vast mythological universe, which it shall be supposed alone to support and vivify and generate ! Quantum in nature remains the same ; change implies causalit3^ ; objects exist and events occur only in time and space ; every object must have its own space, and every event its own time — these and other such ,
108 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
endlessl}^, why should Mr. Caird mention them ever and anon as results, discoveries? Why should he cumber his thought with so much matter tliat requires no thought, nor, indeed, any word to be said about it? Why, with that "dating" of his, should he run risk of being held to regard time and space as, after all, things in them- selves, into which — into whose very substance — our sensations are actually incorporated?
The truth must be said at last, indeed, and, wrung from me — after silence maintained, after only a word spoken as mere salvo to one's conscience, when silence was longer impossible — wrung from me, as I sa}', by Mr. Caird's entire misrepresentation, it is this : Mr. Caird — witli a house before liim that, determined by quantity, was y^t sub- jective ; accordingly, with a house before him which he must make objective by the unacknowledged causality of Schopenhauer's ej'e ; with all those erroneous views in regard to the categories, specially and generall}- ; with wliat he conceived determining in time to be, what bringing to conceptions, what transcendental, what possible experience, etc., etc., etc. — was, possibly, not in a case to write on Kant's central philosophy at all. Such a system as Kant's can only be pieced together with the labor of many years. No man is strong enough to read it off to us as he goes. Why, on his own showing, Mr. Caird has not even German enough for the indispensable intelli- gence. As it appears, he is still obliged to trust to translations, which, moreover, he cannot — or at least does not — correct when required, and no man — that is, of course, so far as ray own necessa- rily limited experience may be relied on — no man, who, for a mo- ment, would think of translations in connection witia an exposition of Kant, is within years and years of such bare possibilit}'. Accordingly Mr. Caird, at least within the limits specified, has rather dreamed over Kant than seen into him ; and what is to him "the philosoph}' of Kant " were, to my mind, almost more relatively entitled KanVs Mythology .^
This, within limits, and I have specified them. In other respects the volume may be a xery admirable repertory of the most fertile and original philosophical suggestion, and as such it maybe met b}^ and deserve, the absolute worship of many. It cannot be my wish to gainsay tliat, or to have it otherwise. It can only be my wish that it should not be otherwise. At worst, one can hope for it such fate as has attended even harder deep books. One of Hegel's best editors
' A previous remark may be extended to some of the objects of the above strictures. It is just possible that things, everywhere palpably wrong in use, may be correctly enough spoken of at times — inust be, where reporting another is concerned.
Professor Caird on Kant. 109
tells us of that ehrenwerthe Klasse who were di-awn to the master rather by "spontaneous instinct than clear consciousness;" and, I dare say, we have all heard of that admiring, but perplexed pupil who carried up the three volumes of the Logik even to the snows of Chimborazo — presumably with the hope of solution there. One knows that there are people in this world who, wholly unable to see meaning in the pathology of Scirrhus, will rise at once to the crab in one's breast that devours daily half a roll. But it is not these that one would hope as readers for Mr. Caird.
One must certainly admit a great courage in Mr. Caird. It was no small matter, with Kant's house on his back and only Schopenhauer's eye in his head, to keep his feet and hold his own, as well b}^ that bold shout of "verbal," as by that infinitel}' bolder cry of misrepresenta- tion, misrepresentation, entire misrepresentation, on the credit of a proposition onl}^ openly and transparently forged. For the comfort and security of assurance, now, what is the acutest eyesight to solidity and stolidity of nerve? Surely, when one thinks of it all, and when one reads at the end of it all, "I have now answered all the matter of Dr. Stirling's attack upon my views, so far as it seems to me to require any answer" — surely, I say, when one thinks of it all, and at the end of it all reads this, one must admire the trust indicated in the possibilities of brow !
And so I conclude a very plain story of — entire misrepresentation, which, in its length and otherwise, I hope the interests of the study of Kant will excuse.
Mr. Caird's personalities (absolutely gratuitous and crassly pert as they are) I do not notice.
In sum, what Mr. Caird had to meet was his implication in the ignorance of Schopenhauer: of his proceedings in that reference it will be now easy to judge. Further, when it is considered that Mr. Caird — almost glorying in the assertion of objective sequence being due to causality alone — did yet, for all that (weaklj' substituting " objects "), brand me (who had imputed to him only his own propo- sition), with the flagrant crime of "entire misrepresentation," every one will readily understand what respect for such small arts remains to me. I shall rely on the sympathy of all my readers, at least to that extent. And, as regards Kant, surely the sympathies of the world will be with him, when it is considered that Mr. Caird has writ- ten, and printed, and published, a whole huge volume of seven hun- dred pages to prove that the single outcome of that enormous labor, the entire relative philosophy, is a fallacy, a sophism — the simple fallacy, the simple sophism of reducing post hoc to propter hoc !
110 Tlie Journal of Sjjeculative Philosopliy .
KANT'S DEDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES, WITH SPECIAL RELATION TO THE VIEWS OF DR. STIRLING.
BY EDWAKD CAIRD.
In a recent number of this Journal, the Editor has expressed a desire that I should give a fuller statement of my view of the points at issue between Dr. Stirling and myself, in relation to Kant's Deduc- tion of the Categories, and especially of the Categor}' of Causalit}-. I had not intended to say anytliing further on the matter at present, but perhaps I may best avoid further controvers}', and do my part to place the question clearly before the readers of The Joubnal of Speculative Philosophy, if I accept the Editor's suggestion, and present at the same time with Dr. Stirling, a more elaborate explana- tion of m}'^ views. And this I do the more willingl}^ because my previous short statement was written in some haste, before I had been able to read Dr. Stirling's article in the Princeton Review, and was therefore confined entirely to the defence of my own position.
What is the great problem of the Critique of Pure Reason ? It is, in Kant's language, to determine how experience is possible. This suggests another question ; what does Kant mean by experience ? He means bj' experience, simply our ordinary consciousness of the world of objects in which we live, and of ourselves as objects. Experience is either outward or inward; i.e., it is either a knowledge of objects in space, and of their relations to each other as causes and effects, or as reciprocally acting upon each other, with all the successive changes of state through which they pass by reason of such influ- ences ; or it is a knowledge of our inner life, as a succession of feelings or "ideas," which are all states of the one permanent self. The problem of transcendentalism is to account for this experience, to determine what are the elements which are combined in it, or the factors which are necessary to constitute it.
What led Kant to ask this question ? Obviously it was the failure of that ordinary realistic solution of the difficult}' which had been given by Locke, and gradually cleared of its ambiguities by Berkeley and Hume. For the origin of knowledge, Locke thought it sufficient "to send men to their senses," i.e., he regarded it as an adequate explanation of knowledge to say that objects become known to us through the feelings which they awake in our minds. This answer however, immediately brought Locke into a difficult}' which he never
Kant'' s Deduction of the Categories. Ill
directly faced, though he was partly conscious of it. If objects are presented to us purely in sensations, how can we know them as objects? Feelings are "perishing existences," never two moments the same ; how then can they give us the consciousness of a world of permanent objects definitely related to each other in space and time? B3' what possible alcheni}^ is the mere series of fleeting states trans- formed into an ordered world, such as we have before us in experi- ence? Locke's solution of the difficulty lay parti}' in emptying experience of some of its contents, so as to make it correspond more closely to that which can be supposed to be given in sense ; but mainly, in attributing to sense an apprehension of objects, which are not feelings, but felt things. In this way, for instance, he transforms the mere sensation of touch into the apprehension of a solid object, and therefore feels himself justified in saying that the primary qualities of objects are felt as they are, and are as they are felt. In the philosophies of Berkeley and Hume, the various disguises l)y which this paralogism of Locke was hidden, were successively stripped off ; until finally, Hume set before himself and his readers the prob- lem of accounting for all our real or apparent knowledge by simple impressions. Whatever we know must be traced back to the simple feelings of the sensitive subject; whatever cannot be so traced, must be regarded as illusory, though even of such illusion, of course, some account must be given. But Hume, though he sets out with the declaration that for every idea an impression must be produced, soon falls back into the old method of Locke, the method of attributing to feeling an apprehension of relations and objects which are not feelings. And it is indeed only in so far as he attributes to feeling more than properly belongs to it, that he is able to make a show of reducing ever3-thing to feeling. Thus it is only as he finds given in feeling the ideas of qualit}' and quantity, as well as of time and space, that he can pretend to explain away the ideas of causation and identity. It is no doubt true that Hume claimed the Sceptic's privilege of believing like ordinary men, while philosophically he undermined the basis of their beliefs, and that, as Dr. Stirling points out, he did not hesitate to speak of Causality as the strongest basis of reasoning, at the same time that he "could find no origin for it, but the customary experience of constant conj unction. "i But that does not make it less necessarv to distinguish between those relations which Hume finds in, or pretends to derive from, the impressions, and those which he tries to explain away. For it is just because he
1 Princeton Review, January, 1879, p. 186,
112 Tlie Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
finds so much in sensation that is not contained in it, that he is able to make a show of explaining experience on the sensationalist hypothesis: Hume "finds no origin for causality but tiie customary experience of constant conjunction;" but where does he get this experience? The experience of constant conjunction is not merely a series of associated feelings ; it is the experience of definitely determined objects or events, standing in a certain definite relation to each other in time ; and until that has been evolved from a mere series of feelings, it is useless to talk of explaining awaj^ causality by means of it. Na}^, it may be shown that such experience as Hume describes already involves the idea of causality itself, for it involves the idea of objects, which are recognized as identical upon their recurrence; and Hume himself acknowledges that such a judgment of identity implies causality. ^
Now the way in which the problem of knowledge presents itself to Kant, is determined by his perception of this failure of sensationalism to account for it. Out of mere feelings we cannot construct the known world, for mere feelings can never give us either necessity or universality, and therefore can never give us the knovvledge of any object, I.e., of anything that is other than a mere passing state of the subject. Nay, mere feelings cannot enable us even to know the passing state of the subject as such ; for ere it can be so known, it must be fixed as a definite state of the permanent subject, in relation to his other states. What then, Kant asks, is necessary, besides sen- sations, in order to constitute an experience such as ours? And in the Critique he seeks to show that there are three things necessary : first the pure sense-forms of Time and Space ; secondly the pure con- ceptions of the understanding ; and thirdly, the unit^^ of the conscious subject. In short it is his contention, that what we call experience cannot be explained, unless we suppose that the mere isolated sensa- tions are combined by the conscious subject under its categories, subject to the conditions of Time and Space. Without the union of all these elements, we could know nothing, either external or internal, we could not be conscious of any object or an}^ world of objects mitli- oiit us, and we could not know ourselves as identical beings, through the succession of our feelings or " ideas" ivithin. Or, as he puts it himself, in a letter to Dr. Marcus Herz : " My knowledge of the things of experience, is possible only under these conditions, and apart from them, all the data of sense would give me no idea of objects ; nay, would not even enable me to attain to that unity of consciousness
^ Treatise on Human Nature, Part HI., chap. 2.
KanV s Deduction of the Categories. 113
which is necessary for the knowledge of myself as an object of inner sense. I should not be capable even of knowing that I have these sensations, and consequently for me as an intelligent being, they would be absolutely nothing at all. It is true that, if I make myself in thought into a mere animal, I can conceive the ideas of sense as carrying on their regular play in my soul, seeing that they might still be bound together by an empirical law of association, and so have influence upon feeling and desire. This I can conceive, if I suppose myself to be conscious of every single idea of sense, but not con- scious, by means of the synthetic unity of apperception, of the rela- tion of these ideas to the unity of the conception of their objects ; but then I should not, through such ideas, have knowledge of anything, even of my own state." ^
Kant then, seeks to prove that experience is a system of elements, which reciprocally imply each other, in the sense that if any one of them were taken away, experience would become impossible. In pur- suance of this demonstration — which he calls "transcendental de- duction"— he shows, first, that Time and Space are not accounted for by sensations, but must be regarded as forms of perception, ?'.e., forms under which sensations must have been brought, ere they could become perceptions of objects within and without us. Next he shows that the mere combinations of the blank forms of Space and Time with sensations, would not give us what we have in experience, ivith- out synthesis, which again implies (1) the unity of the self, in reference to which alone the manifold data of sense can be deter- mined as objects, and as a world of objects; and (2) the Cate- gories as general forms of synthesis or relation in which this unity expresses itself. The Categories again form a system of relations, all whose parts are interdependent, and, in application to the forms and matter of sense, they give us our idea of Nature, i.e., of the world of inner and outer experience. And every object, known as such, must be known as having a definite place in this closed system. In other words, it is only as determined by the idea of this system, that any mere feeling can become an object of knowledge, or, what is the same thing, can be a means of our knowing any object as such. Kant takes up each of these elements in succession and endeavors to prove that it is necessary, if out of the other elements experience is to be produced. Or, in other words, experience is for him a whole or system, which he analytically breaks up into its elements in order that he may reconstitute it again out of those elements.
1 Kant's Works. Ed. Rosenkraiiz, XI, p. 56. XIV — 8
114 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
Now, what is the relation which Kant attempts to establish between the diffei-ent elements which he thus puts together? Is it one of mere logical subsumption? That is, does Kant suppose that we have first the matter of sense given independently, and that we then bring that matter under the forms of perception, and both again under the Categories? If this were the relation in question, Kant's argument would be liable to the obvious objection that it makes a transcendental deduction impossible, by making it superfluous. For that which is thus logically subsumed under a conception, must necessarily contain already in it all that is contained in the conception under which it is subsumed. And in that case, the conception would not need to be brought from without to determine that which is subsumed under it, but might quite as well be got by analysis of that which is thus subsumed.
But this is what Dr. Stirling, as I understand him, finds in Kant. Thus, speaking of the conception of Causality, he describes Kant's procedure as follows: "The function of judgment which constitutes its intellectual multiple is that known as antecedent and consequent : its pure sense-midtiiole is to be a certain multiple of time : and its special sense-multiple any conjunction of two matters of fact such that, if the one comes, the other always follows. In its action on any such conjunction, the function of judgment (of antecedent and con- sequent) becomes the category of cause and effect ; and it is only when this category has realized or asserted itself that the respective sensuous conjunctions are struck from subjectivity into objectivity, from contingency into necessity. The matter is still as it was, sen- suous and a posteriori; but the form., the consequence, the vis nexus, has now an a priori or intellectual validity."^ The doctrine so explained, Dr. Stirling criticises as follows. "It is here, now, that I place my objections to this Kantian theory. I assert, first, that any time-multiple correspondent to the multiple of judgment, is not to be found. I assert, second, that even on Kant's own terms that multiple already must possess necessity. Lastly, I assert, in the third place, that the second objection is virtually valid for all the categories of Kant ; that Time and Space are not spectra within, but independent objects without; and that, in general, the cumbrous machinery of Kant is uncalled for, inapplicable, and a failure. "^
The first point Dr. Stirling proves thus. " It is utterly impossible to see that any quale of sensation in time, conceived absolutely a priori., would ever yield the multiple of one thing out of, or because
1 Princeton Keview, January, 1879, p. 202.
2 Ibid.
Kanfs Deduction of the Categories. 115
of, another. Any such assumption for any such assumed quale is quite inapplicable : the quale may vary as a quale, the sensation as a sensation ; but the relation would remain one of degree only : it would never present the form of causality. But if it be so situated with the quale, it is not different with time itself, whether empty or filled. Time, in either case — time empty, time filled — exhibits succession onlj^ and succession is not mutation proper ; it is but an after one another of different individuals, no one of which is thi-ough the other. "1 On the second point he says : "The special multiples that present themselves as examples of causalit}^, already possess necessity, and must possess necessity, or else it would be absolutely impossible to subsume them under the law of causality ; which sub- sumption, and only for necessity, is the peculiar prescript of Kant. The succession of special sense that is named a &, if it is to be cau- sal, and no mere formal succession (and that suggests at shortest the nerve of the pi'evious argument against the possibility of the schema of causality being found in a priori time) — ^this succession a b, in such circumstances, is already necessary ; I cannot invert it, or take it in any other order." ^
A little further on Dr. Stirling remarks that "one cannot help wondering, at the same time, how Kant, who notoriously regarded understanding as alone the Topos of rules, should have admitted the bare possibility of a rule in sensation, which was to him only a feeling set up, he knew not how or whence. * * * xhe schema already is causality and all that we know of causality. A cause is but a reale given, on which its effect follows. Of course Kant would repeat here, That, in the first instance, is only subjectively so ; but we have already debated the point. And there is no conclusion so far but that Kant, leaving the causal necessity of the sensuous facts unex- plained, has not met Hume's challenge by producing the original — the impression for the idea."^
On the third point. Dr. Stirling then points out that what he has said of causality, is true of all the other categories: "After all, it is special sense that signifies, summons, dictates wheyi each category shall act. That is, of such action special sense alone is warrant and guarantee. May not, then, the very objective necessity, as alone invoked and guaranteed by the subjective necessity, and consequently sharing only a subjective authority, be itself called subjective? Is it not evident, indeed, that even if the objective necessity could
1 Princeton Keview, January, 1879, p. 204.
2 Ibid., p. 205.
3 Ibid., pp. 207, 208.
116 TJie Journal of SpecAilative PJiiJosophy .
I'ealize itself, unpreceded by a subjective necessity, it would, as unguaranteed, be really subjective, and of no account? On every supposition possible to Kant — without guarantee, or with onlj- a sub- jective guarantee — is his objective necessity not equally unsatis- factory? "^
Now I do not hesitate to saj^ that this account of Kant's work, simply deprives it of that which constitutes its distinctive value and importance. The interpretation which Dr. Stirling gives is not a new one ; I have repeatedly, in my book, called attention to it, as one that is suggested by the letter of many particular passages in the Critique, but which is wholly untrue to its spirit, i.e., to its meaning when interpreted as a whole {e.g., Phil, of Kant, pp. 415, seq., and chap. IX., pp. 370, seg. ). Kant's analytic method indeed leads him in the first instance, to isolate sense, understanding, and imagination, or their respective contributions to experience, from each other. And as, in such severance, each part is necessarily treated for the moment as a whole in itself, Kant is almost obliged to speak of the different factors of experience, as if they, were, in their isolation, what they are onl}' as factors in the whole. Further, it is also to be admitted, that in treating of the relation of these different factors, Kant con- stantly starts from the somewhat misleading analogy of logical subsumption. But he as constantly corrects the inadequacy of this view, by pointing out that the part cannot be known as what he had previously represented it to be, except in and through the whole. The conception of subsumption thus forms only the first rough picture by which Kant prepares his own mind and the mind of his reader, for the apprehension of that relation of interdependence which it is his object to exhibit. And if, in some cases, he is not able entirely to get beyond this first picture, or, if it comes back to embarrass his movements after he has got beyond it, this is a logical weakness, for which we can easily find excuse in the diflJculties of one who was the first explorer of a new intellectual world, the first to employ a new method of philosophy, and who therefore could not be always successful in freeing his mind from the traditional concep- tion of things. But that Kant had a new transcendental method, other than the method of ordinary logic, is what no one can denj', without making a great part of the Critique of Pure Reason meaning- less.
What perhaps most obscures the argument of the Critique, is the fact that Kant does not always stick to his problem. His problem
I Princeton Review, January, 1879, p. 209.
Kanfs Deduction of the Categories. 117
was, as he tells us, transcendental, and not psychological. "The reader should never forget," he says, on one occasion, "that we are not here speaking of the way in which experience arises in the individual, but of that which is involved in experience. "^ But Kant often seems to forget this himself, to discuss the process of knowl- edge as a series of partial processes, each of which is done before the other begins, and so to confuse the metaphysical question, what knowledge is, with the psychological question, how a merely sensitive consciousness, passes into the consciousness of a thinking being. Now, the attempt thus to lay out the factors of experience, in an order of time, easily leads to a denial, or at least, to an apparent denial of their interdependence. If we do not observe this confusion and guard against it, and if we hold Kant strictl}' to the "before " and "after" of which he sometimes speaks, we may easil}^ prove that Kant saw very little deeper into the organization of knowledge than Reid, who also, in his way, analyzes the mind into a number of independent faculties, which may work at different times, and whose products have no necessar}'^ relation to each other.
But to adopt such a view of the Critique as Dr. vStirling has adopted, is to set Hamlet on the stage, with the part of Hamlet omitted. It is, as I have already said, to render meaningless the method of trans- cendental Deduction, and to rob Kant of his distinctive merit as the philosopher who first clearly conceived knowledge as a system, the parts of which reciprocally imply each other. And it is to make him escape from Hume's logic, b}^ an apparent sophism. For, as Dr. Stirling tells us, on this view Kant's problem would be to produce the impression corresponding to the different categories ; and as this is impossible, or possible only by assuming that the impression already contains what the category brings to it, we could come to no other conclusion, "but that Kant, leaving the necessity of the sensuous facts unexplained, has not met Hume's challenge by producing the original, — the impression for the idea."^ To give such an interpre- tation, is to turn Kant's weakness against his strength, instead of turning his strength against his weakness. It is to make -his occa- sional inconsistencies the means of obscuring the principle of his whole work. No interpretation of the Critique can be successful, which does not take as its motto the words of the preface, "Pure Reason is so perfect a unit}', that if the principle of it were insuffi- cient to solve one of all the questions which are set before it by its own nature, we might then safely reject that principle forever, since
1 Prolegomena, sect. 22.
^ Princeton Review, January, 1879, p. 207.
118 The Journal of Speculative PhilosopJiy.
it must be equally inadequate to enable us to reach a certain result in the case of any other of these problems." To show what the systematic unity of intelligence is, and to show that experience is only possible through it, is the one chief end and purpose of Kant ; and we have the highest right to treat everything in the Critique which is inconsistent with this leading idea, as an involuntary error, or defect of logic. When, therefore, Kant tells us that the particular elements of sense must be subsumed under the systematic conception of nature which the mind brings with it, we must remember that he adds, that this differs from an ordinary case of logical subsumption, in so far as it is only by it that these particulars can become elements of experience at all ; i.e., can exist for us as thinking beings. For in his view, the impressions of sense do not, either in themselves or in con- nection with the forms of sense, give rise to that consciousness of things, as standing in definite relations to each other in Time and Space, which we call experience. On the contrary, apart from the unity of apperception and the categories, "a chaos (Gewiihl) of appearances, would fill our minds without giving rise to an}^ distinct apprehension of objects such as we mean by the term experience."^ "I should not be capable even of knowing that I have these sensa- tions or ' ideas,' and consequently for me as an intelligent being, they would be absolutely nothing at all."
When we examine the Critique in the light of such statements as these, we see at once what Kant has in view. Starting from a conception of the different factors in knowledge, as if they were separate things (or in Spinoza's language, res completm') of each of which we can speak without any reference to the other factors, Kant steadil}', in one case after another, points out that this separation is provisional and illegitimate ; or, in other words, that it is only as a factor in experience, that each of these elements has that definite character which he had attributed to it. And, if we take it away from its relation to the other factors, it ceases to have the meaning which it has in experience, and indeed — at least in the case of the mani- fold of sense — to have any meaning whatever.
Kant's first step in the "Esthetic " is to show that time and space cannot be accounted for as mere feeUngs. Our experience is out- ward and inward; i. e., it is the experience of a world in space which we distinguish from ourselves, and of a series of feelings which we identify with ourselves. But neither of these forms of experience can be referred to simple feeling. What makes us think
1 Kritik (Rosenkranz), p. 102.
Kanfs Deduction of the Categories. 119
that it can be so referred is, that we confuse what sense is to itself, with that which sense is to the thinliing consciousness. A series of fleetingr sensations cannot be conscious of itself as a series, still less can it be conscious of itself as a world of objects in space, the parts of which are permanent. As I have elsewhere expressed it, "it is not incorrect to say that sensation is of the individual object at a particular moment of time, and a particular point of space: ai'zdd'jtrai roSa re xat -no /.dl ^mv. But this may be understood in two ways. It may be understood as meaning that, to us who look upon the sensitive consciousness from without, who regard the sensitive being as an individual object, related to all other objects in space, and determined by them in its successive consciousness — to us it is manifest that sensation must always be of an individual thing, at one particular moment, and in one particular place. Or it may be understood as meaning that the mere sensitive consciousness itself apprehends the object as an individual object, determined in space and time. If we adopt the former explanation, the words quoted from Aristotle express what are the limits of the individual sensitive consciousness, as these are understood by beings who are not them- selves merely sensitive, but who judge of that which is immediately given in sense by relation to that which is not so given. But if we adopt the latter explanation, we really make sense transcend its own limits, and criticise itself, and we confuse the order of the world to thought, the ordo ad universum, with the order of the world to sense, the 07'do ad individuum." ^
In the Esthetic, then, Kant proves that the forms of space and time are necessary, ere sense can give rise to an inner and outer experience, such as our actual experience is. But in the Esthetic (after a preliminary^ caution that the categories of the understanding also have a place in experience) he generally speaks as if this were all that is necessary ; in other words, as if sensation with the aid of the pure forms of sense, at once gave us perception. His argu- ment is simply this: Perception is of individual objects in space and time — which themselves also are individual, and therefore objects of perception — "infinite given wholes," in which all other objects are placed, in relation to each other. But the perception of the indi- vidual objects, as such, does not contain in it those relations of time and space under which they are perceived. Hence, time and space must be regarded as forms, under which the objects fall, as they become objects of our perception. The mind, therefore, contributes
1 Phil, of Kant, p. 267.
120 The Journal of Siieculative PMlosopliy .
at least tliis element in addition to the matter of sense, ere that matter can be what it is to us in inner and outer experience.
But, as we pass to the Anal3'tic, the problem of knowledge deepens. Objects, it then appears, are not given in sense as objects, nor can we say that space and time are, for sense, "infinite given wholes" in which objects are placed. Neither space nor time, nor any object in space and time, is given in its completely detei'mined individuality, but, in both cases such definition must be reached through a process of synthesis ; and the infinity of time and space, and of the world of objects, only means that it is impossible that this S3'nthesis can ever be completed. It was, therefore, merely a provisional abstrac- tion, by which the unity or individuality of time and space was in the u^sthetic, referred to sense. It was merely a provisional abstrac- tion, by which objects were spoken of as existing for us independently of the determination of the matter of sense by the categories (or "conceptions of objects in general"), which the understanding has to supply. Feelings, sensations, are a "fleeting manifold " which can never give rise to an intelligible consciousness of objects or of the self. Onl}^ as the thinking subject combines or integrates the elements of the manifold with each other by means of the cate- gories, and in relation to its own unity, can the manifold of feeling give rise to that consciousness of the world without, and the world within, which we call experience. It is here that the idea of logical subsumption is first introduced by Kant, and we have to observe with what modifications he applies it to the relations of the elements of experience. In the first chapter of the Analytic of Conceptions, we have a careful comparison of the process of thought or judgment with which ordinary logic deals, with the synthetic judgment which it presupposes, and with wliich transcendental logic has to deal. The judgment with which ordinary logic deals, is primarily analytic, or, if sjaithetic, its synthesis is based on a previous analj'sis. In it we bring ideas together under a general conception, which we have first reached by analysis of these very ideas. But this analysis would be impossible without a primary synthesis, to bring together the elements which are thus separated. And for this primary syn- thesis, the binding conception cannot be got by analysis of the ideas brought under it, but must be derived from thought itself. It is, in fact, the determination of the manifold of sense by such a concep- tion which first turns sensations into perceptions ; or, in other words, turns feelings into an intelligible experience of felt objects. The point of union which Kant finds between the ordinary and the tran- scendental logic, is however, that the very act of thinking or judging
KanVs Deduction of the Categories. 121
carries with it the conception by which the object becomes known as an object of experience. "The same function wliich gives unity to the different ideas in a judgment, also gives unity to the synthesis of different ideas in a perception, and this function, expressed in its generahty is the conception of the understanding." But the diffei-ence of the two cases is, that the binding conception in the one case is, and in tlie other case is not found in the matter wliich is combined.
The transcendental Deduction of the categories according to Kant's own assertion, contains the central idea of the Critique ; and in it we find the same line of argument further developed. In the first part of that Deduction, Kant starts with the idea of a manifold given in sense and immediately proceeds to point out that, as so given, such a manifold would be merel^^ a multitude of isolated feelings, and that sense cannot combine them, and, therefore, cannot know them (even as a manifold). For such combination or knowledge, they must be brought in relation to the unity of a conscious subject, which is provided with certain universal forms of synthesis. It is only as I combine the manifold in one conception, that I can have consciousness of it as an object, (in other words, that for me as a thinking subject, it can be a report of anything). And on the other hand, it is only as I am conscious of the unity of m}^ action in com- bining the manifold into objects, and again the different objects into one experience, i. e., the experience of one world, that I am conscious of myself as one identical self through all the variety of my ideas or sensitive states. Thus it is only as distinguished from, yet related to, the unity of the objective manifold world, that I can be conscious of the unity of the self, and without it 1 should have as Kant declares, "a many-coloi'ed, endlessly-varied self;" or, in other words, I should never become conscious of a self at all. The categories thus form the principles of unity in objective experience, and the necessary conditions of the self-consciousness of the subject, as distinguished from, yet related to, these objects.
The second part of Kant's Deduction differs from the |irst only by introducing the forms of space and time, as the forms under which the manifold has to be known in order to constitute outer and inner experience at once in their difference and their unity. But this alters the case only in so far, that it makes it necessary that the forms of the understanding should be schematized, ere they can become categories. In other words, in order that the forms of pure thought may become the principles of synthesis which are necessary to constitute our actual experience, they must be limited or determined
122 Tlie Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
in relation to space and time. But for the i*est, the argument pro- ceeds in the same way. Neither from mere sensations as such, nor from the blank forms of time and space, can we get any synthetic principle, any principle that shall so combine sensations as to pro- duce what we call experience. In order to the possibility of such experience we must presuppose the unity of the self and the whole system of the categories. For our expei'ience is a consciousness of objects as qualified and quantified substances, which may change, but do not perish ; and which are bound together in one time and space by causality and reciprocity. It is a consciousness of one world without us, and, in opposition, yet in relation to it, of a permanent self within, with a determined succession of states. And as such consciousness of the world without us would not be possible but for the existence of the self, and the system of the categories as principles of synthesis through which it determines the manifold of sense ; so, on the other hand, the consciousness of the self as the same self in the succession of its feelings is possible only in relation to such a world. For it is only through the unity of the known world that we become conscious of the permanent identity of the knowing subject ; and apart from the synthesis in which the activity of the self manifests itself, we should have only a "many-colored, ever-changing self," or, in other words, we could never become conscious of a self at all.
Kant thus opposes the ordinary Realism by showing that the world as known cannot be passively received in sense, through the action upon us of an existent world outside of consciousness, but that it is essentially related to intelligence, seeing that no single phenomenon can possibly take its place in experience, except as de- termined by the categories, and indeed by the whole system of the categories, in relation to the unity of the self. "That order and regularity in phenomena, which we call Nature, is something which we ourselves introduce into them, and we could not find it in them, if we had not ourselves originally put it there." * * * "Under- standing is not merely a faculty which enables us by comparing phenomena to rise to rules : it is itself the legislation for Nature, i.e., without understanding there would be no Nature, no synthetic unit}^ of the manifold of phenomena according to rules : for phe- nomena as such cannot be found outside of ourselves, but exist only in our sensibilit}'. But the sensibility^ with all that it contains, is a possible object of knowledge in our experience only in the unity of apperception." ^ In other words, sense, taken by itself in the
1 Kritik (Rosenkranz), p. 113.
Kant's Deduction of the Categories. 123
series of its feelings, — even if we suppose an association of these feelings as simple feelings in the sensitive subject — cannot give us the conception of a Nature, or objective world, or indeed, of any object or realty whatever: and on the other hand, intelligence in relation to the matter of sense must produce such an idea in order to be conscious of objects, and through objects, of itself.
It is true that the understanding, according to Kaut, can only pre- scribe a irriori laws to phenomena so far as is necessary to consti- tute Nature in general; and that the particular Laws of Nature cannot be deduced therefrom. But at the same time, he maintains that these particular laws can only be known as particular determinations of those highest laws which come from the intelligence itself. This however, does not mean that the particular is given apart from the general, and then brought under it. It means that it is only as already brought under the higher laws, that we can have any appre- hension of objects, or raise the question as to the particular laws by which they are determined. Of any phenomenon of experience as such, it is no longer doubtful that it is qualified and quantified ; no longer doubtful that it is a permanent substance in a particular state ; that it is an effect and a cause ; and that it is in necessary relation of reciprocity with coexisting phenomena. But we may not yet be able to determine what are the threads of necessity that bind it to other things, or, rather, we may not be sure that the first determina- tion which we have necessarily given it in making it an object, is its true and final determination. Kant, indeed, frequently permits him- self to speak (and it is almost a necessity of his analytic method that he should speak) of the appearance of sense as something which has a character of its own, independent of its determination by thought ; although he also declares that the mere data of sense are for us, as intelligent beings, "absolutely nothing at all." This kind of abstraction he employs for instance, in the Prolegomena, when he speaks of appearances as distinct from facts; and again of "judgments of perception" {Wahrnehmung) as distinguished from "judgments of experience." He has, indeed, to run this risk of misunderstanding in order to be able to speak of the "sensible" apart from the intelligible at all. For when we speak of a factor of experience apart from experience, we inevitably treat it as having, in this isolation, a character which it can have only as a factor. Thus for example, to say that sense, as such, gives only a "mani- fold " or a " successive manifold," is not untrue, but it may be misleading if we do not add that it can be known as manifold, and known as in time, onl}' through the transcendental apperception.
124 TJte Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
If we distinguish appearances from facts, we must remember that this is a relative and not an absolute distinction. As Lord Palm- erston said that dirt was only matter in the wrong place, so we may sa}^ that an appearance is a phenomenon referred to the wrong con- text of experience. An appearance is already admitted into the intel- ligible world under some pretence ; it has already, as thus admitted, been determined by the categories, and b}^ all the categories, and the onl}^ question that remaims is, whether the place to which it has been thus determined is its right place. I may be permitted to make a quotation from my book, in which I have stated the point as clearly as I see my way to state it: "So long as we conceive phenomena as a mere pliantasmagoria passing before our mental vision, and do not ask any question, or make any assertion, as to their corre- spondence with an^' object beyond themselves, so long, it would seem, we cannot be deceived. Thus ' the senses set the planets before us, now as moving onward in their course, and again as turning back, and in this there is neither truth nor falsehood, so long as we are content to regard it all as mere appearance, and to make no judgment in regard to the objective movements.' ^ The question of truth or reaht}^ onl}' arises when we go beyond the appearances, and make a judgment in which they are referred to an object. So long as the mind passively apprehends that which is presented to it, so long it cannot err ; for as yet there is to it no distinction between appearance and reality, and therefore no possibility of mistaking the one for the other. * * * But when we consider the matter
* •
more carefully, we see that the statement just made is not strictly accurate. To say that the planets appear to our senses at one time to be receding, and at another time to be advancing in their course, is already to attribute too much to sense. He who can make such a statement, has before his mind, not merely an unconnected ' mani- fold ' of sensation, but a connected system of phenomena. He stands at a point of view at which he could not be placed by mere sense without acts of judgment — at the point of view of the objective consciousness. The contents of visual sensation are represented by him as an order of heavenly bodies moviug in space, and are thus bound up, according to definite principles of synthesis, with his other experiences of the external world. No doubt, after this synthetic process is completed, a doubt may arise in his mind as to the objec- tive value of its result. He ma}' then doubt whether certain move- ments are real or apparent, whether certain phenomena, which he
1 Prolegomena, Part I., Rem. 3, p. 41 ; Tr., p. 57.
Kant's Deduction of the Categories. 125
bad interpreted as movements of the planets, are not rather to be explained in some other way, e.g., as movements of the spectator, or even as due to the diseased state of his eyes. But, in all such doubt, he still presupposes the general reality of the objective con- sciousness, and merely hesitates about the place of certain phe- nomena in it. He doubts only, whether, in his first synthesis, he has put certain data of sense in their proper relation to certain other data of sense. The question is one touching the particular, not the universal ; it relates, strictly speaking, not to the reality of the facts, but only to their position in the context of experience. While, therefore, it is true that appearance is not reality, we must remember that there is for a thinking consciousness no possible return to the unorganized data of sensation, the mere ' appearances of sense ' as such. We cannot, in strict accuracy, imagine a previous state in which things are presented to us as 'appearances,' before they are determined as reaTT for the determination of them as in some sense real, is presupposed in their determination as appearances. To doubt whether experience deceives us, we must already have determined it as experience. An illusion is but a reality referred to the wrong place in the context of experience." ^
Kant's leading idea, then, is, that experience is possible only to the self-conscious intelligence acting through the system of the cate- gories ; or, in other words, that the mere series of sensitive states does not explain our consciousness of the objective world, unless this action be presupposed. If Kant had been quite faithful to this idea, it would, no doubt, have carried him beyond the point at which he actuall}^ stopped. It would have led him to reconsider the absolute dis- tinction which he still preserves between the a 'priori and the It poste- riori elements of experience ; it would have forced him ultimately to reject the doctrine of the existence of things in themselves as opposed to phenomena, or things as they are known (cf. Phil, of Kant, pp. 394, 469, 531, etc.). It was indeed simply by following out Kant's logic in this way to its legitimate result, that the subsequent German philosophy passed from Transcendentalism to absolute Idealism. For, so long as anything is supposed to be admitted within the intelligible world which is not determined by the intelligence, so long there is some ground left for the objections brought by Dr. Stirling, and for his method of refuting Kant by himself. Where the particular ob- jects of experience are considered to have any characteristics over and above those which they receive from the general idea of experi-
1 Phil, of Kant, p. 280.
126 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
ence, and where, as is also the case with Kant, this general idea is not conceived as self-differentiating, or, in other words, as neces- sarily related to the particulars which are thus brought under it — it is always possible to object that the particulars as such must bring with them something to determine what is the right as opposed to the to?'ong' application of the categories; i.e., to determine what is the true place in which each phenomenon must be put in relation to other phenomena. But to do this, is what I have called "turning Kant's weakness against his strength, instead of turning his strength against his weakness." Both weakness and strength are undoubtedly to be found in Kant ; and it would be altogether a one-sided exposi- tion of his doctrine to attribute to him all that may be reached by a more consistent application of his method. But the distinctive merit of Kant — that which marks him off from his predecessors, and that by reason of which he became the beginner of a new philo- sophical movement — was his transcendental Deduction; or, in other words, his method of proving that it is only as related to intelligence, and through its activity, that objects can have for us the charac- teristics which they have in our actual experience. And it might easily be shown, that it was by pressing home this argument, and freeing it from the inconsistencies of Kant, that Fichte and Schelling prepared the way for the result of Hegel. To take Kant, as it were, by the other end, and to use his inconsistencies as the means of driving him back to the position of Hume and Locke, seems to me to be essentially unfair — though of course it is always logically possible. Now, it must be remembered that we are forced to choose between the one alternative and the other, for no possible interpre- tation can make of Kant a self-consistent writer. But it is the business of a critic, as I understand it, to point out how Kant separates himself from his predecessors, and prepares for his suc- cessors : and, while recognizing his inconsistencies, to note clearly the direction in which he was tending. It is the business of a critic, while showing the backsUdings that kept Kant from entering the promised land of philosophy', to give him all the credit that is due to one whose face was steadily set thitherward — to one who was the first to strike into the road that leads to it, and who followed it as consistently as he was able.
Within the last ten years, many voices have been heard, both in this country and in Germany, bidding us return to Kant., as to that which alone is at once sound and hopeful in philosophy : that which unites the prudence of science with the highest speculative enterprise which is possible without idealistic extravagances. And, so far as
Kanfs Deduction of the Categories. 127
this merely expresses an admiration for the philosophic temper of Kant, no one would wish to question it. But it cannot be too clearly understood, that the critical Philosophy is not a possible halting- place of thought, and that we must inevitably be driven backwards to some point of view analogous to that of Locke, or else if we try to reduce it to a logically consistent system, we must sweep away the imperfections that held it back from the full development of the idealistic principle which is its central thought.^
Kant's philosophy is a bridge between the theory for which reality is immediately given in feeling, and the theory for which reality is essentially related to the intelligence by which it is apprehended. If the former view be true, it has been shown by Hume and Kant that knowledge is impossible. If the latter view be true, knowledge is possible, and all its factors and elements are interdependent ; so that ever}^ part of the known world implies all the others, as well as the intelligence throuo;h which it is known. We, indeed, as individual sensitive subjects, "parts of this partial world," are forced to "know in part and prophesy in part." But, inasmuch as the parts are necessarily related to each other, and can be known only through the idea of the whole, which as self-conscious beings we possess, our knowledge cannot increase by mere external additions from with- out, but its advance is, in the full sense of the word, a development. Or, to put it in another way ; its advance is the gradual communi- cation to us of a system whose parts are presented to us in succession, yet can only be understood as parts of an all-embracing whole ; and in which, therefore, nothing can be known, except through the whole. Thus our intellectual life begins with the tacit assumption that every actual or possible object is part of the one world, in one space and one time, and hence, also, with the assumption of the unity of the self to which all objects are related. And its progress consists simply in the development of this assumption, or, what is the same
1 From Dr. Stirling's former writings he must, I should suppose, seek to find his way out of the difficulties of Kant by means of a more complete Idealism. Yet, in his article in the Princeton Review, he uses language, which would, »to say the least, as naturally be taken in the sense of ordinary Realism: e.g. (p. 206) "Sen- sations to become perceptions require to be thought : and to think sensations, in this case, is to reduce them under the category of cause and etfect. But though such thinking or reduction is attended by necessity, this necessity is not, as with Kant, merely boi-roxoed by the facts. On the contrary, the facts already possess it; and the thinker, through his category, only recognizes it. But this point of view — not, as yet, anywhere discussed — is out of place here, where, at present, for the most part we confine ourselves to the machinery of Kant as considered in itself."
128 Tlie Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
thing from another side, its verification through all the compass of an ever-oTowing experience. "Reason," as Kant himself sa^'s, "cannot permit our knowledge to remain in an unconnected and rhapsodistic state, but requires that the sum of our cognitions should constitute a system. * * * The whole is thus an organism {articulatio), and not an aggregate (^concervatio^ ; it may grow from within (pe?- intus- susceptio7iem) , but it cannot increase by external additions (jje?- appositioneni). It is thus like an animal body, the growth of which does not add any hmb, but, without changing their proportions, makes each in its sphere stronger and more active." ^
It is in the sections of the Critique that follow the Deduction of the Categories, if anywhere, that Dr. Stirling may find support for his view of Kant. In the Deduction, the synthetic tendency, on the whole, prevails over the analytic, and the transcendental over the psychological point of view. But in the sections on the Schematism of the Categories and the Principles of Pure Understanding, the reverse is not seldom true. Thus, Kant begins (as I have pointed out, Phil, of Kant, p. 415) by speaking of the process of knowl- edge as one of subsumption, without pointing out the difference which he has elsewhere shown to exist between this subsumption and subsumption in the sense of formal logic. And he takes up the dif- ferent "principles" one after another, as if they were different parts externally added to each other, without in this place sufficiently call- ing our attention to the fact that they are parts in a s\-stem. Yet we must always remember that Kant meant these sections to be inter- preted in accordance with the preceding Deduction. And a careful examination of his language shows that the inconsequence is onl^^ partial. If Kant ever for a moment lets go the thread of the trans- cendental Deduction, he soon recovers it again, and adds corrective statements which brings us back to the point. And if he sometimes speaks as if the different categories were independent, yet he distin- guishes and connects the mathematical and dynamical principles, as having to do with phenomena "in regard to their possibilit}-," and their existence respectively (Critique, Tr., p. 134). He had pre- viously pointed out (c/. Phil, of Kant, p. 210, etc.), that in each class of categories, the third category involves and includes the other two ; and it is in accordance with this that he reduces the first two classes of categories, quality and quantity, each to a single principle. In the case of the categories of Relation this is not done, and Kant never perhaps sees in its full meaning (c/. Phil, of Kant, p. 461) the
1 Critique, Tr., p. 503.
Kanfs Deduction of the Categories. 129
essential unity or correlativity of substance, causality, and reciprocity. Yet, as we sliall see, he points out distinctl}^ that they cannot be sepa- rated from each other, and his proof of their necessity in order to the existence of experience or knowledge, involves their necessary interdependence.
It would carry us too far to prove this in detail, and I shall, there- fore, refer only to Kant's treatment of the categories of quantity and causality.
The proof of the principle that all phenomena are extensive quan- tities is that, " all phenomena are quantities, and extensive quantities, because represented by means of the same synthesis, through which time and space themselves are generated," i.e., by the composition of the homogeneous manifold in a successive S3'nthesis, the conscious- ness of which is the category of quantity. Now, on Dr. Stirling's interpretation, this means only that the impressions of sense contain the category of quantit}^ and therefore are subsumed under it ; and by this subsumption are determined as objective facts — an argu- ment with which, I venture to think, Kant would not have felt much satisfaction. On my interpretation it means that the representation of objects as extensive quantities is implied in their perception as in time and space, and that this perception again is possible only through a synthesis of the pure understanding, the rule for which is the con- ception of quantity. In other words, the perception of phenomena as extensive quanta would not be possible to a merel}^ sensitive sub- ject, but is possible only through a synthetic act of the pure Under- standing, and on the other hand, phenomena must be represented as exclusive quanta, because only so can they be perceived as time or space.
The principle of Causality is that by which Dr. Stirling mainly illustrates his views, and the proof of it undoubtedly contains some things, whicli, taken In' themselves, seem favorable to his interpre- tation, though as he acknowledges it cannot on that interpretation be made consistent with itself. Its confusion arises primaril3% I think, from the cause already mentioned, viz., that in Kant'^ first analj'tic process, he is led to treat, too much as if the}' were separate and independent things, the very elements which he afterwards seeks to show to be dependent on each other. Disregarding for the mo- ment this source of confusion, we may express the substance of his argument as follows : —
Kant seeks to prove that knowledge of objective change implies the principle of causalit}', or, in other words, that we cannot know XIV — 9
130 The Journal of Speculative Philosoi^hy .
any event as happening, unless we assume it to be true, tliat that event follows necessarily and invariably upon some other definite event. Now, to say that an event or objective change happens, is, obviously, not merely to sa}' that a thing has gone from our con- sciousness, and that something else has come in its place ; it is to say that something has altered in objects, which jQt are identified as the same before and after the change. The idea of objective change implies therefore permanent identity on the one hand, and different successive states of this permanent identity on the other. To know objective change, is to know a difference in the successive states of objects which yet remain permanent, and the same. It is to know a permanent identity — which corresponds to the unity of time itself ; and a successive difference — which corresponds to the successive moments in time. Now, it will be observed, that these elements imply each other. Identity can be known only in relation to differ- ence, and difference only in relation to identity ; permanence can be known only in relation to change, and change to permanence. But we cannot derive such knowledge from a merely sensitive consciousness — even if we suppose the successive states of the sensitive subject to be associated together, so that one shall call up the idea of the other. For such knowledge, we require a synthesis of the manifold, according to principles supplied by the understanding. We cannot know any- thing, unless the fleeting sensations be referred to objects which are permanent. And, on the other hand, we can know tliese objects as permanent, only as they are permanent in change: i.e., as the differ- ence of their successive states is explained consistent!}' with their permanent identity. But this implies that if the}^ change, they change according to a universal law. For if we conceived it pos- sible that the same object, in circumstances in every respect identical, did not change in the same way, we should be forced to deny that it was really the same object. The principles of substance and causality must therefore, necessarily be combined with each other in application to the manifold of sense, ere out of that manifold we can derive any consciousness of objects as changing, or passing through different states in time. And this implies that no objective experience can be had, except through the principles of substance and causality.
The force of this argument will be easily seen if we place it face to face with the statements of Hume, to which it was meant as a reply. " The nature of experience" says Hume, "is this. We remember to have had frequent instances of the existence of one species of objects, and also remember that the individuals of another species of
ITcmfs Deduction of the Categories. 131
objects have always attended them, and have existed in a regular order of contiguity and succession with regard to them. Thus, we remember to have seen that species of object which we call //ame, and to have felt that species of sensation we call heat. We likewise call to mind their constant conjunction in all past instances. Without any further ceremony we call the one cause, and the other effect, and infer the existence of the one from tlie other. "^ The experience from which Hume here starts, and by means of which he explains away causality, is not simply a series of sensations following each other in a certain order, but it is an experience in which each sensa- tion, as it came, has been referred to an object which is recognized as again present to us as the same object, or an object of the same kind, on the recurrence of a similar sensation. But sensations, thus inter- preted, are not mere sensations. The}^ are sensations viewed as reporting of permanent objects, which are regarded as the same, just because they stand in permanent relations to other objects ; and would not be recognized as the same, if their relations were regarded as different. At any change in such objects, we are obliged to find the cause in an alteration of the conditions ; and if we did not so find it, we could not recognize them as the same, or even as objects at all. To suppose that there could be presented to us in sense, a succession of phenomena, which cannot be thus referred to a per- manent identity, or a permanent identity, w'hich does not manifest itself in the same way when other conditions are the same, would be to suppose an experience in complete discord with the conditions under which experience is possible. Such a series of sensations or perceptions, Kant does not conceive as impossible in itself, but what he sa^'s in regard to it is, that, if it occurred, we should never be able to bring it into the context of experience. A miracle, in the sense of such an abolition of the law of causality, ma}'^ be, for aught we know, possible ; but it is an impossible experience.
This substantially is the argument of Kant in the Deduction of causality. He successively insists on all these points, on the neces- sary combination of causality and substance, of the ideas of»per- manence and change, and the correspondence of each of these with the two sides of the conception of time, as a unity, and as a series of moments. At the beginning of the argument, however, he introduces a confusing complication, when he asks why it is that we treat the parts of a house, which we see successively, as not being really or objec- tively successive, while we treat the successive positions of a ship
1 Treatise on Human Nature, Part III., sect. 6. Cf. Green's Hume, Vol. I., p. 263, sect. 312.
132 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
drifting down a stream, as objectively successive ; and when he ansivers that it is because we cannot reverse the order in the latter case, and that we can reverse it in the former. For here the problem seems simply to be, how we are to account for a succession of states of feeling determined as successive in our individual subjectivity, in relation to the world without us. If we were thus conscious of our own states as successive, we should already have reached a knowledge of these states as events in our individual life, and the only problem left would be to determine how this succession is to be accounted for, in the connection of our individual life with other objects of knowl- edge. And the criterion to which Kant refers only enables us to determine that the objective change in the case of the house, is the movement of our own e3'es, and in the case of the drifting ship, that it is the movement of the ship itself. In other words, the problem in this case, is not the general problem of determining how the knowl- edge of objective change is possible, but the particular problem of distinguishing different objective changes from each other.
If, however, we interpret Kant as meaning, not that we are con- scious of ourselves as in successive states, or having successive feelings or ideas, but that our sensitive life is a series of successive states, and that such a series — even with the aid of association — cannot enable us to account for a consciousness of real succession or objective change either in ourselves or in any other object, but that in order to such a consciousness, we must have determined our sen- sations in reference to objects by the law of causality — if we take this view of Kant's words, we can bring them into closer connection with the general problem he has undertaken to solve. For what, on this view, he intends to convey to us, is, that before a succession of perceptions in us can become the knowledge of a real change in any object, we must have synthetically combined these perceptions by means of the law of causality: i. e., we must have referred them to a permanent object or objects, and determined them as states which will always occur in the same order in these objects, under the same conditions. Dr. Stirling argues that the impression of sense must " give the cue " for the application of the category, since in the above instance Kant seemed to find in the irreversibleness of the time order in which the portions of the drifting ship were perceived, a reason for bringing the case under the conception of causalit}'. But this would imply that the phenomena could be presented apart from any determination by the category. What Kant needs to show is not how the scientific man may arrive at a finally satisfactory application of the category of cause, but that the idea of cause is involved in
KanCs Deduction of the Categories. 133
all apprehension of objective change. Of course, when we have " brought to conception " the synthesis involved in our apprehension of events in time, i.e., when by abstracting from the particular events, and also from the form of time, we have become clearly conscious of the category of causality which is involved in such expe- riences, we can now use it as a principle of investigation ; we can, by its aid, correct the ordinary judgments of experience, and thus raise experience into the form of science. In this sense, Dr. Stirling is quite right in saying that "the facts already possess necessity; and the thinker, through his category, merely recognizes it." This, indeed, is just what the transcendental Deduction is meant to prove. Tlie facts already involve the category, and therefore the scientific man can use it as a key to their better interpretation. The facts of ordi- nary experience already involve the categories, and if they did not, they would not for us be facts at all. But if we could reduce the facts, as Hiune did, to the mere impressions of a sensitive subject — a series of "■perishing existences" which are never the same for two moments — they would not involve the categories, and therefore would be no longer /acte, t.e., no longer objects or states of objects for us. After we have separated the Universal from the Particular, the category from the object determined by it, we can make it our guide in a new determination of these objects ; but this does not imply that we can ever have the latter presented to us, except by means of the former.
I may now sum up in a few words the view of Kant which I have been maintaining in this article. The question of Kant is, how is experience possible? and he seeks to answer it in such a way as to show the inadequacy of the ordinary realistic or sensationalist answer. Experience he resolves into a number of factors, each of which he proves to be necessary to the rest, if out of the rest we are to derive which we call experience. His defect, however, is that he does not f ull3' realize that the elements which he names are not only necessarily that consciousness of the world of objects and of the self as an object, combined in order to experience, but that they lose all meaning when not conceived in relation to each other. Hence time and space, sen- sations, the categories, and even each individual categor^s seem to be set up by themselves as independent units, each of wliich might exist even if there were nothing else but itself. And, though the whole tendency of Kant's argument is to disprove this first analytic view of things, yet it constantly reappears to embarrass his readers and himself. But all this proves only the greatness of the effort which was necessary in order to make the first step in a new region of
134 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
thought. It should not for a moment lead us to minimize our obliga- tions to one of the greatest, ii not the greatest, of modern philos- ophers.
I have now done. The authority of Dr. Stirling's name has in- duced me to examine with some care the view of Kant which he has opposed to mine. Whether I have been successful in showing the inadequacy of his interpretation, and the adequacy of my own, I leave to competent students of Kant to judge. A prolonged per- sonal controversy, especially one turning upon such a question, would seem to me a worse than useless waste of time. And there- fore, so far as I am concerned, the discussion must now terminate.
NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.
HEGEL'S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, AND KANT'S CRITiqUES OF JUDGMENT AND PRACTICAL REASON.
Mr. Edwin D. Mead writes from Leipzig, under date of May 1, 1879, that he has nearly read}^ for the press the translation of the third volume of Hegel's History of Philosophy, containing the entire portion which treats of Modern Philosoph}^ Our readers have seen a portion of his work in the translation of Hegel's treatment of Jacob Boehme (published in our April and July numbers, 1879). Notwithstanding the man}^ and valuable writings on the Histor}^ of Philosopliy (Erdmann, Kuno Fischer, Ueberweg, Zeller, Scliwegler, and others), the work of Hegel remains indispensable, by reason of his profound insight into the general spirit of the philosophizing of any given epoch, and his precise and accurate characterization of the principles involved. No doubt there were mistakes in regard to details, which later writers have been able to correct, in a measure, but there is no one since Aristotle who has shown such wealth of ideas, united with such power of discrimination, as to assign to each thinker his best thoughts without robbing the later systems of their dues, in explaining the earlier ones.
Mr. Mead, we are persuaded, will render a signal service to philosophy by his translation.
Mr. Mead (under the same date) writes, further: —
"I am sure that it will be of interest to you to know that a fine German scholar and an exact thinker is undertaking a translation of Kant's Kritik der Urtheilskraft.
JSfotes and Discussions. 135
He will proceed with the work slowly, and it will be a year or more before its completion, — but when it is completed, it is sure to be most satisfying. I hope, mvself, to translate the portions of the Kritik der Praktischen Vermmft, which Mr. Abbott's book does not give, or to make an entirely new translation, — and English readers will then have all the material necessary for an understanding of Kant's system." — [Ed.
THE CONCORD SUMMER SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
The experiment of a School of Philosophy at Concord was so successful, it seems, that another session will be held the coming summer. We hope to find room in our next issue to present some of the discussions that engaged the attention of the school last July. We have received the following circular, announcing the second session : — '
THE CONCORD SUMMER SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY AXD LITERATURE, 1879-80.
Early in the year 1879 a faculty of philosophy was organized informally at Concord, Massachusetts, with members residing, some in that town, some in the vicinity of Boston, and others at the West. In course of the spring, the dean of this faculty, Mr. A. Bronson Alcott, and the secretary, Mr. F. B. Sanborn, both of Concord, issued the following circular: —
"A summer school for instruction, by conference and conversation, in literature and the higher philosophy Avill open at the Orchard House of Mr. Alcott, in Concord, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, July 15, 1879, and continue for five weeks. The classes will be conducted by five professors, who will each give ten lectures or conversations, between the hours of 9 and 11 a. m., and 3 and 5 p. M. ; each day of the week, except Sunday, being devoted to two sessions, and no more. Five days in the week will be occupied by the regular professors, and the sixth by special lecturers on related subjects.
The regular professors will be —
A. Bronson Alcott, of Concord, on Christian Theism.
William T. Harris, of St. Louis, on Speculatioe Philosophy.
H. K. Jones, of Jacksonville, Illinois, on Platonic Philosophy.
David A. Wasson, of Medford, on Political Philosophy.
Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, of Boston, on The Histoi-y a7id Moral of Art.
The special lecturers will be —
F. B. Sanborn, of Concord, on Philanthi-opy and Social Science.
T. W. Higginson, of Cambridge on Modern Literature.
Thomas Davidson, of Boston, on Greek Life and Literature.
George H. Howison, of Boston, on Philosophy from Leibnitz to Hegel; and others.
The terms will be $3 for each of the courses of ten sessions; but each student will be required to pay at least $10 for the term, which will permit him to attend three of the regular courses and all the special lectures. The fees for all the courses, regular and special, will be $15, or $3 a week. Board may be obtained in the village at from $6 to $12 a week, —so that students may estimate their necessary expenses for the whole term at $50. A few single tickets, at fifty cents each, will be issued for the convenience of occasional visitors.
136 Tlie Journal of Speculative Philosoj^hy.
All students should be registered on or before July 1, 1879, at the office of the secretary, in Concord. No preliminary examinations are required, and no limita- tion of age, sex, or residence in Concord will be prescribed ; but it is recommended that persons under eighteen years should not present themselves as students, and that those who take all the courses should reside in the town during the term. The Concord Public Library, of 16,000 volumes, will be open ever}^ day for the use of residents. Students coming and going daily during the term may reach Concord from Boston by the Fitchburg Railroad, or the Middlesex Central ; from Lowell, Andover, etc., by the Lowell and Framingham Railroad; from Southern Middlesex and Worcester Counties, by the same road. The Orchard House stands on the Lexington road, east of Concord village, adjoining the Wayside estate, formerly the residence of Mr. Hawthorne."
At Mr. Howison's request, in the course of the summer, his name was dropped from the list of special lecturers, and those of Mr. R. W. Emerson, Prof. Benja- min Peirce, of Cambridge, and Rev. Dr. Bartol were added. As finally arranged, the professors and lecturers gave their conversations and readings as follows: —
Mr. Alcott's classes (9 a. m.), July 15, 17, 22, 24, 29, 31 ; August 5, 7, 12, 16.i
Mrs. Cheney's classes (3 p. m.), July 15, 22, 29; August 6, 13.i
Mrs. Cheney's classes (9. a. m.), July 16, 23, 30; August 6, 14.
Prof Harris's classes (3 p. M.), July 16, 17, 18, 21, 23, 24, 25, 28; August 4,i 5.
Dr. Jones's classes (9 a. m.), July 18, 21, 25, 28; August 1, 4, 8, 11, 13, 15.
Mr. Wasson's classes (3 p. M.), July 30, 31 ; August 1, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16.
Mr. Higginson's two lectures (9 a. m.), July 19, 26.
Prof. Peirce's two lectures (3 p. m.), July 19, 26.
Mr. Davidson's two lectures (9 a. m.), August 2, 9.'
Mr. Sanborn's two lectures (3 p. M.), August 9, 16.'
Mr. Emerson's lecture (3 p. m.), August 2 (at the Second Parish vestry).
Mr. H. G. 0. Blake's Reading from the Thoreau Manuscripts, August 6.'
Dr. Bartol's lecture (10 A. m.), August 16.
The classes met at the Orchard House, except for Mr. Emerson's lecture, Mr. Blake's reading from Thoreau, and the four evening lectures (August 4, 9, 13, 16), which were given in the Second Parish vestry, on Walden Street.
Mr. Alcott, dean of the faculty, opened the school on the morning of July 15 with an address of welcome, and closed it on the evening of August 16 with a valedictory address.
At the other times above noted, the persons named gave lectures, readings, or conversations on the following topics, occupying for each exercise a period of above two hours, on the average : —
Lectures by Mr. A. Bronson Alcott: 1. Welcome, and plan of future conver- sations. 2. The Powers of the Person in the Descending Scale. 3. The same in the Ascending Scale. 4. Incarnation. 5. The Powers of Personality in Detail. 6. The Origin of Evil. 7. The Lapse into Evil. 8. The Return from the Lapse (the Atonement). 9. Life Eternal. 10. Valedictory.
Lectures by Prof. W. T. Harris : 1. How Philosophical Knowing diflers from all other Forms of Knowing ; the Five Intentions of the Mind. 2. The Discovery of the First Principle and its Relation to the Universe. 3. Fate and Freedom. 4. The Conscious and Unconscious First Principle in Relation to Human Life.
1 At 7 : 30 P. M.
Notes and Discussions. 137
5. The Personality of God. 6. The Immortality of the Soul. 7. Physiological Psychology. 8. The Method of Study of Speculative Philosophy. 9. Art, Religion, and Philosophy in Relation to each other and to Man. 10. The Dialectic.
Lectures by Mrs. E. D. Cheney : 1. The general subject of Art. 2. Greek Art. 3. Early Italian Art. 4. Italian Art. 5. Michael Angelo. 6. Spanish Art. 7. German Art. 8. Albert Dlirer. 9. French Art. 10. Contemporaneous Art.
Lectures by Dr. H. K. Jones: 1. General Content of the Platonic Philosophy. 2. The Apology of Socrates. 3. The Platonic Idea of Church and State. 4. The Immortality of the Soul. 5. Reminiscence as Related to the Precxistence of the Soul. 6. Precxistence. 7. The Human Body. 8. The Republic. 9. The Mate- rial Body. 10. Education.
Lectures by Mr. D. A. Wasson: 1. Social Genesis and Texture. 2. The Nation. 3. Individualism as a Political Principle. 4. Public Obligation. 5. Sov- ereignty. 6. Absolutism Crowned and Uncrowned. 7. Representation. 8. Rights. 9. The Making of Freedom. 10. The Political Spirit of '76.
Lectures by Prof. Benjamin Peirce: 1. Ideality in Science. 2. Cosmogony.
By Mr. T. W. Higginson : 1. The Birth of American Literature. 2. Literature in a Republic.
By Mr. Thomas Davidson: 1. The Historyof Athens as Revealed in its Topog- raphy and Monuments. 2. The same, continued.
By Mr. Emerson . 1. Memory.
By Mr. Sanborn : 1. Social Science. 2. Philanthropy and Public Charities.
By Rev. Dr. C. A. Bartol : 1. Education.
By Mr. H. G. 0. Blake: 1. Selections from Thoreau's Manuscripts.
These subjects will give a general notion of the scope of the school in its first year. The courses of lectures (with exception of Mrs. Cheney's, which were his- torical and biographical) were distinctly philosophical, while the single lectures and pairs were either literary or general in their character. The conversations accompanying or following the lectures took a wide range, and were carried on by the students, the faculty, and by invited guests, among whom may be specially named Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody and Mrs. R. W. Emerson, of Concord ; Rev. Dr. Kidney, of Faribault, Mitmesota; and Mr. R. G. Hazard, of Rhode Island. By the courtesy of certain families in Concord, evening conversations and receptions (eight in all), were given at the houses of Mr. Emerson, Mr. Edward Hoar, Miss Ripley, Mr. Fay Barrett, Mr. Edwin S. Barrett, Mr. R. N. Rice, Mr. Alcott, and Judge Hoar; thus testifying the hospitality of the town, and bringing the school into social relations with its people.
The whole number of persons (students, invited guests, and visitors) who attended one or more sessions of the school was nearly' four hundred, of whom about one-fourth were residents of Concord. Others came from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Louisiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Colorado, California, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. Twenty-eight course-tickets were issued, of which twenty-seven were used; about twenty complimentary course-tickets, of which perhaps fifteen were used; and about eleven hundred and fifty single tickets were issued and used. The average attendance of students was about forty; of students and faculty, about forty-five; but at Mr. Emerson's lecture one hundred and sixty were present, and at several of the other sessions more than seventy. The receipts from fees and single tickets paid all the expenses of the school, without leaving a surplus; thus
138 The Journal of Speculative Philosopliy .
showing that the scale of tuition and expense adopted was a reasonable one. This will therefore be continued in the coming year, as set forth in the circular above cited.
The Concord Summer School will open for a second term on Monday, July 12, 1880, at 9 A. M., and will continue five weeks. The lectures will be arranged in courses of five, in pairs, and by single lectures; and in each week there will be eleven. They will be given morning and evening, except Saturday evenings, on the six secular daj's, and, so far as can now be foreseen, will be arranged as follows : —
Mr. A. Bronson Alcott, dean of the faculty, lectures on Mysticism.. Mr. Alcott will also deliver the salutatory and valedictory, and will have general charge of the conversations of the school.
Dr. H. K. Jones lectures on The Platonic Philosophy and on Platonism in its Relation to Modern Civilizatio?i.
Prof. W. T. Harris lectures on Speculatice Philosophy and on The History of Philosophy.
Mr. D. A. Wasson lectures on The Philosophy of History.
Rev. J. S. Kidney, D.D., lectures on The Philosophy of the Beautiful and the Sublime.
Mr. Denton J. Snider lectures on Shakespeare.
Mr. F. B. Sanborn lectures on The Philosophy of Charity.
The following ladies and gentlemen will deliver one or more lectures each during the continuance of the school. The subjects, so far as already known, are mentioned below : —
Mrs. E. D. Cheney, on Color and Americaji Art ; Miss Anna C. Brackett, on The Philosophy of Teaching ; Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, on Modern Society ; Mr. R. W. Emerson, Mr. H. G. O. Blake, Prof. B. Peirce, Rev. C. A. Bartol, D.D., Rev. A. P. Peabody, D.D., Rev. F. H. Hedge, D.D., Mr. John Albee, Mr. S. H. Emerj-, Jr., Mr. E. Mulford, and Mr. George H. Howison.
A. Bronson Alcott, H. K. Jones, W. T. Harris, S. H. Emery, Jr., director. F. B. Sanborn, secretary. For the Faculty of the Concord School.
Concord, September 30, 1879.
LESSTNG'S CENTENNIAL BIRTHDAY. We have received the following : —
QUESTIONS FOR A HISTORY OF LESSING'S "NATHAN," FOR HIS HUJODREDTH
BIRTHDAY, MAY', 1879.
We earnestly beg, in the interest of science, for a speedy answer, and that you will not take for granted as already known any circumstance, however apparently unimportant.
1. Is Lessing's "Nathan" known extensiveW in your country?
2. Has "Nathan," in the original text, been copied or pirated in your country?
3. Accurate bibliographies of all the known copies and piracies.
4. Has "Nathan" already often been translated?
5. Into which language has it been translated?
N'otes and Discussions. 139
6. Exact bibliographies of all the known translations of "Nathan."
7. Has "Nathan " often been given in the theatres?
8. Old and new play-bills, in the original or cop3^ The setting of the chief characters. How has the poem been abridged or enlarged?
9. Other characteristics from the performance of "Nathan."
10. Has "Nathan" had influence upon any poet in your country? Has "Nathan " been imitated by any poet known to you?
11. Exact bibliographies of "Nathan " which you know.
Date : Nmne :
This list of queries, in English, German, and French, with the original text of the friendly giver of the information, will form, in this way, interesting documents of the latest history of " Nathan ; " wherefore, we beg that you will not lay them aside without consideration. Even the slightest curiosm about the Lessing litera- ture will be thankfully received.
The remittance sous bande is sufficient. Address : —
To the editors of the 'polyglot '■'■Journal of Comparative Literature" in Koloz- svdr, Hu?igary.
KoLOZSVAR, December 1, 1878.
140 Tlte Journal of Speculative PJdlosophy .
BOOK NOTICES.
La Psychologic Allemande Contemporaine (Ecole exp^rimentale). Par Th. RiBOT. Paris : Germer Baillifere. 1879.
lu this work M. Ribot has undertaken a task for which he is peculiarly well qualified, both by his sympathies and by his wonderful faculty of clear and concise exposition. Even more than in his book on English Psychologj', he has thrown himself into his subject, putting himself forward as the champion of a cause which he believes to have right and justice on its side. Without attempting to add any- thing to what has been done by others, the author has produced a book that is at once opportune and of great practical utility. It is hardly to be regretted that he has so thoroughly identified himself with the writers of whom he treats as to be unconscious of their limitations ; for what, at present, is most wanted is a clear con- ception of the method and results of the new experimental school of psychology, and this can be best given by one whose intense sympathy precludes adverse criti- cism. In due time, no doubt, we shall have a more critical estimate.
In a ratlier vivacious preface, not in the very best of taste, M. Ribot deals some stout blows at the " metaphysical" psychologists, who are told, in very plain terms indeed, that their method is essentially unsound and their results worthless. A bold contrast is drawn between psychology as it was and psychology as it is des- tined to be. The former is vitiated by its "metaphysical" basis — by which M. Ribot means that it starts from the presupposition of the "Soul," as a substance distinct from and independent of the body. The latter is free from all metaphysi- cal conceptions, and substitutes for the false contrast of two independent things the true notion of a "single phenomenon with a twofold aspect." The former relies entirely upon introspection ; the latter depends upon experiment and exact measurement, and hence its results, meagre although they as yet are, rest upon a solid basis of fact, and are not liable to be blown away by every new wind of doc- trine. So strongly is M. Ribot convinced of the stability of the new psychology that he converts the want of originality in its representatives into an argument in its favor. When a study has fairly entered upon its scientific stage, he contends, it bears less and less the impress of a single mind or of a single nation, and be- comes the common possession of all nations. Thus there seems to be a perfectly clear line of demarcation between the old psychology and the new, which, to the author's mind, are contrasted as the dead and the living. The opposition, however , is not quite consistently maintained. The claim of complete freedom from " meta- physical " presuppositions, which, in the first instance, is put forward as the distinc- tive mark of experimental psychology, is virtually retracted when it is somewhat grudgingly admitted that it is, "perhaps, a necessity inherent in all psychology, even experimental, to start from some metaphysical hypothesis." So, also, the method of the new psychology is, after all, not that of external observation and experiment, but of combined external and internal observation. And this vacilla- tion is not merely verbal, but is really the index of a contradiction running through the whole reasoning of the school to which M. Ribot belongs. It is a matter of perpetual surprise to those who hold that psycliology, in so far as it is a theory of human knowledge, necessarily presupposes metapliysic, and who yet reject the fiction of a "thinking thing" existing in complete isolation, to find all empiricists
Book Notices. 141
assuming that a denial of the latter presupposition must of necessity carry with it a denial of the former. It is a matter of still greater surprise that those who osten- sibly banish the fiction of a separate "Soul " should reintroduce it again in admit- ting that pure inner observation is a separate source of knowledge. The fact that this is done indirectly proves that shutting one's eyes to the metaphysical implica- tions of one's system only leads to the substitution of unreasoned for reasoned metaphysic.
From what has been said, the general character of M. Ribot's work will be evi- dent. "Under the form of history," as the author himself admits, "the aim is dogmatic." The body of the work is occupied with a statement of the four topics that have mainh" engrossed the attention of the experimental school of psychology in Germany — the theory of local signs, the origin of the notion of extension, the measurement of the quantity of sensation, and the determination of the duration of psychical acts. The rest of the volume is occupied with an account of the gradual way in which the latest results have been prepared for, and of the disputes on minor points within the experimental school itself. The pioneer of the new psychology was Herbart, who occupies a middle position between pure speculation and experimental psychology. His merit is to have shown that psychical acts are capable of quantitative measurement. The ethnographic school of psychologists, represented by Waitz, Lazarus, and Steinthal, although they differ widely in their method from Herbart, are yet able to claim him as master, on account of his view that psychology must remain incomplete so long as it views man simply as an isolated individual. These writers do not make experiments, and hence ~Sl. Ribot gives only the faintest outline of their philosophical creed. Still more superficial is the account of Beneke, who, in fact, is rather out of place in the pantheon of Experimental Psychologists, his chief claim to rank being that he fought bravely against cl 'priori theories at the moment of their triumph, and thus helped on the downfall of the speculative psychologists. So far, M. Ribot has only been skir- mishing. It is when he comes to treat of Lotze that he begins to warm up to his work, for Lotze is the originator of the well-known "local sign" theory — with which the readers of this Journal are tolerably ffimiliar, from the articles of ^Ir. Cabot and Prof James — a theory accepted in a modified form by Helmholtz, Wundt, and the experimentalists generally. M. Ribot does not attempt to give a statement of Lotze's comprehensive system as a whole, but practically limits himself to his theory of local signs. In the next chapter, however, dealing with the so-called "nativistic " and "empiristic" theories of the origin of Space, the author is thor- oughly at home, for the last taint of metaphysic, strongly marked even in Lotze, disappears, and we get down to a purely experimental basis. From this point on- ward, M. Ribot is at his best. The account of the two rival theories of extension — the one regarding the idea of extension as connate to the organism, and the other look- ing upon it as gradually acquired — is concise and lucid, and may be advantageously compared with Mr. Sull3''s treatment of the same topic in Mind, No. X. ^ Another chapter is devoted to a statement of the psycho-physical researches of Fechner, the clearest I have seen, and to a summary of the main objections to Fechner's ps3'cho- physical "law," based upon that writer's In Sacheti der Psychophysik. Following Delbceuf, M. Ribot decides that the law is not psychological, but physical. Why, then, one naturally asks, should it be included in Psychology at all? M. Ribot gives three reasons : that the facts on which it is based are of exceptional interest to the psychologist ; that it is a new proof of the relativity of knowledge ; and that it shows, in regard to quantity, what had been already established in regard to quality, viz., that there is no equality or equivalence between qualities in the
142 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
object and states of consciousness in the subject. But it is no valid reason for in- cluding in a science facts that belong properly to another science, that the former uses them as data ; nor can the other arguments be regarded as more than an ex- pression of the false dualism which sets subject and object opposite to each other, as complete, apart from anj- inner relation to each other. A long chapter is occu- pied with a statement of the topics treated of by Wundt in his Grundzuge der Physiologisehen Psychologic, sufficiently full to give an idea of the varied contents of that important work, but not full enough to absolve the student of psychology from the trouble of reading the original. Next follows an account of experiments on the duration of psychical acts, and a concluding chapter is devoted mainly to Horwicz and Brentano.
No better introduction to experimental psychology could be put into the hands of the student than M. Ribot's boolv, and the authors whose views he epitomizes may congratulate themselves on having secured a disciple so enthusiastic, and with
so great a gift of popular statement.
JoHx Watson.
La vScience Politique. Revue Ixterxation'ale. Paraissant, le ler de Chaque Mois. dirig^e par le Professeur Emile Acollas, Ancien Professeur de Droit Civil Fran^ais a I'Universite de Berne; Membre de la Societe d'Economie Politique; de la Societe d' Anthropologic et de la Societe de Linguistique. (Sur notre drapeau est ecrit: "Emancipation par la Science; Justice et Libert^ pour tous.") Paris: Librairie A. Ghio, Palais Royal, Galerie d'Orl^ans, 1, 3, 5 et 7. Premiere Ann^e. No. 6, Decembre, 1878, a No. 12, June. 1879.
The following partial list of articles in the six numbers of this magazine will convey an idea of the scope of its discussions : —
No. 6 — By Emile Acollas, on the Principal Theories in the Science of Politics (Aristotle); b}' Dr. Louis Buechner, on the Physiological Nature and Social Des- tiny of Woman ; by Jules Soury, on the History of Civilization ; by Leon Cahun, on the Directing Classes; by C. Issaurat, on Priraai'v Education at the Exposition.
No. 7 — By Emile Acollas, on the False Principle of the Separation of Powers; by Py y Margall, on the Federation ; by J. Sour}^ on the History of Civilization and the Theory of Evolution ; by A. S. Morin, on the Historians of Jesus.
No. 8 — By Emile Acollas, on Marriage; by Maria Deraismes, on the Philos- ophy of History.
No. 10 — By Professor Charles Schoebel, an Litroduction to a Philosophical Catechism; by Dr. Paul Topinard, on The Human Brain: Its Evolution Through the Ages; by Mme. B. Gendre, on M. Taine and the Education of Woman.
No. 11 — By Gabriel de Mortillet, on The Origins of Man; by A. S. Morin, on The Latin Races.
No. 12 — By Viollet-le-Duc, on Art in Paris; by J. Baissac, on The Age of God {i.e.. the age in which a belief in God prevails).
Verhandlungex der Philosophischex Gksellschaft zu Berlin. Leipsig. By Erich Koschny.
The sixth number of these proceedings (1877) of the Philosophical Society of Berlin is devoted to a lecture, by Dr. Gustav Engel, "On Empirical, Practical, and Philosophical Knowledge," and an essay, by Dr. Adolf Lasson, on Prof. Harms's recent work, "Philosophy since the Time of Kant."
The seventh and eighth numbers (for 1878) give an essay, by Dr. v. Heyde- breck, on the "Limits of Painting and Sculpture," and a lecture, b}' Dr. Frederichs,
Boohs Received. 143
"On the Conception of Keligion, and on the Main Stages of Religious Develop- ment."
The ninth number (also for 1878) is devoted entireh' to Dr. v. Kirchmann's essay " On Probability."
The tenth and eleventh numbers (1878) are devoted to Prof. Dr. Michelet's "History of the Philosophical Societ}^ at Berlin" (on the basis of a lecture deliv- ered by him before the society, at its session of the 26th of January, 1878.)
The twelfth number (1879) contains a lecture of Privatdocent Dr. J. H. Witte (of the University of Bonn), on immediate perception {Anschaulichkeit) in the sensory, and the same in the thinking activity. It was delivered before the Philo- sophical Society, March 30, 1878. Anschauen — according to Jacob Grimm, =asjDicere, contemplaTi, irdueri — in English means to contemplate, to consider, to look upon, to behold, always with a sense of the immediate presence or objec- tivity of what is "intuited." [There is no word in German Philosophy which occasions more difficulty to translators.]
The thirteenth and fourteenth numbers (1879) are occupied with Dr. J. H. von Kirchmann's review of E. von Hartmann's Phenomenology of the Ethical Con- sciousness— Prolegomena to every future ethical system — delivered as a lecture, November 30, 1878, before the Philosophical Society ; and with the discussion that followed the reading of the paper.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
A YoYAGE WITH Death, AND Other Poems. Bv Adair Welcker. Oakland, Cal. : Strickland ct Co. 1879.
Addenda to Bibliography of Hyper-Space and Non-Euclidean Geometry. Bv George Bruce Halstead. From the American Journal of Mathematics, Vol. l.\ 1878, and Vol. II., 1879.
Notes on the First English Euclid. By same author, and from the same periodical.
Geometry, Old and New; its Problems and Principles. A paper by B. Gratz Brown. St. Louis : 1879.
The Divine Authority of the Bible. A sermon preaclied before the Synod of Perth and Stirling, at Perth, October 15, 1878, by the Rev. George Mure Smith. Stirling, Scotland.
La Philosophie Pour Tous. Organe Prouhdonien Revue Philosophique, Lit- teraire et Scientifique. Directeur : Decandin Labessee. Annees 1876 et 1877. Paris, 9 Rue Taranne. 1878.
Our Labor Difficulties. The cause and the way out; including the paper on the displacement of labor by improvements in machinerv, bv W. Godwin Moody. Boston : A. Williams & Co. 1878.
In the Matter of Certain Badly-Treated Mollusks. By Robert E. C. Stearns. Read before the California Academy of Sciences, April 21, 1879.
Symptoms of Decline in Races. The Chancellor's Prize Essay, read in the Theatre, Oxford, June 27, 1878, bv George Spencer Bower, B.A. Oxford:
1878.
144 The Journal of Speculative Philosopliy .
Prolegomeni alla Moderna Psicogenia. Memoria di Pietro Siciliani, Profes- sore di Filosofia Teoretica e Incaricato dell' Inseg-iiameiito d'Antropologia e Pedagogia nella K. Universita di Bologna. Estratto dalla Serie III. Tomo IX. delle Memorie dell' Accademia delle Scienze dell Istituto di Bologna. Un bel volume di pagine 112 carta di registro in quarto grande, prezzoL. ital. 4. (This ■work is announced by Nicola Zauichelli, Editore" Bologna: 1878.)
Principles of Natural Jurisprtjden-oe. By "William 0. Bateman, Esq. St. Louis. G. I. Jones & Co. : 1878.
The Kneeling Nun. Suggested by the painting "Awakened Thoughts," by H. C. Ives, Washington Universitv. By Lvman Whitnev Allen. Reprinted from "The Western," May-June. "^ 1878.
Addresses Delivered on Installation of Rev. C. C. Stratton, as Presi- dent OF The University of the Pacific, June 5, 1878. Containing also the Baccalaureate sermon bv Prof. A. J. Nelson. San Francisco: .Joseph Winterburn & Co. 1878.
En Sj.el efter Dceden. J. L. Heibergs Dram af samma namn granskad af
F. I. V. Oosterzee. Theol. Dir. 2 och Prof. R. N. O. . Oefversaettning
fran HoUaendskan af C. L. H. Forslind. Koeping, 1871 : J. F. Saefberg.
Principles that Should Govern in the Framing of Tax-Laws. A paper read before the American Social Science Association at Cincinnati, April 22, 1878. By Thomas M. Cooley, LL.D. St. Louis : G. L Jones & Co. 1878.
Economic Tree-Planting. By B. G. Northrop, LL.D. New York : The Orange Judd Company. 1878.
The Liability of Railway Companies for Remote Fires. Proximate and Remote cause. Second edition, with introductory letter by Rowland G. Hazard. By Francis Wharton, LL.D. St. Louis : G. I. Jones & Co. 1878.
Haeckel's Genesis of Man, or History of the Development of the Human Race. Being a review of his "Anthropogenic," and embracing a sum- mary exposition of his views, and of those of the advanced German school of science. By Lester F. Ward, A.M. Philadelphia : Edward Stern & Co. (Con- taining three papers reprinted from the Penn Monthly, and embod\dng an expo- sition whose substantial correctness is acknowledged by Prof. Haecket himself.)
The Salt-Eating Habit; its Effect on the Animal Organism in Health and Disease. A contribution toward the study of the rational good of man. By Richard T. Colburn. New York: Austin, Jackson »& Co. 1878.
Buddhism and Christianity* Face to Face ; or an oral discussion between the Rev. Migettuwatte, a Buddhist priest, and Rev. D. Silva, an English clergyman, held at Pantura, Ceylon, with an introduction and annotations by J. M. Peebles, M.D. London : James Burns. 1878.
The Conflict between Darwinism and Spiritualism; or Do all Tribes and Races Constitute one Human Species? Did Man Originate from Ascidians, Apes, and Gorillas? Are Animals Immortal? By J. M. Peebles. Boston: Colby & Rich. 1876.
Circular of Information, and Annual Report op the Board of Visitors AND Superintendent of the Kentucky' Military Institute. For the year ending Jime (J, 1878. Col. Robert D. Allen, Supei'intendent. Frankfort, Ky. : 1878. (Containing — pp. l<i-30 — " Extracts from Lectures, explanatory of the modes of government and instruction of boys, by Robert D. Allen," — lectures containing ethical insights of remarkable excellence.)
Philosophie-Geschichtliches Lexicon. Historisch-biographisches Handwoer- terbuch zur Geschichte der Philosophic. Bearbeitet von Ludwig Noack, ordeiit- lichem Honorarprofessor und erstem Bibliothekar an der Ludwigsuniversitaet zu Giessen. Erste Lieferung. Leipzig : Erich Koschny. 1877. (Preis 1 ^lark,
50 Pf. Each "Lieferung" contains 80 pages, double column, long primer.)
THE JOURNAL
OF
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.
Vol. XIV.] April, 1880. [No. 2.
ON NATURAL SCIENCE IN GENERAL.
[translation of the eleventh lecture of F. W. J. VON SCHELLING "ON THE METHOD OF UNIVERSITY STUDY." BY ELLA S. MORGAN.]
When we speak of absolute Nature, we understand by it the Universe, uncontrasted with aught else, and then distinguish within it the two sides : one in which ideas are manifested in the real, the other in which they are manifested in the ideal way. Both are the result of one and the same creative energy, and in accordance with the same laws, and consequently in the Universe itself there is no duality, but, on the contrary, the most perfect unity.
To comprehend Nature as the universal birth of ideas, we must return to the origin and significance of ideas them- selves.
The origin lies in the eternal law of absoluteness, viz., that it is to be its own object ; for by virtue of this law the creative energy is the reflection of the entire universality and essence, through particular forms, which for this reason, while they are particulars, are at the same time universals — what the philos- ophers have called monads, or ideas.
In philosophy is shown more completely that Ideas are the only means through which particular things can be in God, and according to this law there are as many universals as XIV — 10
14(5 The Journal of Speculative PJiilosophy .
there are particular things, and yet, by reason of the identity of their essence, there is in all but one universe. Although in God ideas are purely and absolutely ideal, still they are not dead, but living, the first products of divine self-contemplation, which therefore partnke of all the qualities of His being, and, notwithstanding their particular form, participate in the undi- vided and absolute reality.
By virtue of this participation the}^ are, like God, creative, and work according to the same laws and in the same way, ac- tualizing their essence in particulars, and making it manifest in particular individual things ; being in their own nature not of time, but becoming, from the stand-point of the particular, both in and of time. Ideas are the souls of things, as things are the bodies of ideas ; in this relationship the former are necessarily infinite, the latter finite. But the infinite and the finite can never become one, except through internal and essential iden- tity. If therefore the finite, in itself and as finite, does not comprehend and express the whole infinite, seen from the objective side, then the idea cannot enter into it as soul, and the essence is not manifested in and for itself, but through something else, namely, through finite being. But on the con- trary, when the finite, as such, reflects the whole infinite as the most perfect organism, which is already in itself the entire idea, then the essence of the thing is also numifest as soul — as idea — and the reality is again resolved into ideality. Reason is this complete identity, and is therefore the centre of the Universe, and consequently of the objective actualization of ideas.
As therefore the absolute, in the eternal act of knowing itself, becomes objective in ideas, so the latter act eternally in nature, which, regarded sensuously, or from the stand-point of partic- ular things, gives birth to them in time ; and, having received the divine seed of ideas, becomes fruitful without cessation.
We are now at the point where we can make clear the two methods of knowing and conceiving nature in their antith- esis. The one, which considers Nature as the instrument of ideas, or, to speak generally, as the real side of the absolute, and hence itself absolute ; the other, which conceives Nature
On Xataral Scienco in General. 147
itself, apart from the ideal, and considers it in its relativity. In a general way, we may call the former the philosophical, the latter the empirical method, and the question of their relative value we shall settle by an investigation as to whether the empirical method can ever in any sense lead to a science of nature.
It is evident that the empirical view does not rise above' matter as matter, and considers it as somethins: in and for itself, while the philosophical view comprehends it only as an ideal transformed into the real (by the act of subject becom- ing object). Ideas are symbolized in things, and since they are forms of absolute knowing, they manifest themselves in these as forms of finite existence — as plastic art slays its ideas in order to give them objectivity. Empiricism looks at existence independent of its significance, it being the nature of a symbol to have a life of its own. In this separation it can appear only as a pure finite, with entire negation of the infinite.
If this theory had only developed itself in later physics to universality, and if the idea of spirit were not absolutel}' opposed to that notion of matter from pure materiality, which prevents its being an independent whole, and from attaining that completion which it had in the system of the old Atom- ists, especially in Epicurus. This system (atomism), in the annihilation of nature itself, freed the soul from longing and fear, instead of, like the former, taking np all the ideas of dogmatism and preserving the duality out of which it arose.
This svstem of thono-ht, which owes its orijjin to Cartesius, completely changed the relation of mind and science to nature. Without higher conceptions of matter and nature than those of the atomic theory, yet lacking the courage to develop them into a comprehensive whole, it considers nature in gen- eral as a sealed book, a secret, which by accident or good iuck can be only partially disclosed, never comprehended as a whole. If it is essential to the conception of science that it is not atomistic, but is created from and by one spirit, and that the idea of the whole precedes that of the parts, not vice versa, then it is clear that a true science of nature is impossible and unattainable on this theory.
148 The Journal of Speculative Philosoplnj.
The purely finite conception, from its very nature, dispenses with any organic theory, and puts in its place the simple mechanical series, and in the place of genetic deduction mere explanation of facts. From observed etfects causes are in- ferred ; but that these, and only these are the causes, would not necessarily make the efiects more comprehensible, even if the method of conclusion be granted, and if there were not phe- nomena which follow immediately from an absolute principle. For it does not follow that they might not result from some other causes. Only when the causes are known in and for themselves, and the effects are deduced from them, could a necessary connection of cause and effect be established and made evident. We will say nothing of the arrangement by which facts must necessarily follow from causes which have been inferred with reference to deducing certain fiicts from them.
The internality of all things, and that out of which arise all living phenomena of things, is the unity of the real and the ideal, which is in itself absolute repose, and is determined to action only by differentiation from without. Since the ground of all activity in nature is one and the same, is omni- present, conditioned by no other, and is absolute in respect to each thing, then the different activities can be distinguished only according to form ; but none of these forms can be derived from another, because each in its kind is the same as the other. The unity of nature consists in this : that all phenomena have a common source, and not from the dependence of one phe- nomenon on another.
Even the suspicion of empiricism, that every thing in nature is dependent on a preestablished harmon}' of all things, and no one thing changes or affects another except by mediation of the universal substance — even this was understood mechan- ically, and transformed into the absurdity of a cause operating at a distance, in the sense in which Newton and his successors understood this expression.
As matter had no life-principle in itself, and they wished to avoid explaining the higher phenomena — such as voluntary motion, etc. — as the effect of spirit on matter, they assumed
On JSfaturcd Science in General. 149
something other than matter, which, while resembling matter, should b}^ negation of its higher qualities — for instance, weight, and others — approach the negative conception of spirit as immaterial substance : as if the antithesis could thus be avoided, or even lessened. Even conceding the possibility of the idea of imponderable, incoercible matter, every thing in matter, according to this explanation, would still be determined by something external to it : death Avould be first, and life the derivative from it.
But even if, on the side of mechanism, every phenomenon could be completely comprehended in this explanation, the case would still be the same as an explanation of Homer, or any other great author, beginning with the forms of the alpha- bet, showing how they are combined and printed, and then finally how such a work was the result of these processes. This is more or less the method, and particularly in what has been called the theory of mathematical constructing in nature. We have already remarked that the mathematical forms "which are used have a purely mechanical application. They are not the essential grounds of the phenomena themselves ; on the contrary, they are entirely foreign and empirical : like suppos- ing that the motions of the celestial bodies are the result of an impulse wdiich they received from without. It is true that applied mathematics taught us how to foretell with exacti- tude the distances of planets, the time of their revolutions; but it gives not the least clew as to the reason or first cause of these motions. The so-called mathematical explanation of nature is therefore a mere formalism, which contains nothiuii; of a true science of nature.
The opposition generally assumed between theory and experience has no true ground, for the reason that in the yqvj idea of theor}^ there is presupposed a reference to particular existence, and hence to experience. Absolute science is not theory, and the notion of the latter belongs to the undefined region between the particular and the general which charac- terizes ordinary knowledge. Theory is to be distinguished from experience only in this : that it expresses the latter more abstractly, apart from accidental conditions, and in its orig-
150 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
inal form. To emphasize this, to represent clearly in every phenomenon the action ofnatnre, is the business ot" experiment ; hence both are equal in importance, ^^^e cannot see how experimental investigation of nature can be superior to theory, since the former is deduced entirely from theory, without whose inspiration the interrogations of nature could not be sug- gested, since the clearness of the answers obtained depends upon the reasonableness of the theorj^ which prompted them. Both have this in common : that the point from which they begin is always some certain object, not a universal and absolute knowing. Both, if they remain true to their idea, are to be distinguished from false theorizing, whose object is to give an explanation of natural phenomena l^}- inventing the causes; for both are limited to the mere statement or presen- tation of the phenomena themselves, and in this resemble a priori deduction, which, on the other hand, does not concern itself about explanation. If the effort in each were a conscious one, neither could admit any other aim than to penetrate from the periphery to the centre, as a priori deduction proceeds from the centre to the periphery. But in both directions it is an endless journey, and the possession of the centre being the tirst condition of science., it is necessarily unattainable in the former.
Every science demands for its objective existence an exoteric Hide ; so there must be such a side in the science of nature or in philosophy, through which it may be a construction of nature. This side can be found only in ex[)eriment and its necessary correlative, theory (understood in the sense we have already indicated). But this must not claim to be science itself, or any thing other than the real side of science, in wjiich we have extended in s})ace and separated in time that which in the ideal is one and simultaneous. Oidy when empiricism en- deavors to become in its way what science is in its — namely, empirical construction — only then will it be the body of science, and thus a part of it. It will then be taught and studied in the spirit of the whole, when, without explanation or hypothesis, it becomes a pure objective presentation of the phenomenon itself, and attempts to express no idea except by
On N^atural Science in General. 151
means of this. But not when inadequate empiricism looks out into the universe through its eccentric views, and ap})lies them to the objects it meets ; or when an empirical beginning of this sort rises superior to truths already proved and accepted ; or forms them into a system, with separate, isolated experi- ences taken from a chain of facts of which it cannot see the whole ; or taken from a multitude of contradictory, confusing conditions — an endeavor to oppose science which, to use a common comparison, is like trying to stop the inroads of the ocean with straw.
The absolute science of nature grounded in ideas is, there- fore, the first and the only condition on Avhich an empirical theory of nature can substitute a systematic procedure, directed toward a certain end, for a blind and aimless wandering. For the history of science shows that a construction of phenomena b}^ means of experiment, such as we claim has never been accomplished, except in isolated cases, as the result of instinct ; and there, in order to make this method of investioatino- nature generally accepted as valid, the primeval type of all construc- tion in an absolute science is necessary.
I have developed the idea of such a science in your presence too often to make it necessarv to oive more than a ijeneral presentation now.
Science of nature, from its verv idea, consists in risino- above isolated phenomena and products to their idea, in which they are one, and from which they proceed as from ;i common source. Empiricism also has an obscure conception of nature as a whole, in which one is determined by all, and all by one. There is thus no use in knowing the one if the all is not known. But the point at which unity and multiplicity are identical is recognized only by philosophy, or rather, the knowledge of it is philosophy itself.
The first and necessary purpose is to comprehend the birth of all things from God, or the absolute, and' as far as nature is the real side of the eternal act of subject become object, so far is the philosophy of nature the first and necessary side of philosophy itself.
The principle and element of it is absolute ideality, but this
152 T'he Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
would be forever unknowable, wrapped in ifself, if, as sub- jectivity, it did not transform itself into objectivit}'^ — finite, phenomenal nature being the symbol of this transformation. Philosophy, as a whole, is therefore absolute idealism, since that act (subject become object) is included in the divine knowing, and the philosophy of nature offers no antithesis in the first, only in the relative ideality, which is but one side of the abso- lute ideal. For the complete reflection of its essentiality into particularity, to the identity of both, produces in God the ideas ; so that the unity of that through which they are in themselves, and real, with that through which they are in the absolute, and ideal, is one and the same. But in par- ticular things, which are the mere copies of ideas, these unities do not appear as one ; in nature, as the merely relative-real side, the first preponderates, so that it appears in contrast with the other where the unveiled, undisguised ideal shines forth as the negative, while the former, on the contrary, is its positive, and manifests itself as its principle — both being but the relative modes of manifestation of the one abso- lute ideal, in Avhich thev are united as one. Accordino; to this view, nature is one, not only in its essence, where it is the whole absolute act of subject become object, but also on its phenomenal side, where it manifests itself as the relative-real, or objective side of that act. Nature in its very essence is one ; there is no inner antithesis in her ; there is one life in all things, and one power to be, the same regulative principle through ideas. There is no pure materiality in nature, but there is everywhere soul symbolically represented in body, with a preponderance of one or the other in phenomena. For the same reason there can be but one science of nature, and the parts into which it is divided by the understanding are but branches of the same absolute knowins^.
A priori deduction (construction) is representation of the real in the ideal, of the particular in the pure general in the idea. Every particular, as such, is form ; but the necessary eternal, and absolute form of all forms is the source and origin. The act of making the subject objective {^'- suhject-ohjectiva- tion''''^ goes through all things and generates special forms,
0)1 Natural Science in General. 153
which, being different modes of appearance of the universal and unconditioned, are themselves unconditioned.
Since, further, the inner type of all things, by reason of their common source, must be one, and this can be necessarily under- stood, so the same necessity inheres in the construction which is founded on this one. Consequently, it does not need the confirmation of experience ; it is sufficient in itself, and may be used where practical experience is hindered by insurmountable obstacles — for instance, in the hidden mechanism of organic life and of universal motion. Not for deeds alone does necessity exist ; for knowledge also there is an unconditioned necessity, namely, the inner essence of the universe and of nature. And if the sio;ht of a brave man in conflict with his surroundings is a spectacle on which even the gods look with joy, the struggle of the spirit for a conception of primeval nature and the eternal inner essence of its phenomena is no less sublime a sight. As in tragedy the conflict only really ceases when neither fate nor freedom is conquered, hut when both are lifted to equality with each other, so the spirit comes from the battle at peace with nature when it is transfigured into the most perfect indifference with itself (^^ e., to self-equality, devoid of tension or contrast) and to the ideal.
In the struggle which rises from unsatisfied longing after knowledge of things, the poet has embodied his discoveries in the poem which is the peculiar possession of the German people, and thus opened an eternal spring of inspiration which alone is enough to rejuvenate the world of science, and give it a halo of new life. Let him who wishes to penetrate to the sanctuary of nature nourish his soul with these tones of a higher world, and in his early youth breathe in the strength which radiates from this poem like beams of light, and moves the innermost world. •
154 Tlie Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
ANTHKOPOLOGY.
[translated from the GERMAN OF IMMAlfUEL KANT. BY A. E. KROEGER.]
PART I.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC,
Concei'ning the manner in whicJi to recognize the Internal as well as the External of Man.
BOOK I. CONCERNING THE FACULTY OF COGNITION.
§ 32. — Concerning the Faculty of the Power of Imagination to represent the Past and make present the Future.
The faculty consciously to represent the past is called the Power of MemoiT, and the faculty to represent something to one's self as occurrino: in the future is called the Power of Prevision. So far as they are sensuous, both of these facul- ties are founded on the association of the past and future conditions of the subject with its present condition ; and although they are not themselves perceptions, they serve to connect perceptions in time, to connect that which no longer is with that which is present, and in a connected experience. They are called faculties of remembrance and of divination, of respiciency and prospiciency — if I may use these expres- sions — ■ by means of which we become conscious of represen- tations that we might find in a past or in a future condition.
A. Concerniny Memory.^
Memory is distinguished from the purely reproductive power of imagination in this : that it is able to reproduce, at its will, a previous representation, and that hence in it the mind is not
^ I beg leave to refer, in this connection, to Fichte's exposition of the faculties of memory and remembrance — their distinctive character^- in his Science of Knowledare. — Translator.
Anthropology. 155
a mere play of that representation. Phantasy — that is, crea- tive power of imagination — must not mingle with it, for that would make memory imtrue. To take hold in memory of something quickly, readily to recall it, and to retain it for a long time — these are formal perfections of memory. But these qualities are rarely met together. When a person be- lieves that he has something in his memory, but cannot recall it to consciousness, he says that he cannot call it to mind. The endeavor to do so, if nevertheless attempted, is a very great exertion of the brain ; and the best method is to let other thoughts busy one's self for a while, looking only casu- ally back upon the ol)ject, in which case one will generally seize hold of one of the associate representations that recalls the primitive one.
To take hold of something in memorj'' methodically i^mem- orim mandare) is called to memorize (not to study, as the vulgar are a])t to say of the preacher, who merely learns his sermon by heart). This memorizing may be mechanical, or ingenious, ov judicious. The first is based merely on repeated literal repetition ; for instance, in the learning of the multi- plication-table, in Avhich instance the student often has to go throuoh the whole series of the words that follow each other in their usual succession in order to arrive at the ti<>ure souo-ht for. Thus, Avhen the pupil is asked. How much is 3 times 7? he will begin at 3 times 3, and arriving at 3 times 7, will also probably catch the 21 : but when you ask him. How much is 7 times 3? he will not be so quick in arriving at the solution, but will have to reverse the numbers in order to get the an- swer. If it is a solemn formula which has to be learned, in which no expression! must be changed, but which has to be learned b}^ heart, as it is called, it happens that men, even of the best kind of memory, are afraid to trust themselves (which very fear is likely to lead them astray), and therefore con- sider it necessary to read it oft" aloud. Indeed, the most' practical preachers are apt to do so, since the least change of words might make them appear ridiculous.
Ingenious memorizing consists in a method of impressing
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upon memory certain representations, through association with their co-representations that have in themselves (for the unclerstandino;) no rehition at all to each other — as, for instance, the sounds of a voice with images utterly dissimilar. In this case people are apt, in order to get hold of something in memory, to burden that memory with still further co-repre- sentations, and thus to act absurdly : an unruly attempt on the part of the power of imagination to pair together what cannot be brought under one and the same conception, which is at the same time a contradiction between means and purpose ; since the intention is to ease the burden of memory, whereas it is, on the contrary, made heavier by the unnecessarily accumu- lated association of very dissimilar representations.
A remark which explains this phenomenon is this, that wits have seldom a true memory {ingeniosis non admodum Jida est memoria) . Judicious memorizing is nothing else than that of a table of the mental divisions of a system (for instance, Lin- naeus's svstem). In this case, if we have forsfotten something, we can easil}^ recall it to mind by counting up what we have remembered. Or it is the memorizing of a table of the visi- ble divisions of a whole — as, for instance, the provinces of a countr}^ on a map, etc. — since that also requires understand- ing, which comes to the aid of imagination. A great assistance to memory is to be had by constructing a commonplace book for general conceptions by means of classification ; as for instance, when we arrange our books on different shelves with dilFerent headings. There is no such a thing as an art of memory (ars memorire). Amongst the various tricks belonging to it, we may mention rhymed proverbs (^veisus memoriales) , since the rhvthm has a regular fall of svllables which irreatly assist the mechanism of memory. One must not speak contemptuously of the prodigies of memory — a Picus of Mirandoia, Scaliger, Angelus Politianus, Magliabecchi, etc., the polyhistorians, who carry in their heads a load of books sufficient for a hundred camels, as materials for their different sciences — because, per- haps, they did not possess a judgment proper for the selection of all this knowledge for an appropriate use. It is merit enough.
Anthropology. 157
to have brought together so much raw material, eveu if it needs other minds to work it up judiciously (^tantum scimus quantum memoria tenemus). One of the ancients has said "the art of writing has ruined memory," by making it partly super- fluous. There is something true in this proposition ; for an ordinary man generally has the manifold which he has encoun- tered better arranged on his mental thread, and can there- fore recall it easier, because his memory is here mechanical, and admits no reasoning to intermingle, whilst the scholar, whose mind is occupied with many foreign thoughts, forgets many of his agreements, or homely occupations, through mere mental dissipation, because he did not take hold of them with suflicient attention. But to have your tal^lets safely in your pocket, to be quite sure that you can find surely and without difiiculty what you have just put into your mind, is, at any rate, a very great comfort ; and the art of writing is, after all, a very glorious art, which, although it is not used for the purpose of communicating knowledge to others, can yet repre- sent the truest and most extensive memory, the lack of which it can replace.
Forgetfulness (obliviositas) , on the contrary — in which case the mind, however often filled, remains nevertheless always empty, just like a sieve — is proportionately a greater evil. This evil is sometimes brought about without any fault of our own, as in the case of old men, who may well be able to remember the events of their early life, but always forget thi^t which is nearest to their remembrance. Nevertheless this is often the effect of an habitual mental dissipation, which is apt to afiect specially lady novel -readers. For since the only object of that kind of reading is to be entertained for the moment, every one knowing that it is mere fiction, and the reader having therefore full liberty to follow the bend of his or her own imagination while reading, which naturally dissipates the mind and makes absence of mind (lack of attention to the present) habitual — memory must inevitably be weakened. This exercise in the art of fcillino- time and makino; one's self useless for the world, and yet complaining afterwards of the
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shortness of life, is one of the most dangerous enemies to memory, apart from the phantastic mental condition which it produces.
B. Concerning the Faculty of Prevision {Prcevisio).
§ 33. It is of more interest to possess this faculty than any other, since it is the condition which determines all i)()ssible practical acting, and all the objects to which man relates the use of his powers. All our desires turn upon a (dubious or certain) prevision of what our powers are able to accomplish. We look back into the past (remember) only with a view to make possible thereby our looking into the future ; looking around as we do from our standpoint of the present, in a gen- eral way, in order to resolve upon or prepare ourselves for something.
Empirical prevision is the expectation of similar occurrences (expectatio casuum similium), and requires no intellectual knowledge of causes and effects, but merely a memory of observed occurrences as they usually follow each other, and repeated experience in these matters produces an aptness in this memorizing. It is a matter of great interest to the sea- man and the farmer how the wind and weather ma}^ turn. But our prevision in this respect does not reach much further than the common almanac, the prophecies whereof we praise when tjiey are fulfilled and forget when they do not come to pass, and which thus always retain some consideration anyway. One might almost believe that Providence had purposely arranged the change of weather in so inscrutable a manner, in order that man might not find it too easy to make the proper arrange- ments for every occasion in his life, but be compelled to use his reason in order to be prepared for every occurrence. To live thoughtlessly from day to day does not confer much honor upon man's understanding, it is true ; as in the case of the Carribee-Island Indian, who sells his hammock at mornings, and is astonished in the evening to find that he does not know how to sleep through the night. But, provided that it involves
AntJiropology. 159
no offence against morality, we may well consider a person who is hardened against all the events of life happier than one who kills all delight in life by constantly entertaining gloomy views. Of all prospects which a man may look for, the most com- fortable one is probably a moral condition which gives him reason to believe in its permanence and a further advance towards improvement. But if, although courageously resolv- ing to lead hereafter a new and better mode of life, he is forced to say to himself: I suppose it will not amount to any thing, after all ! because he has so often made the same sort of a promise to himself, but always broken it, under the plea of an exception, for that one excepted time — then he is certainly in a disconsolate condition, arising from the constant expectation of the same results.
But where the future depends upon the fate that hangs over us, and not on the use of our own free will, this looking ahead is either a presentiment (prcesensio) or preexpectation (prce- sagitio). The former suggests, as it were, an occult sense for the perception of what has not yet become present ; the latter, a consciousness of the future, derived from reflection on the law of causality in the sequence of events.
One sees clearly that all presentiments are brain-specters ; for how can we feel that which as yet is not? But if they are judgments based upon dim conceptions of such a causal rela- tion, then they are not presentiments, since we can discover the conceptions which lead to them, and explain the grounds of those judgments.
Presentiments are generally of the painful kind ; a feeling of dread, which arises from physical causes, precedes, with an uncertainty as to the cause of the dread. But there are also presentiments of a joyful and bold kind, indulged in by enthusiasts, who scent the approaching unveiling of a mystery, for which man nevertheless has no receptive sense, and who believe that they see with their eyes, just newly uncovered, the presentiment of that which they, as seers, expect in mystic contemplation. The second sight of the Scottish High- landers— with which some of them believe they see a person
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hung up on the shipniust, of whose death they then, as soon as their ship reaches shore, pretend to have been just advised — belongs to the same chiss of enchantments.
C. Concerning the Gift of Prophecy {Facultas divinatrix).
§ 34. To foretell, to divine the future, and to prophesy are dis- tinguished in this : that the first is a prevision, — according to laws of experience, and hence natural ; the second, opposed to the known laws of experience, and hence unnatural ; while the third is an inspiration by means of a cause distinct from nature, or held to be so distinct, and hence supernatural. Therefore the latter gift, seeming, as it does, to originate from the influence of a God, is also called the real faculty of divination — for it is wrong to call every clever anticipation of the future a divination.
If we say of some one : he prohesies this or that, this may indicate a very natural talent. Bat if, in doing so, he pre- tends to be supernaturally inspired, we ought to say of him : he is a fortune-teller; as in the case of the gypsies, who call palmistry reading the planets, or of the astrologers and treas- ure-hunters, with whom we may also class the gold-makers ; supreme over all of whom ranked in ancient times Pythia, rank in our day the ragged Siberian Schaman. The prophetic utterances of the auspices and haraspices of the Romans had in view, not so much the discovery of what lies concealed in the future of the world's events, as the will of the gods, to which their relioion taught them to submit. But how the poets came also to consider themselves inspired (or possessed), and prophets (vates), and to boast of receiving inspiration in their poetical moods (furor jjoeticus), can be explained only hy the fact that the poet does not execute his work at leisure, like a prose- writer, or orator, but must wait for a favorable moment, when happy thoughts and images crowd upon him of their own accord, as it were, he remaining in a manner pas- sive ; and, indeed, it is an old saying that a certain dose of madness is always allied to genius. This explains also
AntJn^opology . 161
the faith in oracles, which people believed were to be found ill passages chosen at random from the works of celeln-ated poets (who were impelled by inspiration, so to say — sorfes VirgiliancG) a means of discovering the will of heaven similar to that of modern pietists, who use their devotional books for the same purpose ; and also in the interpretation of the Sibvliine books, which are said to have foretold the Romans the fate of their State, and which they unfortunately lost, partly owing to misapplied economy.
All prophecies that foretell the unavoidable fate of a nation, which nevertheless is held to arise from its own fault, and therefore produced by its free luill, are not only useless — the presupposition being that the fate cannot be escaped — but also absurd, since in their unconditioned destiny {decretum ahsolutimi) they postulate ^ mechanism of freedom the concep- tion whereof contradicts itself.
Probably the height of absurdity or deception in prophecy was reached when a lunatic was regarded as a seer (of invis- ible things) — as though a spirit had taken the place of his soul, which for that time had absented itself from its home in his body, and was speaking through him, whereupon the poor soul-invalid, or perhaps a mere epileptic, was taken for an ener- grt«?2enou (possessed) ; and if the demon was regarded as one of the good-natured kind, he was called b}^ the Greek a Mantes^ and his interpreter a prophet. Every kind of stupidity has been exhausted in order to bring within our reach the future, the prevision whereof so much interests us ; mere skipping all the steps that might lead us to its cognition by the Avay of the understanding and experience. 0 curas Hominum f
No prophesying science is so certain, and yet so far reaching as that of astronomy, Avhich predicts the revolutions of the heavenly bodies in infinity. But even this was not sufficient to prevent the accession of a mysticism, which did not make dej^endent, as reason demands, the numbers of the world- epochs from events, but, on the contrary, made events depend- ent upon certain numbers ; and thus turned chronology itself, so necessary a condition of history, into a fable. XIV — 11
162 TJie Journal of Speculative PJiilosophy.
Goncerning Involuntary Imaginations in a Healthy Condition ^
or Dreams.
§ 35. It does not come within the province of a ^ra^7?^a^^c*a7 anthropoh:)gy to inquire what sleep, dreams, somnambulism (which includes loud speaking in sleep) may be ; for we cannot deduce from these phenomena any rules of onr condition in dreaming, since those rules apply only to the waking person, who does not desire to dream, but wishes thoughtlessly to sleep. Again, that was a cruel saying, and utterly opposed to experi- ence, which is attriliuted to the Greek emperor who condemned a man to death that had been reported as having had a dream wherein he'murdered the emperor : " Well, he would not have dreamedHt, if he had not thought about it while awake."
Dreaming seems to appertain to sleeping so necessarily that to sleep and to die would be one and the same, if dreaming were not added as a natural, thouo;h involuntarv, ao;itation of the internal vital organs by the power of imngination.
Thus, I well remember, have I, being a boy, tired out by play, laid me down to sleep, and in the moment of dropping off to sleep was quickly awakened by a dream, as if I had fallen into the water, and, near drowning, was being turned around in a circle : but all in order to fall soon asleep again, and more quietly — probably because the activity of the chest- muscles in breathing, which depends altogether upon the will, relaxes, and must therefore (the movement of the heart being checked by the stoppage of the breath) be revived by the imagination of the dream. To this we may also count the beneficial eifect of dreams in the so-called nightmares (incu- bus). For without this terrible imagination of a monster that oppresses us, and the exertion of all our muscular power to change our position, the stoppage of the blood would soon put an end to our life. This seems to be the reason why nature has so arranged matters that most of our dreams, involve difficulties and dangerous circumstances, since such pictures excite the forces of our soul more than dreams wherein every thing happens according to our desire. We often dream that
Antliropology . 163
we cannot lift ourselves on our feet, or that we have lost our- selves, or stopjDed in the middle of a sermon, or through for- getfulness put on a nightcap instead of a wig on entering a large assembly, or that we can fly in the air like a bird, or burst out in iovful lauohter without knowing why. But it will probably remain a mystery forever, how it happens that in our dreams we are often transported back to long vanished times, and speak with people long since dead ; and that, although w^e are tempted to look upon the whole occurrence as a dream, we nevertheless feel ourselves compelled to con- sider the dream an actuality. But we may probably accept it as certain that there can be no sleep without dreaming, and that a person who thinks he has not dreamed, has only for- gotten his dream.
Ooncerning the Designatory Faculti/ (Faculty Signatrix).
§ 36. The faculty of cognizing the present, as a means of con- necting the representation of the foreseen with that of the past, is called the desio-natorv faculty. The act of the mind in effecting this connection is the affixing of a sign (signatio), also called sio-nalizino;, and the hioher deo-ree whereof is named distinction.
Forms of things, so far as they serve only as a means of obtaining representations through conceptions, are symbols, and coijnition by means thereof is called symbolic or figurative (speciosa). Letters or hieroglyphics are not exactly sym- bols ; for they may also I)e merely mediate, indirect signs, signifying nothing in themselves, but leading to contempla- tons, and therebj'to conceptions, only by means of association. Hence symbolical cognition must be opposed not to intuitive, but to discursive cognition, in which latter the sign (character) accompanies the conception only as a custodian (custos), for the purpose of reproducing it at some future time. Hence symbolical cognition is opposed, as said before, not to intui- tive cognition, which arises from sensuous contemplation, but to intellectual cognition, which arises from conceptions. Symbols are mere means of the understanding, and this they are
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only indirectly, by an analogy with certain contemplations to Avhich the conceptions thereof can be applied, in order to give them significance through the representation of an object.
Persons Avho can express themselves only symbolical^ have not as yet many conceptions of the understanding, and the much admired and vivid expressiveness in the speeches of sav- ages— often also in those of the so-called sages of an uncul- tured people — is nothing but a poverty of conceptions, and hence also of words whereby to express them. Thus, when the American savage savs : " Let us bury the tomahawk !" he means, " Let us make peace !" Indeed, the ancient songs and epics, from those of Homer to those of Ossian, or from those of an Orpheus to those of the Prophets, owe the brilliancy of their execution solely to the lack of means whereby to express their conceptions.
To make out the actual, sensually perceptible phenomena of the world to be the mere SA'mbols of a spiritual world remain- ing behind concealed, as Swedenborg does, is an absnrdity." But to distinguish, in the representation of the (.'onceptions that })elong to morality, which constitutes the essence of religion, and that therefore appertain to pure reason (which concep- tions are (jailed ideas), the symbolical from the intellectual part — church-service from religion — and thus to separate the perhaps, temporarily useful and necessarj'^ hull from the sul)ject-matter itself — this is enlightenment ; since otherwise an idtal (of pure, practical reason) would be exchanged for an idol, and the o'bject aimed at would thus be missed. It is undeniable that all the people of the earth have begun with this exchana'ino-, and that if Ave wish to ascertain what their teachers have really thought in writing their holy books, we must interpret them not S3'mbolically, but literally, since it would be dishonest to misinterpret their words. But if we have in view not merel}' the trutlifulness of the teacher, but also, and mainly, the truth of the doctrine, we must interpret that doctrine as a merely symbolical mode of representation, to accompany those practical ideas by certain established forms and usages : since otherwise the spiritual meaning, which constitutes the chief end in view, would become lost.
Anthrr/pology. 165
§ 37. We may divide signs into arbitrary ( artificial), natural, and miraculous signs.
A. Amono-st the first-named class of siirns are: 1. Ges- tures (mimics also, since they are partly natural). 2. Letters (signs for speech). 3. JVotes (signs for tones). 4. Ciphers (signs agreed upon between certain persons, and only for the use of the eye). 5. Crest (signs of hereditary rank). 6. Uniform and livery (signs of service). 7. Orders (signs of honor and merit). 8. Brands (signs of disgrace). We must also count in the signs of pauses, interrogations, ex- clamations, etc., used in writing.
All language is the expression of thoughts by signs, and, vice versa, the best mode of expressing thoughts by signs is that afforded by language — this greatest means of all to understand one's self and make one's self understood by others. To think is to speak with one's self (the Otaheite Indians call thinking speech in the belly), and hence also, to hear one's self in- wardly (through the' reproductive power of imagination). To the deaf and dumb, his speech is a feeling of the movement of his lips, tongue and jaw ; and it is scarcely possible to imagine that, in speaking, he does anything else than to carry on a \)\'Ay with his bodilv feelinos. he havino: really no concen- tions or thoughts. But even persons Avho can speak and hear do not alwa3^s understand themselves or others; and it is mainly due to a deficiency in the faculty of designation, or to a faulty use thereof (people taking signs for things, or vice versa), that men are often so tar apart in their notions (espe- cially in matters appertaining to reason) though they are agreed in their speech. This is made apparent only by acci- dent, namely, when each one acts on his own notions.
B. So far as the natural sio-ns are concerned, the relatif)n ot the signs to the designated thinas is, in res^ard to time, either demonstrative, or recollective, or prognostic.
The beat of our pulse makes known to the doctor the pres- ent feverish condition of the patient, even as smoke indicates a fire. The reagents discover to the chemist the matters con- cealed in water, even as the weathercock shows the direction of the wind. But whether a blush betravs consciousness of "uilt.
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or rather a tender feeling of honor, or mereh' the indignity felt at an insulting proposition, it is in certain instances impos- sible to sa3\
Tombstones and mausoleums are sions of our remembrance •of the dead. In the same class of signs, or as tokens of the perpetual memory of the past power of a king, we may count the pyramids. Layers of shells in districts far removed from the seas, or the holes of the pholads in the high Alps, or volcanic remnants where at present there are no eruptions, show us the iincient condition of the world, and form the basis of an arcJiOiology of nature — to be sure, not so vivid as the scars of a warrior. The ruins of Palnnra, Baalbec, and Persepolis are speaking memorials of the art condition of ancient States^ mid sad mementoes of the chanoe of all thinos.
Prognostical signs interest more than all others, because in the series of changes the present is only a moment, and the motive which determines our action desires the present only for the sake of the future (06 futura consequentia) , and calls particular attention to it. In regard to future events in the world, we have the surest prognosis in astronomy ; but this becomes childish and phantastic when the stellar configurations, conjunctions, and changes of planetary position are represented as allegorical characters written on the pages of the sky, tell- ing of the impending fates of men, as in the astrologia judi- ciaria.
The natural prognostic signs of an impending illness or cure or those, like ihoi fades liippoeratica , of approaching death, are phenomena which, based upon long and frequent experience, serve also — when apprehended in their connection, as cause or ertect — to guide the physician in directing a cure. Of such a kind are the so-called critical days. But the auguries and haruspices, instituted by the Romans for political pur- poses, were a superstition sanctioned by the State to direct the people in periods of danger.
G. So far as miraculous signs are concerned (events, in the nature of tilings, turned topsy-turv^y), the}^ consist — if we ex- cept those that nowadays no one thinks important any more, such as the birth of monstrosities amongst men, or cattle — of
AntJirojiologij . 167
the following: Signs and wonders in the heavens, comets, meteors, auroras ; nay, even eclipses of the sun and moon ; especially when such signs crowd together, or perhaps even are accompanied by war, pestilence, etc., in which cases they seem to the terrified mob as announcing the approaching day of judgment and the end of the world.
Appendix.
A curious instance of the manner in which the power of imafjination plays with man in substitutino; sis^ns for thino-s — as if the former had an inner reality of their own, and as if the latter adjusted themselves to the former — deserves special mention here. Since we cannot divide the course of the moon, according to its four phases (new moon, first quar- ter, full moon, and last quarter), more exactly into round numbers than by giving it twenty-eight daj^s (the Arabs on that account dividing the zodiac into the twenty-eight houses of the moon), of which one quarter makes seven days, the number seven has obtained a vast mj^stical importance, to which even the creation of the world has been forced to con- form ; especially since the Ptolemaic system taught also seven planets, just as seven tones were put into the gamut, seven simple colors in the rainbow, and seven was said to ])e the number of the metals. Thus there arose the graduated years (7 -|- 7, and 9 also being a mystical number with the Hin- doos, 7 -f- 9, as likewise 9 + ^')' '^^ the end of which human life was said to be in great danger ; and the seventy year-weeks of the Jews (four hundred and ninety years) constitute really, in Jewish Christian chronology, not only the divisions of the most important changes in its history — from the call of God to Abraham to the birth of Christ — but determine alsd a priori, and with minute exactness the limits of those divisions ; just as if chronology ought not to conform itself to history, but history to chronology.
But even in other matters it becomes a habit to make things dependent upon numbers. A doctor, to whom his i)atient sends a fee by his servant, and who, on opening the package.
168 Tlie Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
finds $11 therein, will l)egiii to suspect that the servant has appropriated $1. For why, he will argue, is the dozen not full? A person who buys porcelain things at an auction will bid less if the dozen is not full ; and if he bids on a lot of thirteen plates, he will value the thirteenth only as a guaran- tee that if one of the dozen should break he will be able to replace it. But why should this number have a special prefer- ence, since we do not invite guests to dinner by the dozen? A man left to his cousin, in his will, eleven silver spoons, and added: "He knows best why I do not bequeath him the twelfth." The young good-for-nothing, namely, had at one time, W'hen dining with his cousin, secretly slipped a spoon into his pocket; which the cousin observed well enough, but said nothing about at the time, so as not to disgrace the reprobate. Now, when the will was opened and read, every one could easily guess the meaning of the testator, but solely through the accepted prejudice that only a dozen is a round number.
The twelve signs of the zodiac (in analogy with which num- ber the twelve jurymen in England seem to have been hit upon) have also received such a mystictd significance. In Italy, Ger- many, and elsewhere also, perhajDS, it is considered ominous to have thirteen guests at the dinner-table, it being supposed that in such a case one of them, whoever it may be, must die within the year ; and at a table to which twelve judges have been invited, the thirteenth who chances to be amongst them is sure to be the criminal, who will be put on trial. I was present once myself at such an occasion, when the lady of the house noticed this mishap, and quietly beckoned her son to leave the table and dine in another room, so as not to disturb the cheerfulness of the guests.
But even the mere size of the numbers, when one has enough of the thinii;s which thev desiijnate, excites astonishment from the simple fact that they do not by chance fill a division of numbers made on the decimal principle, and hence in itself altogether arbitrary. Thus, the emperor of China is said to have a fleet of nine thousand nine hundred and ninetA-nine ships; and we ask ourselves secretly, why not one more? althouo;h the answer miaht well be : because nine thousand
Rapliael and Michael Angela. 169
nine hundred and ninety-nine are enough for his use. But our question had, in point of fact, not the usefuhiess of the fleet in view, but originated solely in a sort of numeral mysticism. The matter is worse still, though by no means unusual, when somebody, by economizing or cheating, has at last succeeded in accumulating a fortune of $90,000 in cash, and has now no rest until he has $100,000 in full, although he does not need them ; and in the elFort, perhaps, if he does not get the gallows, at least merits it.
To what childish tricks does a man condescend, even in his mature age, if he allows himself to be directed by the guiding- threads of sensuousness. Let us now see, in the next division of our work, how much or how little better he will act, when he follows his path by the light of the understanding.
KAPHAEL AND MICHAEL ANGELO.
[translated from the GERMAN OF HERMANN GRIMM. BY IDA M. ELIOT.]
Raphael, as w^ell as Michael Angelo, stood like a prince in con- trast to the popes and Medici. But Raphael lived like a prince ; had money, dependents, and a magnificient palace, which Bra- mante had built for him. Michael Angelo was treated like a prince ; for, though the charms of brilliancy and of personal loveliness which surrounded Raphael did not belong to him, yet the independence of his behavior, together with the perfect mastery of ever}' thing that pertained to his art, gave to him as much importance as if he himself constituted the whole kingdom.
When Raphael died Michael Angelo stood alone, without the shadow of a rival. We know very little about him at t)his time. In the year 1527, standing on the threshold of age, he appears again, and after the events that then drew him from his retirement, he lived through a long range of years, seeming really endless when we see how every one around dies and changes, while he alone survives.
Leo X. was succeeded, after a short reign of another pope,
170 ^he Journal of Speculative Philosopliy .
by Clement VII., another of the Medici. Without an}^ true instinct for the political condition of the country, without firmness to keep to a resolution after it was formed, without any feeling for the dignity of the Papacy when the interest of his family was at stake, he brought matters to such a point that Ave see him one day on the height of the castle of St. Angelo looking down in powerless rage as the soldiers of Charles V., Spanish and German, practised against defenceless Rome all the cruelties which were in the power of that army, whose savage conduct formed a terrible exception even to those times.
When thinking of the cruelty towards the inhabitants of the city, one almost forgets the injury which art suffered then. Golden and silver ornaments were melted ; monuments standing in the public places broken to pieces ; collections robbed, and every thing that was movable carried off ; fires were built in those rooms of the Vatican which had been painted by Raphael , and the soldiers cut out the eyes of the figures. When Titian came to Rome, twenty years later — then only thirt}^ years after Raphael's death — and saw the restored painting, he asked what bungler had been at work there. Since that day to this, three hundred years have passed.
Clement at first defended himself with the rest of his people. Benvenuto Cellini gives a vivid account of what took place in the castle of St. Angelo. There is a terrible moment, when the people crowd together, and the first foes break in like wolves. He tells how, throughout, there is a general scene of death and destruction ; how the pope stands near him on the battlement of the castle, and Benvenuto directs his shot against the im- perial troops ; how he is obliged secretly to break the jewels from the pope's crown, and to sew them into the garments of the Hol}^ Father. The gold is melted into a lump in a blast furnace, which was quickly built. Now the necessaries of life begin to fail. Their alh^, the Duke of Urbino, appears in the distance, and goes away without accomplishing anything. All hope vanishes. The pope yields himself a prisoner. The Spaniards tear down the standard of the pope, and raise the colors of their emperor.
Raphael and Michael Angela. 171
During these events Michael Angelo was in Florence, which was ruled in the name of the pope by the cardinal of Cortona, — a prelate who was hated by the citizens. The dissatisfaction was so universal that all longed for an opportunity to break away trom him. Even before Rome had fallen, there was an insurrection in Florence, which the Medici were able this time to subdue. The disturbance lasted two days. The David of Michael Angelo was injured on this occasion. It stood where it now stands, before the palace of the Signoria, in which the insuroents were defending themselves. A bench thrown down from above hit it in such a way that one arm broke off and fell in three pieces. No one took any notice of it, and the pieces lay in the square, which was filled with soldiers, until two boys, Francesco Salviati and Georgio Vasari, — both of them famous ariists in later years, — slipped by the sentinels and carried the pieces safely home. Years after, the Duke Cosmo had the broken arm fastened to the statue with copper bands.
This first disturbance of the citizens was scarcely quieted when the news came of the fall of Rome. There was now nothing worth holding in Florence. The Medici left the city, and the old republic was restored.
But it was not long before the pope and emperor were friends ; that is, Clement yielded to that power whose suprem- acy in Italy had been resisted by himself and his predecessors. He cared for Florence only. Rome held the second place ; Florence was the principal thought. He was somewhat in the condition of a man who neglects duty and honor out of con- sideration for his wife and children. He gave up the indepen- dence of the papacy, and made sure of the possession of Florence. The same army that had laid Rome waste, and then had gone south towards Naples, was now recalled and pressed into the service of the pope, in Tuscany. Now begins 'the struo-ole whose end was the end of Florentine freedom.
The reinstating of the Medici in the city was not exactly like the restoration of a legitimate ruling family. The Medici were at first citizens, like many others ; they never belonged to the highest class. Their influence had changed from an impar- tial, benevolent protection, into a pow^erful management of
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affairs, and at last they assumed the outward marks of a princely house, and by this showed their superiority to the rest of that class which orjoinallv had the same rank. It was a usurpation. Only two circumstances were in their favor: First, they had ruled for a century brilliantly and without hin- drance, and a great proportion of the citizens depended upon them ; second, as soon as the highest authority was removed, the parties in the city would not be held in balance, and threatened to destroy each other. But it was in the interest of Charles V. to have in Tuscany an established princely house dependent upon him, instead of an excitable, independent republic, whose sympathy for hated France seemed to be ine- radicable. For the emperor, the destruction of Florentine free- dom was a necessary act. The most thoughtful citizens felt this from the first, and tried to negotiate with him while their relations were still friendly. But they were under the control of an excited, heedless party, who would hear of no agreement, and who souo-ht to defend themselves to the death.
Michael Angelo belonged to this party. He who was first known through the favor of the Medici, who had kept with them and worked for them, now shook off all associations and stood on the side of their enemies. The struggle lasted tliree years. All arts of persuasion, treachery, and force were at times attempted, but they were all noticing but oil thrown upon the fire. There is such a confusion of passions here presented to us, such an intermingling of characteristics whose tendencies we can trace out, that these three years of the Florentine republic form one of the richest chapters of history. Those nations whose conflicts caused the important events in ancient history are now dead and gone, but these occurrences are more closely connected with our own times, and fill us with partisan sympathy. It seems as if we could see the things happen. Florence, that was never destroyed or buried, never wholly conquered, now stands as firm as it stood then, and the sight of its buildings involuntarily makes one reflect upon what it has experienced. But this concerns only the external view ; far more important to us than the outward appearance of tliose times is the spiritual meaning of the conflicts which
Raphael and Michael Angela. 173
are not yet ended, and which may perhaps in the fntnre break out with more bitterness than we of to-day are inclined to imagine.
There is nothing on the earth more touching than a peo- ple that is defending its freedom. Every other loss seems small in comparison. A lost freedom makes every other sor- row lose its force ; no deprivation is worthy of name when that is mentioned. This is what makes the destruction of Carthage the most terrible event in ancient history, the destruction of Troy the most touching in the realm of poetry. For this reason there is so much significance in the German wars which were fought for freedom, because this is the only nation which has lost and then regained it ; all others have perished when that Avas gone.
One might say that in Florence the Italian was fighting against Italy. But it was not so. The Italians who were defending the city were the old Florentines, who stood upon their own national character ; those attacking the city belonged to the new Italjs which had already reconciled itself to dependence upon the Spanish emperor and his treacherous policy, by whose means art and science and religion were destroyed. Italy was ruined by Spanish influence; and who knows how many other countries might have been involved in their ruin in the course of the following centuries, if England and North' Germany had not offered the resistance for which now, at last, they are beginning to reap their reward? Flor- ence was occupied by merchants and trades-people. The aristocracy of the city consisted of the great banking firms, who, having immense wealth, advanced money to the kings of Eno-land and France. The real nobleman who controlled the city of Venice, and who everywhere in Italy played the most important parts in the cities and in the country, had entirely vanished from Florence. Either he must leave the city or join himself to a guild, to which he must be subordinate. So it came about that the city educated no youthful warriors and no great generals, and when it had a war to carry on, was obliged to depend upon hired troops. But through money it could control the nol)ility of Italy, who made the business of
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carrjing on war a regular means of livelihood. A war was undertaken then just as now we start the builduig of a rail- road. Whoever was the richest man in Florence had the greatest number of adherents among the citizens, and received the most consideration.
When the conflicts between the native nobilitv and the citizens had ended with the victory of tlie latter, these quar- relled among themselves, and the jealousies between the rich, who wished to rule alone, and the poor, who desired their share in the government, took the place of the former strife, now ended. Here the Medici found the soil upon which they laid the foundation of their power. They made themselves necessary to l)oth ])arties, through their riches. They not only did good service to individual citizens where there was want of money, but they helped the State in her foreign policy, by standing upon the best footing with the princes of Europe. If any thing was to be accomplished in Lyons, Milan, or Venice, people turned to the Medici ; if one wanted a loan, they lent generously ; if one wished them to accept State offices, they refused. On the other hand, through mar- riage they bound the noblest families to further their inter- est, favored art and education, and mingled socially with the crowd at public festivals. They did not rule ; they merely gave good advice. They began to be feared, and were exiled ; but the people voluntarily recalled them, and at last they could not be spared. Then, when under Lorenzo, — the one who pro- tected Michael Angelo in his youth, — not only Tuscany, but all Italy, was brought into peace and prosperity, the power and position of his family became so firmly rooted in Florence that his antagonists gave up all hope.
Lorenzo died in the year 1492, and left three sons, the eldest of whom succeeded him in his rule, — a haughty, knightly char- acter, who was much more concerned about his own proud person than about conducting the affairs of state, which were complicated and very difficult to manage. The other aristocrats, who were all of as good birth, and who were no lower in rank, soon felt themselves hurt, and joined with the people in disapproval. Piero perceived this, and being forced to take
RapJiael and Michael Angela . 175
some measures, at once made an attempt to become duke of Florence. The way which he took to accomplish this end brought the city into the most dangerous situation, although it brought him power.
At this time Venice was the most powerful State in Italy, perhaps in Europe; The Venetians held the same position which to-day the English hold. In opposition to them, Lo- renzo de Medici, the duke of Milan, and the king of Naples formed a league, and these three States together against the fourth, strongest of all, held the balance of power in Italy. As soon as Lorenzo died, hostilities broke out between Milan and Naples. Piero de Medici took the side of the king, while the duke of Milan allied himself to France, and invited to Italy Charles VIII., a young, ambitious prince, whose house formerly laid claim to Naples.
Charles made every effort to gain Piero d'e Medici to his side, but Piero acted shamefully. The people, ever since their early history, had been inclined towards the French ; but Piero did not wish to break with Naples, and refused Charles's pro- posal. Then the king of France entered Tuscany as an enemy, and was everywhere victorious. Finally Piero changed his policy, and threw himself at the feet of the French. Without being conquered, he evacuated the fortresses, and hoped by this extreme humiliation to gain from Charles that favor which would now be useless to him if shown by Naples. But his reckoning was false. His behavior embittered the people ; the nobility rebelled, Piero was forced to flee, Charles recog- nized the republic in its new form, and the attempts of the Medici to be again reinstated in power were fruitless. Michael Angelo, at that time twenty j^ears of age, had left the city before the catastrophe, having been warned, Condivi says, by threatening dreams. He soon returned, however, and was, an ardent defender of the new order of things.
At the same time with the political revolution, another one began in behalf of morality and religion, guided by Savonarola, a monk born in Ferrara, who, as prior of the cloister of San Marco, had within a few years grown very powerful and influ- ential, and now was the soul of the ruling party.
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From the first he preached against the Uiwlessness that had fallen upon Italy. Vices of the worst kind had at that time penetrated all classes of society, that of the clergy above all. The most horrible crimes had become so common that they excited little attention and were regarded as only ordinary occur- rences. Opposition to such a state of things ; a feeling that they must make it different ; a foreboding of some change to be brought about by force, — all these thoughts filled the minds of the people. Even during the last part of Lorenzo's life, Savonarola had urged repentance and a total change in the mode of life, warning the people of Florence that a divine punishment was imminent.
Now, when the French reall}^ came and behaved like demons, his prophecies seemed fulfilled in an astonishing manner, and Savonarola's party had the ascendancy over the aristocratic party, which, without the Medici, wished to rule in the Medi- cian fashion. This supremacy was held for four j'^ears, main- tained by the man Avhose life and works, and finally whose death, are grand and imposing.
He was the soul of the State. His sermons gave the tone to pul)lic utterances. His fame filled Italy and all Europe. The manners of the Florentines improved through his influ- ence ; the city endured bravely pestilence, war, and famine ; and the religious enthusiasm of the people was so deep and penetrating that it increased from year to year, and indeed seemed to chano-e the character of the inhabitants.
When the reaction came, when Savonarola was defeated by the machinations of the aristocratic party, and was burned by Pope Alexander, the republic still stood, and the party of the unfortunate man held fast to their faith in the truth of his doctrines and his prophecies. In their belief, the destruction of Rome in the year 1527, thirty years after his death, was only the fulfilment of a judgment Avhich had been foreseen and foretold years before. Let us here give a summary of events : In 1492, Lorenzo died ; in 1494, Piero w^as driven out ; in 1512, the Medici family again established their power; this was a short time before Giovanni de Medici became pope, under the name of Leo X. Under him and under Clement VIL, his
Raphael and Michael Angela . 177
nephew, Florence was under the control of the Medici, until in 1527 it rebelled foi- the last time. Michael Angelo was at that time over fifty years of age.
I called him a friend of the family. Strictly speaking, how- ever, the old Lorenzo was the onl}^ one whom he knew well. When Piero succeeded, he left the palace in which he had been living ; and when Piero was driven oft', he stood upon good terms with a distant branch of the family, who, had been banished, and now returned to the city. Afterward Michael Angelo's friend and patron was Soderini, who, until 1512, ruled the city as Gonfalonier for life, and who was especially opposed to the Medici. During the papacy of Leo X. he stayed ver}^ little in Rome, and made nothing of importance for him ; but when Clement VII. employed him, since he was the greatest artist of his time, it was true that the commissions which he received were less honor to him than his accej^tance of them was' to those who gave them. He was a free man, and chose the side on which he would fioht, without beino- bound either way.
In the year 1527, as in 1494, the aristocrats, 1)}' whom the revolution was begun, wished to hold the reins alone and as before, they were again overpowered by the whole body of citizens. There were at that time a great many men who had seen and heard Savonarola. Tiiey insisted that it should be then as before, — the former strict moral' codes should be renewed, processions instituted, the old form of government, the consilio, restored. Michael Angelo was one of the mem- bers of the state commission on military aft*airs. He at once urged the fortification of the city. Capponi, the first of the three Gonfalonieri who had guided the helm durinir the first three 3'ears of the republic, opposed it. There was no danger at hand, and the fortification would be a dangerous demoA- stration. Capponi l)elonged to the aristocrats, but he wished to rule so that he should suit all parties. This was the very thing that had caused Soderini's failure. Capponi was a fol- lower of Savonarola in reference to the freedom of the city and the consilio, but he wished no alliance with France ; while this alliance formed the chief article of creed with the party XIV— 12
178 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
who were opposed to the aristocrats. When, in opposition to his efforts, the league was formed with France, and the forti- fication of the city carried on, he secretly entered into com- munication with the, pope, and tried to prevent Michael Angelo in his work. It was Capponi's belief that the united power of emperor and pope could not be resisted, and all that there remained to do was to make the most favorable terms. This was the utmost that could be done. He resisted every thing that looked like forcible opposition. AVhile Michael Angelo was directino- the i3ublic buildino's in Pisa and Leo-horn, and, acting under the commission of the State, was examining the fortilications of Ferrara, Capponi stopped the works of de- fence which had been begun in Florence, and even sent off the materials that had been collected. This could not last. Capponi was deposed; Carducci, his successor, executed with enerofv the wishes of the French iDartv. Circumstances now made moi'e immediate action necessarv. Soon things reached such a point that Florence, deserted by Venice and France, was thrown upon her own resources, opposed to a pope who would hazard every thing to bring the city into his power, and to an emperor who, at that time, was the most powerful prince in Europe. It need not be asked who would be the victor in this conflict, but onlv how Ions: it would last and what it would cost. Clement paid the army before the city with his own money. The longer the Florentines defended themselves, so much the longer his payments must continue ; besides, so much the poorer was the city itself, which lost through the war enormous sums of money.
When Michael Anoelo came back from Ferrara, thinijs were not so bad. They were hoping for help from France and Venice ; they tried, by evading the pope, to make the emperor inclined to enter into direct neo-otiations ; thev had confidence in Malatesta Baglioni, who, in the name of the king of France, as general of the republic, commanded an imposing army. Michael Angelo urged with all his might the fortification of San Miniato, a hill directly before the city, towards the south, on whose summit lay a magnificent old church. Michael Angelo was one of those men who can be employed for any thing when
RapliaeJ and Michael Angela. 11^
the time needs a man. He was painter, scnlptor, poet, archi- tect ; he made for himself the iron tools with Avhich he worked in marble ; he himself qnarried the blocks at Carrara ; contrived the scaffolding \i\)on which he [)ainted the ceiling of the Sis- tine, and planned the machines with which he moved his statues. Now he built fortifications, and contrived shields for the tower of San Miniato, which the imperial cannon had made their target. And in the midst of this disturbance he painted his Leda with the Swan, and privately worked on at the figures for the tomb of the Medici in the sacristy of San Lorenzo. In him the interests of art and politics were so united that he made his art of use against his enemies, from whom he was defending his fatherland.
Meanwhile the Spanish troops, under Philibert of Orange^ had come nearer to Florence. Perugia lies half-way towards Rome. Here Malatesta Baglioni should have opposed him. The latter, however, who laid claim to the supreme power in Peruoia, drew back after he had concluded an ao;reement with the pope by which the city should be spared. Next the Spaniards ought to have been checked at Arezzo, half-way between Peruo-ia and Florence, l)ut here also the o-arrison fell back upon Florence without making any resistance. Then the citv was oblio-ed to defend itself.
There were plenty of soldiers — foreign mercenaries as well as armed citizens — but food was scarce, for the avaricious Signoria understood matters too late to repeal the heavy duty upon grain. Now they brought in whatever could be pro- cured, completed the fortifications, exiled suspected citizens or imprisoned them, destroyed all houses outside the city, and prepared themselves for the worst. By pestilence, religious fanaticism, and the secret feeling; that at last there was an end to the long-cherished hope that help might come unexpectediy from outside, the inhabitants had risen to a degree of energy which displayed itself in the most obstinately disputed struggle.
If Florence had been besieged and at last taken by storm ,^ .its fate might perhaps have been more destructive to the lives of men and the works of art, but it would have seemed simple and natural, like some phenomenon of nature whose disastrous
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effects are fearful, but not criminal. But here shameful treason appeared, whose invisible nets were drawn around the victim more and more closely, till at last, powerless, it was delivered into the hands of the enemy. Treason had become so com- mon at that time that it is mentioned by Macchiavelli, without comment, as one of the customary state expedients, and that whenever it was practised the principle was never questioned. One pitied the victim, but the way and manner of the fall was not considered any thing extraordinary. Malatesta Baglioni's method of working is therefore no terrible exception, for which no one was prepared ; on the contrary, his treacherous course was from the beginning thouo'ht of and considered possible. The act in this case was fearful onl}" on account of the tragic scene which it caused.
Baglioni laid claim to Perugia. When, in the name of the king of France, he was employed as the first general for Florence, and undertook to carry on the war with his troops, the pope was so badly off that the whole affair seemed to Bag- lioni very advantageous in reference to his position in Perugia. But when, after the reconciliation between pope and emperor, other relations were entered into, Baglioni would have lost with the fall of Florence his city, his troops, — in short, every- thing that he possessed. It behooved him to guard his own interest in case of a fall, which was posssible, and very soon seen to be inevitable.
The pope met his endeavors half-way. Clement was in quite as critical a condition as his opponent. Not o\\\y was he obliged to pay with his own money the imperial troops now before Florence, but he had made additional ao-reements with the Prince of Orange, who commanded them ; he had promised him the hand of the young Catherine de Medici, who was then held prisoner by the rebels in Florence. When he did that, he knew very well that Orange intended to take Florence as a princedom for himself. It never entered the mind of a Medici to resign this city. He thought of ways and means to let the city be besieged by Orange, without allowing it to come into his power. It is now evident that Clement had an understandins: with Ba2:lioni that he should defend Florence
Raphael and Michael Angela. 181
against the prince, and see tliat no Spaniard entered the city, but at the same time he should prevent the Florentines from goinii' out to attack Orans^e, lest the attack mio-ht be successful, and destroy the besieging army. Thus the struggle would go on for a long time, the republican government would be divided, and finally, without being conquered, by capitulation the city would again fall into the hands of the pope. Then it would have been Baglioni who kept the city for liim. Bag- lioni was safe in either case. If help should come from outside, he M'ould appear to the city as a most fortunate defender, as a true savior in its extreme need ; if things should happen as the pope hoped and expected, then the Medici would be deeply indel)ted to him.
His problem was therefore a ver}^ complicated one, and it is difficult to tell in individual instances whether he acted a traitor's part or not ; onl}^ the result could show. The Florentines knew these things as well and better than we know them now. They observed Baglioni, and drew their conclusions. But the generaFs position was so favorable to him that at first it was not possible to be sure of the meaning of his acts. He always had some means at hand to explain every thing in the best w^ay to the government ; and when, finalh^ he was not able to do this, the time had passed when the city was in a condition to protect herself from him.
Michael Angelo was among those who instinctively saw through the false oame of the man. As a member of the highest military authorit}^ he saw more than many others. He felt that the retreat from Peruoia was the first treacherous step of Baglioni' s. Now Arezzo was suddenly given up. Bag- lioni threw himself and his troops into the city. A frightful insurrection of the citizens foHowed this turn in affiairs. Every thino- seemed lost ; a revolt of the lower classes in favor of the Medici was expected. Man}' citizens left the city, and among the fugitives was Michael Angelo.
He had stated his views positively before the assembled Sig- noria. They would not listen to him. He was even accused of fear. He went away angry. He saw Florence in the power of the traitor ; he saw the dangerous disposition of the people ;
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should the Medici enter victoriously it was all over with him. Overwhelmed with vexation and despair, he determined to do what many had done, — save himself, and leave his fatherland to the ruin into which it seemed blindly to plunge. In a few days, he thought, the Spaniards would be in the city, as in the year 1512, and the people would open their doors to them as l^efore.
With two friends, he mounted his horse. He carried with Mm 12,000 gold scudi, which had been melted down. No one was allowed to leave the citv. Thev refused him at the oate, but the guard recognized him : " It is Michael Angelo, one of the nine," They let him go l)y. He took the road towards the north, — towards the mountains, — and reached Venice, truly the only place where he could go.
Two sonnets on Dante which are among his poems seem to belong to this time ; perhaps he wrote them on the way, or in Venice, where he lived in retirement, and avoided tokens of distinction from the Doge and the whole nobility.
" Ungrateful fatherland," one of the sonnets ends, " weaver of thine own fate, to thy destruction ; for those who are the most perfect, thou preparest the heaviest sorrow. Among a thou- sand instances, I mention only this, that his shameful exile is without comparison, and that there never was a greater man than he upon the earth." ^
' In "William Hazlitt's translation (Bohn's Library) these two sonnets are versi- fied as follows : —
"He from the world into the blind abyss Descended, and beheld the realms of woe: Then to the seat of everlasting bliss, And God's own throne, led by his thought sublime. Alive he soared, and to our nether clime Bringing a steady light, to us below Kevealing the secrets of eternity. Ill did his thankless countrymen repay The fine desire ; that which the good and great So often from the insensate manj' meet. That evil guerdon did our Dante find. 6ut gladly would I, to be such as he, Por his hard exile and calamity Porego the happiest fortunes of mankind."
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He loved Dante. He knew by heart whole poems of his. Even in the time of Pope Leo, the Florentines wished to have within their walls the ashes of the great exile. They appealed to the pope, and Michael Angelo's name is found under the petition. " I, Michael Angelo, the sculptor, also petition your Holiness, and I pledge myself to execute a monument worthy of the divine poet, and to put it in the city in a place honor- able to him." Nothing came of all of this, because in Ravenna it was said that the ashes of Dante could not be found. Now, like Dante, he was himself an exile who wandered in a strange land. He seemed to compare his own situation with that of the great poet, and to console himself with the similarity of their fate.
Michael Angelo had been a few days in Venice when he re- pented of the step he had taken. He determined to return. Florence, which he had considered the pre}^ of its enemies, had from the pitiful confusion in which he left it l)een roused to heroic energy. The citizens had solemnly sworn to conquer or to die. No more treaty or compromise. A heart-rending document has been preserved to us, which represented the feeling of the people ; that is a dispatch of the Venetian am- bassador in Florence, which was sent to Venice shortly after Michael Angelo's flight. It is quite probable that it was shown to him there. Every word must have fallen on his heart like a burning tear. His only desire then was to be again in Flor- ence, and take part in the glory of his fatherland.
"How shall we speak of him, for our blind eyes Are all unequal to his dazzling rays? Easier it is to blame his enemies Than for the tongue to tell his lightest praise. For us did he explore the realms of woe ; And at his coming did high heaven expand Her lofty gates, to whom his native land Refused to open hers. Yet shalt thou know, Ungrateful city, in thine own despite, That thou hast fostered best thy Dante's fame ; For virtue, when oppressed, appears more bright, And brighter therefore shall liis glory be. Suffering, of all mankind, most wrongfully ; Since in the world there lives no greater name."
184 TJie Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
The dispatch siiys that the citizens had burned all the suburbs, destroyed all gardens outside the walls, procured food, raised money ; promised exiles, without exception, that they shotild have full possession of their former rights if they would return within a month, and six hundred had already returned. All the inhabitants were armed, and they had sworn rather to cut to pieces their own fathers than to give up their freedom on unworthy conditions. And then the ambassador tells of the reproaches which are uttered against his own government, that promised freely, but gave no help. Indeed, the Venetians had no thouoht of assisting Florence in her death-struirs'le. Michael Ano-elo knew this very well when he ao-ain left Venice. There could be no doubt in his mind as to the result of the war. The hope of aid from the republic and from France was a vain one. At that time there was not any one who offered defiance to the emperor ; he was even on his way to Bologna, where he met Clement, and where the Florentines tried for the last time to neootiate with him. Titian also left Venice at this time ; but while Michael Angelo went towards ruin, he turned to Bologna, where he took part in all the festivities and formed one of the celebrities who increased the splendor of the whole court. What a contrast !
We know how Michael Anijelo effected his return. Through the Florentine ambassador at Ferrara, he humbl}^ entreated per- mission again to enter Florence. The people there longed to have him back again ; but now that he begged to come, they put themselves on their dignity. Perhaps but for that the Signoria would have j'ielded some points on their side, but as it was they said he must endure a fine and loss of position. He did not oppose any thing, yielded to all, and was immediately reinstated in his old place.
Michael Angelo returned in November, 1529 ; in the next Auoust the citv fell. Malatesta's treachery of;ive the final blow. Till the last moment they had hoped for help from the king of France. They knew ver}^ well that his help would be almost a miracle ; and yet in spite of that, when in July, 1530, the news came that Francis I. had taken to Bordeaux the children who had been left at Madrid, thev rang the bells and
Raphael aiid Michael Angela. 185
held a joyous mass in order to thunk God for the favorable event. The citizens had no more wood to kindle festive fires. They began to eat the rats, when cats and dogs had been devoured. Oil and bran were not to be seen. Pestilence decimated the city. Eight thousand citizens and more than tv/ice as many foreign soldiers had perished. On the Gth of August the gates Avere opened to the victor. A capitula- tion was concluded on toleralily favorable terms, and in it a universal amnesty proclaimed. But there is not any con- tract which can secure protection to a conquered party. The Medici took revenge with bloodj^ hands. The leaders of the State, of whom they were suspicious, were executed. This was the fate intended for Michael Ano-elo. Search was made for him, but he kept concealed. According to the common tradi- tion, he was in the house of a friend ; according to a tradition pre- served in the Buonarotti family, he was in a tower of the Church San Niccolo, beyond the Arno. Here he waited until the first wrath of his former protector had passed away. The pope desired his death. Besides the fact that Michael Angelo was one of the most active rebels, his enemies now accused him of having suggested to the people that the palace of the Medici should be levelled to the o-round. That was evidentlv a lie. The anger of the pope cooled off. He reniQmbered what an artist Michael Anoelo was. At last he went so fiir as to promise him a full pardon and his former income if he would only come forward and continue the work on the family mon- ument.
Then Michael Angelo left his hiding-place, and quietly went back to his work. He gave himself no recreation ; he ate and drank but little, and had sleepless nights, and suffered from dizziness and headache. His friends feared that he would die if this went on any longer. '
A verse written by him at this time shows the gloomy con- dition of his mind. He had completed the figure of Night, — a woman's form half-sitting, half-ljing. We remember Homer's expression, " Sleep relaxed his limbs," when we look at this beautiful figure sunk in quiet slumber. The right leg is drawn up a little ; the arm rests upon it ; and the face, Avith the
186 The Journal of SpeAmlative PhiJosophy .
eyes shut, leans against the back of the closed hand. A braid of hair falls over the neck and shoulder down upon the l)reast. It is wholly nude.
According to the custom in Italy, people fastened all kinds of complimentar}^ poetry to the statue, when publicly exhibited. One of the verses reads : " Night, which thou seest sJeeping in such a charming position, was carved in this marble by an angel, (angelo). She is alive ; she merely sleeps ; Avaken her if thou dost not believe it, and she will speak." Michael Angelo let the work itself reply, and wrote below the wonderful verse which begins, " Grato me'e il sonno piu Vesser di sasso,'^ whose trans- lation into metre is not possible for me. " Well for me that I sleep ; better still that I am of stone, while dishonor and shame endure in the' land ; to see nothing, to hear nothing, is the happiest fate ; therefore wake me not, pray, but speak softly."
He dared to sa}^ this in public. He dared venture to refuse his assistance in buildino- the new citadel of Florence, when requested by the Grand Duke Alexander, whose vindictive dis- position he knew. True, he was again in Rome when he did it, but the arm of the prince could have reached him there ; for what he refused to Alexander he refused to the pope as well. Michael Anselo must have held a remarkable relation toward Clement. He worked with covered head in his pres- ence ; he refused oftener than was necessary to appear at court ; the pope dared not sit down in his presence, for the artist would immediately have done the same. And once, when without the wish or knowledoe of the artist he took a view of one of his works which was just begun, Michael Angelo remained on his scaffolding, and threw down, as if by chance, a board whose fall had nearly injured the pope. He could not endure to have outsiders look upon his works before they were done ; and that may be the reason of the anger which he felt when Bramante secretly opened to Raphael the room where he painted. When he carved the David, he had a board parti- tion made around the marble block, and the eyes of no one rested upon the work until he showed it to all the people. Vasari tells how he himself came to see him one night, and found him at work. By a contrivance of his own, Michael
Rapliael and Michael Angelo. 187
Aniielo managed to fasten a light into the top of his hat, and worked on in that way. When Vasari entered, and naturally wished to see upon what the artist, who was at that time a famous master, was at work, suddenly Michael Angelo put out the light, and went on speaking in the dark.
The furious passion into which he fell at times, as into a tit of madness, inliuenced to a great extent his outwar(^ life, fie always tried, however, to make amends for the wrong he did at such times, and he continually encountered men who would not let themselves })e put out by his actions. Those were times when human life was held cheaper than now. Peo- ple would rather be armed with sword and dagger than have pistols or a rifle in their hands, and very often this means of self-defence was necessary. Every walk through the dark streets of a citv durino; the niii'ht mioht give rise to a quarrel ; every journey was a little campaign on one's own account, undertaken against an unexpected attack. The wars, great and small, filled the country with people whose business was to carry arms. The citizens defended their walls and their rights ; merchants resisted by force of arms all highwaymen, or on the sea all attacks from pirates ; for at that time an incessant conflict was waged alon<r the coasts of the Mediterranean. So, every one shaped his own life in unrestrained freedom ; there was no established conventionality, in accordance with which the lives of thousands or hundreds of thousands were all spent in the same routine, Avhile only the chief among them was obliged to do the planning.
In Cellini's life we have a most vivid account of how things were at that time; Vasari's "Lives of the Painters" also shows a great number of adventurous expeditions. Every interest was touched ; people gave way to every feeling ; every passion easily found expression ; and so, taken in reference to the whole, Michael Angelo's character stands less alone in its reckless disregard of circumstances. Still it was fortunate for him that he met princes who knew how to appreciate the man. Beneath the hardness of his manners lay the most tender gen- tleness. When he was going to Bologna in 1506, to be recon- ciled to the pope, Piero Soderini, who from 1502 to 1512 ruled
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the city as Gonfalonier, gave him a letter, in which he wrote : " If one is fair-spoken to him, one can gain every thing from him ; one must show love for him, and prove one's good will, and he will accomplish things which will fill the minds of all those who see him, with astonishment." At that time Michael Angelo was thirty-two years old ; how much more sensitive must he have been now, when a man of fifty-six. People knew that with him there was no compromise, and were satis- fied with whatever he did, so as not to lose his wonderful art. In order to show what was ascribed to him, I will tell one of those anecdotes about whose value I have already spoken. When he was modelling a Christ, in his enthusiasm about the work, he insisted upon having his model nailed to the cross, that he might better perceive the expression of pain. That would never have been attributed to Raphael, But then his poems show that the tenderness, the deep sensitiveness of his spirit were no fable. They sprang from his soul as the snow-drops grow under the snow which conceals, while it protects from the frost. His pride and his ambition were only the expression of his aspiration to be worthy of himself. Raphael strove for the cardinal's hat as a child reaches out for o-okl and diamonds : but I believe Clement would have been cautious about oflerino- this honor to Michael Angelo, who, perhaps, would not have refused it in the gentlest way. There are some natures which are great on account of what the}^ attain ; others, through what they refuse. One could not approach him with presents ; he would not give up the least part of his independence. Only in rare cases did he make an exception. Once, when he liad admired a splendid Arabian horse belonging to the Cardinal Hippolytus de Medici, and it was sent to him as a present, he conquered his objection and accepted it.
Being reconciled to the pope, he went to Rome, made one visit to Florence afterwards, and then never went there again. The next letter for the vear 1532 is dated at Rome, and written to Sebastian del Piombo, the famous painter, who worked as well with his left as his right hand, and for w^lioni, before this time, he had made a sketch for a picture that would rival some of Raphael's work. The letter speaks al)Out the monument of
Raphael and Michael Angela. 189
Pope Julias, of money matters, and of blocks of marble. The next, without date, sets forth in a comprehensive account every thino" that Michael Ano;elo had to suft'er durino- the whole affair. It is a long piece of writing, and the original, as we have it, is not in the author's hand ; indeed, according to Dr. Guhl's opinion, in which other authorities agree, it was not even composed by him. According to Vasari's and Condivi's statements, it must have been foro-ed. Guhl asks if it is at all probable that, at the time when Michael Angelo was wholly enoTossed with his last misfortune — the accusation of dis- honesty — he would all at once write a full account of what had taken place long before. The letter itself, indeed, is of mod- erate length, but the copious postscript reaches l)ack into past times, and contains the strongest expressions about the plottings which sought from the very beginning to hinder his progress. It ends with the remark about Raphael already quoted : that w^iatever Raphael knew about architecture he had learned from him.
This endino- seems too severe to even Herr von Neumont, whom we must thank for making the letter known in Germany.^ I think that these words could have come from no one except Michael Angelo.
Pope Clement died in 1534. Paul III., his successor, adopted all his projects in art, as Clement had carried on those of Leo X., and Leo those of Pope Julius. Still the comple- tion of the monum.ent was far in the distance. Trouble of all kinds befel the artist as a consequence of the work. Clement died, there was a new pope, and Michael Angelo's enemies hoped that they could influence him against the artist. Michael Ano-elo thinks it is necessary for his new master to know that while he is worried with the burden of this affair unexplained, he cannot paint quietly. At that time he was working oil his great picture of the Last Judgment.
He has finished his letter, and has expressed himself as briefly as possible, when the thought comes over him of the
1 He published it in 1834, in a little pamphlet which appeared at Cotta. The original is printed in Harford's book. Herr von Neumont defends its genuineness.
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long- list of grievances which he has suffered unjustly. The pope must understand the whole thing from the beginning. He writes a postscript, tries very hard to represent every thing clearly and in proper order, and getting excited with the thought of these past events, he grows more and more angry, till at last, Avith bold words, he says that the jealousy of Raphael and Bra- mante was the cause of all the trouble, and declares openly that what Raphael knew of architecture he owed to him and no one else. He could sa}^ that then, since on the one hand Raphael's fame as a painter stood firm, while on the other hand it was long ago acknowledged that the alterations which he made to Bramante's plans of St. Peter's were not any improvement.
If Michael Angelo wrote the letter, it is not certain that he sent it off. It may have been found among his papers and copied. He may have shown it to some one, who copied it without his knowledge, while he himself destroyed the original. If it came from the pen of a partisan, who wished by this to vindicate Michael Angelo, he would have had tact and reserve enough not to have forged such expressions ; for in the opinion of mankind generally they must tend to the injury of the great master, rather than be a help to his cause.
The trouble was not at all ended by this letter ; it con- tinued just the same, and more letters were written about it. These, together with the explanations of the editor, form the successive acts of a suit, which one follows with eagerness into its minutest details. This suit embittered the life of the artist, and increased the sadness which the fate of his native city had brought upon him. Added to this, his father, wlio had lived to an old a^e, died at this time, and his brother followed in the same year, leaving children to be cared for. And, besides, he had a misunderstanding with Sebastian del Pionil)o, his old friend, to whom he was never again reconciled. The cause of their difference shows how excited Michael Angelo was, and how he was preparing for himself the fate of so manv j>reat men constituted like him, — that of enterino; upon a doubting, gloomy old age, alone, and without friends.
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THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION.
[a paraphrase of dr. KARL ROSENKRANZ'S " PEDAGOGICS AS A SYSTEM," WITH ADDITIONAL REFLECTIONS. BY ANNA C. BRACKETT.]
SECOND PART.
The Special Ele^nenls of Education.
§ 51, Education is the development of the theoretical and practical Reason which is inliorn in the liunKin being. Its end is to be accomplished by the labor which transforms a condition, existent at first only as an ideal, into a fixed habit, and changes the natural individuality into a glorified humanity. When the youth stands, so to speak, on his own feet, he is emancipated from education, and education then finds its limit. The special elements which may be said to make up education are the life, the cognition, and the Avill of man. Without the first, the real nature of the soul can never be made really to appear ; without cognition, he can have no gen- uine will — i.e., one of which he is conscious; and without will, no self-assurance, either of life or of cognition. It must not be forgotten that these three so-called elements are not to be held apart in the active Avork of education ; for they are insep- arable and continually interwoven the one with the other. But none the less do they determine their respective consequences, and sometimes one, sometimes another has the supremacy. In infancy, up to the fifth or sixth year, the physical develop- ment, or mere living, is the main consideration ; the next period, that of childhood, is the time of acquiring knowledge, in which the child takes possession of the theory of the AV\)rld as it is handed down — a tradition of the past, such as man has made it through his experience and insight ; and finally, the period of youth must pave the way to a practical activity, the character of which the self-determination of the will must decide.
§ 52. We may, then, divide the elements of Pedagogics into
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three sections: (Ij the physical, (2) the intellectual, (3) the practical. (The words " orthobiotics," "didactics," and " pragmatics" might be used to characterize them.)
Esthetic training is only an element of the intellectual, as social, moral, and religious training are elements of the practical. But because these latter elements relate to exter- nal things (affairs of the world), the name pragmatics, is appro- priate. In so far as education touches on the principles which underlie ethics, politics, and religion, it concurs with those sciences, but it is distinguished from them in the capacity which it imparts for solving the problems presented by the others.
The scientific order of topics must be established through the fact that the earlier, as the more abstract, constitute the con- dition of their presupposed end and aim, and the later because the more concrete constitute the ground of the former, and consequently their final cause, or the end for which they exist ; just as in human beings, life in the order of time comes before cognition, and cognition before will, although life really pre- supposes cognition, and cognition will.
FIRST DIVISION.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION, OR ORTHOBIOTICS.
§ 53. Only when we rightly comprehend the process of life may we know how to live aright. Life, the " circle of eternal change," is constantly transforming the inorganic into the oi'o-anic, and after using it, returnino; it ao;ain to the realm of the inoro-anic. Whatever it does not assimilate of that which it has taken in simply as a stimulant, and whatever has become dead, it separates from itself and rejects. The organism is in perfect health when it accomplishes this double task of or- oanizino- and disoroanizino-. On the comprehension of this single fact all laws of physical health or of hygiene are based. This idea of the essence of life is expressed by Goethe in his Faust, where he sees the golden buckets perpetually rising
The Science of Education. 193
and sinking.^ When the equilibruini of the upward and down- ward motion is disturbed, we have disease. When the motion ceases we have death, in which the whole organism becomes inoro-anic, and the " dust returns to dust."
§ 54. It follows from this that not only in the organism as a whole, but in every organ, and every part of every organ, this restless change of the inorganic to the organic is going on. Every cell has its own history, and this history is only the same as that of the whole of which it forms a part. Activity is then not inimical to the organism, but is the appointed means by which the progressive and retrogressive metamor- phoses must be carried out. In order that the process may go on harmoniously, or, in other words, that the body may be healthy, the whole organism, and every part of it in its own way, must have its period of producti\'^ activity and then also its period of rest in which it finds renewal of strength for another period of activity. Thus we have waking and sleep, inspiration and expiration of air. Periodicity is the law of life. When we understand the relative antagonism (their stage of tension) of the different organs, and their cycles of activity, we shall hold the secret of the constant self-renewal of life. This thought finds expression in the old fairy stories of " The Search after the Fountain of Youth." And the figure of the fountain, with its rising; and fallins; waters, doubtless finds its origin in the dim comprehension of the endless double move- ment, or periodicity of life.
§ 55. When to any organ, or to the whole organism, not suf- ficient time is allowed for it to withdraw into itself and to repair waste, we are conscious of fatigue. While the other organs all rest, liowever, one special organ may, as if sep- arated from them, sustain a long-continued effort of activity even to the point of fatigue,, without injury — as, e.g., the lungs in talking while all the other members are at rest. But, on the other hand, it is not well to talk and run at the same time.
1 Faust; Part I., Scene I. "How all weaves itself into the Whole! Each works and lives in the other ! How the heavenly influences ascend and descend, and reach each other the golden buckets ! "
XIV— 13
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The idea that the body may be preserved in a healthy state longer by sparing it — i.e., by inactivity — is an error wiiich springs from a false and mechanical conception of life. It is just as foolish to imagine that health depends on the abundance and excellence of food, for without the power of assimilating the food taken, nourishment of whatever kind does more harm than good ; all real strength develops from activity alone.
§ 58. Physical education, according as it relates to the re- pairing, the muscular, or the emotional activities, is divided into (1) diatetics, (2) gymnastics, (3) sexual education. In the direct activity of life these all interact with each other, but for our purposes we are obliged to speak of them as if they worked independently. Moreover, in the development of the human being, they come into maturity of development in a certain order: nutrition, muscular arowth, sexual ma- turity. But Pedagogics can treat of these only as they are found in the infant, the child, and the youth; for with the arrival of mature life, education is over.
First Chapter.
Diatetics.
§ 57. By diatetics we mean the art of repairing the constant w^aste of the system, and, in childhood, of also building it up to its full form and size. Since in reality each organism has its own way of doing this, the diatetical practice must vary somewhat with sex, age, temperament, occupation, and cir- cumstances. The science of Pedagogics has then, in this de- partment, only to enunciate general principles. If we go into details, we fall into triviality. Nothing can be of more impor- tance for the whole life than the way in which the phvsical education is managed in the very first stages of development. So generally is this fact accepted, that almost every nation has its own distinct system, which has been careful!}^ elaborated. Many of these systems, no doubt, are characterized by gross errors, and widely differ as to time, place, and character, and yet tliey all have a justification for their peculiar form.
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§ 58. The best food for the infant in the first months of its life is its mother's milk. The emph)vment of another nurse^ if a general custom, as in France, is highly objectionable, since with the milk the child is likely to imbibe to some ex- tent his physical and ethical nature. The milk of an animal can never supply the place to a child of that of its own mother. In Walter Scott's story of The Fair Maid of Perth, Eachim is represented as timorous by nature, haviug been nourished by a white doe after the death of his mother,
§ 59. When the teeth make their appearance, it is a sign that the child is ready for solid food ; and yet, till the second teeth appear, light, half-solid food and vegetables should constitute the principal part of the diet.
§ 60. When the second teeth have come, then the organism demands both vegetable and animal food. Too much meat is,, doubtless, harmful. But it is an error to suppose that man was intended to eat vegetables alone, and that, as some have said, the adoption of animal food is a sign of his degeneracy.
The Hindoos, who live principally on a vegetable diet, are not at all, as has been asserted, a mild and gentle race. A glance into their stories, especially their erotic poetry, proves them to be quite as passionate as any other people.
§ (il. Man is an omnivorous being. Children have, there- fore, a natural desire to taste of every thing. With them, eat- ing and drinkiug have still a poetic side, and there is a pleas- ure in them which is not wholly the mere pleasure of taste. Their proclivity to taste of everything should not, therefore, be harshly censured, unless it is associated with disobedience, or pursued in a clandestine manner, or when it betrays cun- nino; and o-reediness.
§ 62. Children need much sleep, because they are growing and changing so fast. In later years, waking and sleeping must be regulated, and yet not too exactly.
§ 63. The clothing of children should follow the form of the body, and should be large enough to give them free room for the unfettered movement of every limb in play.
The Germans do more rationally for children in the matter of sleep and of dress than in that of food, which they often
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make too rich, and accompany with cofi'ee, tea, etc. The clothing should be not only suitable in shape and size, it must also be made of simple and inexpensive material, so that the child may not be hampered in his play by the constant anxiety that a spot or a rent may cause fault to be found with him. If we foster in the child's mind too much thought about his clothes, we tend to produce either a narrow-mindedness, which treats affairs of the moment with too much respect and con- cerns itself with little things, or an empty vanity. Vanity is often produced by dressing children in a maimer that attracts attention. (No one can fail to remark the peculiar healthful gayety of German children, and to contrast it with the different appearance of American cliildrcn. It is undoubt- edly true that the climate has much to do with this result, but it is also true that we may learn much from that nation in our way of treating children. Already we import their children's story-books, to the infinite delight of the little ones, and copies of their children's ])ictures are appropriated constantly by our children's magazines and picture-books. It is to be greatly desired that we should adopt the very sensible custom which prevails in Gernumy, of giving to each child its own lit- tle bed to sleep in, no matter how many ma}^ be required ; and, in general, we shall not go far astray if we follow the Germans in their treatment of their happy children.)
§ 64. Cleanliness is a virtue to which children should be trained, not only for the sake of their physical health, but also because it has a decided moral inlluence. Cleanliness will not have things deprived of their distinctive and individual char- acter, and become again a part of original chaos. It is only a form of order which remands all thino-s, dirt included, to their own places, and will not endure to have things mixed and confused. All adaptation in dress comes from this same prin- ciple. When ever}^ thing is in its proper place, all dressing will be suitable to the occasion and to the wearer, and the era of good taste in dress will have come. Dirt itself, as Lord Palmerston so wittily said, is nothing but " matter out of place." Cleanliness would hold every individual thing strictly to its differences from other thino-s, and for the reason that it
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makes pure air, cleanliness of his own body, of his clothing, and of all his surroundings really necessary to mau, it develops in him the feeling for the proper limitations of all existent things. (Emerson says : " Therefore is space and therefore is time, that men may know that things are not huddled and lumped, but sundered and divisible." He might have said, " Therefore is cleanliness.")
Second Chapter.
Gymnastics.
§ 65. Gymnastics is the art of cultivating in a rational manner the muscular system. The activity of the voluntary muscles, which are under the control of the brain, in dis- tinction from the involuntar}^, which are under the control of the spinal cord, renders [)ossible the connection of man with the external world, and acts in a reflex manner back upon the involuntary or automatic muscles for the purposes of repair and sensation. Because the activity of muscle-tibre consists in the change from contraction to expansion, and the reverse, gymnastics must use a constant change of movements which shall not only make tense, but relax the muscles that are to be exercised.
§ ^(i. The gymnastic art among any people will alwaj'S bear a certain relation to its art of war. So Ions; as fiohtino- consists mainly of personal, hand-to-hand encounters of two combatants, so long will gymnastics turn its chief effort towards the development of the greatest possible amount of individual strength and dexterity. But after the invention of fire-arms of long ranoe has chano:ed the whole idea of war, the individual becomes only one member of a body^ the army, the division, or the regiment, and emerges from this position into his individuality again only occasionally, as in sharpshooting, in the onset, or in the retreat. Modern gymnastics, as an art, can never be the same as the ancient art, for this very reason : that because of the loss of the individual man in the sreneral mass of combatants, the matter
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of personal bravery is not of so mnch importance as formerly. The same essential difference between ancient and modern gymnastics, would result from the subjective, or internal character of the modern spirit. It is impossible for us, in modern times, to devote so much thought to the care of the T:)ody and to the reverential admiration of its beauty as did the Greeks.
The Turners' Unions and Turners' Halls in Germany be- longed to the period of intense political enthusiasm in the German youth, and had a political significance. Now they have comeback again to their place as an instrument of educa- tion, and seem in great cities to be of much importance. In mountainous countries, and in country life generally, a definite gymnastic drill is of much less importance, for much and varied exercise is of necessity a constant part of the daily life of every one.
The constant opportunity and the impulse to recreation helps in the same direction. In cities, on the contrary, there is not free space enough either in houses or yards for children to romp to their heart's and body's content. For this reason a gymnasium is here useful, so that they may have compan- ionship in their plays. For girls this exercise is less necessary. Dancing may take its place, and systematic exercise should be used only where there is a tendency to some Aveakness or de- formity. They are not to become Amazons. On the other hand, boys need the feeling of comradeship. It is true they find this in some measure in school, but they are not there perfectly on an equality, because the standing is determined to some extent by his intellectual abilit3^ The academic youth cannot hope to win any great preeminence in the gymnastic hall, and running, climbing, leaping, and lifting do not inter- est him very much as he grows older. H-e takes a far more lively interest in exercises which have a military character. In Germany the gymnastic art is very closely united with the art of war.
(The German idea of a woman's whole duty — to knit, to sew, and to obey implicitly — is perhaps accountable for what Eosenkranz here says of exercise as regards girls. We, how-
Jhe Science of Education. 199
ever, who know that the most frequent direct cause of debility and suffering in our 3'oung women is simply and solely a want of muscular strength, may be pardoned for dissenting from his opinion, and for suggesting that dancing is not a sufficient equivalent for the more violent games of their brothers. We do not fear to render them Amazons by giving them more genuine and systematic exercise, both physically and intel- lectually. )
§ 67. The main idea of gymnastics, and indeed of all exer- cise, is to give the mind control over its natural impulses, to make it master of the body which it inhabits, and of itself. Strenijth and dexterity must combine to o:ive us a sense of mastership. Strength by itself produces the athelete, dexterity by itself the acrobat. Pedagogics must avoid both these extremes. Neither must it l)ase its teaching of gym- nastics on the idea of utility — as, e. g., that man might save his life by swimming, should he fall into the water, and hence swimmino; should be tauiiht, etc.
The main thought must be always to enable the soul to take full and perfect possession of the organism, so as not to have the body form a limit or fetter to its action in its dealings with the external world. We are to give it a perfect instru- ment in the body, in so far as our care may do so. Then we are to teach it to use that instrument, and exercise it in that use till it is complete master thereof.
( What is said about the impropriety of making athletes and acro])ats may with justice be also applied to what is called *' vocal gymnastics;" whence it comes that we have too often vocal athletes and acrobats in our graduates, and few readers who can read at sight, without difficulty or hesitation, and with appreciation or enjoyment, one page of good English.) .
§ 68. There are all grades of gymnastic exercises, from the simple to the most complex, constituting a system. At ffrst sight, there seems to be so much arbitrariness in these things that it is always very satisfactory to the mind to detect some rational system in them. Thus we have movements (a) of the lower extremities, (6) of the upper, (c) of the
200 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
whole body, with corresponding movements, alternately, of the upper and of the lower extremities. We thus have leg, arm, and trunk movements.
§ 69. (1) The first set of movements, those of the legs and feet, are of prime importance, because upon them depends the carriage of the whole body. They are (a) walking, {b) run- ning, (c) leaping; and each of these, also, may have varieties. We may have high and low leaping, and running may be distinguished as to whether it is to be a short and rapid, or a slow and long-continued movement. We may also walk on stilts, or run on skates. We may leap with a pole, or with- out one. Dancing is only an artistic and graceful combina- tion of these movements.
§ 70. (2) The second set comprises the arm movements, which are about the same as the preceding, being {a) lifting, (h) swinging; (c) throwing. The use of horizontal poles and bars, as well as climbing and dragging, belong to lifting. Under throwing, come quoit and ball-playing and bowling. These movements are distinguished from each other not only quantitatively, but qualitatively ; as, for instance, running is not merel}^ rapid walking ; it is a different kind of movement from walking, as the position of the extended and contracted muscles is different.
§ 71. (3) The third set of exercises, those of the trunk, differ from the other two, which should precede it, in that they bring the body into contact with an object in itself capable of active resistance, which it has to subdue. This object may be an element (water), an animal, or a human being ; and thus we have (rt) swimming, (h) riding, (c) fighting in single combat. In swimming we have the elastic fluid, water, to overcome by means of arm and leg movements. This may be made very difficult by a strong current, or by rough Avater, and yet we always have here to strive against an inanimate object. On the contrary, in horseback riding we have to deal with something that has a self of its own, and the contest challenges not our strength alone, but also our skill and courage. The motion is therefore very complex, and the rider must be able to exercise either or all of these qualities at need. But his
The Science of Education. 201
attention must not be wholly given to his horse, for he has to observe also the road, and indeed every thing around him. One of the o;i"eatest advanta2:es of horseback ridino; to the over- worked student or the business man lies doubtlessly in the mental effort. It is impossible for him to go on revolving in his mind the problems or the thoughts which have so wearied or perplexed him. His whole attention is incessantly de- manded for the management of his horse, for the observation of the road, which changes its character with every step, and with the objects, far or near, which are likely to attract the attention of the animal he rides. Much good, doubtless, results from the exercise of the muscles of the trunk, which are not in any other motion called into such active play, but much also from the unavoidable distraction of the mind from the ordinary routine of thought, which is the thing most needed. When the object which we are to subdue, instead of being an animal, is a man like ourselves, as in single combat, we have exercise both of body and mind pushed to its highest power. We have then to oppose an intelligence which is equal to our own, and no lono^er the intellio-ence of an unreasonino; animal. Sinsle com- bat is the truly chivalrous exercise ; and this also, as in the old chivalry time, may be combined with horsemanship.
In single combat we find also a qualitative distinction, and this of three kinds: (a) boxing and wrestling, (h) fighting with canes or clubs, and (c) rapier and sword fencing. The Greeks carried wrestling to its highest pitch of excellence. Amono; the British, a nation of sailors, boxing is still retained as a national custom. Fencins; with a cane or stick is much in use amono; the French artisan class. The cane is a sort of refined club. When the sword or rapier makes its appearance, we come to mortal combat. The southern European excels in the use of the rapier; the Germans in that of the sword. The appearance of the pistol marks the degeneracy of the art of single combat, as it makes the weak man equal to the strono;, and there is therefore no more incentive to train the body to strength in order to overcome an enemy. (The trained intelligence, the quick eye, the steady hand, the wary thought to perceive and to take advantage of an opportunity — these
202 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
are the qualities which the invention of gunpowder set up above strength and brute force. The Greek nation, and we may say Greek mythology and art, would have been impos- sible with gunpowder ; the American nation impossible with- out it. )
Third Chapter. Sexual Education.
fThis chapter is designed for parents rather than for teachers, and is hence not paraphrased here. A few observations are, however, in place.] Great care is necessary at the period of youth that a rational system of food and exercise be main- tained. But the ijeneral fault is in the omission of this care in preceding years. One cannot neglect due precautions for many years, and then hope to repair the damage caused, by ex- treme care for one or two years.
Special care is necessary that the brain be not overworked in early years, and a morbid excitation of the whole nervous system therebj^ induced. We desire to repress any tendency to the rapid development of the nervous system. Above all, is the reading of the child to be carefully watched and guarded. Nothins; can be worse food for a child than what are
called sensational romances. That the reading of such tends to enfeeble and enervate the whole thinking power is a fact which properly belongs to the intellectual side of our question not yet reached, and uniy be here merely mentioned. But the effect on the phj^sical condition of the youth, of such carelessly written sensational stories, mostly of the French type, and full of sensuous, if not sensual suggestions, is a point not often enough considered. The teacher cannot, perhaps, except indi- rectly, prevent the reading of such trash at home. But every influence which he can brino; to bear towards the formation of a purer and more correct taste, he should never omit. Where there is a public library in the town, he should make himself acquainted with its contents, and give the children direct help in their selection of books.
The Science of Education. 203
This is an external means. But he should never forget that every iufluence which he can bring to bear in his daily work to make science pleasant and attractive, and every lesson which he gives in tlie use of pure, correct English, free from exao-o-eration, from slano- and from mannerism, o;oes far to render such miserable and pernicious trash distasteful even to the child himself.
Every example of thorough work, every pleasure that comes from the solving of a problem or the acquisition of a new fact, is so much fortification against the advances of the enemy ; while all shallow half work, all pretence or show tend to create an appetite in the child's mind which shall demand such food.
The true teacher should always have in his mind these far- away and subtle effects of his teaching ; not present good or pleasure either for himself or his pupil, but the far-off good — the distant development. That idea would free him from the notion, too common in our day, that the success or failure of his efforts is to be tested b}^ any adroitly contrived system of examinations ; or still worse, exhibitions. His success can alone be tested by the future lives of his pupils — by their love for, or dislike of, new knowledge. His success will be marked by their active growth through all their lives ; his fail- ure, by their early arrested development.
204 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
AES POETIC A ET HUMANA.
BY JOHN ALBEE.
Dost thou, beloved, see
That even poesy
Hath rites like thine and mine? Dost thou its harmonies Observe, and how there lies
Along the builded line
The touch, the frequent ties
The muses love to twine?
See, at the very end The loving words must blend In cording rhymes, and kiss. Their meaning not to miss, Ere they onward flow Some other mood to show.
So do our hearts rehearse, In earnest or in play.
The self-same pulse like verse, And lips seal what lips say.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAMS.
BY JULIA H, GULLIVER.
Among the most perplexing, and at the same time the most inter- esting problems of Psychology are those connected with the state of the mind in sleep.
For many centuries the phenomena of the mind, as they appear in our waking state have been the battle-ground of the antagonistic schools. The scholarly research and accnrate thinking even of the present day have been insufficient to settle these questions be3'ond dispute. The difficulties which attend the analysis of our waking states must needs be great, inasmuch as the solution of them has so divided and perplexed the scholarly world. But in the psychology of sleep all these difficulties are immensely increased. There seems
The Psycliologi/ of Dreains. 205
to be little in common between the vigorous muscular movements, the clear perception, the logical reasoning of the day, and the lassi- tude, the wild visions, the strange vagaries of the niglit. All reason- ing from analogy between the two states might, therefore, appear to be out of the question.
If, however, the phenomena of dreams are absolutely sui generis, we find ourselves in still greater perplexity. Instead of the direct testimon}' of consciousness, we must depend for our data upon the memory — a treacherous guide, even in our waking states, while its reports from the dream-world are often so vague and untrustwortliy as to be wellnigh useless.
In f iill view of these difficulties, we must proceed with unusual care in our inductive processes, and draw sharply the line between the known and the conjectural.
For a large proportion of the embarrassments under whicli philoso- pliy is constantly laboring, a careless use of language is responsible. It will therefore be to our advantage to discover what men com- monly mean when they talk about sleep and dreams, and by careful investigation to determine how far these terms are used correctly and how far erroneousl}'. Referring to Webster, we find sleep defined as "a natural and healthy, but temporary and periodical suspension of the functions of the organs of sense, as well as those of the volun- tary and rational soul ; that state of the animal in which the senses are more or less unaffected by external objects, and the fancy or fantasy only is active." Dreams, according to the same authority, are " the states or acts of the soul during sleep." The definition of dreams is doubtless true in a scientific, as well as a practical point of view. Whether or no, the definition of sleep is equally correct, future discussion will tend to show. •
However dissimilar the two states of wakefulness and sleep may appear to be at first sight, there are some facts in general psychology which are suggestive and pertinent to our subject.
First. Psychology and physiology are closely linked. Mind and body act and react on each other. In its ordinary action, we know nothing of the soul save in connection with a material organism.
Second. In rare cases, such as the trance and mesmeric sleep, the mind seems to be freed, to a certain degree, from its bodily restraints, and to act according to independent laws of its own.
Third. It is generally true that greater energy is manifested by one faculty than by another. The quantum of intellectual activity at any given time is seldom equally distributed among all the mental
20(5 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
powers. If undue prominence is given to any one of tlie functions of the mind, the others suffer in consequence. An excessive!}' re- tentive memory checks the inventive powers. A good imitator is rarely' a good originator. A too vivid imagination, a strong emotion, renders impossible cool judgment and logical reasoning.
Besides these general preliminary statements, there are some well- established facts in regard to sleep itself, and also dreams, which deserve careful attention. In sleep we know, —
First. That the senses do not fall to sleep simultaneously, but one after the other ; nor are they always completely dormant. Often they are as sensitive as during wakefulness. The senses of hearing and touch are especially excitable.
Second. We know that the blood tends to leave the brain, to stim- ulate the digestive organs. As a consequence, the activity of the brain is diminished, while the process of digestion is carried on with increased rapidity and intensity. ^^ Sornnus, labor visceribus," said Hippocrates, and his words are substantiated by modern science. Respecting dreams we may assert, —
First. That the sources of dreams are many, and that they vary at different times and with different individuals. These exciting causes may be divided into two general classes, namely, physical and men- tal. Physical stimulations come from the organs of sense, the internal bodily organs, and the encephalic region. Mental stimula- tions arise in the mind itself. These are often to be traced to ideas lately i-eceived, or to those recalled from the past ; but sometimes appear to be originated b}- the mind while in sleep.
Second. That dreams are characterized by a lack of voluntary at- tention, and oftentimes by a predominating influence of memory and imagination.
Let us now consider, a little more in detail, what is involved in these preliminary statements, in order to discover what conclusions we are justified in deducing from them. We have found tliat the sleep of the sense-organs is often incomplete, and that ihe impres- sions made upon them are frequently the causes of dreams. That these impressions are a more fruitful source of dreams than is gen- erally supposed, many illustrations go to prove.
It will be needful to adduce only enough facts to show tliat all the senses may be active in sleep, although not necessarih' at the same time, or in the same degree. M. Maury, whose experiments have thrown much light on the subject, caused himself to be tickled, while asleep, on the lips and inside of the nostrils. He dreamed
The Psychology of Dreams. 207
that a mask of pitch was appHed to his face, and then roughly torn off, taking with it the skin of his Ups and nose.
A pair of tweezers was held at a little distance from his ear, and struck with a pair of scissors. He dreamed he heard the ringing of bells.
A bottle of eau de Cologne was held to his nose. He dreamed that he was in a perfumer's shop.
Dr. Hammond tells of a young lady who had contracted the habit of going to sleep with her thumb in her mouth. One night she tried covering the offending thumb with extract of aloes, but in the morning woke to find it in her mouth, as usual. During the night, however, she had dreamed that she was in a ship of wormwood, where it was impossible to breathe without tasting the bitterness. Not only are the senses of touch, hearing, smell, and taste some- times active in sleep, but even the sense of sight is not altogether dormant. Another case is related by Dr. Hammond, where a fire on the hearth, kindling into a bright blaze, caused a sleeper to suppose that he was in heaven, and was dazzled by -the brilliancy of every thing about him.
In somnambulism the variations of sense-activity are most re- markable. The sense of touch is often unnaturally sensitive. Maine de Biran mentions a somnambulist who distinguished different kinds of money simply by feeling of them. Another somnambulist, named Negretti, a servant, who frequently rose in his sleep, set the table, and performed other duties, was unable to discern any thing by the sense of taste. Cabbage, seasoned with strong pepper, was eaten by him with as much apparent relish as the most delicately pre- pared salad.
Whatever may be the effect of sleep on the external organs, the workings of the vital organs continue without interruption, and even, as we have alread}' remarked, with an intensified activity. Here we have an unfailing source of dream material. In the beating of the heart, in the rising and falling of the lungs, in the performance of the other vital functions, is to be found the best example which nature gives of motion that never ceases. Those who have drained the life- blood dry in the restless pursuit of perpetual motion, have thus un- wittingly destroj-ed the only approximation to it which the}' could hope to discover. Da}' and night, silently and unceasingly, these processes go on, and will go on till death. One conclusion, then, inevitably follows from these considerations, namely, that for the body perfect sleep is impossible. We have only to keep in remem-
208 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
brance the fact, laid down as one of our fundamental principles, in reo-ard to the close correlation which subsists between the mental and physical forces, to be brought to another and far more important con- clusion : that these incessant movements of the internal organs make perfect sleep fully as impossible for the mind as for the body. As Leibnitz remarks, "a state without thought in the soul, and an ab- solute repose in the body, seem to me equally contrary to nature, and without example in the world. I hold, likewise, that something passes in the soul which corresponds to the circulation of the blood and to all the movements of the internal organs." To the same purport Lemoine saysc^ '*A11 principal writers agree that certain movements of the internal organs, imperceptible during wakefulness, become perceptible in the midst of the silence of the outside world, and, at each instance, new disturbances come to furnish materials for new visions." Or, to quote Maine de Biran : " Because each of these impressions [received immediately from the internal organs] can move S3'mpatheticall3^ the brain, and awake an image propor- tional to the affection, one sees that all sleep must be filled with dreams."
That the mind is incessantly active in sleep is also maintained by Hamilton, Kailt, Jouffroy, and other eminent philosophers.
There are those who believe that dreams are confined to the moments of transition from wakefulness to deep sleep, and con- versely ; and that deep sleep is dreamless. The oul^^ reason of any weight given for this opinion is that dreams of deep sleep are not remembered. That we have no remembrance of dreams, however, is no evidence that we have not dreamed. Witness the somnambu- list, the most vivid of dreamers, who is utterly unconscious, on awak- ening, of what has passed in his sleep. Witness also the mutterings and tossings of a person who evidently dreams, yet has no recollec- tion of his dream. If we are still in doubt, let us endeavor at the end of a day to recall every thought which has passed through our minds during the da}'. If this is impossible, how absurd is it to sup- pose that the memory can and ought to retain all the fleeting fancies of our dreams. Forgetf ulness of dreams, therefore, is no proof that the}' have not occurred.
When we come to consider that, beside ceaseless ph3-sical excita- tions, there are many and effective causes of mental action to be
1 See Du Sommeil, by Albert Lemoine. To this essaj' a large indebtedness is acknowledged throughout the present discussion.
The PsycJiologi/ of Dreams. 209
found in the mind's own workings, we shall be confirmed in the opinion that in sleep the soul never remits its activity. Let us next inquire whether this ceaseless activity is also a conscious activity.
There are certain phenomena of sleep, let us remark lu this con- nection, which seem to show that there is a subconscious activity. For example, the fact that a nurse will wake at fixed hours during the night to give medicine to a patient, and yet sleep soundly be- tween times, appears to indicate a subconscious calculation of the lapse of time. The question now l)efore us is whether tliere is a conscious, as well as a subconscious activity in dreams. If by consciousness we mean an accurate and lucid knowledge of all the thought-processes involved in dreams, the answer is emphatically in the negative. If it means, however, a certain idea, however confused, of what we do, and think, and suffer, then the acts of the soul are always conscious acts. The fact that we retain a knowledge of our personal identity through sleep is a sufficient proof of this. We have only to appeal to our consciousness to know that we who wake in the morning are the same persons who went to sleep the evening before and have been sleeping during the night. When Leibnitz says, '' It is not exactly memory which makes the same man, but it is at least, memory which makes the same ej/o," he does not mean that we must be able to recall at evening all the mental processes of the day, nor that in the morning we must recollect all the dreams of the night, in order that we may know our own identity. He simply means that a single act of thought is no thought ; that there must alwaj^s be a comparison of two things in order that thought may be possible ; and, since a single act of consciousness refers to the present only, that memory is essen- tial in order that the changing states of the ego may be contrasted and compared. The one thing necessary to a consciousness of self is tliat the acts of consciousness form one unbroken chain, each being united with that which precedes and that which follows. It matters not how frail and gossamer-like this chain ma}^ be, provided that no link l)e wanting. Consciousness of self, then, implies conscious men- tal activity which is never intei'rupted. It may be well to note here that some of the vagaries of dreams would seem to show that' we may occasionally lose a knowledge of our own identity while dream- ing, although we are always clearly conscious of it on awakening. For example. Dr. Macnish dreamed tliat he was riding on his own back, without knowing whether he vvas the carried or the caiTier. Again, he saw twenty resemblances to himself in different parts of the room. "I could not ascertain,'" he says, '■'• which of them was-
XIV — 14
210 77^6 Journal of Speculative P/rilosop/ij/.
myself niul wliieli my <U)iible." Here we have a solulion of the difHculty. His anxiety nnd effort to discover which was himself, were his own anxiety and effort. He was still himself; he was still carrying- on conscious thought-processes, wiiich he knew were his own. To come back to the main point in hand, however; not only is tliere activity, and incessant activity, on the part of the mind in sleep, but, for reasons now given, we believe this to be a conscious activity as well. Yet, let it be distinctly observed that, thus far, only a i)assive activity (to use a [)ara(loxical expression) has been maintained to subsist on the part of the intellectual faculties in sleep. Leibnitz's idcM. that sleep is filled with '•'little perceptions and con- fused sentiments," expresses all tliat has been proved, provided it be luiderstood that these " percei)tions and sentiments " never cease to be in consciousness.
It is one thing to concede that the mind is never wholly stupified by sleep, and quite another thing to acknowledge that it is active in all its powers. To this conclusion, nevertheless, we may be led by future discussion.
In pushing our inquiries farther, then, concerning the nature of the soul's activity in slee|), it will l)e necessary for us to consider, in detail, the various mental faculties as they appear in dreams.
At the outset, let us ask whether there be any one faculty rather than another which constitutes the ego, awake or asleep. What the mind is in itself we cannot know, since we know it only as it is mani- fested to us. What is its fundamental manifestation may be discov- ered. Descartes supposed it was to be found in the thougiit-processes. Modern philosophy refers it to the will, and with moi'e reason. Sleep is defined by Maine de Biran as the temporary suspension of the will. Only a moment's reflection is necessary, however, to convince us of the falsit}' of this position. It may be true, as many assert, that the action of the will on the bodily organs is interrupted in sleep. But this fact is due to the inertia of the body, and not to that of the mind. We have, all of us, dreamed of walking, running, or flying. It matters not that our bodies have been lying immobile during the dream. The suggestion has been given by the mind ; the will has decreed. It is owing to a bodily rather than a mental inactivity that the usual result has not followed. None would be so foolish as to maintain that a pai'alytic had lost the power of willing, simply because his deadened members refused to obey his commands. Yet those who deny the will's action in sleep have no better grounds for their assumption. But stop a moment, expostulates Dr. Hammond ; we do not ivill any
The Psychology of Dvecnns. 211
action in sleep. We imagine we do, and that is all. As an example of this he tells of a dream of his own, wherein he supposed that he was hanging over the Q(\ge of a precipice, and that, in spite of the most strenuous exertion of the will, he was forced to cast himself over the brink into the chasm below. In commenting on this, lie says: "'The imaginarj' volition was to refrain from ciawling over a precipice which did not exist, and over which, therefore, I was not hanging. The volition was just as imaginary as all the other circum- stances of the dream." In like manner it miglit be said that a man who imagines that he sees a robber in his room at night, and who therefore seizes his pistol, takes aim, and fires, has not designed to kill or disable the supposed thief, since in reality it was no thief, but only a shadow, at which he has fired. In addition to the arguments already adduced to show that the will is active in sleep, Dugald Stewart adds very pertinently the following: "If it were necessary that volition should l)e suspended before we fall asleep, it would be impossible for us, by our own efforts, to hasten the moments of rest. The very supposition of such efforts is absurd, for it implies a con- tinued will to suspend the acts of the will."
Continuing our investigation, let us next consider the reason, as it is manifested in dreams. Reason is a faculty ; reasoning is a process. Many will acknowledge the presence of the latter in dreams, while they utterly deny the action of the former. "•Reasoning," remarks Dr. Clarke, "may be good or bad, logical or illogical, sound or absurd. There is no contradiction in saying that a dreamer reasons, but does not use his reason." It would be nearer the truth to sa}^ that the reason remains in dreams, but the will no longer controls it. While awake, the attention is concentrated by an act of the will on a given subject. Tiiis subject is the mind's voluntary choice, and b}' a careful comparison of the given data, the mind is enabled to reach correct and reasonable conclusions. In sleep, all this is changed. The voluntary attention necessar}' to compare dreams with each other and with the reality is lacking. Not only this, but the subject-matter of dreams, instead of being chosen bv the mind, is introduced regardless of law, or order, or rational connection. So rapidly does one scene shift into another that the wildest confusion and the most absurd combinations result. In dreams, the mind's activity rather than its somnolence is manifested in its earnest endeav- ors to fit together the disconnected bits of thought which are pre- sented to it. To be sure, these mental mosaics are often incongruous, and even gi-otesque. But erratic thinking is by no means confined
212 The Journal of Speculative PJiilosophy.
to sleep. On tlie contrary, we shall hope to show that the vagaries of our waking moments are to be compared not unjustly to the wan- derings of our dreams. Fenelon, speaking of reason, says: "This sun of truth leaves no shadow ; it shines upon us in the night as well as in the da}^ ; it is a day without a shadow ; it is only the eyes of the sick which are closed to its light ; and yet no man is so diseased, or so blind, that he walks no more in the faint glimmering of some dim light shed upon him by this interior sun of the consciousness." Few words are required to show that the process of reasoning is sometimes carried on in dreams as logically and accurately as during wakefulness. As Cabanis remarks : " Really the mind can continue its researches in sleep ; it can be conducted by a certain train of rea- soning to ideas it had not." There are a number of well-known examples to prove this. Franklin said that he was enabled to solve man}' a political problem in his sleep, which he had labored over in vain while awake. Condorcet frequently fell asleep in the midst of the most abstruse calculations, and woke to find that the thought- processes had gone on while he slept, and that the desired results had been obtained. Condillac gave a like testimony in regard to the work- ings of his mind in sleep. Many other like illustrations could be instanced, but those here cited are sufficient to show that incoherency is not the necessary characteristic of dreams. It is probable that if we alwaj's knew the data on which our reasoning in sleep depended, many of our dreams which now seem ridiculous would prove to be rational thought-processes. The logic of the mind asleep is precisely the same as the logic of the mind awake. The trouble arises from the material with which it has to deal, and not from its method of handling that material. This peculiarity of dream psychology brings out with startling emphasis the danger of reasoning from false premises. Once grant fundamental principles which are not true, says its warning, and it is impossible to predict into what insanities your system, logically carried out, will lead you. The workings of conscience in sleep admit of an explanation similar to that just given. Many assert that the moral sense is entirely lacking in dreams, and numberless cases can be quoted which appear to sustain this opinion. For example. Miss Cobbe, in Macmillan' s Magazine^ November, 1870, says that one of the most benevolent of men, Mr. Richard Napier, dreamed "that he ran his best friend through the bodj^ and ever after recalled tlie extreme gratification he had experienced on seeing the point of his sword come out through the shoulders of his beloved companion." Inasmuch, however, as the conscience is noth-
The PsycJiology of Dreams. 213
ing more or less than the judgment exercised in respect to questions of right and wrong, it is probable that the judgments of our sleep would be found to be regulated by the same principles as the judg- ments of our waking moments, provided we knew with equal cer- tainty in both cases the data upon which we base those judgments.
Some time ago the writer had a most vivid dream, which illustrates several noteworthy points, but especiall}^ the fact that reasoning processes are carried on in dreams.
I dreamed that I was in the remotest corner of a deserted house, which stood alone, apart from all others, emptv and desolate. The room where 1 stood was a small one, lighted b}^ a single candle, which, however, was all-sufficient to disclose the bodies of the dead laid out on all sides of me. A shuddering horror took hold upon me, and I thought it was only by a strong effort of the will that I retaiued my self-control. Whether my greatest fear was of men or ghosts, I can- not say. I was in deadly terror of both. I was possessed with the idea that there were thieves lurking about the place. "But, after all," I reasoned, "there is little danger of that; for this is the best place of concealment in the whole house. If robbers were hiding on the premises, I should have found them here." No sooner had I rid myself of this idea than another suggested itself. The house was swarming with spectres and ghostly phantoms. At any moment they might come gliding in at the door. But again my reason came to my aid, and I argued: "If there are ghosts here, I shall not see them ; for, even were they present, being ghosts and having no substance, the}' would present no surface from which the light could be reflected to my eye." Is it not manifest that I went through processes of reasoning, and sensible reasoning, too, in this dream, and also that I put forth a strong exertion of the will ? Notice also two other points illustrated by this dream: —
First. That, in the process I went through to prove to myself that I should not see any spectres, my mind seemed to leap to its conclu- sion without thinking out the separate words, as I was obliged to do on awakening and trying to recall my dream ; showing the rapidity with which the mind works in sleep, and also throwing light pn the vexed question as to whether it is possible to think without words. This dream shows also \evy clearly an instinct of emotional harmony, which some writers believe to be prominent in dreams, and to form an important feature in producing the unit}^ they often manifest.
Thus far in our analysis, we have been passing through a " debat- iible land" of antagonistic criticism. Now, however, that we are
214 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
ready to consider the faculties of memory and imagination, we find that the divergent pathways have all merged into one, so plain and indubitable that it can be rapidly traversed. That these two faculties often occupy a prominent place in dreams is indisputable. Frequently, the powers of the mind which rule with iron sway during the daj^ ax*e deposed at night, and forced to walk obediently in the rear, follow- ing these two gaj' leaders like monarchs in chains. The fact that the mind is left so largely to its own resources, and has so little, com- paratively speaking, to distract its attention, explains not only the A'ividness and tendency to exaggeration in dreams, but also the prom- inence of imagination and memory. A good illustration of the creative imagination in sleep is Tartini's " La Sonate du Diable," and also Coleridge's " Kubla Khan." both of which were composed in a dream. The opening lines of the latter are as follows : —
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran, Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea."
So vivid and ingenious is this imaginative power that one feels like echoing the words of Caliban, when he says : —
— " In dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and show riches Ready to drop upon nie ; that, when I waked, I cried to dream again."
Dr. Macnish tells a remarkable story, which he vouches for in every particular, showing that in dreams the memory can sometimes recall that which is sought for in vain during the waking hours. He saj^s that a Mr. R., of Bowland, was prosecuted for a considerable sum of money, the accumulated arrears of a tithe. Mr. R. was strongly impressed with the idea that his father, who was then dead, had during his lifetime purchased thesL' lands from the tituhir. and that therefore the present prosecution was groundless. After dili- gent search, however, he could find no evidence to support his claim, and accordingly determined to make the best compromise he could. With this resolution he went to bed, and dreamed that his father appeared to liim, and told him in whose hands were the papers relat- ing to the purchasing of the land in question. On awakening, Mr. R. went to the person named, and found the papers as described. Dr. Macnish thinks, and his opinion is a reasonable one, that this dream
The PKjjcholocpj of Dreams. 215
was a mere recapitulation of information which Mr. R. had really received from his father during his lifetime, but which he had entirely forgotten until it was recalled Iw his dream. There is something startling in the power manifested by the memory in dreams, suggest- ing as it does, that forgetfulness is impossible, and that every thought and deed remains forever in remembrance, readv at some future day to bear its terrible witness for or against us.
From the investigation of dream psychology which we have now made, only one conclusion is possible, namely, that sleep is a func- tion of the body., and not of (he soul. What, then, it may be asked, is the difference between the state of the mind in sleep and its state in wakefulness? To which we would reply, there is no essential differ- ence. But it will be very justly urged, if the mind is consciously active in sleep as well as in wakefulness, why is it not also conscious of the fact that it is dreaming? Why does it accept as reality the wild visions of sleep? For tlie very reason that sleep pertains to the body and not to the mind. To think, to feel, to will, are acts of the soul. Hence it recognizes them even in dreaming. To sleep is the part of the physical organs. With them it begins and ends. Nor is there any sign by whicii the mind is informed of the condition of the body.
iSlill the question arises, if wakefulness and sleep show no essen- tial differences, why do we find the one characterized by all that is reasonable and possible, the other by all that is al)surd and incon- gruous? This statement we have already called in question, in dis- covering that all the mental phenomena of our waking moments occur also in sleep. The falsity of such a distinction will appear still more clearly if we can shovv that the converse is equally true, namely, that all the mental phenomena of sleep occur during wakefulness. There are two kinds of error common in dreams, illusions and hallu- cinations. Lemioine defines an illusion as a wrong interpretation of a sensation made by an external object; an hallucination occurs, according to the same authority, when the mind assigns to an exter- nal object a sensation produced by an internal distuibance. Illusions are by no means confined to sleep, but are of frequent occurrence during wakefulness. Witness the following instance related by Dr. Luke, in his l)ook entitled •'Mind and Body:" ''During the conflagration at the Crystal Palace, in the winter of 1866-7, when the animals were destroj'ed by fire, it was supposed that the chim- panzee had succeeded in escaping from his cage. Attracted to the roof, with this expectation in full force, men saw the unhappy animal
216 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
holding on to it, and writhing in agony to get astride one of tlie iron ribs. It need not be said that its struggles were watched b}' those below with breathless suspense, and, as the newspapers informed us, with 'sickening dread; ' and all this feeling was thrown away upon a tattered piece of blind, so torn as to resemble, to the eye of fancy, the body, arms, and legs of an ape." Hallucinatioas are more rare during wakefuhiess, because one sense may be used to correct an- other. For example, if we feel, when awake, a stricture at the throat produced by internal inflammation, yet momentarily assign it to some external cause, by simply raising the hand we discover our mistake; nor find it necessary, after the fashion of a sleeping brain, to account for the feeling by supposing that we are suffering death by hanging. Nevertheless, to quote the words of Dr. Elam : ''In a state of iiealth and mental soundness, senses may be so imposed upon, with or without existing objects, that in some instances it requires the exercise of all the reasoning and anal3^tic faculties to correct the impression ; and in others these impressions are so strong that no suspicion of unreality ever appears to attach to them, nor can the subject of them be persuaded of their unreality."
" It is a well-known physiological law," he further remarks, " that whatever impressions can be produced upon the organs of the senses by external agency can also be produced subjectively by internal changes." Dr. Clarke dwells on this in his book on "Visions." Speaking of the angular gyrus, that part of the visual appaiatus which forms the cerebral terminus, and where sight is perfected, he says: "Whatever report the angular gyrus sends to the mind is accepted as true. Were it apt to act by itself, unstimulated by the eye, we should be unable to distinguish orthopia (objective) from pseudopia (subjective). Now and then the angular gyrus does act independently, and the result is amazing and confounding." Again he says: "Vivid ideal pictures, painted by strong emotion or intense Yolitional effort on the organic structure of the frontal lobes, react on the visual \ientre of the hemispheres, and lead to the formation there of visual cell-groups more or less perfect in character. These, in turn, visually excite the lobes, and so, by action and reaction, add vividness and accuracy to the ideal representation." This, be it remarked, exactly describes what takes place in sleep. It is what Lemoine expresses in simpler language when he says: "I see a phantom in sleep. Its sight terrifies. I fear lest it advance, pursue, speak, menace me witli death. Immediately, it does advance, pursues, etc. Thus one fear augments the other.
The Psychology of Dreams. 217
A continufil reaction of organ on mind, and mind on organ is taking place." But to illustrate the point in question, as to whether hallucinations occur during wakefulness as well as sleep, the case of Goethe can be quoted, who could produce, at will, subjective copies of pictures and various works of art which he had seen. . Shake- speare, in his own inimitable way, shows how the senses may be imposed upon. Macbeth, intent on the murder of Duncan, says of the dagger : —
— "I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Or art thou but A dagger of the mind; a false creation? Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still.
There's no such thing; It is the bloody business, which informs thus to mine eyes."
Hallucinations are by no means confined to those pertaining to the sense of sight. It is a well-known fact that, after the amputa- tion of a limb, the patient continually refers the pain he suffers to the amputated part. In some cases the sensation has been so strong that the diseased member has been actually dug up to see if some- thing was not torturing it. From all of which it appears that error is not peculiar to sleep, any more than reasonableness is peculiar to our waking states.
We do not mean to deny that wildness and misrule are more com- mon at night than during the day. But we maintain that this is for the very reason that the mind obeys the same laws in sleep as in wakefulness. Accustomed to accept as trustworthy the testimony of the senses, it continues to do so even in sleep ; utterly unconscious and without warning of the somnolent condition of the bodily organ- ism. Is it aii}^ wonder that it becomes confused, that it constantly mistakes the false for the true ? So far as the vagaries of dreams are due to the mental rather than the physical condition, they are to be fully accounted for by the fact insisted on as a fundamental prin- ciple, and dwelt upon in different parts of this discussion, that volun- tary attention is always lacking in dreams, and tliat frequently mem- ory, and especially imagination, predominate over the other faculties. "Attention," says Maury, "instead of dominating the images which present themselves, is itself dominated b}' them." Under these cir- cumstances, it is natural to suppose that the judgment and reason should be frequentl}' in abej^ance, since we have already seen that if
218 2Vie Journal of Speculative Philosopit ij .
undue prominence is given to any one of the functions of the mind, either during vvakefuhiess or sleep, the others must suffer in conse- quence.
Finally, it maj^ be urged, if the position here maintained is a just one, how can there be any recuperative power in sleep? What chance is there for brain relaxation, if the mental processes continue at night as well as during the day? This brings out a very important point. While we believe, and have tried fully to demonstrate, that the activ- it}^ of the mind in sleep is the same in kind as the activit}' of the mind awake, we also believe that, generally speaking, it is very much less in degree. Moreover, repose does not necessitate the cessation of all mental activity. The brain wearies when the mind is forced to keep its attention fixed on a given subject for any length of time. It is restraint, not action, which fatigues. It is change, rather than stupefaction, which refreshes. Just as during the day, after long and concentrated mental effort, we ol)tain rest in allowing the mind to wander at will ; so in sleep, only much more perfectly, the thoughts, given loose rein, rove on in unrestrained vagrancy, and thus the tired brain finds repose.
So far is it from being true that the mind is deprived of any of its faculties in sleep, that it seems at times to [)ossess even a super- natural power. In the brilliant imagination, the accurate and far- reaching memory, the marvellous rapidity of thought, and the tire- less activity which goes on and on, while the wearied body lies stui^e- fied and inert, we catch glimpses of what the underlying soul may be, when, freed from the material organism which fetters it, it shall enter upon a new and independent existence.
"Dormientiuin aninii maxime deelaiaiit tliviintateni suaiij."
Laivs of Crenfioii — Ultimate Science. 219
LAW8 OF CREATION — ULTIMATE SCIENCE.
BY TIIERON GRAY.
Some journalist has derisively said that "every writer nowadays has a theory of creation to ventilate." It is truly a marked fact that creation is coming to lie a common theme, and it is a fact fraught witli too much weiglit to be thus disposed of by the flippant pen of popular journalism.
There are conclusions forced u[)on the minds of thoughtful persons in this connection, that are vital and impressive. First, this general attempt to speak the important word as to Ci'eation imi)lies a pre- vailing sense that it has not yet been spoken. Second, it implies that it is the leading word to all correct thought and activity, and ought to be consistently uttered. Thirdly, it implies that the time has come for amplest hearing of that word, as also for amplest utter- ance.
The very fact that the spohenmen of the I'ace are so largely pressed with one endeavor is a symptom that the race is big with the mighty burden, and is painfully laboring for deliverance. And although I'elief and satisfaction cannot be found in stammering incoherent utter- ances, 3'et th^se efforts are not to be despised on account of their inefficiency, but rather they are worthy of a measure of respect, because of their worthy aim. The commanding impression is that Creation is the one great reality that embraces and carries us all, from first to last ; and it is felt that the truth of that verity, con- sistently rendered as comprehensive law, is that which of all realities is most needful to the mind of man. For the difference between knowledge and ignorance here is the difference between scientific navigation from port to port, with craft all perfectly rigged and manned, and that of ignorant, disorderly drift, mainly at the com- mand of wind, wave, and tide. In plain words, a good understand- ing of Creative Order, as determined by supreme law, anchors fira^iy in fundamental knowledge. It gives that knowledge of the origin, develoi)ment, and destiny of the race that is requisite to ail scien- tific jirogress — to systems of human culture and discipline that carry the race steadily onwai-d and upward to its destined goal. The progress of the race in knowledge and power is sure, by the normal ruling of the Divine Providence ; but with the intelligent concurrence
220 The Journal of Specidative Philosophy.
of man, through a definite knowledge of creative law, movement will be dii'ect and peaceful, where otherwise it were indirect and con- flicting. For scientific method is always easy and sure, compared with experimental uncertainty.
Knowledge such as is here contemplated, — that is, knowledge of comprehensive creative law, — can onl}' be derived from certain ruling principles clearly seen to be necessary and sufficient for the occasion.
These principles may be brietl}' indicated, but need to be largely explicated and applied, in solution of the various problems that inter- est current thought, in order to exhibit their real nature and practical worth as commanding creative law.
Let me try to briefly state or outline them : —
First term : That which involves all in chaotic indistinction — as, Creative Mind, and Substance given.
Second term : That which projects or definitely unfolds all in specific detail and contrariet}^ of forms — as, Creative Operation in developing creaturely form.
Tliird term : That which embraces and truly relates or associates all in most effective power and harmony — as, Creative End: crea- turely form consummated in Divine Man.
The fii'st gives the principle of creative Simplism — the unknown one.
The second gives the y^rinciple of the Complex in creation — the known manifold.
The third gives the principle of the Composite in creation — revealed fulness in the practical unity of the simple and multiform.
The first is equivalent to monotone ; the second, to diversity in discordance ; the third, to diversity in harmony. The first were painfull}^ impressive ; the second, full of distracting conflicts ; and the third, of peace and delight in perfect order.
Without the first, as an elementary principle in creation, there were no possible base or foundation for an unfolding process. With- ont the second, there were no means of intelligent discrimination of characteristic; forms. Without the third, there were no possible opening to composure and rest in orderly wholeness of mind, thought, and things. So, it is seen, no one of these factors of creative law can be spared from the series v/itliout annulling the elements of com- plete order ; nor can aught be added thereto to make the sclieme more ample or perfect. Neither minus nor plus is possible, to enhance the quantitative or qualitative significance of this comprehensive sum- mary. Hence the conclusion is inevitable that the three elementary
Laws of Creation — Ultimate Science. 221
principles thus named, or tlieir equivalent under other terms of similar significance, compose the full scale of creative law, and give the clew, when consistently applied, to the solution of the various puz- zling problems that engage our attention.
As to all themes that come under mental survey, these three-fold elements may not readily ap[)ear ; but that they invarial)ly exist, and will be made to appear in any comprehensive explication of the theme, is very certain. Regarding this subject of creation, for instance, the first term — Creative Being — is cognizable by neither human sense nor reason, and hence is liable to be denied ; at least, until human sense and reason are illumined by wisdom, either as sophial intuition, sophial reflection, or sophial science. Indeed, sense and reason are sure to den}-, without the higher light, in an}' of these forms.
The wisdom form, as the faculty above sense and reason, is the only avenue b}' which the lower can be opened to the realities of the Highest, that were otherwise totally obscure to their vision. But if sense and reason remain closed to the light of wisdom in its three degrees, and thence deny that there is any first term to the creative series, that cannot nullify' the truth of the Creative Time, which we have shown to be an essential and all-pervading verity.
Human reason may be impressed with sense by the sense or intui- tion of wisdom, and thence affirm the Divine Being as essential l^asic term ; or it may be impressed with various reflex deductions of wis- dom, and thence not only affirm, but partially explicate the necessary truths thereof ; or it may be distinctly informed of the compre- hending fulness of the truth as a science of wisdom, and thence be able to affirm, explicate, and apply it as the only "Light of life; " but if that reason remains untouched by any of these forms of wis- dom, it is wholly in the dark as to supremest realities, and can only doulit and deny.
Philosophic idealism seems to be overshadowed by benighted human reason, and so it regards the first term of the creative series as mere "abstraction," or "naught." The light of Christian science is needed to dissipate the fogs and mists of such nescience as to ^he basic term. Let us try to impress our thought more distinctly :
In our scale of numeric symbolism, it will do to let the symbol " naught" (0) stand as the root-term, without practical power. Yet we know that it represents that unit of inherent, numeric power, as an Eternal Providence, without which actual enumeration could never take place as the boon it is to human experience. And while
222 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
to careless thought it counts for ''abstraction" or "naught," to clear insight it stands for the infinite potentiality of enumeration. And "in the fulness of time," when the actual scale of numeric power is fully unfolded in tlie units 1-9, this ci|)lier-symbol vindi- cates its significance and power in a composite terra before unknown (10). Here, as the underived root-term (J)) ^ allied loith the lowest of the derived (1), it augments tlie power of that one in nine-fold degree ; that is, to the full extent, in power, of the developing series. Thus, l-{-9=10; equivalent to l-[-0=10.
Thus the infinite potentialit3' of numeric power, symbolized as " naught," is actuall3'^ the all and onli/ reality ; and, in the end of the series, becomes actually incarnated or embodied in its own proper form as tlie fulness of power in tliis form.
Tills is all simpl}' the imagery or analogue of the truth of Creation, that comprehends (1) God as Creative P^ssence in Divine Being, (2) as Creative Operation in human existence, (3) as Creative End in the composing fulness of Divine Natural Man.
So, a true conception of Creation sees the very first term as all- comprehending Being, or generative Life, iiivoloiiig generatiA^e process in creaturely form, and generated result in created form. And it also sees this trine principle bearing rule as the law of the evolu- tionaiT process in the luitnral humanity^ and the law of true organi- zation and activity in the Divine Humanity.
We thus see where tlie voice of wisdom, as ultimate science, leads us. Where mere rationalism, or even philosophical idealism, finds only "negation," " abstraction," or "idea" as the prior term to known mind, thought, and things, this science sees eternal triune substance, or God, as essential Life, Activity, and Form. It never allows the dominance of sense and reason, though it ministers to them of its own supreme light through all the forms of rational analogy and sen- sory symbols. It fuses the simplicity of sense and the complexities of reason in the synthesis or composite fulness of eternal reality. It perfectly serves the needs of sense and reason by taking what it sees theologically , or of God, and delivering it to reason analogically, and to sense symbologicaUy. Reason can take and apply the essential truth when it is presented rationally {by force of related reality, lohich it has come to experience^, for it knows only by relation — its own form. And sense can be instructed only through its own form — the sensory symbolization of the truths of wisdom.
Human wisdom, will, or Divinest affection comes to true illumina- tion as to the Highest through Divine revelation — direct infiux
Laivs of (Jveation — Ultimate Science. 223
through such affections, duly quaUfied — and it may communicate its Hglit to reason bj- analogies of science, and to sense by objective form or sensible symbol. Sense may confusedly perceive of itself, and reason ma}'^ generalize partially, and discordantly cognize of itself ; but onl}' amplest wisdom can synthetize, or accordantly and fully cognize, and thence duly illumine both sense and reason by conform- ing the lohole truth to their scope of vision.
Hence all that rational science can do, from its special fields of survey, is to criticise and protest as to falsities or perversions that arise under the guise of theology. It were as absurd to suppose that the specialist in science can discover and announce the truths of uni- versal scietice — the science of tlieology — as to suppose that moon- light can illumine the sun. The lower can typify, illustrate, or analogically render the higlier when that lower is illumined by the higher, and not before. Then it can only illustrate. It can never illiuuine the higher. How absurd, therefore, ever^^ pretence of rational science to determine as to the ruling- truths of theoloo-v — as to Creative Being, Creative Operation, and Creative End — God's Being, generative activity in the realms of human experience, and destined fruition to such activity in Divine Order, supreme and con- stant in liuman affairs. This is the prerogative of theology alone. And a scientific tlieology will cover and explicate the wliole truth of Divine Being, Operation, and End, as thus indicated.
The sole value of the criticisms of the rationalists as to matters of theology is that they tend to clear the ground of a mass of unseemly rubbish which has long been gathering there — men of straw, and other cumbersome forms — and thus open the way for the heat and light of Central Sun to fall on that ground and cause new and living- forms to spring forth. Not only rationalistic science, but rationalistic philosophy has a mission in this direction. Neither are affirraative of real truth in highest realms, but both are serviceable as image- breakers. Iconoclastic thought goes naturally before integral thought, the partial and insufficient — mainly useful to tear down — before the universal and efficient, competent to affirm and build up.
Philosophic idealism tries to affirm the ripened fruit of human thought ; but fruition can only counterpoise initial seed, or first fruit given. When that given seed or first term is only " negation " " abstraction," or '" idea," tliat vanishes into nothingness, thus giving no hold for human heart, head, or feet; only " negation " can come of it as fruition. So much is clear. Nothing comes of nothing.
To Christian science — a scientific theology, as knowledge derived
. 224 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
in the revealed incarnate Divinity — God, the Creator, is distinctly known as the infinite personality of love, wisdom, and power; not merely "idea," "abstraction," "negation," but the veriest S^ih- stance or Being. This science abhors and repudiates every notion of mere unrelieved simplism even. It knows no absolute one in heaven above or earth below. In every atom it sees form in community of matter, action in the special form, and function in the universal. In every distinct form is seen an anchorage in a common element or genus, action in that form according to its own nature, and in some way utility to related forms which it acts upon. Sense may know it only as simple one, and reason as discordantly related, one; but high- est vision knows it as essentially composite or unitary, functioning in and by the universal; distinctly knows it as a triunity of form; and thus, in some measure, an image of Creative Being.
Any form of knowing or science that reaches above mere sensory knowing (animalit}^) must analyze and measurably synthetize, else it will make a poor show as science. How, therefore, can there be analysis and synthesis essential to amplest science, if all tliat is or can be of experienced mind, thought, and things is derived in absolute one, and that one is only " idea," " abstraction," " nothing? "
How can " sul)lation " of that one occur when there is only " idea," " abstraction," or " naught " to " sublate? "
In this creative series we are forced to conclude tliat the factor termed " abstraction " or " negation" is that sublimest of all realities, which does not appear in and by sense or reason — does not appear by mere animal and human faculty — but only by the full revelations of Divine Wisdom. Then it necessarily appears under the form of wisdom — -the composite form, trinity -iii-tinity ; for wisdom is Divine Substance, Divine Force, and Divine Form. By it "the worlds are made." It is vital substance that generatively acts by its force, and divinely organizes by its form.
Creation consisting, then, (1) of a principle of simple unity or gen- eral term given, (2) a principle of complexity and ijontrariety in the manifold derived, and (3) of a principle of composite unity in the organic derived, we have a three-fold principle of Creative Law, as the comprehending order of all mind, all thought, and all things; which, duly formulated and explicated, constitutes a Science of Crea- tion, ample to assume human thought and regulate human conduct to the utmost.
While by the rule of such science we see that basic one is the all and only verity, we see that without due translation, " sublation," or
Educational Psychology. 225
a going forth, it is entirely unknown or inappreciable to the mere human understanding; and not then is it truly known till it is formed, embodied, or composed in a sufficing final term. This is not only true as verified Christian science — the science of creation — but also as to all the minor drapery or imagery of the outward inves- titure, which is a seamless robe to a jierfect form, and can never be parted, though it be doomed to rudest hawking in the hands of the crucifiers.
Let, therefore, this era of science put on its majestic crown in supreme Christian science. At least, let Christian disciples come to a clear understanding here. Then, when assailed by the pompous thrusts of free-lance, the3' will show a defensive armory invulnerable to its rude assaults, that will not only turn that lance, but break it at the hilt.
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY.
[outlines of a system, by WM. T. HARRIS.]
I.
What beings can be educated ; the plant has reaction against its surroundings in the form of nutrition; tlie animal has reaction in tlie form of nutrition and feeling; Aris- totle calls the life of the plant the " nutritive soul," and the life of the animal the " sen- sitive soul."
The life of the plant is a continual reproduction of new individuals — a process of going out of one individual into another— so that the particular individual loses its identity, although the identity of the species is preserved.
That which is dependent upon external circumstances, and is only a circumstance itself, is not capable of education. Only a "self" can be educated; and a "self" is a conscious unity — a "self-ac- tivity," a being which is through itself, and not one that is made by surrounding conditions.
Again, in order that a being possess a capacity for education, it must have the ability to realize within itself what belongs to its species or race.
If an acorn could develop itself so that it could realize, not only its own possibility as an oak, but its entire species, and all the varie- ties of oaks within itself, and without losing its particular individu- ality, it would possess the capacity for education. But an acorn, in reality, cannot develop its possibility without the destruction of its own individuality. The acorn vanishes in the oak tree, and the crop XIV— 15
226 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
of acorns which succeeds is not again the same acorn, except in kind or species. ''The species lives, but the individual dies," in the vegetable world.
So it is in the animal world. The brute lives his particular life, unable to develop within himself the form of his entire species, and still less the form of all animal life. And yet the animal possesses self-activity in the powers of locomotion, sense-perception, feeling, emotion, and other elementary shapes. Both animal and plant react against surroundings, and possess more or less power to assimilate what is foreign to them. The plant takes moisture and elementary inorganic substances, and converts them into nutrition wherewith to build its cellular growth. The animal has not only this power of nutrition, which assimilates its surroundings, but also the power of feeling, which is a wonderful faculty. Feeling reproduces within the organism of the animal the external condition ; it is an ideal repro- duction of the surroundings. The environment of the plant may be seized upon and appropriated in the form of sap, or in the form of carbonic acid, for the nourishment of that plant ; but there is no ideal reproduction of the environment in the form of feeling, as in the animal.
In the activity of feeling, the animal transcends his material, cor- poreal limits — lives beyond .his mere body, and participates in the existence of all nature. He reproduces within himself the external. Such being the nature of the activity of feeling, which forms the dis- tinguishing attribute that divides animals from plants, the question meets us at the outset, "Why is not-the animal capable of educa- tion? Why can he not realize within himself his entire species or race, as man can? "
In order to settle this fundamental question, we must study care- fully the scope and limits of this activity, which we have termed -"Feeling," and which is known under many names — as, sensation, sensibility, sensitivity, sense-perception, intuition, and others.
Education aims to develop the mind as intellect and will. It must know what it is to develop, and learn to distinguish higher or more complete stages of intellect and will from^those which are rudimen- tary.
Again, the discussion of mind begins properly with the first or most undeveloped manifestation — at the stage where it is common to brutes and human beings. Hence we may begin our study of educational psychology at this point where the distinction between animal and plant appears, and where the question of the capacity for education arises.
Educational PsycJiologij. 227
When we understand the rehition of feeUng or sensibiUt}' to the higlier manifestations of mind, we shall see in what consists a capacity for education, and we shall learn many essentials in regard to the matter and method, the ivhat and the koto of education.
A general surve}' of the world discovers that tliere is inter-action among its parts. This is the verdict of science, as the systematic form of human experience. In the form of gravitation we under- stand that each bod}' depends upon every other bod}', and the annihilation of a particle of matter in a body would cause a change in that bod}^ which would affect every other body in the physical universe. Even gravitation, therefore, is a manifestation of the whole universe in each part of it, although it is not a manifestation which exists /o?" that part, because the part does not Tcnoiv it.
There are other forms wherein the whole manifests itself in each part of it — as, for example, in the phenomena of light, heat, and possibly in magnetism and electricit}'. These forms of mani- festation of the external world upon an individual object are de- structive to the individuality of the object. If the nature of a thing is stamped upon it from without, it is an element only, and not a self; it is dependent, and belongs to that on which it depends. It does not possess itself, but belongs to that which makes it, and which gives evidence of ownership by continually modifying it.
But the plant, as we just now said, has some degree of self-activity, and is not altogether made by the totality of external conditions. The growth of the plant is through assimilation of external sub- stances. It reacts against its surroundings and digests them, and -grows through the nutrition thus formed.
All beings that cannot react against surroundings and modify them, lack individuality. Individualit}' begins with this power of reaction and modification of external surroundings. Even the power of cohesion is a rudimentary^ form of reaction and of special Indi- vid ualit}'.
In the case of the plant, the reaction is real., but not also ideal. The plant acts upon its food, and digests it, or assimilates it, and imposes its /orm on that which it draws within its organism. It does not, however, reproduce within itself the externality as that exter- nal exists for itself. It does not form within itself an idea, or even a feeling of that which is external to it. Its participation in the €xternal world is only that of real modification of it or through it ; -either the plant digests the external, or the external limits it, and prevents its growth, so that where one begins the other ceases. -Hence it is that the elements — the matter of which the plant is
228 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
composed, that which it has assimilated even — still retain a large degree of foreign power or force — a large degree of externality which liie plant has not been able to annul or to digest. The plant- activity subdues its food, changes its sha[)e and its place, subordi- nates it to its use ; but what the matter brings with it, and still re- tains of the world beyond the plant, does not exist for the plant; the plant cannot read or interpret the rest of the universe from that small poition of it which it has taken up within its own organism. And yet the histor}' of the universe is impressed on each particle of matter, as well within the plant as outside of it, and it could be understood were there capacities for recognizing it.
The reaction of the life of the plant upon the external world is not sufficient to constitute a fixed, abiding individuality. With each accretion there is some change of particular individuality. Every growth to a plant is by the sprouting out of new individuals — new plants — a ceaseless multiplication of individuals, and not the preserva- tion of the same indisidual. The species is preserved, but not the particnhu- individual. Each limb, each twig, even each leaf is a new individual, which grows out from the previous giowth as the first sprout giew from the seed. Each i)art furnishes a soil for the next. When a [ilant no longer sends out new individuals, we say it is dead. The life of the plant is only a life of nutrition.
Aristotle called veoetable life ''■the nutritive soul," and the life of the animal the "■feeling," or sensitive soul. Nutrition is only an activity of preservation of the general form in new individuals, it is only the life of the species, and not the life of the permanent individual.
Therefoi'e we see that in the vegetable world we do not possess a being that can be educated — -for no individual of it can realize within itself the species; its realization of the species is a continual process of going out of itself in new individuals, but no activity of return to itself, so as to preserve the identity of an individual.
II.
Feeling is a unity of the parts of an organism everywhere present in it: feeling is also an ideal ri'iiroduction of the external surroundings; feeling is therefore a synthesis of the internal and external. Aristotle joins locomotion and desire to feeling, as correlates; how desire is a more explicit recognition of the unity of the external and internal than the first form of feeling is; feeling reproduces the external without destroying its exter- nality, while nutrition receives the external only after it has destroyed its individuality and assimilated it; desire is the side of feeling that unfolds into will.
With feeling or sensibility we come to a being that reacts on the external world in a far higher manner, and realizes a more wonderful form of individuality.
Educational Psijclwlogy. 229
The animal possesses, in coraraon with tlie plant, a process of assim- ilation and nutrition. Moreover, he possesses a capacity to fed. Through /ee/t//{y, or sensation, all of the parts of his extended organ- ism are united in one centre. He is one individual, and not a bundle of separate individuals, as a plant is. With feeling, likewise, are joined locomotion and desire. For these are counterparts of feeling. He feels — i.e., lives as one indivisible unit}' throughout his organism and controls it, and moves the parts of his body. Desire is more than mere feeling. Mere feeling alone is the perception of the external within the being, hence an ideal reproduction of the external world. In feeling, the animal exists not only within himself, but also passes over his limit, and has for object the reality of the external world that limits him. Hence it is the perception of his finiteness — his limits are his defects, his needs, wants, inadequateness — his sep- aration from the world as a whole. In feeling, the animal perceives his separation from the rest of the world, and also his union with it. Feeling expands into desire when the external world, or some portion of it, is seen as ideally belonging to the limited unity of the animal being. It is beyond the limit, and ought to be assimilated within the limited individuality of the animal.
Mere feeJitig^ when attentively considered, is found to contain these wonderful features of self-activity: it reproduces for itself the external world that limits it; it makes for itself an ideal ol)ject, which includes its own self and its not-self at the same time. It is a higher form than mere nutrition ; for nutrition destroys the nature of such externality as it receives into itself, while feeling preserves the external in its foreign individuality.
But through feeling the animal ascends to desire., and sees the independent externality as an object for its acquisition, and through locomotion it is enabled to seize and ajjpropriate it in a degree which the plant did not possess.
III.
The various forms of feeling — its specialization: (a) touch, the feeling of mere limits, the indifferent external indeiiendence of the organism and its surroundings; (6) taste, the feeling of the external object when it is undergoing dissolution by assimjlation ; (c) smell, the feeling of chemical dissolution in general ; (rf) hearing, the feeling of the resistance of bodies against attacks: sound being vibration caused by elastic reaction against attacks on coliesion; (e) seeing, the feeling of objects in their independence, without dissolution or attack ; plant life, nutrition, a process in which the individuality is not preserved either in time or in space ; animal life, as feeling, preserves its individu- ality as regards space, but not as regards time.
Having noted these important characteristics of the lower orders of life, and found that reaction from the part against the whole — from
230 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
the internal against tlie external — belongs to plant life and animat life, we may now briefly mention the ways in which feeling is par- ticularized. In the lower animals it is only the feeling of touch ; in higher organisms it becomes also localized as seeing, hearing, taste, and smell. These forms of sense-perception constitute a scale (as it were) of feeling. With touch, there is reproduction of externality, but the ideality of the reproduction is not so complete as in the other forms. With taste, the feeling cognizes the external object as undergoing dissolution, and assimilation within its own organism. We taste only what we are beginning to destroy by the first process of assimilation — that of eating. In smell, we perceive chemical dissolution of bodies. In seeing and hearing, we have the forms of ideal sensibility. Hearing perceives the attack made on the indi- viduality of an external thing, and its reaction in vibrations, which reveal to us its internal nature — its cohesion, etc. In seeing, we have the highest form of sense-perception as the perception of things^ in their external independence — not as being destroj'ed chemically^ like the objects of taste and smell ; not as being attacked and resist- ing, like the objects which are known through the ear ; not as mere limits to our organism, as in the sense of touch.
Sense-perception, as the developed realization of the activity of feeling, belongs to the animal creation, including man as an animal.
We have not yet, therefore, answered the question of capacity for education, so far as it concerns a discrimination between man and the brute. We have only arrived at the conclusion that the vege- table world does not possess the capacity for education, because its- individual specimens are no complete individuals, but only transi- tory phases manifesting the species by continual reproduction of new individuals which are as incomplete as the old ones. Plant life does not possess that self-activity which returns into itself in the same individual — if we may so express it; it goes out of one indi- vidual into another perpetually. Its identity is that of the species, but not of the individual.
How is it with the animal — with the being which possesses sensi- bility, or feeling? This question recurs. In feeling there is a reac- tion, just as in the plant. This reaction is, however, in an ideal form — the reproduction of the external without assimilation of it — and especially is this the case in the sense of sight, though it is true of all forms of sensation to a less degree.
But all forms of sensibility are limited and special ; they refer only to the present, in its forms of here and noiv. The animal cannot feel what is not here and now. Even seeing is limited to what is present
Educational Psychology. 231
before it. When we reflect upon the significance of this limitation of sense-perception, we shall find that we need some higher form of self-activity still before we can realize the species in the individual — i.e., before we can obtain the true individual — the permanent individuality.
The defect in plant life was, that thei'e was neither identity of individuality in space nor identity in time. The growth of the plant destroyed the individuality of the seed with which we began, so that it was evanescent in time ; it served only as the starting-point for new individualities, which likewise, in turn, served again the same purpose ; and so its growth in space was a departure from itself as individual.
The animal is a preservation of individuality as regards space. He I'eturns into himself in the form of feeling or sensibiliti/ ; but as re- gards time, it is not so — feeling being limited to the present. With- out a higher activity than feeling, there is no continuity of individu- ality in the animal an}'^ more than in the plant. Each new moment is a new beginning to a being that has feeling, but not memory.
Thus the individuality of mere feeling, although a far more perfect realization of individuality than that found in plant life, is yet, after all, not a continuous individuality for itself, but only for the species.
In spite of the ideal self-activity which appertains to feeling, even in sense-perception, only the species lives in the animal and th^ individual dies, unless there be higher forms of activity.
IV.
Representation is the next form above sense-perception. The lowest phase of repre- sentation is recollection, which simply repeats for itself a former sense-perception or series of sense-perceptions; in representation tlie mind is free as regards external impressions ; it does not require the presence of the object, but recalls it without its own time and jilace ; fancy and imagination are next higher than recollection, because the mind not only recalls images, but makes new combinations of them, or creates them altogether; attention is the appearance of the will in the intellect; with attention begins the separation of the transient from tlie variable in perception; memory is the highest form of repi-esentation ; memory deals with general forms — not mere images of expe- rience, but general types of objects of perception ; memory, in this sense, is productive as well as reproductive ; with memory arises language. '
Here we pass over to the consideration of higher forms of intellect and will.
While mere sensation, as such, acts only in the presence of the object — reproducing (ideally), it is true, the external object, the faculty of representation is a higher form of self-activity (or of
232 The Journal of Speculative Philosoiiiliy .
reaction against surrounding conditions), because it can recall, at its own pleasure, the ideal object. Here is the beginning of emancipation from the limitations of time.
The self-activity of representation can summon before it the object that is no longer present to it. Hence its activity is now^ a double one, for it can seize not only what is now and here immediately before it, but it can compare this present object with the past, and identify or distinguish between the two. Thus recollection or representation may become memory.
As memory, the mind achieves a form of activity far above that of sense-perception or mere recollection. It must be noted carefully that mere recollection or representation, although it holds fast the per- ception in time (making it permanent), does not necessarily constitute an activity completely emancipated from time, nor indeed very far advanced towards it. It is only the beginning of such emancipation. For mere recollection stands in the presence of the special object of sense-perception ; although the object is no longer present to the senses (or to mere feeling), yet the image is present to the repre- sentative perception, and is just as much a particular here and now as the object of sense-perception. There intervenes a new activity on the part of the soul before it arrives at memory. Recollection is not memory, but it is the activity which grows into it by the aid of the activity of attention.
The special characteristics of objects of the senses are allowed to drop away, in so far as they are unessential and merely circumstantial, and gradually there arises in the mind the type — the general form — of the object perceived. This general form is the object of memory. Memory deals therefore with what is general, and a type, rather than with what is directl}' recollected or perceived.
The activit}' by which the mind ascends from sense-perception to memory is the activity of attention. Here we have the appearance of the will in intellectual activity. Attention is the control of per- ception by means of the will. The senses shall no longer passively receive and report what is before them, but the}' shall choose some definite point of observation, and neglect all the rest.
Here, in the act of attention we find abstraction^ and the greater attainment of freedom by the mind. Tiie mind abstracts its view from the many things before it, and concentrates on one point.
Educators have for many ages noted that the habit of attention is the first step in intellectual education. With it we have found the point of separation between the animal intellect and the human.
Educational Psi/cJiology. 233
Not attention simply — like that with which the cat watches by the hole of a mouse — but attention which arrives at results of abstrac- tion, is the distinguishing characteristic of educative beings.
Attention abstracts from some things before it and concentrates on others. Through attention grows the capacity to discriminate between the special, particular object and its general type. Gener- alization arises, but not what is usually called generalization — only a more elementary form of it. Memory, as the highest form of repre- sentation— -distinguishing it from mere recollection, which repro- duces onl}' what has been perceived — such memory deals with the general forms of objects, their continuity in time. Such activity of memory, therefore, does not reproduce mere images, but only the concepts or general ideas of things, and therefore it belongs to the stage of mind that uses language.
Language marks the arrival at the stage of thought — at the stage of the perception of universals — hence at the possibility of education; language Axes the general types which the productive memory forms ; each one of these types, indicated by a word, stands for a possible infinite of sense-perceptions or recollections; the word tree stands for all the trees that exist, and for all that have existed or will exist. Animals do not create for themselves a new world of general types, but deal only with the first world of particular objects; hence they are lost in the variety and multiplicity of continuous succession and difference. Man's sense-perception is with memory; hence always a recognition of the object as not wholly new, but only as an example of what he is mostly familiar with. Intellectual education has for its object the cultivation of reflection; reflection is the Platonic "Reminiscence," which retraces the unconscious processes of thought.
Lano-uag^e is the means of distinguishing between the bi'ute and the human — between the animal soul, which has continuity only in the species (which pervades its being in the form of instinct), and the human, soul, which is immortal, and possessed of a capacit}^ to be educated.
There is no language until the mind can perceive general types of existence ; mere proper names nor mei'e exclamations or cries do not constitute language. All words that belong to language are significative — they ' ' expi'ess " or " mean ' ' something — hence ^they are conventional symbols, and not mere individual designations. Language arises only through common consent, and is not an inven- tion of one individual. It is a product of individuals acting togetJier as a community, and hence implies the ascent of the individual into the species. Unless an individual could ascend into the species he could not understand language. To know words and their meaning
^ rcttrrUon. uA tW koov- d MM «iiD- luire Uwt
of •taiTP* rtf
U> ■
11,
'•»•» «W^, it uses k»o« it, nor it it Tk»« »• the first •b %ii msoaenihie <-oo- *«i puaaeuing
tW nftfm«(^ |>rin- <M», aoH ri-quires
lO tbe IM-Xt tlMIS —
'jUj at tJie world Each thmi changes, o*. The process ■■», it is destroying it t^at Uuoigs are not the are the rv of
Educational Psycholoy.
237
This
y are negative, and cannot be sei by tlie senses, nic stand -point in philosopliy. knows that these abstract ideas i;ssess more truth, more the "things" of sense-percept n ; the force is more iliing, because it outlasts a thin, — it causes things to to change, and disappear.
t' abstract ideas or of negative owers or forces finally
ijiiced of the essential unity of 1 processes and of all
up the doctrine of the covJation of forces, and
rsistent force is the ultimate ruth, the fundamental
vorhl. This we may call a cocrete idea, for it sets
\ liicli is the origin of all thins and forces, and also
;ill things, and hence more eal than the world of
s : and because this idea, uen carefully thought
tlie idea of self-determinatif; — self-activity.
, as taught us by the scienlic men of our day, is
piinciple, and as such it gi^s rise to all existence
, for there is nothing else or it to act upon. It
all changes, and all evanes'.nce. It gives rise to
>s — heat, liglit, electrici', magnetism, etc. —
^^h cause the evanescent fors which sense-percep-
^^■d three phases : — ^1 perceive " things." ^B perceive '"forces." ^B perceives " persistent f'ce."
)rn one phase of letiectid to another, the intel- M r and truer reality • acach step.
tc-h of the Human Understaling, makes all the percep-
olve themselves into two 'stinct kinds: impressions
between them consists i the degrees of force and
trike upon the mind, an make their way into our
Tbose perceptions whicl^ liter with the most force
pressions, and under thi name include all our sen-
-(, as they make their fit appearance in the soul.
ages of these in thkpl ""<^ reasoning." "The
234 Tlie Jotirnal of Speculative Philosophy.
is an acUvity of divine significance ; it denotes the formation of universals in the mind — the ascent above the here and now of the senses, and above the representation of mere images, to the activity which grasps together the general conception of objects, and thus reaches beyond what is transient and variable.
Doubtless the nobler species of animals possess not only sense- perception, but a considerable degree of the power of representation. They are not only able to recollect, but to imagine or fancy to some extent, as is evidenced by their dreams. But that animals do not generalize sufficiently to form for themselves a new objective world of types and general concepts, we have a sufficient evidence in the fact that they do not use words, or invent conventional symbols. With the activity of the symbol-making form of representation ^ which we have named Memory, and whose evidence is the invention and use of language, the true form of individuality is attained, and each individual human being, as mind, may be said to be the entire species. Inasmuch as he can form universals in his mind, he can realize the most abstract thought : and he is conscious. Conscious- ness begins when one can seize the pure universal in the presence of immediate objects here and now.
The sense-perception of the mere animal, therefore, differs from that of the human being in this: —
The human being knows himself as subject that sees the object, while the animal sees the object, but does not separate himself, as universal, from the special act of seeing. To know that I am I, is to know the most general of objects, and to carry out abstraction to its ver}^ last degree ; and yet this is what all human beings do, young or old, savage or civilized. The savage invents and uses language — an act of the species, but which the species cannot do without the participation of the individual.
It should be carefully noted that this activity of generalization which produces language, and characterizes the human from the brute, is not the generalization of the activity of thought, so-called.
It is the preparation for thought. These general types of things are the things which thought deals with. Thought does not deal with mere immediate objects of the senses; it deals rather with the objects which are indicated by words — i.e., general objects.
Some writers would have us suppose that we do not arrive at gen- eral notions except by the process of classification and abstraction, in the mechanical manner that they lay down for this purpose. The fact is that the mind has arrived at these general ideas in the process
Educational Psychology. 235
of learning language. In infanc^^ most children have learned such words as is, existence^ being, nothing, motion, cause, change, I, you, he, etc., etc.
But the point is not the mere arrival at these ideas. Education does not concern itself with that ; it does not concern itself with children who have not yet learned to talk — that is left for the nur- sery.
It is the process of becoming conscious of these ideas by reflec- tion, with which we have to concern ourselves in education. Reflec- tion is everywhere the object of education. Even when the school undertakes to teach pupils the correct method of observation — how to use the senses, as in " object-lessons " —it all means reflective observation, conscious use of the senses ; it would put this in the place of the naive spontaneity which characterizes the first stages of sense-perception.
We must not underrate these precepts of pedagogy because we find that they are not what it claims for them — i.e., they are not methods of first discovery, and of arrival at principles, but only methods of reflection, and of recognizing what we have already learned. We see that Plato's " Reminiscence" was a true form of statement for the perception of truths of reflection. The first know- ing is utterly unconscious of its own method ; the second or scientific form of knowing, which education develops, is a knowing in which the mind knows its method. Hence it is a knowing which knows its own necessity and universality.
VI.
Education presupposes the stage of mind reached in productive memory ; it deals with reflection; four stages of reflection: (a) sensuous ideas perceive things; (6) abstract ideas perceive forces or elements of a process; (c) concrete idea perceives one process, a pantheistic first principle, persistent force; {d) absolute idea perceives a conscious first principle, absolute person.
We have considered in our psychological study thus far the forms of life and cognition, contrasting the phase of nutrition with that of feeling, or sensibility. We have seen the various forms of feeling in sense-perception, and the various forms of representation as the second phase of intellectual activity — the forms of recollection, fancy, imagination, attention, and memory. We draw the line between the animals capable of education and those not capable of it, at the point of memory defined — not as recollection, but as the faculty of general ideas or conceptions, to which the significant words of language correspond.
236 Uie Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
With the arrival at language, we arrive at education in the human sense of the term ; with the arrival at language, we ai'rive at the view of the world at wliich thouglil as a mental process begins. As sense- perception has before it a world of present objects, so thought has before it a world of general concepts, which language has defined and fixed.
It is true that few persons are aware that language stands for a world of general ideas, and that reflection has to do with this world of universals. Hence it is, too, that so much of the so-called science of education is very crude and impractical. Much of it is materialistic, and does not recognize the self-activit}^ of mind ; but makes it out to be a correlation of physical energies — derived from the transmuta- tion of food by the process of digestion, and then by the brain con- verted into thought.
Let us consider now the psychology of thinking, or reflection, and at first in its most inadequate forms. As a human process, tlie know- ing is always a knowing by universals — a re-cognition, and not sim- ple apprehension, such as the animals, or such as beings have that do not use language. The process of development of stages of thought begins with sensuous ideas, which perceive mere individual, concrete, real objects, as it supposes. In conceiving these, it uses language and thinks general ideas, l)ut it does not know it, nor is it conscious of the relations involved in such objects. This is the first stage of reflection. The world exists for it as an innumerable con- geries of things, each one independent of the other, and possessing self-existence. It is the stand-point from which atomism would l)e adopted as the philosophic system. Ask it wliat the ultimate prin- ciple of existence is, and it would reply, " Atoms."
But this view of the world is a very unstable one, and requires very little reflection to overturn it, and bring one to the next basis — that of abstract ideas. When the mind looks carefully at the world of things, it finds that there is dependence and interdependence. Each . object is related to something else, and changes when that changes. Each object is a part of a process that is going on. The process produced it, and the process will destroy it — nay, it is destroying it now, while we look at it. We find, therefore, that things are not the true beings which we thought them to be, but processes are the reality. Science takes this attitude, and studies out the history of each thing in its rise and its disappearance, and it calls this history the truth. This stage of thinking does not believe in atoms or in things; it believes in forces and processes — "abstract ideas" —
Educational Psychology. 237
because they are negative, and cannot be seen by the senses. Tliis is tiie dynamic stand-point in philosophy.
Reflection knows that these abstract ideas possess more truth, more reality, than the "things" of sense-perception; the force is more real than the thing, because it outlasts a thing, — it causes things to originate, and to change, and disappear.
This stage of abstract ideas or of negative powers or forces finally becomes convinced of the essential unity of all processes and of all forces ; it sets up the doctrine of the correlation of forces, and believes that persistent force is the ultimate truth, the fundamental reality of the world. This we mny call a concrete idea, for it sets up a principle which is the origin of all things and forces, and also the destroyer of all things, and hence more real than the world of things and forces; and because this idea, when carefully thought out, proves to be the idea of self-determination — self-activity.
Persistent force, as taught us b3" the scientific men of our da}', is the sole ultimate principle, and as such it gives rise to all existence by its self-activity, for there is nothing else for it to act upon. It causes all origins, all changes, and all evanescence. It gives rise to the particular forces — heat, light, electricity, magnetism, etc. — which in their turn cause the evanescent forms which sense-percep- tion sees as "things."
We have described three phases : —
I. Sensuous Ideas perceive " things."
II. Abstract Ideas perceive "forces."
III. Concrete Idea perceives "persistent force."
In this progress from one phase of reflection to another, the intel- lect advances to a deeper and truer reality ^ at each step.
' Hume, in his famous sketch of the Human Understanding, makes all the percep- tions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds : impressions and ideas. " The difference between them consists in the degrees of force and liveliness with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought and consciousness. Those perceptions which enter with the most force and violence we may name impressions, and under this name include all our sen- sations, passions, and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas, I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning." " The identity which we ascribe to the mind of man is onl3- a fictitious one."
From this we see that his stand-point is that of "sensuous ideas," the first stage of reflection. The second or third stage of reflection, if consistent, would not ad- mit the reality to be the object of sense-impressions, and the abstract ideas to be only "faint images." One who holds, like Herbert Spencer, that persistent
238 The Journal of Speculative Pliilosoph y .
Sense-ideas which look upon the world as a world of independent objects, do not cognize the world truly. The next step, abstract ideas, cognizes the world as a process of forces, and " things" are seen to be mere temporary equilibria in the interaction of forces ; *' each thing is a bundle of forces." But the concrete idea of the Persistent force sees a deeper and more permanent reality underly- ing particular forces. It is one ultimate force. In it all multiplicity of existences has vanished, and yet it is the source of all particular existence.
This view of the world, on the stand-point of concrete idea, is pantheistic. It makes out a one supreme principle which originates and destroys all particular existences, all finite beings. It is the stand-point of Orientalism, or of the Asiatic thought. Buddhism and Brahminism have reached it, and not transcended it. It is a necessar}^ stage of reflection in the mind, just as much as the stand- point of the first stage of reflection, which regards the world as com- posed of a multiplicity of independent things ; or the stand-point of the second stage of reflection, which looks upon the world as a col- lection of relative existences in a state of process.
The final stand-point of the intellect is that in which it perceives the highest principle to be a self-determining or self-active Being, self-conscious, and creator of a world which manifests him. A logical investigation of the principle of " persistent force " would prove that this principle of Personal Being is presupposed as its true form. Since the "■ persistent force" is the sole and ultimate reality, it originates all other reality only by self-activity, and thus is self-determined. Self-determination implies self-consciousness as the true form of its existence.
These four forms of thinking, which we have arbitrarily called sen- suous^ abstract, concrete, and absolute ideas, correspond to four views of the world : (1) as a congeries of independent things; (2) as a play of forces; (3) as the evanescent appearance of a negative essential power ; (4) as the creation of a Personal Creator, who makes
force is the ultimate reality — " the sole truth, which transcends experience by underlying it" — ought to hold that the generalization which reaches the idea of unity of force is the truest and most adequate of thoughts. And yet Herbert Spencer holds substantially the doctrine of Hume, in the words: "We must predicate nothing of objects too great or too multitudinous to be mentally repre- sented, or we must make our predications by means of extremely inadequate xepresentations of such objects — mere sj'mbols of them." (Page 27 of "First Principles.")
Educational Psychology . 239
it the theatre of the development of conscious beings in his image. Each step upward in ideas arrives at a more adequate idea of the true reality. Force is more real than thing; persistent force than particu- lar forces ; Absolute Pei'son is more real than the force or forces which he creates.
This final form of thinking is the only form which is consistent with the theory of education. Each individual should ascend by education into participation — conscious participation — in the life of the species. Institutions — family, societ}', state, church — all are instrumentalities by which the humble individual may avail himself of the help of the race, and live over in himself its life. The highest stage of thinking is the stage of insight. It sees the world as explained by the prin- ciple of Absolute Person. It finds the world of institutions a world in harmony with such a principle.
240 The Journal of Speculative Philosojphy .
NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.
SENTENCES IN PROSE AND VERSE.
SELECTION BY W. E. CHANNING.
We dip't in all That treats of whatsoever is : tlie state, The total chronicles of man, the mind. The morals, something of the frame, the rock, The star, the bird, the flsh, the shell, the flower, Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest.
— Tennyson.
Economy of thought depends on executive talent. — Anon.
Providence, who looks out for man, cannot be bribed to the least disclosure. Nature is not only mystic, but curious, — -a. child's toy and a Prospero's wand at the same moment. i
In human society an effort is made to throw propert}' into a common stock. Tlie phrase must be compreliensible to the least informed. Each agrees to forego a portion of his personalities, and unite upon a basis of general common-sense, which is the abstract nature of men. The student alone strives to preserve some part of his original thought, as a metre for the race in its average mediocrity,
I accuse each morning of monotony, but the morning accuses me of far more.
The sun gleamed with a peculiar beauty from the broad, green leaves of Indian corn, as if nature said: I am pleased with my son's industry, and will gild this plant with a double radiance as a reward.
Life is forever repeated. Each new day the old experience asks the old unanswered question.
Temperament enters fully into the system of illusions, and shuts
us in a prison of glass whence we cannot see. — Emerson.
"A new commandment," said the smiling muse, "I give my darling son, — Thou shalt not preach." Luther, Fox, Behmen, Swedenborg grew pale, And, in the instant, rosier clouds upbore Hafiz and Shakespeare with their happy choirs.
— Id.
Notes and Discussions. 241
Montaigne was sensible to literaiy hypocrisy, as he says he never corrects bis writing ; while it is true that be did this, through several editions, even to the light turns of expression.
The individual needs to master all that enters into bis experience, even despair, humiliation, or failure, and make it whole ; thus be becomes wholesome.
The extremely objective man is a tradesman in mind. Facts should dance before us like a dream, to set us thinking.
The poet cannot judge truly as to the place for bis verses; the opinion of indifferent readers classes them as wretched or divine.
Love bangs suspended by a hair ; it will suddenly revive like a lichen, after it seemed dead, and visit us with its painful delights, while character acts with irresistible force on certain natures when combined with beauty.
If his genius wer5 not so great be would be more popular. He places himself where the ra3's of intelligence fall, and collects them in a focus. Like Christ's, fond men should compose bis story.
Our admiration for persons no more makes them sympathetic to us than that for the landscape ; a longing for the beautiful need not force its prison-wall.
This man who muses on his way across the fields, who tries to catch each scent of the breeze, or by the margin of the lake sits and gazes long into the waters, loves to recall the blessings of such existence in verse.
Jung Stilling's was a simple, ideal story, not heroic. He was a gland of tears — a little pressing caused them to flow bountifully. There is a soft, agreeable piety there.
We have been entertained at a magnificent repast, and cannot recall the name of a single dish. As I lay on the shore of the pond, and saw the blue waters freshly dancing, I dreamed of their beaut}'.
It requires livelong patience to grow moderatel}^ tolerant of inevit- able disagreement.
Occasional poems, — the first and most genuine of all kinds of poetry. — Goethe.
A debris of broken vows and issues waiting settlement crumble into rubbish in the minds of the feebly resolving. Like an apple- tree, the mind should be sometimes scraped to get relief from these rusty scales.
XIV— 16
242 The Journal of 8])eculative Philosophy.
A man may be celebrated for his lack of celebrity ; his success may consist in an abundance of failures, if combined with unfathom- able self-assurance and unbounded self-deceit.
The public is a mirage which shines before the Sahara of some authors' lives, and flatters them with the promise of visionary palm- trees and murmurs of sweet water.
In his early youth, St. Simon's servant awoke him each morning with these words: "Levezvous, monsieur le comte, vous avez de grand choses a faire."
It seems too great a happiness to have a friend, ever to prove true. We know we have so many and such oppressive defects, it seems impossible there should live any who can dare excuse and accept them.
The old opiate, the juice of honey flowing through the character, and a man's hands become lead by his side. The farmer's vision is in the ends of his fingers, the muscles of his back, the breadth of his shoulders. Thought is but a light, fantastic cloud, contrasted with the heavy clods whereon he treads in company with his cart-horse.
Anxiety, which is the trick of wearing out with care, never wears itself out.
It is most ungracious not to pay the tax-bill cheerfully, when we know how much safety and convenience we purchase with a few shillings.
The difference in the degrees of nervous sensibilit}' are incom- putable. Strong nerves are at once a push and a prison. The coarse can never comprehend the fine ; the latter have travelled over the whole route.
The fruits of experience are green ; we never knew the trait that ruled all these years.
Men with each other are like weights in the scales of a balance. We see them testing their pounds ; nothing is so rare as an equi- librium.
Montaigne was an avalanche of reading and reflection, which descended in the form of essays. Landor sometimes pleases himself with the dry pedantrj^ of scholars, which is the thirst of literature, and parches the mouths of the vulgar.
The miserable are made happy at times by constancy and patience. — Cicero.
He was one of those unexpressed characters whose force is an
JSTotes and Discussiojis . 243
untried mystery to themselves. Such persons are capable of sudden and unpredicted expansions.
Some depth unknown, some inner life untried, Some tliirst unslaked, some hunger which no food Gathered from earthly thorn, or by the knife In gorj- shambles stricken, can allay, Man hopes for, or endeavors against hope.
— Scott IVeaj- of the World],
Conversation with certain persons is a game of ball ; your thoughts squarely rebounding from the tenacious surface, the brain soon grows weary of pitching and catching.
We may regard painful and depressing trains of thought and eras of stagnation like the moments we wait at the doors of the theatre, before the play begins.
The inferiority of most men does not consist in themselves, but in their opinion of themselves.
Distant mountains are delicious ethereal magnets. They attract us by their beautifully blue, permanent promise. The ocean-distance also fills us with a strange delight. Those far receding horizons, — amid the low islands, — that long, glimmering reach of shining sand so far away, — they send us an answer of sweetness.
Friendship is that priceless jewel we most guard as the richest of all earthly possessions, — even God has somewhat incomputable.
The cultivated man is he who is least the egotist. We hope even to reach here a bonhomie of expression when we shall no longer be constrained to light our torch at another's, but furnish some sparks for ourselves.
In 3^on woodchuck's skull, did form precede function, or function form, — that wariness, those powers of digging, the scent that a sweet apple is relishing, his fear of man and dog, ^ — -whence came and where have gone ?
How easy it is to make a descent upon those shallower than our- selves, — we pour ourselves into the hollows without effort.
. Persevere in any course, good or evil, and you .cannot fail to find your purpose partially accomplished. Doing a thing twice makes it a kind of second-nature.
If we cannot be great, let us strive at least to be complete in our small orbit. Some little States perfectly governed far surpass the looseness of graver nations. Who cannot admire a fine seal-ring?
244 The Journal of Speculative Philosopliy .
We may put it down for certain we shall be dull every afternoon. The morning is sufficient to spend the plumes of an angel.
The light is there, and the colors surround us, but if we have nothing correspondent in our own e3es, the outward appearance will not avail us. — Goethe.
Chaucer, as the portrait of a comfortable English time, seems like a delicious peach. The mouth of the reader waters for such sweet ages. His quaintness may be parth' put on, as cabinet-makers design old styles of furniture, the better to show the peculiar veins of their wood.
At the creation of man, all things of divine order were collated into him. — Sicedenborg.
In the tectonic art and that of the currier all things are asserted on account of the better or the worse ; but mathematics does not pay attention to things good and evil. — Aristip}nis.
Like the day, each man's constitution obeys the order of the day. A few clear, brilliant moments are called the morning ; in these Goethe found his charming, suushiny songs.
He tried to create the savage in the civilized ; but he was rather near the latter than the former in trying that.
If Ufe were any worse, we should so hate it, it would not be worth the living ; if it were any the better, it would be so precious we should never know how to have done with it.
Lively feeling of a situation, and power to express it, constitute the poet. — Goethe.
Nature was only created for the purpose of clothing what is spir- itual, and of presenting it correspondently in the ultimate of order. — Sivedenborg.
THE IDEAS OF THE PURE REASON.
I saw in dreams a constellation strange, Thwarting the night; its big stars seemed to range Northward across the Zenith, and to keep Calm footing along Heaven's ridge-pole high, While round the pole the sullen Bear did creep And dizzily the wheeling spheres went by. They from their watch-towers in the topmost sky Looked down upon the rest, Nor eastward swerved, nor west. Though Procj-on's candle dipped below the verge. And the great twins of Leda 'gan decline
Notes and Discussions. 245
Toward the horizon line,
And prone Orion, sprawling headlong, urge
His flight into the far Pacific surge.
I heard a voice which said: "Those wonders bright
Are hung not on the hinges of the night;
But set to vaster harmonies, they run
Straight on, and turn not with the turning sphere.
Nor make an orbit about any sun.
No glass can track the courses that they steer,
By what dark paths they vanish and appear.
The starry flocks that still
Are climbing Heaven's hill
Will pasture westward down its sloping lawn ;
But yon wild herd of planets — who can say
Through what far flelds they stray ;
Ai'ound what focus their ellipse is drawn ;
Whose shining makes their transcendental dawn?"
I told my vision to a learned man.
Who said : " On no celestial globe or plan
Can those unset, unrisen stars be found.
How might such uncomputed motions be
Among the ordered spheres? Heaven's clock is wound
To keep one time. Idle our dreams, and we,
Blown by the wind, as the light family
Of leaves." But still I dream.
And still those planets seem
Through Heaven their high, unbending course to take ;
And a voice cries: "Freedom and Truth are we,
And Immortality :
God is our sun." And though the morning break
Across my soul still plays their shimmering wake.
Henry A. Beers. New Haven, January, 1880.
AN ORIENTAL MYSTIC.
The name of Dsclielaleddin Rumi is familiar to lovers of Persian poetry. He lived in the thirteenth century, and belonged to that sect of Mohammedan mystics called Sufis ; whose doctrines, under various forms, permeated Oriental poetry and philosophy. The Sufists looked upon the soul as an emanation from Deity to be ab- sorbed into its source, and regarded that absorption as the sole aim of life, attainable only by contemplation. They concentrated every faculty inward, and sought to identif}' themselves so closely with God as to lose "each atom of separate being," swallowed up in an all- embracing unity.
246 The Journal oj Speculative Philosophy.
Dschelaleddin has been called "the greatest mystic poet of the ■whole Orient." He wrote a Divan, containing thirty thousand coup- lets, and the " Mesnavi," containing forty thousand. The following ■extract from the former, translated by Riickert into German, illus- trates the recurrence of the same rhyme, characteristic of Persian poetry : —
" Mit deiner Seele hat sich meine
Gemischt, wie Wasser mit deni Weine. Wer kann den Wein vom Wasser trennen,
War dich und mich aus dem Vereine? Du bist mein grosses leh geworden,
Und nie mehr will ich sein dies kleine. Du hast mein Wesen angenommen,
SoUt' ich nicht nehmen an das deine? Auf ewig hast du mich bejahet,
Dass ich dich ewig nie verneine."
The rhj'me is repeated through twelve additional couplets. I would fain render it into English verse, but give instead a prose ver- sion : —
"My soul has mixed with Thine, as water with wine. Who can separate wine from water, or Thee from me ? Thou hast become my great Self, and never more shall I be this little self. Thou hast re- ceived into Thine my being ; shall I not' receive Thine into mine? For ever hast Thou affirmed me, that I may never deny Thee."
The " Mesnavi," Rumi's greatest work, is regarded by Mohamme- dans as surpassing all others in the depth and fervor of its mystical piety. Portions of it have been translated into German by the Orien- tal scholar, Georg Rosen. It opens with the song of the flute, whose melting, melancholy music inspired the dervishes in their mystic dances. Its notes are complaints, — complaints on account of its separation from the reed-grown ponds ; and thus it is the picture of enlightened man, whose life is also a complaint on account of its separation from Divinity ; the sundering of a part from the whole, for which it longs, until individuality is annihilated, and the pure spirit is reabsorbed into the great unity. Legends and narratives, mystical and allegorical, interwoven with ascetic doctrines and philo- sophical teachings, make up the book. One of the principal stories is that of a Jewish king who reigned in the early part of the Christian €ra. This king consulted his vizier as to what meays he should em- ploy to root out the Christian faith. The vizier thereupon was hypo- <!riticall3^ converted to Christianit}^ and by his assumed piety so gained the confidence of the Christians that he was appointed spirit-
JVotes and Discussions. 247
ual chief ovei* the twelve tribes into which they were divided. He then taught to each different dogmas. To one he said, "Victory over self is the only basis of reconciliation to God." To another, "Renunciation is of no avail, good works alone can save thee." To a third he declared that '" attention to external rites was chiefly neces- sary." In a fourth he inculcated the duty of resignation. To a fifth he said, "Let man recognize his weakness, and God's omnipotence is revealed." To a sixth, " Call thyself not weak, or thou mistakest Ood's mercy ; for thy power flows from His power, and is part of that which created every thing."
Having disseminated contradictory doctrines, he I'etired to a her- mit's cell, whence all entreaties to draw him forth were vain. He secluded himself, fasting for forty days, and then summoned the twelve princes of the twelve tribes to separate interviews, and ap- pointed each his immediate successor. His purpose accomplished, the seeds of dissension sown in the very midst of the Christians, he died a willing sacrifice. Ethical precepts and reflections are inter- spersed through the narrative. The poet dwells upon the idea that the selfishness of the individual stands in the way of that perfect purity of thought essential to the comprehension of Divinity. To be buried in God, man must forget himself ; must give up self-love to be reunited to the primitive substance. Renounce thyself if thou wouldst perceive the truly Existent under the play of external phenomena. Nature's multiplicity is confusing, but faith looks up- ward steadily, and perceives beneath the transient the eternally abid- ing. God is everywhere.
"I am what is, and is not. I Am — if thou dost know it, Say it, O Docaelaleddin — I am The Soul in nil!"
The poet likens divine knowledge to a sea ; an element clear in it- self, but resisting all formation. The world of forms is a succession of waves, each moment appearing and disappearing. The individual being is tossed hither and thither, until, abstracted from sensuous per- ception, he sinks into its depths.
Remote from the light of the senses and of the understanding, says the poet, the light of reason radiates from the light of the Lord.
In a dark night thou seest not color ; it is the darkness that makes known to thee the light.
Out of the sea of thought plunges the sound, the word, and back to the sea it returns ; thought reabsorbs its sense. As the All is lost in the Lord, so is the Form lost in the Formless that bore it.
248 Tlie Journal of SiJeculative Philosophy .
The universe passes away, changes its garment each moment, but ■who perceives its renewal ? Like a river, life flows uninterrupted and even ; like the course of a s])ark swung around, that circles and curves through the air ; like a line that is seen in quick flight ; a series of points, of vanishing moments.
The earth is true ; corn springs up where corn is sowed. But its fidelity rests on that of the sun, and it is God's thought that ani- mates all. Like a senseless stone is he who comprehends this not ; like a crystal filled with light is he to whom it is clear. There is no alchemy equal to God's alchemy. I would praise Him — yet praise implies separate existence ; he who praises stands outside of the Being praised.
The soul is a bird shut up in the cage of the body, longing for freedom. The poet exhorts the soul to look with the glance of love unselfishly into the world, the pure mirror wherein God is revealed and, confounded with His glory, to sing as the lark sings at early dawn.
Death is welcomed as an escape from the bondage of the senses.
" While 3'our dim eyes but see through The haze of earth's sadness, My frame, doomed to mix with The mouldering clod, I am treading the courts of the Seventh heaven in gladness. And basking unveiled in the Vision of God."
Death ends the trouble of life, but life shudders at its approach ; it sees the dark hand, and not the clear cup which death offers. Thus, says the poet, a heart shudders at the approach of love ; for where love awakes, selfishness dies. Let it die, he adds, if thou wouldst breathe freely. He alone is free who hath conquered self.
As ice at heart is the same as water, and proceeds therefrom, so out of the ethereal light of Divinity is formed this external universe, which can only exist separately because the rays of heavenly glory do not penetrate it wholly. The blue horizon overarches it in mourn- ful remembrance of its severance from God. (Blue, with the Per- sians, is the color of mourning.) Cling not, O soul, to this world of change, but recognize the changeless that underlies it. The sun's rays are many, but its light is one.
Filled with this mystic sense of oneness, the poet loses sight of every distinction. Limit is swallowed up in the illimitable. "Noth- ing seems every thing, and ever}- thing seems nothing." Pantheism is the result.
St. Louis, Mo.
N'otes and Discussions. 249
" Nothing is the mirroi-, and the World the image in it; God the shower is, who
Shows the vision every minute."
Ellex M. Mitchell.
MIND vs. MATTER.
The conflict between Idealism and Materialism ever and anon breaks out in some new quarter, but the casus belli through all the ages remains the same. The riddle of the sphinx was solved in the schools of Greece ; the intellectual man is no longer an inexplicable enigma. Berkeley raised an iconoclastic hand against those material forms before which the grossest idolaters, until the present day, have continued to worship. An incestuous alliance with these same materialistic notions has been formed by his professed followers ; and modern idealism, like the mythological king of Thebes, is now banished from its own stronghold. Realism has fallen completel;^ into the hands of the materialist ; and, in its captivity, too hastily concedes that tlie Berkeleyan distinctions Ijetween mind and matter w&s a " mere logomachy " — a " metaphysical abstraction."
Thus the breach which the "ideal bishop" opened is made the butt of ridicule ; but whether his distinctions be real or unreal, an impartial history testifies that Berkelej^anism possessed a strength which its strongest antagonists dare not encounter. It was a breach which the extravagant speculations of ideal pantheism could not bridge over; a bottomless pit, which the "corporeal substance" — the rubbish of materialism — has not been able to fill up. "In itself," as Huxley, in his lecture on the Physical Basis of Life, con- cedes "it is of little moment whether we express the phenomena of matter in the terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit in the terms of matter; " though this materialistic terminology (to reverse his own argument and turn it against him) would be " utterl}^ barren, and lead to nothing but obscurity and confusion of idea," if, accord- ing to the irresistible logic of Berkeleyanism, there is no such thing as " matter." "
To avoid confusion, we must use the terminology of Idealism, and must base all our argument for spiritual existences wholly upon the data furnished by an idealistic S3^stem. Physiological facts can be used to prove nothing about a distinct spirituality from the stand- point of a materialistic empiricism ; thus, the mind cannot be known as distinct, as other than corporeal substance. The dead Monism of
250 The Journal of Speculative Philosoj^hy .
the materialist allows no a priori distinction between the phenomena of mind and the phenomena of matter ; mind and matter are one — not in the paradoxical sense of Berkeleyanism, but according to the Huxleyan idea. The riddle of the sphinx has been answered, but the sphinx itself remains, as the representative of the materialistic notion.
The distinction between mind and matter is very vital to the foundation of all theological science. Idealistic realism, the recog- nized patron of that spirituality which theology demands, is held in durance by materialistic notions of mind and mental phenomena ; and its ph3'siological arguments, upon which so much stress has been lately laid, prove nothing unless the (fallacia j^etitionis principii) postulate »of mind vs. matter is first allowed. It will attempt in vain to convince sceptical gainsayers until it stands wholly outside of an atheistic materialism.
If the synthetic a priori judgments of idealism are denied, while those of materialism are accepted, no deductions from physiological data will be irrefragible evidence in support of immaterial or psy- chical existence. There must be direct inferences from the phe- nomena of mind, referred to mind itself, supported by an idealistic philosophj^, which alone can logically prove these inferences to be valid. Not only will Berkeleyanism accomplish this, but the more powerful S3'stem of idealistic realism, if uncorrupted, would possess the strength, without the weakness, of Berkeley's system.
J. E. B.
Roanoke College, Salem, Va., December 6, 1879.
AHNUNG.
[In the Ph(edrus of Plato, the soul is Weened to a chariot drawn by two ivinged steeds, the one white and the other black. The %chite horse symbolizes spirit, the black represents the sense. Reason is the charioteer. The embodied soul has reminiscences of its former soarings to the surface of the outer sphere of the sensible universe, where it caught glimpses of the perfect types, or ideas, of all created things.}
Sometimes the tired reason drops the reins —
The shining reins of the immortal car.
Then quick as thought the vvliite steed spreads his wings :
As leaps the lightning through the summer sky.
So heavenward speeds the ethereal spirit-steed,
And seems a flash of silver-dust and fire.
And now is seen the realm of radiant types.
The perfect patterns of all earthly things.
This is the home of the soul,
In vision and revery seen ; Oft through the gates of the morn
Flashes its diamond sheen.
Notes and Discussions. 251
All that is beautiful here
Catches its radiance thence ; Streams through the tangle of stars,
The lustre resplendent, intense.
Dustless the rose there, the leixf —
Delicate, pure, and serene, Sleeping in silence as deep
As that of the soul in a dream.
But while the enraptured reason thrills with joy,
And fain would stand forever gazing there.
Spreads his black wings the frightened steed of sense,
Takes in his teeth the bit of aery gold.
And, ere the heavenly light has wholly ceased
To sift its silver o'er his raven plumes.
Lies grovelling and panting on the ground. Plato, thy fine, ideal eye here pierced The veil. Thy symbol adumbrates the truth.
Burns through the world that appears,
Tliat of the actual, real ; Holiness, friendship, and love.
Sweetly its presence reveal.
Over the hearse-cloth and shroud
Roses and violets fling; Where is thy victory, grave.
Where, O death, is thy sting?
William Sloan Kennedy. Cambridge, Mass., December 21, 1879.
THE CONCORD SUMMER SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
July and August, 1880. — The Concord Summek School will open for ;i second terra on Monday, July 12, 1880, at 9 A. M., and will continue five weeks. The lectures will be arranged in courses of five or three, in pairs, and by single lectures ; and in each week there will be eleven. They will be given morning and evening, except Sat- ui-day evenings, on the six secular days (in the morning at 9 o'clock, and in the evening at 7:30), at the Hillside Chapel., near the Orchaixi House. The list of lecturers and subjects will be found on the fol- lowing page.
The terms will be $3 for each of the five weeks ; but each regular student will be required to pay at least $10 for the terra, which will permit him to attend during three weeks. The fees for all the courses will be $15. Board raa}' be obtained in the village at fi'om $6 to $12 a week, — so that students may estimate their necessary expenses for
252 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
the whole terra fit $50. Single tickets at fifty cents each, will be issued for the convenience of visitors, and these may be bought at the shop of H. L. Whitcomb, in Concord, after July 1, 1880, in packages of twelve for $4.50, of six for $2.50, and of three for $1.25. It is expected that the applications for course tickets will exceed the number which can be issued. Any one to whom this circular is sent can now engage tickets by making application at once, and send- ing with the application $5 as a guaranty. For those who make this deposit, tickets will be reserved till the first day of July, 1880, and can then be obtained by payment of the balance due. Course tickets at $15 will entitle the holders to reserved seats, and $10 tickets will entitle to a choice of seats after the course-ticket holders have been assigned seats.
All students should be registered on or before July 1, 1880, at the oflflce of the Secretary, in Concord. No preliminary examinations are required, and no limitation of age, sex, or residence in Concord will be prescribed ; but it is recommended that persons under eigh- teen years should not present themselves as students, and that those who take all the courses should reside in the town durino- the term. The Concord Public Library of 16,000 volumes, will be open every day for the use of residents. Students coming and going daily dur- ing the term, may reach Concord from Boston by the Fitchburg Eailroad, or the Middlesex Central; from Lowell, Andover, etc., by the Lowell and Framingham Railroad ; from Southern ]\Iiddlesex and Worcester Counties by the same road. The Orchard Hous6 stands on the Lexington road, east of Concord village, adjoining the Wayside estate, formerly the residence of Mr. Hawthorne.
S. H. Emery, Jr., Director.
F. B. Sanborn, Secretary. CoNCOEB, April 26, 1880.
LIST OF LECTURERS AND SUBJECTS.
Mr. A. Bronson Alcott, Five Lectures on Mysticism. Mr. Alcott will also deliver the Salutatory and Valedictory, and will have general charge of the con- versations of the School.
Dr. H. K. Jois"ES, Five Lectures on The Platonic Philosophy, and five on Plat- onism, in its Relation to Modern Civilization, viz. : 1. Platoyiic Philosophy ; Cos- mologic and Theologic Outlines. 2. Tlie Platonic Psychology ; The Daemon o;f Socrates. 3. The Tivo Worlds, and the Twofold Consciousness; The Sensible^ and the Intelligible. 4. The Eternity of the Soul, and its Preexistence. 5. The Immortality and the Mortality of the Soul; Personality and Individuality; Metem-psychosis. 6. The Psychic Body and the Material Body of Man. 7. Edu- cation and Discipline of Man ; The Uses of the World we Live in. 8. The Phil- osophy of Law. 9. The Philosophy of Prayer, aiid the "Prayer Gauge." 10. Spiritualism, Ancient and Modern.
Notes and Discussions.
253
Prof. W. T. Harris, Five Lectures on Speculative Philosophij, viz. : 1. Phil- osophic Knowing. 2. Philosophic First Principles. 3. Philosophy and Immor- tality. 4. Philosophy and Religion. 5. Philosophy and Art, Five Lectures on The History of Philosophy, viz. : L Plato. 2. Aristotle. 3. Kant. 4. Fichte. 5. Hegel.
liev. J. S. Kidney, D. D., Tliree Lectures on TAe Philosophy of the Beautiful and the Sublime.
Mr. Denton J. Smder, Five Lectures on Shakespeare. \. Philosophy of Shakespearean Criticis?n. 2. The Shakespearean World. 3. Principles of Cha?-- acterizationin Shakespeare. 4. Organism, of the Individual Drama. 5. Organism of the Universal I}rama.
Eev. W. H. Channing, Four Lectures on Oriental and Mystical Philosophy. \. Historical Mysticism. 2. Man'' s Fourfold Being. 3. True Buddhism. 4. Mod- ern Pessimism.
Mrs. E. D. Cheney, Two Lectures. 1. Color. 2. Early American Art.
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, A Lecture on Modern Society.
Mr. John Albee, Two Lectures. L Figu7-ative Language. 2. The Literary AH.
Mr. F. B. Sanborn, Two Lectures on The Philosopihy of Charity.
Dr. Elisha Mulford, Two Lectures. 1. The Personality of God. 2. Prece- dent Relations of Religion and Philosophy to Christianity.
Mr. H. G. O. Blake, I'eadings from Thoreau's Manuscripts.
Prof. Benjamin Peirce, A Lecture.
Kev. Dr. Bartol, A Lecture — The (Quandary.
Prof. Andrew P. Peabody, A Lecture — Conscience and Consciousness.
Mr. H. W. Emerson, A Lecture.
Kev. Dr. F. H. Hedge, A Lecture.
Prof. G. H. HowisoN, A Lecture.
Mr. D. A. Wasson, A Lecture.
PROGRAMME OF LECTURES,
JULY, 1880. 2'2d, 9 A.M. Mr. Snider.
12th, 9 A. M. Mr. Alcott 7.30 P. M. Prof. Harris
(Salutatory). '2:3d, 9 A.M. Dr. Jones.
7.30 P.M. Prof. Harris 7.30 P.M. Rev. W. H.
1.3th, 9 A. M. Mrs. Che- Channing.
ney. 24th, 9 A. M. Prof. Harris
7.30P.M. Rev. W. H. 2(!th,9 A.M. Dr. Jones.
Channing. 7.30 P.M. Rev. W. H.
11th, 9 A. M. Mrs. Che- Channing.
ney. 27th, 9 A. M. Mr. Alcott.
7.30 P.M. Mr. Alcott. 7.30 P.M. Prof. Harris
15th, 9 A. M. Mr. Wasson. 28th, 9 A. M. Kev. W. H.
7.30 P.M. Prof. Howi- Channing.
■ sou. \ 7.30 P. M. Mr. Albee.
16th, 9 A.M. Mr. Wasson. : 29th, 9 A.M. Mrs. Howe.
7.30 P. M. Mr. Snider. | 7.30 P. M. Prof. Harris
17th, 9 A. M. Mr. Snider. \ 30th, 9 A. M. Dr. Jones.
19th, 9 A. M. Dr. Jones, i 7.30 P. M. Dr. Kidney.
7.30 P. M. Mr. Snider. , 31st, 9 A. M. Prof. Peirce
20th, 9 A. M. Mr. Alcott. | August, 1880.
7.30 P. M. Prof. Harris. | 2d, 9 A. M. Dr. Jones.
21st, 9 A. M. Dr. Jones. 7.30 P. M. Mr. Albee.
7.30 P. M. Mr. Snider. 3d, 9 A. M. Mr. Alcott.
7.30 P. M.
4tli,9 A. M.
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5th, 9 A. M.
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7..30 P. M.
7th, 9 A. M.
9th, 9 A. M.
7.30 P. M.
10th, 9 A. M.
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11th, 9 A. M.
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12th, 9 A. M.
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13th, 9 A.M.
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son.
Uth, 9 A. M.
body.
11 A. M.
Prof. Harris Dr. Jones. Dr. Kidney. Dr. Mulford Prof. Harris Dr. Jones. Dr. Kidney. Dr. Mulford Dr. Jones. Dr. Hedge. Mr. Alcott. Prof. Harris Dr. Jones. Mr. Blake, Mr. Sanborn Prof. Harris Dr. Bartol. Mr. Emer-
Prof. Pea-
Mr. Alcott
(Valedictory).
254 The Journal of Speculative PJiilosophy .
BOOK NOTICE.
Delphic Days. By D. J. Snider. St. Louis, Mo. : 1880.
The canons of criticism require constant extension to keep pace with the con- stant new forms of the poetic imagination. AVe ought not to harden them, but struggle to keep them flexible and almost fluid, as it were like watei-, which at once buoys and surrounds the noble vessel launched upon it. An open, well- endowed, and sj'mpathetic mind is the best criterion, — the best critic of new attempts. There is a certain soul in us, to which poetry, of whatever kind or form, must make its appeal. This has been formulated into many definitions — some as poetical as the best verse — and into ars poetica and abstract dogmas. But more than all these, perhaps, we are educated and fitted to read and pronounce upon new poetry by as much old poetry, that has steadfastly held the ear of the world, as we happen to have read. There is not likely to be any verse so strangely new that we do not somewhere hear the echo of the most ancient muse. The lineage of the poets has never lapsed, though often disappearing. Their race is united by ties tender and heroic; and many a merest trifling keepsake as well. They pass on the pcean to beauty, nature, the gods, valor, and virtue ; and with it they transmit the flute, the harp, the identical note, the choice phrase, the honeyed word.
All these help us for whom they sing to know the authentic song, and also to detect what new string has been added to the modern lyre. The smooth maga- zine versicles cannot deceive us. We know their excuse for being, and why they are printed. They have not the poor merit of novelties or reproductions. We do not apply any tests to them ; we bespeak them kindly, because written by our friends.
In the heart of the lover of poetry, there is always the prophecy of a new poet. As he knows the elder bards, he is better able to recognize the younger ; and lie is ever on the alert for a freshly-inspired word. He may make mistakes, but they are those of magnanimity. For there is something to him more engaging, even in the defeated poetical enterprise, than in all other success.
We cannot in the space allowed us give any adequate account of Delphic Days, or the grounds of our admiration of the poem as a whole. Having little acquaint- ance with the author's previous work, aud no prejudice, we have read Delphic Days with a single mind and freedom to permit it to make its own impression, and have found a new sense of intellectual pleasure. Taking ourselves at our present state of culture, we must ask and answer the question, does this poem give us delight? Does it move us into its own world? Does it, itself, move freely, con. sciously, and triumphantly in an ideal world of its own creation? We must answer aflirmatively to these tests, reserving only a few minor, and, mostly, verbal restrictions.
Booh Notices. 255
The demand unconsciously insisted upon to-day, that a man shall be a specialist, and having done one kind of work, shall not venture into new fields, has, on its own merits no weight with us ; and, i-n as far as it pertains to this author, we clearly perceive how happily and well his studies in criticism, and in the litera- tures of Greece and Rome, may have qualified him, and led up to the power of construction, conception, and even inspiration of this poem. Cahokia need not be astonished because its schoolmaster turns out to be a poet. Already in one of its pedagogues, Europe discovered for it a philosopher. Some wild destiny often intervenes to give a man a name and place for work, through which only he is endeavoring to pierce his way, which he uses by necessity as a foundation, but which a blind public calls his topmost stone. "We suppose many citizens of Am- sterdam died believing Spinoza a maker of spectacle glasses.
We understand the author of Delphic Days spent much time among the scenes he describes, having first equipped himself with the modern Greek tongue. In ancient Greece he was already at home. He has combined and reproduced the two with distinctness and beauty. And he has blended with them the modern, romantic, subjective spirit, so that artistically nothing is absent which belongs to the manner and the matter required for such attempts. There is scarcely in Goethe or Landor a more natural afiiliation with the antique than in Delphic Days. Study will go far toward this aptitude — this assumption of remote and ancient life ; but also some genuine relationship and sympathy must give the color, the tone, the deep internal oneness, which alone can move the reader into the same realm. As we are so moved in reading Delphic Days, we hesitate not in believing the author to have these accomplishments, and these gifts. All are cen- tered in the artistic ability to reproduce and endow with appropriate form, that image of Greece, ancient and modern, which the susceptible mind bodies forth in many a mood, in the presence of the actual object. The form is elegiac verse, which, in a measure, helps the illusion wrought by the subject itself — the hexa- meter, whose long flow is deliciously ended in music and sense by the following pentameter line : We could read them forever for nothing but their rhythmical cadence !
We have long believed hexameter to be, for English poetry, the verse of the future. Grand as blank verse is in its higher flight, the moment it descends at all, it becomes little else than essentially prosaic. Hexameter can continue to produce poetical efi'ect through the whole scale. And we believe in it as one means of im- proving our language, and giving to it more versatility and amplitude for poetical themes. Another argument we must not omit in its tavor — every fool can't write it. It is flnely varied by the pentameter, as in elegiac, and we shall invent or adopt other variations when it is more freely used.
This poem, as far as we remember,' is the largest attempt in our literature in elegiac meter. It is evidently, in its structure, the result of long studies, and per- fect familiarity with Latin and German models. It cannot be written or read by counting of syllables, or application of classical, or any strict rules of quantity : it tnust be read by accent; then its music will be apparent. Then it will be seen to be not precisely an imitation of classic elegiac, but a rendering of the general spirit and rhythmical efi'ect of that form of verse. It is peculiarly adapted to subjects where the continuity required is not dramatic nor historical, but an assem- blage of incidents, thoughts, and emotions, only loosely bound in some general con- ception.
What, then, is the manner and the meaning which we must next look for, after
256 TJie Journal of Speculative Philosophy .
becoming fomiliar with the measure, once ridding ourselves of all mental resist- ance toward the author and the book? Here we must leave the reader to answer for himself, just where, possibly, he expects us to tell what we find. We have sufficiently intimated, in a general manner, our own impressions. It seemed more necessary- to us to clear the way to a right appreciation, to remove some accidental obstructions, than to employ description and praise ; approval will then have some force and sweetness.
It would be a wrong to poetry of this order to attempt to redact it into its liter- ary elements and summarize its contents. It contains too delicate a flower to be so handled.
Its three books, "Delphi," " The Olives," and "Elpinike," are each one divided into numbers of twenty or thirty lines. (We say nothing of the titles of sub- divisions because they seem to us to mar, with an unmeaning diminutive, the general form.)
Each numbered division embodies, completes in itself, some little history, out- ward or interior, some description or scenery, some sentiment or reflection, contrast or likeness of the ancient and modern ages, of the Mississippi and Castalia; and the thread which binds them is the depth, adequacy, and integrity of the poet's mood.
He is drawn to Greece by all that captivates the imagination. At the same time he remains the modern, with the longing soul of the northern man. Greece her- self satisfies him momentarily — he longs to transplant her by the banks of his own restless river; but he lays at her feet the reward of his transient happiness, with the prayer that her beauty may at length lead him into the calm of a life devoted to philosophj'^ and poetry.
" Nov can I censure this heart for being the captive of beaut.y; Let it siug on in its bauds till it shall sing itself free."
John Albee.
ERRATA.
The reader of Dr. Stirling's article will please note carefully the following corrections, made in the author's revision of the proof-sheets:
Page 258. line 7, for will read shall.
" 259, bottom line, for there read here. •
•• 262, line 2, msQrtjuHt l)efore because.
" 2t)2, " 29, insert foot-note relating to the word perception., as follows : "It is fair to own that Hegel (see " Secret of Plegel," I, 329) seems to make einfachheit of self-reference the chai'acter- istic of a hegriff- — not that this at all helps the matter liere. Blue, too, was probably in Hegel's mind as a one blue color, as there is a one space; but tliere are only particu- lar lilue colors, if only a single notion blue." Page 262, line 33, for fact read truth.
" 265, " 19, for' 155 read 185.
" 268, third line from the bottom, insert is before strucTc.
" 269, line 30, for completely read competently.
" 271, '' 1, for consciousness read consciousnesses.
'• 271, " 22, for accord read accordance.
'■ 271, " 28, for sense — intellect read sense-intellect.
•• 272. '• 29, after word insert ima,(jination.
•' 272, in next to last line, for this gift j-ead the gift.
" 273, line 4, for empiric rend enipirie.
" 273, '• 9, read whatever is ah which is indip'creufh/ also ha, etc.
•• 273, " 10, for ah veaAfact.
" 273, " "is, ms&vt as a^tev sense-forms.
" 273, " 32, for there read their^
" 274, " 30, insert the affections before theutselves.
" 278, " 5, insert after him {see TI, 138).
" 280, " 4, for times read time.
'• 280, •' 27, for is read implies.
" 282, insert 2. before the third paragraph.
" 283, line 31, read after considered, the successions itnplied iroidd he only of indiff'erent units, hut only in one direction; whereas the ohjective successums under ciew are not of indifferent Knits, and one of them may he in two directions.
" 284, line 9, insert S. before the second paragraph.
" 284, " 16, for any read one.
THE JOURNAL
OF
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.
YoL. XIV.] July, 1880. [No. 3.
CRITICISM OF KANT'S MAIN PRINCIPLES."
BY J. HIJT0HI80K STIRLING.
In late articles of mine {Causality^ Hume and Kant j Scho- jienhauer and Kant), sometliin2: seemed suggested perhaps, which, it true, could not be denied (in appearance, at least), fundamentally and fatally to object to the position of Kant, especially so far as that position was regarded in its own self-avowed principal de- sign. The subject, however, still lying daily in my mind, a variety of new lights gradually arose in it, till the general bearing on the very center of the entire Kantian system took more and more shape. If now, then, in the present paper, I follow, to some extent, the forms of the previous ones, I hope to add, at the same time, not
' This, though so far independent in itself, is the paper to which I refer {J. Sp. Ph., January, 1880) as interrupted by Mr. Caird's letter (/. Sp. Ph., April, 1879). The wliole first piirt must be unc'erstood to have been, at that moment, complete as it stands — discounting only an inconsiderable- change in a note or two. And, in that reference, I may remark here, that it may be expected of me that I should say something in re- joinder to Mr. Caird's lust article in this Journal. On grounds, however, as well per- Bonal as general, I conceive myself to be now dispensed from this ; and I have not read more than the first line that is written there. I am quite willing, at the same time, to undertake any further duty that may, in that reference, be brought home to me, espe- cially in the interests of science. But that I leave for the future.
XIV— 17
258 The Joutmal of Speculative Philosophy.
only elucidation and support, but more or less of complete exten- sion as well.
In accordance with the plan of procedure indicated, then, I desire to remind my readers that the first point in regard to which I polemically animadverted upon Kant related to the schema. The motive of the schematism at all is to find a medium, a tertium qidd, in which a prior^i form will coalesce with a posteriori mat- ter; and the realizing power is the faculty to which Kant in the course of his exposition has advanced. The function oi judgment., namely, is to subsume cases under rules. In this, transcendental judgment will diifer from general judgment, as having before it, in addition to the rules themselves, or the conditions to rules (the categories), a certain transcendental matter (as condition to cases), namely, time and space. It will be the business of transcendental judgment, that is, to subsume the transcendental matter under the transcendental rules; or it will simply develop these rules, or these conditions to rules, with tlie help of said matter. Now, this shall be the schematism, and shall constitute the medium required.
The categories, then, as rules, or conditions to rules, will, ob- viously, be the first consideration. They are taken in their four general classes — quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Towards their development, again, the matter to be subsumed under them will be the contents of pure or formal perception, time and space. Further, if we consider that time, as form of inner sense, is a de- gree nearer the central unity of apperception than space, which is only the form of outer sense — if we consider, indeed, that space itself is only conceivable or perceivable in time, we shall see that it is with this latter we must begin. It is the subsumption of time under the conditions of the categories which will give origin to such element as shall mediate the many of special sense to the unity of apperception. In strictness one would expect, where materials of this nature are concerned, some manipulation of space — at least, in the second place, and before reference to special sense. One cannot see, however, that Kant has taken it so. Space has some slight mention under quantity ; but is afterwards, we may say, wholly neglected. This neglect is noticed by Ueberweg, who, how- ever, like the rest (Hegel, Erdmann, Schwegler), has, perhaps, not looked quite close enough at the schematism generally. For, on the whole, we may say of all of these, that they seem to have taken
Criticism of Kanfs Main Pi^inGijples. 259
it for granted that the onlj material Kant had in view for his schematism was the pure forms of sense and, in ultimate instance, time.
Hegel, for his part, takes but slight notice of the schematism anywhere at all. In Glauben und Wissen we find time and space so mentioned that they may be assumed to have been re- garded as the matter of the schematism. In the History of Philosophy, again, he accords the theme (XY,, 516) no more than half a dozen sentences. These praise what is implied in the idea of the transcendental imagination, but complain that Kant, in blindness to his own import, merely joins together understanding and sense, " as two difierent particular things, in an external, su- perficial fashion, like a stick and a bone bj a string: thus, for example, the category of substance becomes in the schema a per- manent substrate in time ; that is to say, it is put into unity with the form of pure perception." In another sentence he says, too : " The 5(?-^6ma/^6-m of pure understanding, the transcendental imag- ination, it is, that determines the pure perception in accordance with the category, and in this way makes transition to experience." In the "Encyclopaedia," lastly, he seems to have considered it enough to refer to sense on the M'hole as under influence of the categories, at the same time that the pure forms of perception are named. So far Hegel, though perfunctory, and in his perf unctori- ness incomplete, may be regarded as not verbally incorrect. There are a few other points, however, in which, in Kant's reference, Hegel seems to fail here ; and we are, consequently, led to distrust even those noticed. For example, Kant proposes to prove that time and space are, first, not objects of special sense, but a priori in the mind; and, second, that they are, nevertheless and notwith- standing, not notions (conceptions), but perceptions. In behoof of the latter proposition he argues that space and time are not universals with particulars under them (most probably Kant's only meaning for " Bestandtheile "), as the genus mammal, say with lions, bears, whales, men, and what not, under it. On the con- trary, they are singular entities, whose subordinate parts are not under, but in them, are simply limitations of themselves, are in this way simply themselves — spaces and space, times and time (in which sense, obviously, space and time have parts, have " Bestand- theile "). There Hegel understands Kant to say, " Space and time
260 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
are no general notions of relations of things, but pure perceptions; for we can conceive space only as a single such ; it has not Be- standtheile" (TFIF., XV., 510).
Tiicse words (put in inverted commas as an actual quotation from Kant) Hegel follows up by others of his own, thus: "Just so is it situated with time again. The abstract concejjtion Tree, for example, is in its actuality a number of individual, separate trees; but spaces are not such particulars, or even not parts (Theile) ; on the contrary, there remains a one direct continuity, and, therefore, a simple unity." One sees here that Hegel has taken the more probable logical or metaphj'sical, rather than the chemical or phy- sical, interpretation of the word Bestandtheile. Kant's space, he thinks, is not like the abstract notion Tree, a whole of generaliza- tion with individuals under it, "Spaces," he says, "are not such particulars;" and he is quite right so far: spaces are not to space what actual trees are to the notion Tree. But it is just this saying that spaces are not as trees, which, perhaps, leads him wrong (or it is there, at all events, that his error lies). These trees are reals: spaces, then, as contrasted with trees, he would seem to have been misled to think, are not such reals. " Spaces," he says, " are not such Besondere {i. e., as individual, separate trees), or even not parts (Theile) ; on the contrary, there remains a one direct con- tinuity, and, therefore, a simple unity." The general understand- ing of Kant, then, that on Hegel's part comes out here, is evidently a very confused and muddled one (and this is confirmed, as we shall see, by the words that follow). Space is undoubtedly to Kant " a one direct continuity, a simple unity ;" but it is also to him, and just for that reason, a thing that has parts, Theile, though not Bestandtheile in the sense of logical parts. Kant's own words are these : " We can represent to ourselves only a single space, and, M'hen we speak of several spaces, we understand thereby only parts {Theile) of one and the same sole space, which parts (Theile) also cannot precede the one space that contains them all, as though they were its Bestandtheile, rendering its composition possible, but are only thought in it" — its complex of parts "only rests on limitations." Space to Kant, in short, though only an a jjriori spectrum from within, is, for all that, and even so, an actual per- ceptive object (exactly as it is to us), whose parts are, like parts of other perceptive objects, in it, limitations of it, and not logical
Griticism of Kanfs Main Principles. 261
parts of a logical whole.* Kant dwells on oneness in regard to space only that he may accentuate the fact of its perceptivity as against its conceptivity, so to speak ; and it is with the same pur- pose he calls attention to the peculiar nature of its parts: they are in it, limitations of it. Though he would have us regard the source and (so to say) substance of the object space in a different way from the usual one, he would, after that, have us to consider the object itself as quite the common one. And his work would have no meaning else. To him, as to us, come from where it ma}'', and be in itself what it may, space is at last but the same general element, topically receptive of phenomena, on which phenomena themselves it has no influence whatever further than that they must present themselves in the general terms of its bare extension — a necessity to him again only as it is to us. Li that extension, things will still have all their own powers, whether necessary or contingent. We have quite the same reason that Kant had to insist on an all-embracing one space ; and Kant, in point of fact, no more insisted on any such than we ourselves do.
Hegel, then, as it would seem, while hazy about this oneness, is evidently quite wrong about these parts. " Spaces are not parts," he says, while Kant himself, even to the letter, assigns "parts" to space; nor is it to him any prejudice to this that these parts are " limitations." Euclid's squares and triangles, though limitations, are surely parts of space ; and as they are to us, so they were not " by the estimation of a hair" different to Kant.
Hegel's words immediately following those already quoted are these : " Perception has always only something individual (Ein- zelnes) before it ; but space or time is always only a one (Eines), and therefore a priori.'''' From this it appears that an object of perception (which is an experience a posteriori) being only an Einzelnes, space or time is tXifdveiovQ ou\y a priori • because, as objects, each is only an Eines ! Eines and Einzelnes, usually very much the same thing, are here in such polar opposition that, the one is a priori simply because the other is a posteriori ! Time and space are to Kant a priori because they are not derived from
' The reader will see that I very much prefer to think Kant used the word Be- standtheile only in a logical sense.
262 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
special sense ; but they are to him also not a bit the less percep- tions, and not conceptions, because of the nature of their parts. One wonders how Hegel could, of such articulate simplicity, make such an inarticulate jumble. One is apt to suspect, indeed, that it is not Hegel but only the reporting editor that is at fault here. Yet, even as we think this, we are immediately staggered by the very next sentence. " We might reply to Kant," says Hegel (as though Kant had used that wonderful Einzelnes-Eines argument), " the nature of space and time is certainly that of an abstract uni- versal ; but there is equally also a one Blue." After such a pro- pos as this, there can be no conclusion but that Hegel himself, however he may have been reported, has certainly understood very badly the arguments in hand. Passing over the fact that Kant's object is to prove precisely the reverse of what Hegel affirms (namely, that space and time are not abstract universals), and ju>-t for this reason that Hegel here may be allowed in fairness to mean by " abstract universal," not a notion, but that abstract universal of pej'ception wliich Kant's space really is, we will re- mark only this : Hegel's Blue now is quite as was his Tree before ; abstract notions both, they have actual individuals logically under them ; and that was accurately and literally the reason why, spaces being to space in a very ditferent relation, space itself was also something very diiferent from such abstract conceptions as Tree in general or Bhie in general. In short, Blue, a genus, a no- tion, a conception (that is blue as blue, not any particular actual blue shade), even as Tree is a genus, a notion, a conception, is surely a very odd thing to object to Kant when he is proving space not to be a genus, a notion, a conception, but, on the contrary, a perception.
With all this, there can be no doubt, nevertheless, but that Hegel perfectly understood what, in actual fact, time and space were to Kant. The one or two pages which immediately precede those quoted from leave this unmistakable. In fact, we there find Hegel to understand Kant's space and time so well that he laughs at them. " As a priori,^'' he says, " space and time are universal and necessary ; that is, we find them so, but that, lirst of all, they must be there the presentments they are, follows not." I give Hegel's thought, and it is thorough and hits. But he con- tinues : " They are certainly basally implied, but even so as an
Criticism of Kanfs Main Princijples. 263
external universal. Kant, however, puts the thing before him somewhat in this way. There are out there things in themselves, but without time and space ; consciousness comes now, and has time and space already in it, as the possibility of experience, jnst as, for eating, it has teeth and a mouth, etc, as conditions of eating. The things that get eaten have not themselves teeth or a mouth ; and, as it perpetrates eating on things, so it perpetrates on them space and time ; as it puts things between mouth and teeth, so into space and time." This is the genuine Hegel, and there is not one word in it but, like a shot, lodges. But, letting that be, we must see also, from these and other such expressions in the same neighborhood, that when Hegel calls Kant's time and space " ab- stract perceptions," " external universals," he has before him pre- cisely the same entities which I name " spectra," " optical mi- rages," " expansible discs," " cones of projection," etc. If as much as that be obvious, however, I think it will be equally ob- vious, from the previous discussion, that, say at least as reported, Hegel has made a muddle and a mull of much of Kant's relative argumentation.
It is this consideration that leads to any mistrust of Hegel's perfunctory remarks on the schematism, verbally correct though they may be passed to be. Such expressions, for example, as " the category of substance becomes in the schema a permanent sub- strate in time, that is to say, it is put into unity with the form of pure perception," or " the schematism^ of pure understanding, the transcendental imagination, it is, that determines the pure percep- tion in accordance with the category " — such expressions, I say, being allowed a certain amplitude of scope, cannot be regarded as inaccurate. The category of substance does become in the schema a permanent substrate in time, or it is put into unity with time. It is true also that the schematism is determination of pure perception in accordance with the category. Still, we have here only the categories with time and space before us, whereas the truth is that Kant, in addition to these, postulates, for certain cat- egories, another element which is the medium of connection be- tween the two former elements. That element, as we shall see again, is what we may call a certain generate oi empirical instruc- tion. In short, Hegel's state of mind on the matter is probably complete in the words which introduce the latter quotation above :
264 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
*' In the mind, in self-consciousness, there are categories and pure perceptions ; the schematism'''' it is that connects these.
Erdmann {Gnmdriss, second edition, II., 314, sqq.), in regard to the mediation between a 2>^^^ori and a posteriori^ says : " Time was universal form a priori like the categories; but, on the other side, it was form of sense ; and tiierefore the determinations of time have reallj^ this required mediating character." This is hia ruling throughout : " the schemata are determinations of time; " and from this it is doubly plain to hinj, as he wittily and suggest- ively adds, that the categories are applied only to the temporal. He conceived Kant also to have come upon time in this function, in consequence of Hume having maintained, " That we infer the propter hoc from \\\q post hoc.'''' It is " scarcely doubtful," he says, that Kant's " atteiitiou " was thus "directed" to " the relations of time as such media." But this is doubtful. The phrase is not Hume's, if a deduction from Hume. Kant was led by Hume's question as to the source of a particular necessity, to the question of the nature and source of necessity in general. A system of pure reason, in direct consequence, soon rose around him, whose func- tion was to infect contingent sensation with necessary notion ; but it was the uhi of both notion and sensation — one's own inner sub- ject, namely — that led him to place time and space there too, and to see that, holding of both, they were the necessary media or vehicles of both. At the same time it is to be acknowledged that, if Kant read the long discussion of " the ideas of time and space" in the Treatise of Humian Nature^ it was quite natural that, al- ready influenced by Hume in regard to the subjectivity of knowl- edge, etc., he should have been further led by those very ideas to his own ideal theory in regard of pure perception. But the chance is that Kant did not read this ; otherwise he would not have said Hume failed to think of mathematics. Erdmann's mere phrase, nevertheless, "' inference of the propter hoc from the 'post hoc^^ seems to have been gladly caught up by Mr. Caird, as directly relevant to Hume and inversely to Kant: it constitutes, as we may indeed say, the "brief" of his whole relative industry.
Ueberweg, carefulest and loyalest, perhaps, of all Kant's stu- dents, hardly sees the need of the schematism at all, inasmuch as the action of pure sense upon special sense seems itself already sufficient preparation of the latter towards the categories {Grund-
Criticism of Kanfs Main Principles. 265
• riss, third edition, III., 193). It is here, too, where he remarks
that, if a schematism at all be necessary, then space seems to be in capacity and nnder obligation to yield such on precisely the same grounds as time. It is quite coherent, then, that Ueberweg regards the schemata as no more than determinations of time. It is the same with Schwegler. He, too (Handb., 222), finds " qual- ity of time " to be source of the schemata. In the categories of relation, howevei% he brings things too into reference. In fact, with all of them the truth is probal)lv this. They all regard time alone as the schema, but may stray right in reporting.
Now, Kant himself, as we indicated at starting, did undoubted- ly begin work with no other idea. The schematism at first, or from the first, and for long, was, professedly, a system of forms due to the amalgamation of pare intellect with pure sense (of categories on the one hand, with time on the other). Incident- al admissions of as mu(;h repeatedly occur. He bases all, in his preface to the K. of P. E., for example (II., 674), on " space, time, and the elementary notions of the understanding;" or he ex- pressly tells us (XL, 135), that " the categoi-ies, to have an object, require a pure perception, and time and space are that." Such, we may say, is the very show of the general face, indeed. In the schematism itself, namely, the reference to time is perpetual, is express; and if things themselves are also somewhat confusingly (say) mentioned, that may be only Kant's vague, loose way ; and they were better perhaps left out — the rather, indeed, that he him- self almost seems to advise as much. In substance, for example, his very argument, his very reason for the empirical substrate is this. '' Time runs itself not otf, but things in time run them- selves oflf: to time, then, which is itself unchangeable, there corre- sponds what is unchangeable in existence, i. e., substance." One is apt to find such statement enough, and to reject accordingly any traffic with a substrate as superfluous. Time itself suffices — time itself in relation of whole to its vicissitude of parts : it is un- necessary to taint our elements by any empirical reference at all. Then time alone is spoken of in modality, time alone is enough for quantity ; and, even in quality, the mere generate of filling in time cannot be regarded as more than time.
But we have to see that all this is, as has been already inti- mated, probably otherwise in Kant — in the end.
266 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
Kant, though not a stylist (and he is not, simply, the worse for that), is, when there is a plain story before him (as in the Prac- tical Kritih, the Anthropologic^ the latter half of the great Kritih and much else), always such plain, sensible writer as 'one likes to meet. That is, it is all very well, when one's brain is idle, to read humming words, as in a Henry Thomas Buckle ; but, on the whole, one reads with undisturbed satisfaction only the men who speak ; one is apt to look back, indeed, on the humming of the others as only a hum. Rosenkranz is a stylist himself — speaks always in the happiest, living, new metaphors ; and he has this in his Metaphysih (p. 395) : " We say, for example, that Kant writes a naive reality of style (einen sachlich naiven Styl), Fichte a rhetorically imposing style. They both proceed logically. In divisions, definitions, reasoned conclusions, in endeavor to be clear, neither of them fails. But Kant shows as a man who, before all things, will come to a clear understanding with himself, and, this accomplished, gives himself the greatest pains to be intelligible to his reader." Now, this is the general truth of Kant's writing ; he is no hummer, as (in his Essays) even Hume largely is (Rosen- kranz talks too of Hume's " rather redselige " Essays), but he always sees something, and what he sees he would say. De Quin- cey laughs at Kant's style, and compares his sentences to an ancient stage-coach with its endless boots, boxes, pockets, and other receptacles, but in definite result De Quincey is himself (though with splendid natural endowment) only a stylist, and is not to be trusted. The center of Kant's system, however, is his answer to Hume ; and that is his discussion of time, space, and the categories, or as I call it, his theory of perception. Now, that is not the plain, sensible story, of a plain, sensible man, who has only a plain, sensible fact before him. On the contrary, as a whole, it is entangled, contradictory, and perplexed, almost to despair. Kant does, indeed, endeavor to make himself" deutlich (intelligi- ble) "to his reader in it : that, indeed, he endeavors over much, and never seems anywhere to trust his own success, or allow him- self anywhere to come to any end. And the reason really is that, in that business, he has not come '•'' aufs Peine (to a clear under- standing) " with himself. The Prolegomena^ to be sure, are there in its support; but the final explanations that come forward from these, though deciding for ia clearer and more settled theory, only
Criticisra of Kanfs Main Principles. 26T
deepen our sense of irreclaimable vice in the earlier statement. Passing over that the whole business starts from an entirely false and inadmissible premiss — that, namely, of presupposing: 1. That we know only our own states of sensation in a time and space which are merely mirages within ourselves (whereas we perceive actual independent external things, in an actual independent external space, and in an actual independent external time) ; 2. That that knowledge, consequently, is (so far) only contingent (whereas it brings with it its own intelligible principles of neces- sity) ; and, 3. That, in further consequence (as having regard to said contingency), principles of necessity must lie in each subject, to be added, by each from within, to the contingent sensations as they present themselves within, and that thus only is there a ruled and regulated context of objective experience realized (whereas such ruled and regulated context of objective experience is, so to speak, not artificially, but naturally realized, and in this way, that a perfectly real and rational external universe is presented to a perfectly real and rational subject, capable, consequently, of sim- ply perceiving what is simply presented) — passing over, I say, this wholly false and inadmissible premiss, or these wholly false and inadmissible premises (though, surely, as much as that will be enough for the most of us), the artificial construction itself, with its categories, schemata, and what not, is but one long jumble of, as it were, successive Vids of explanation that only end in an im- broglio of contradiction, helpless and hopeless.
As regards the schematism, now, in particular — and the sche- matism, instead of being superfluous, is precisely the indispensa- ble and necessary worh (the putting together, namely, of the whole system of internal necessity, and the explaining, as well, of ho\^ this system acts in reception of the actual aflections of special sense) — I think it requires but due attention to discover that, as has been intimated, Kant, in the course of it, found himself com- pelled to change front more than once, and that his position in the end was very difi'erent from what it was. in the beginning. And it is, perhaps, precisely what concerns time that will' best demonstrate this. It is very tempting to be perfunctory here, as seemed the case with those expounders of Kant, or, as we have also suggested, to see in Kant himself hints towards his own purer and more consistent restriction to the a priori materials
268 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
alone ; but, neitlier in the one way nor tlie other, have we the truth so. Tlie truth varies with Kant himself; as said, it was not with him in the beginning as it was in the end.
One cannot help thinking, namely, we say, that, in the first instance, Kant intended pure perception and the categories to be alone adequate to the schemata, and that into these schemata, then, the affections of special sense should at once enter. Both, as one saw, were pure or a priori ; and both lay together in the mind. But, thougli both, as a p>fiori, lay thus together in the mind, the one was a form of intellect, and the other was still a form of sense. It should be the action between these two forms, then — the action of the a priori of intellect upon the a priori of sense — that should give rise to all the necessary chequers for the reception of special^ or a posteriori sense. In point of fact, how- ever, at least as I believe, Kant found himself, after a variety of changes, whose traces he did not always efface, compelled in the end to have recourse, for construction of his schema, to what we have named empirical instruction. In order that his machinery might act, that is, he was obliged to postulate certain general rules, forms, or types of actual empirical fact, which were the schemata, and alone were the schemata he pretended to construct out of the unities of the categories and the tnanies of time. But in that way he simply presupposed all that he made believe to deduce. That is, it was precisely these sense-schemata con- tained the whole problem, and these he assumed. That is to say, his whole machinery of time, space, and the categories, event- ually, took wnngs to itself and rose into the air — with dust enough !
What is a schema? Evidently, in Kant's mind, it is a rule of synthesis (constr:iction) to a whole class or kind of images (pic- tures). It is not an image ; it is a general type for an indefinite variety of individual images. In that sense, it is a surrogate, a substitute; it is a representative of others. To Kant's first inten- tion, further, it is a species, an eflSgies, a figura (but quite gen- eral), in the a priori sensuous element, of its companion a p>riori intellectual element. The mere ratio of the one (the intellectual) struck into a bodily shape (still indefinite enough) in the other (the sensuous) : it is, as it were, the reflec;tion of the lamp above in the stream below. These words of Reinhold, one of Kant's most
Criticism, of Kant 8 Main Principles. 269
literal students {Versuch einer neuen Theorie^ etc., p. 466) — "The categories figured in their precise relation to (or in tlieir precise connection with) the universal Form of the perceptions (hare time) are called schemata" — surely only echo Kant's primary intention here. This primary intention was, one cannot help thinking, this, to prove that the intellectual relation named cate- gory becomes, on its entering the element of time, projected, not indeed into an image (})icture) of itself, but into a schema, a rule of synthesis (construction), towards a whole class of images, even as the notion triangle is not and cannot be a one image, but is only such schema, such rule of synthesis, towards quite an indefi- nite number of images, acute-angled, obtuse-angled, right-angled, scalene, etc. Hegel's ex[)ression that we have seen already, though ap])arently for another purpose and in connection with other views, comes up to this, lie says, " substance becomes in the schema a permanent substrate in time ; i. e., it is put into unity with time." That is as much as to say, the star substance, fallen into reflection in the sea, time, becomes a scliema. And just this Kant himselt seems to mean by such words as these (129) : '"'' Numerus est quaniitas phcBnomenon, sensatio realitas phceno- menon, constans et perdurahile rerum suhstantia phodnomenon^'' etc. These imply, evidently, what- relates to appearance, to show. Quantity, reflected into time, becomes the phsenomenon of its own self, i. (?., the temporal show, type, or schema of its own self. So of sensation, substance, and the rest.
This, as we have seen some reason to believe, is the universal understanding, and this, as we have now also som.e reason to sus- pect, is, probably, Kant's own first understanding of the term schema. My theory, further, however, is that Kant found this insufficient — that he found it impossible, so to speak, completely to realize any category (unless quantity) out of pure perception (time and space) alone. For quality, he found himself compelled to take for granted (as a priori) the universal of the empirical function, the universal of the empirical faculty (sensation) itself, what we may call the generate of the actual empirical tilling of time. And so far (as more than once said) we experience no check. What he is compelled to assume at last for the categories of relation, however, is something quite beyond time, or even any allowable universal of function — rules, that is, of such empirical
■270 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
constitution or processes of things themselves in time, as it were onlj possible to know from the things themselves, empirically, that is, or a posteriori. To assume these rules, then, as a priori was simply to assume the entire case, and leave nothing to be explained.
As likely to prove satisfactory to the reader, in illustration of what has been said, I shall now make a few extracts from the K. of P. R. (pretty well in the order in which in the schematism they come to hand); and I do not think any one, who understands the first two pages of § 24 of the Deduction., will fail to understand what they amount to. These two pages (II., 745) suggest, pretty well completely, Kant's new scheme of perception : the nature and order of the various syntheses as regards self-consciousness, im- agination, and the categories can hardly be missed there. Multi- ples of pure intellect (which are at the same time unities), multi- ples of pure sense, multiples of special sense (as I catalogue them) are all capable of being realized from these two pages, and in their order, as well as in the mode in which, by imagination, they are reduced into a single objective consciousness in pure apperception (which is the pure ego, the pure self-consciousness). The very first words of the schematism are these : —
" In all subsuraptions of an object under a notion, the perception of the former must be homogeneous with the latter; that is, the notion must contain what is perceived in the object to be subsumed under it; for that is just what the expression means: an object is contained under a notion." P. 122.
Now, if M^e take this rule of Kant's own, and apply it to the schematism as standard in estimation of his own acts, we shall readily realize results which have been already named. That is, we shall find that we are disposed to accept the requisite of homo- geneity (but with grades) for some categories, but to deny it for others.
" Now, it is clear that we must have a third something which, being homo- geneous on one side with the category, and on the other with the sensible im- pression, shall render possible the adhibition of the former to the latter. This mediating element must be pure (free from anything empirical), and yet on the one side intellectual and on the other sensible : any such is the transcendental schema.
" The notion of understanding (category) contains pure synthetic unity of a many in general. Time, as the formal condition of the many of inner sense,
Criticisin of Kant^s Main Principles. 271
consequently of the connection of all consciousness, contains a raany (multiple, manifold, complex) a priori in pure perception. Now, a transcendental deter- mination of time is homogeneous with the category (which functions unity to it), so far as it is universal and rests on a rule a jmori. On the other side, again, it is homogeueous with the sensible impression, so far as time is con- tained or implied in every empirical perception of a many of sense. Hence an application of the category to impressions of sense will be possible by means of the transcendental determination of time, which, as the schema of the notion of understanding (category), mediates the subsumption of the impressions of sense under the category." P. 128.
" We shall call this formal and pure condition of sense to which the function of the category is addressed (restricted) the schema of this category, and the action of understanding on or with these schemata the schematism of pure understanding. The schema in itself is always only a product of imagination ; but a schema is to be distinguished from an image (picture), for the synthesis of imagination aims at no individual perception, but only at a certain unity as in determination of sense. If I set down five points the one after the other
thus , these points will be an image of the number five. On the other
hand, should I think of a number in general, which is neither five nor a hun- dred nor any number, but may be five or a hundred or any number, then this thinking, this thought which I so have, is rather the conception of a method to bring a many, in accord with a certain notion, into an image, than an image itself. This conception, now, of a general process of imagination to procure a notion its image, I call the schema to this notion." P. 124, seq.
So far, there cannot be a doubt but that we are ordered to re- gard the schema as a result wholly a priori, of categories as mucli a iwiori, and of time alone no less a priori. As such middle form of pure sense — intellect — it mediates special sense, so to speak, into eclipse in apperception. As for the word restringirt (restricted as above) there is nothing special, or new, or that calls for expla- nation in the restriction it implies. I suppose most people easily apprehend that " without objects notions are void," and all the more easily when these words concern Kant's notions and Kant's objects, in which regard, as we all know from the first, if the former without the latter are empty, the latter, for their part again, without the former are blind.'
' The allusion here is to Kant's " restringiren," and, of course, it is easy to un- derstand that, if anything acts under conditious, it is so far restricted. Over this simple conception, however, Mr. Caird, as usual, contrives to stumble. Transelementation is the result, with its strangely muflBed voice, apparently from the midst of a somnambu- listic dream. Translations of Kant, I fear, have much to answer for ? " Successive synthesis of productive imagination " is to Kant the agent of perception, the agent of
272 The Journal of Sj)eculatwe Philosophy.
So far, tlien, to repeat, we may hold ourselves safe to affirm there is not a thought in Kant's mind of anght but pure intellect and pure sense ; any trace of empirical ingredient or quasi-em- pirical ingredient does not appear ; for, I suppose, no one will ask us to see in the terms '' determination of time '' or '' formal condition of sense " any grasping foi'ward to what we have called the em- pirical instruction of certain empirical universalia or generalia, which, though eni})irical, should, as universals, be capable of being allowably named a priori. A schema is certainly a recii)e or rule of a priori synthesis ; and it is difficult to see any room in it even for empirical suggestion. It is a " pure synthesis," " under a cate- gory," "produced by imagination;" it "concerns" at the same time " the determination of inner sense according to conditions of its form (time)," etc. These words occur p. 126, and they cer- tainly justify Reinhold fcr aitributing the schema to the hestimmte Beziehung of the categories on " die hlosse Zeit " (the specific action of the categories on bare lime, for Beziehung means ujore than mere reference or relation ; it has the active sense in it of acting on, or of drawing into connection with : So and so '•''hat die TJniversitat hezogen^^).
On page 127, we have the schemata of relation. That of substance is " the persistence of reality in time," " the conception of reality as a substrate in empirical time generally, which re- mains unchanged while all else changes." The schema of cause is " the reale, which being, something else always ensues ;" it " consists in the succession oi a many, so far as said succession has been sub-
knowledge (II., 105-115). So far it cannot be called restrictive. Restriction, in fact, is not due to it ia its function, but to the conditions (of sense and understanding) vphich it must obey. (Kant occasionally uses the word when, properly, it is under- standing ho. means.) Erdmann tells \xs {Grundr., II., 422) that Fichte rightly con- ceived " imagination " as understood by Kant to be simply " the action proper of the ego." That is to the same effect as I have just said. Imagination to Kant, in fact, is, as medium of reception for the contributions of sense on the one hand, and the contributions of understanding on the other, so also the vehicle of mediation between both (p. 112). Mr. Caird, for his part again, looks (p. 4:^9) rather a|>prehensively at im- agination as " that power cf dealing freely, or even arbitrarily, with the data of experi- ence, which is the distinguishing giit of imaginative natures,"' and he solemnly warns us, as though from behind the veil of the very temple of Kant, to " remember the dan- ger that accompanies this gilt!" If this is interpretation of Kant, surely, also, it is * 'most exquisite fooling."
Criticism of Kanfs Main Principles. 273
jected to a rule." The schema of reciprocity is " the being at the same time of the determinations of substances in each other's re- gard mutually, according to a general rule." And, in all of them, "we find ourselves at once transported into the realm of Empiric. In the case of substance words follow, indeed, that would, as already- indicated, make time itself the substrate; but in causality and re- ciprocity the empirical element is literal and bare. No modus of time whatever is A B where B is out of A ; and no modus of time •whatever is A B C D which may be as well D C B A, etc. The empirical A B is the entire ])roblem ; and no trafHc of imagination, throuiih categories, with time alone will ever even lind it. Nav, no traliic of imagination with time alone will ever find there any dimmest picture (image) of the very notion, said notion, that is, being even granted. Nevertheless, though time as time has not the smallest influence on such facts, the schemata are (p. 128) still called determinations of time : they refer to '• time range^ time-con- tent., time-order., and time-imiolex.^'' They are still said to (p. 129) "realize the categories." Much later, indeed, in his letter to Tieftrunk (XI., 185) we find Kant saying, as we have seen already, that the " categories," " to have an object," must get "' an a priori perception," " and that time and space are." Now, not only is it impossible to find in time itself as time any perception of cause and effect, but Kant himself again and again, and very strongly, asserts the same thing {e. g.^ 778). No ; if these words (XI., 186) shadow out the one general process, " the thought-forms (cate- gories) can have sense-forms (schemata) put under them to give them sense and meaning," then it must be said that for the cate- gories of relation, at least, no such sense-forms are required, or, as Kant actually names, can be found in time itself.
But I shall now quote some of those passages which seem decidedly to involve the empirical reference :
"Even space and time would be without sense aad meaning were there necessary application not shown in regard of empirical objects.'' P. 137.
" Change affects not time itself, but only things in time, just as contempora- neousness is not a determination of time itself, for time's parts are not at the same time, but after one another.
" Through permanence of substrate only does existence in successive parts of time get a magnitude, which we call duration. For, in the mere succession, existence is always going and coming, and has never the smallest magnitude." P. 157.
XIV— 18
274 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
"The postulate of the possibility of things demands, therefore, that any notion of these agree with the formal conditions of an experience in general. This latter, namely, the objective form of experience in general, involves all synthesis which is required for the perception of objects. A notion, such as implies a synthesis, is to be reckoned void and to refer itself to no object, unless its synthesis belongs to experience, either as borrowed from it (and then it is an empirical notion), or else as such that experience in general (the form of one) rests on it as a condition a priori (and then it is a pure notion, which per- tains to experience, nevertheless, because its object can only be found there). For, where will you get the character of the possibility of an object which has been thought by means of a synthetic a priori notion, unless in the synthesis which constitutes the form of the empirical coguition of objects ? " P. 184.
And here I will parenthetically remark this. It is always to be nnderstood that, by an experience in general, or an experience at all, we are not to think of an absolute experience, an exj)erience as such. Passing over that such an idea is ahsohitely reynote from Kant, we may say that Kant cannot mean that, for his own pre- suppositions forbid. His presuppositions, namely, are such that they are quite compatible with a plurality of experiences. In point of fact, Kant actually names two experiences : one (" intuitus derivativus "), such as ours, confined to phenomena of sense ; and another (" intuitus originarius "), such as that of the Supreme Being, addressed to noumena of intellect. It is the presupposed necessary restriction, then, oiour experience that similarly restricts his notion of what he calls the possibility of an experience in general. That presupposed necessary restriction is this, that we know only, and can know only, our own subjective affections within, any reference to things in themselves without, which might cause these affections (sensations), being effectually pre- scinded and precluded even by themselves. Kant's possibility of experience means, then, always the possibility of this seeming ob- jective external experience of ours, on or with such never-doubted necessary presupposition. Evidently, sensations, the whole matter of experience, being only within, the very time and space in which they are disposed must also be within, and the appearance of per- ceptive objects in a context of necessary relation, which thoy then assume, must also be due to principles within, the primary prin- ciples of self-consciousness, namely, which we call categories. But what is so alhided to as a priori (all elements but that of sensa- tion), must, as opposed to this matter of sensation, be evidently
Criticism of Kanth Main Principles. 275
form., or a system of forms. This system of forms, now, would be the formal conditions a priori of the possibility of such ah experience as ours. That now is, on the whole, all that Kant means by his phrase the possibility of experience. The only question that interposes is this : Does not Kant find himself obliged to extend his purview oi a priori principles beyond those just named (cateojories and time), which are undeniably (on his theory, that is) wholly a priori, to others which are only quasi a priori f This question (as indicated) we are disposed, notwith- standing the expounders of Kant, notwithstanding so much in Kant himself, to answer in the affirmative. We hold, in short, that Kant's schemata are not productions of a simple amalgama- tion of the pure forms of sense (space and time) with the pure forms of the intellect (categories), as is generally believed, but are largely indebted to a presumption of experience — an arbitrary assumption of certain principles as a priori which are only ex post facto results of empirical generalization — so to speak, a cognition called ^ra^ which is in eifect and possibility only a cognition j?05z5. And this we believe even the immediately preceding quotation to imply, but we shall now follow it up by others which (with those that forego) will probably set the matter at rest :
"And now Ave shall show the extensive use and influence of this postulate of possibility. Should I conceive a thing that persists unchanged, in such man- ner that all t'.iat changes attaches merely to its temporary states, I could never know, from such mere notion, that such a thing were itself possible. Or I conceive something such that, on its being, something else infallibly always follows. This conception itself, of course, may he thought without contradic- tion. But whether such peculiarity (causation, namely) is to be met with in any possible thing cannot be thereby judged. Lastly, I can conceive several things (substances) such that the state of the one involves a consequence in the state of the other, and mce versa ; but whether such relation can attach to any actual things, can, from these conceptions (which comprise a mere arbitrary synthesis) not at all be gathered. Only by tliis, then, that these conceptions «|>r^or^ express the relations of the j3e?rfph'o?is in all cases of experience, do we attain to the knowledge of their objective reality, that is, of their^ trans- cendental truth, and that, too, certainly in independence of experience, but not, nevertheless, in independence of all reference to the form of an experience in general, and to the synthetic unity in which alone objects are capable of being empirically cognized." P. 185 seq.
" As regards reality, it is of itself evident that, without calling in the aid of experience, we cannot possibly think any such in concreto ; for reality refers
276 Tlce Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
only to sensation as matter of experience and not to the form of relation, with which latter, of course, we might constructively jilay." P. 187.
"And so the possibility of continuous magnitudes, nay, of magnitudes at all, is, because the notions they imply are synthetic notions, never evident from the notions themselves, but only from these notions when they are considered as formal conditions of the determination of objects in experience at all; and where should we seek for objects which should correspond to notions, if not in experience, by which alone are objects given ? — albeit that we are certainly quite well able to discover and characterize the possibility of things, w-ithout just premising experience itself, by merely referring to the formal conditions under which generally objects are determined in experience ; where, conse- quently, the reference is completely a priori., though only in respect of expe- rience, and within its limits." P. 187 seq.
" We may get to know the existence of a certain thing, even before percep- tion of it, and so comparatively a priori, if only it cohere with certain percep- tions according to the principles of their empirical connection." P. 188.
" The object of a notion cannot otlierwise be given than in perception ; and, although a pure perception is still possible a priori, even before the object, yet this same pure perception can get its object (consequently objective validity) only through the empirical perception of which it (the pure) is the mere form.
" Although all these principles, and the conception of the object with which mathematical science is occupied, are generated in the mind completely a pjri- ori, they would still mean nothing at all, were we not always able to exhibit their meaning by example of empirical objects." P. 199.
" That this is the case with all the categories, and the principles derived from them, is clear from this, that we cannot even define a single one of them without at once stooping to conditions of sense." P. 200.
" The categories can have definite meaning only by means of the general con- ditions of sense.
"The categories require, in addition to the pure notion of understanding, determinations of their application to sense in general (schemata)." P. 203.
" Should this condition (schema) fail, then all subsumption vanishes." P. 205.
"But it is still more remarkable that, in order to understand the possibility of things as in agreement with the categories, and demonstrate, consequently, the ohjective validity of the latter, we stand in need, not of mere perceptions, but always even of external perceptions. ... In order, as correspondent to the notion substance, to bring forward something permanent in perception (and thereby exhibit the objective reality of said notion), we require a perception in space (matter). ... In order to exhibit change, as that perception which corresponds fo causality, we must, by way of example, point to motion as change in space. . . . How it is possible that, in consequence of a given state, another state of the same thing, and oppo.*ed to the former, toUows, not only no reason can make comprehensible to itself without example, but no reason can, even without an actual perception, make intelligible to itself . . . Lastly, the category of reciprocity, so far as regards its possibility, is utterly incompre-
Criticism of Kanfs Main Principles. 277
hensible by mere reason ; it is impo.'^sible to conceive the objective reality of this notion without a perception, and that, too, of something external in space." 778 sq.
These passages (with the many others they may suggest) will make plain what I mean by empirical instruction on Kant's part. Kant, undoubtedly, had it in mind at last that there was a neces- sity to refer to actual outer experience tor the very possibility of such notions as substance, cause, reci])rocity — nay, that there was a necessity to refer to an experience that can only be subsequent^ even in the case of quantity and quality — this, at the very moment that he named every such reference a priori. In fact, I should say that, finally, the relative state otf Kant's mind on all the cate- gories might if it had been fairly explicit to its own self, have been put pretty well thus:
Preliminarily, modality is to be eliminated from consideration here. Objectively, it has no contents but those of the other three categorical classes. It is but a result of reflection on these in regard of one another as they bear on the relation of evidence to the mind : they are, in fact, in that relation, the exhaustive three grades. P(jssibility relates to formal conditions (pure perception — quantity) ; actuality relates to the material conditions (sensation — quality) ; and necessity relates to conditions of connection in products of the others (relation). But, modality eliminated, the other three remain.
Quantity, singularly pure, seems to require no schema for which time and space alone were not enough. JSTe vert hel ess, there is reference even so — to thiiigs in zawic-form (dimensions).
Quality shows an empirical element at once. It involves refer- ence to sensation, to the filling of time as mere tilling, or, as we may otherwise express it, to the universal of the mere function, the universal of the bare faculty itself. This, then, involves an advance in depth empiricall3^ As we had the generate of sense- form before, so now we have the generate of %Q\\%Q-matter .
Relation points to a degree of empiricism that is deeper still. Now it is that the empirical instruction definitely comes in, and would add to the generate of empirical function or faculty certain generalia of the actual interconnection of things — generalia, at the same time, which are utterly impossible to be even conceived by us till actual experience has extended them to us.
278 The Journal of Specalatlve Philosophy.
The three empirical references, then, still postulated by Kant, though not quite consciously, perhaps, are respectively a generate of empirical form, a generate of empirical matter, and a generate of empirical connection. Of course, form, matter, and connection, as such, were perfectly present to him : what we presume to add in each case is the reference to an empirical generate.
In short, I am disposed on the whole to believe that no one now can have any doubt on the matter. What I call, relatively, an assumption of empirical instruction on Kant's part must be granted. Nor less is it a necessity to be granted that this instruc- tion— make it as general as you please — ever so general, never so general — will still remain empirical always and never a priori. In a word, there is not one single schema whose origin is not a posterim'i, and nothing more nor less than a posteriori. All of them, in short, are due at last to empirical instruction — in grades. This is the ultimate and delinitive truth here, and we shall now, in conclusion on this head, illustrate and confirm it by applying the principles we have won, in test of that one category which, in itself the most important of them all, is also the soul and center of the entire construction, the fons et origo of the whole huge industry. That is, in the light of these principles, we shall review the fact, 1. Negatively, that time alone is not possibly a schema for causality ; 2. Affirmatively, that this schema postulates a cer- tain empirical rule; and, 3, That this rule cannot coherently be granted.
1. For we must begin so. In order to attain to a complete dis- cussion we must start with what, even as from Kant, is the uni- versally accredited position. And that is that, for production of a schema to causality, time, or a determination of time, is, in some way, to be subsumed (as representative type of what many or mul- tiple of things is called cause and effect) under a correspondent category. It is but natural, then, that, in obedience to Kant's own prescript, we should seek in time itself for that determination which were, in the case in hand, the " third something — homoge- neous on the one side with the category " (here antecedent and consequent), "and on the other side with the sensible impression" (here any emj)irical example of cause and effect). Any such " third," however, as type, whether on the one hand of antecedent and consequent, or on the other of cause and effect, is not to be
Criticism of Kant's Main Prmoiples. 279
found in the plurality of time, arrange it as you may, or regard it from what point of view you may. The tick, tick, tick of a clock is the accurate representative of the single succession (plnrality) of time : a flux of units in which certainly there is no return, but in which, at the same time, all of the units are only, so to speak, bodily after one another, and never bodily through one another. Now, the blot on this paper is not only bodily after the drop of ink op my pen, but, actually and in very truth, bodily through it. Empty time, then, evidently contains no type of such peculiar suc- cession as that of cause and effect. It is sufficiently tempting, how- ever, to turn here to that necessity in the succession of time where- by access (say) from a first moment of time to a third moment of time is possible only through the intervening second. The A B of causality is irreversible, one thinks ; but so is the A B of time. The consideration here indeed proves a snare into which it is but too easy to fall. Nevertheless, it is as inapplicable, inapposite, and out of place, as anything called aroirov in Plato.
It requires indeed but a single reflection to demonstrate this. If, namely, it is the necessity of the A B of time that causes the necessity of the A B of causality — that is, if the causal A B is irre- versible because the A B of time itself is irreversible — then plainly such a succession as a reversible one at all were a downright im- possibility ; casuality, contingency would cease, an important falla- cy fail, post hoc disappear, and an omnipotent propter hoc alone reign. Nay, in that event it is quite uncertain that a single other of even Kant's own categories would be left. The succession of quantity must be taken in time, the succession of quality must be taken in time, the succession of substance and accident must be taken in time, the succession of reciprocity must be taken in time, why, even all the successions of modality must be taken in time: must we, then, say, as the A B of time is irreversible, so every A B of things is similarly irreversible, and all the above succes- sions are but examples of the succession of cause and effect {prop- ter hoc) 1 This has been said ; but I fancy the sayer of it will remain as single as the Herostratus that burned the Ephesian Temple of Diana, and because, it may be, of no dissimilar feat.'
' More than two thousand vears ago Aristotle told us, again and again, all about both Vac propter and the post. At 1065 a, for example, we hear of the universal, the general,
280 The Jour Mil of Speculative Philosophy.
But we have to see that there are expressions of Kant's which seem to assert not only that there is a determination of time cor- respondent to cause and effect, but even that the necessity between the successive units of times enters into and forms part of the ne- cessity that exists between the units constitutive of causality. In discussing causality, for example, he says this: "As, now, it is a necessary law of our sensibility, consequently o. formal condition of all perceptions, that the preceding necessarily determines the succeeding time (seeing that I cannot reach the latter otherwise than through the former) ; so it is also an indispensable law of the empirical apprehension of series in time, that the phenomena of the past determine all the existences in the future, and that these latter, as events, do not take place unless so far as those former determine for them their existence in time, that is, establish it accordino; to a rule." What I translate there "all existences" occur^ in WW., II., 169, and is evidently a misprint. Jenes Daseyn, that is, ought to be Jedes Vaseyn, as is proved by said Daseyn being immediately referred to as diese Begebenheitfin. Another passage similar to the above is to be found at page 165 :
and tlie casual. Nay, Aristotle actually takes the pains there to prove by demonstra- tion tliat the " Post " eawnoi be the" Propter." Erdmann significantly intimates also (II., 409) that "without succession causality is not thinkable." Very curiously, Mr. Cuird's whole work is simply to invert this, and say, "Without causality succession is unthink- able." That, in fact, shall be Kant's reply to Hume ; or that, in a word, shall be the entire outcome of Kant's enormous labor ! And yet justice must be done Mr. Caird too. It is really true that without causality succession is unthinkable ; things, that is, being thought of, and not mere time itself. Succession in things is a change in things, and there is no change without a cause. And our results now are certainly sufficiently re- markable. Hume asks, Why do we say there is no change without a cause ? and, accord- ing to Mr. Caird, Kant answers, We do say there is no change without a cause ! It would be a strange contradiction to Mr. Caird's single strong proposition — would it not — to assert that, in ultimate instance, to Kant's mind, no succession involved causality, or that, in ultimate instance, no succession could, in consistency, involve to Kant's mind causality ? And yet that would be true too. Ice follows frost, heat the sun, water gravity, a ship the current, etc., etc. Now, all these things were to Kant, just as they were to Hume, not relations of ideas, but matters of fact, and, consequently, contingeiit — that is, causeless ! Cause, or the necessity of the order in these contingent facts, was but a gov- ernment stamp he himself stuck upon them — a stamp b<jrrowed from the analogy of hia own mental function called antecedent and consequent. Thus, then, every succession was, in consistency for Kant, in its own self, necessarily causeless! I say — again in consis- tency, or on his own principles — be could not even stick the stamp on, unless the facts themselves so ordered him.
Criticism of Kanfs Main Principles. 2S1
" From the succeeding: time-point tliere is no going back to the preceding one, though the former refers itself to some one that pre- cedes ; irom a given time, again, the progression to the determi- nately following time is a necessary one."
Xow, when we consider such words as these alone, it is suffi- ciently natural to think that they point to time itself as consti- tuting, in its own series, if not the whole schema of causality, then the most important element towards it. It is possible, however, that what seems to be said of time itself is in realit}' said only of things in time, and of such things, moreover, as are alone in place in a discussion (as here) under the second analogy — events, namely. In point of fact, what is said in the last of the above extracts about the impossibility of going back from following to preceding time, is not said of time itself, but of something (actual event) in time. And as regards the other, however strongly it may seem to speak of time alone, it means, for all that, really nothing, and refers to noth- ing, but the things themselves that are in time. We may confident- ly decide, then, that, however peculiar Kant's own words may be, there is no actual evidence that he ever expected to find his schema of causality in the succession of time itself. He says (II., 48), the notion of change does not count among the a priori data of pure perception ; " for time itself changes not, but only something that is in time." Similar words (p. 157) are these: " TF<?cA5e? affects not time itself, but only the Erscheinungen in time." Nay, he actually tells us that to be able to use the mere succession of time for any such schema, we should require another time in which to see time. "Would you attribute to time itself one event after another, you must think another time in which this succession were possible." Here, plainly, it is understood that the time which is to be con- ceived as in time would only occupy the place of things in time. I add that quite unmistakable light in this reference is to be found on pages 148, 174, and 778.
I have said elsewhere, that Schopenhauer seems to attribute to the succession of time itself some portion of the causal efficacy : one moment, he says, is "parent" of the other. It is certain that Mr. Caird adopts this view. "The different elements of the manifold of the events are determined in relation to each other in the same way as the different moments in time are determined in relation to each other; but it is obvious that the
282 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
moments of time are so determined in relation to each other that we can onlj put them into one order, i. e., that we can pro- ceed from the previous to the subsequent moment, but not vice versa^' It throws light liere to perceive that Mr. Caird follows this up by like expression in regard to the succeeding analogy. " The same argument may be applied," he says, " to coexistence in space, and the principle of reciprocity — the parts of space are necessarily represented as reciprocally determining each other," etc. As of space then, so of objects in space. N^evertheless, as there is in reality no ground for assuming Kant to mix up the succession of time in his schema of causality, there is not even the appearance of a ground for mixing up the extension of space in his schema of reciprocity. The word Raum occurs only twice, I think, in the relative exposition. Time, again, is repeated in every second line even there, and, so far as words go, might still be mistaken for an agent in the schema. Kant, however, only thinks of things, and neither of space nor yet time, as such. The agent on which he leans is only the " relation of influence." What he has in view is merely a " dynamic reciprocity, without which even the local {communio spatii) could never be empiri- cally perceived : it is easy to be observed in our experiences, that only the continuous influences in all places of space can lead our sense from one object to another" (771, 179). Influence of object on object, then, is here the thought ; and, instead of saying, as of space so of objects, we ought to invert the phrase and say, as of objects so of space ; the latter is even perceived only through the former.
The conclusion, then, so far, is that time alone is not the schema; and it is no objection to this conclusion that this schema, whatever it be, must be in time. That is granted. The schema must appear in time, and must dispose itself according to the succession of time ; but, even in obeying this succession, the 7'ule of the schema is not that succession, and is not determined by that succession, but is something quite else.
With regard to the second, or atfirmative proposition, that an empirical reference is involved in the schema, that is not difiicult to exhibit. '' The schema of the cause and the causality of a thing in general is the reale^ on which, whenever it is, something else always ensues. It consists therefore in the succession of the
Criticistn of Kant'S Main Principles. 283
multiple of parts in the object, in so far as that succession is sub- jected to a rule." This passage, easily found (127) like the sub- sequent ones, is Kant's own express definition of the schema in regard. We see that, so far as time is concerned, this schema is a succession ; but no influence of time goes further than that. All else concerns a reale ; and a fixed rule of the parts of that reale — a rule which is in time, but not prescribed by time. The very succession referred to is not that of time, but of the parts of the sensuous impression. The schema in question, Kant sajs, again (128), "is the relation of the sensuous perceptions, the one to the other, in all time (that is, according to a rule of time-determination)." That evidently is to the same effect. Time is spoken of, but it is only the vehicle or medium in which ; there is no hint whatever of time determining a rule : on the con- trary, it is the rule determines time. " The universal proposition of the analogies of experience (152) is: all sense-presentations stand, as regards their existence, a priori un^er rules of the deter- mination of their relation, the one to the other, in one time." And here we see that Kant by " all time " and " one time" means quite the same thing — accordance with a "rule of time-determina- tion ; " but there is no thought in either phrase of an all or whole of a " one all-embracing time." The rule here, in effect, is a rule of relative existence in one and the same time j and one can at once realize the meaning by referring to either of the special cate- gories implied. In causality the rule is of the existence of a B necessarily due to the existence of an A in a time common to both ; while in reciprocity, again, the rule is of an A B, in which there is a relation of transition at once from A to B and from B to A in the same time. Once more the question is only of things, though necessarily disposed in the extension of time. Were that exten- sion alone considered, the succession implied would be an indif- ferent one, and only in one direction ; whereas the objective succession under view is not indifferent, and may be in two directions. " Properly the schema is only the phenomenon or the sensible notion of an object in agreement with the categouy." Evidentl}^, then, that schema or sensible effigies must, as concerns relation, refer to connections of things., that is, to a certain fore- cast of rules affecting objects in time ; but not themselves (the rules) from time. I have already argued the point that in the
284 TTie Journal of SjpecttZative Philosophy.
realization of the niachinerj of relation certain quasi a priori conditions of all experience have been postulated; and not ob- scurely in Kant we may say the necessity of that empirical in- struction is emphatically enforced. In particular we may refer here to the section an noumena and phenomena as well as the general remark that follows the postulates. We draw into con- sideration now the third proposition that the postulated rule can- not coherently be granted.
The schema of causality is " the reale on which, w^ienever it is, something else always ensues;" it is a "rule" which deter- mines succession in the parts of impression, Now, where are we to get this absolutely empirical rule which shall yet at the same time be absolutely non-empirical ? Neither the matter nor the form (function) of pure perception will yield it. Time has simply succession ; it has no type of the necessary step from antecedent to consequent, of any thing out of another. Pure perception has reallj', for matter, nothing submitted to it but the pure side-by- eide of space, and the pure after-one-another of time — units that are to one another simply as the books on the shelf, in the one case, and the ticks of a clock in the other. In form, again, it has no universal of function that will typify a fixed order. Neither is there in sensation any succession but that of degrees in filling; and such succession is also manifestly inadequate. Now, these faculties are the only faculties of sense, and, if we cannot get from them what empirical element is in request as quasi a priori uni- versal, it is impossible to imagine where else we are to look for it. There is nothing left Kant now but (as we have seen) the bold postulate of a general empirical fact. And what is that but a simple assumption of the whole case, a simply presupposing and taking for granted of all that is to be proved or explained ? " The reale, on which, whenever it is, something else always ensues,' ac- cording to a universal rule." It is quite evident that no a priori^ either of time or space, either of pure perception or (so to say) pure sensation, is ever adequate to as much as that. And just as little is it possible to grant that any such peculiarly specific em- pirical fact can be allowably used as an a priori principle. Kant makes no concealment here; he is quite open in declaring (II., 776, III., 75 seq.) that the categories of substance, causality, and reciprocity would be all vacuous and consequently null, were there
Criticism of Kant 8 Main Principles. 285
not va eacli case an actual " perception " to give it filling, function, and purpose. But such perception it is evidently impossible to grant. One thing out of another, one thing together with another : these are particular facts of particular perception, and thev cannot be generalized into any a priori universal whatever. Kant does not even generalize in such cases: he only asserts. To him there are, and there must be, such universalia allowable to postulate in experience ; for to him they are indispensable for the realization of his categories, at the same time that, to his own persuasion, he is immovably shut in, whether as regards sensation or time and space, to the interior of his own subject.
Eeaders of Kant do not generally take home the full signifi- cance of such things. Tliey are apt to regard them vaguely and mistily as things wliicli Kant is to be understood to have proved. But that is not so. Kant does not mean us to suppose his theory of causality cducluded in the schema, but only begun. And yet the empirical instruction necessary to the schema — the schema itself — is already the whole of causality. Kant is quite unable to get his categorical rule of necessity between antecedent and conse- quent into action, unless we grant him first of all an empirical rule of necessity between one thing and another ; and it is precisely this latter rule which Hume, which everybody else agrees to hold up as the enriie problem in dispute. AYhen I ask you to explain why I believe the efi'ect necessarily follows the cause, and you present me with the presupposition of a " reaU on which, whenever it is, something else always ensues," you simply return me my own question. And as it is with causality, so it is with the rest.
This, then, is the teaching of our illustrative application, namely, that neither time empty nor time filled can present an adequate schema to causality ; that what in Kant appears as in point of fact that schema is but the postulate of an empirical rule; and that that rule, while it at once assumes the whole problem it pretends to resolve, cannot, whether for that reason or its flagrantly em- pirical origin, be for a moment granted. The general conclusion on the question of the schemata as a whole (which is now termi- nated), we have expressed already.
{The conclusion of (his criticism follows in the October number.)
286 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
ATOMIC COLLISION AND NON-COLLISION ; OR, THE CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS STATES OF MATTER. A NEW THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
BY PATTON SPENOE.
Coijsciousness seems to stand abruptly apart from the world of matter and its phenomena. Not only has science failed to find a connecting link which shall bind into a continuous chain the phenomena of the conscious and the unconscious universe, but it has not yet conceived of any possible means by which the chain can be made continuous even in thought or imagination. Yet the philosophy of the day poses itself on the oneness of things ; and the science of the day seeks rest in a verification of the philo- sophical conception of the continuity of the phenomena of matter and mind. Consciousness, by its seemingly wide and abrupt separation from matter and its modes, has ever been a standing obscuration of all our prophetic glimpses of this cosmical onenessj a mockery of all human efiforts to trace the chain of unbroken continuity in the phenomena of nature, and a persistent, irreduci- ble, defiant assertion of the duality of the cosmos. Nevertheless, for reasons which will more fully appear as we proceed, we still believe in the oneness of things — we still believe that matter is the unitary constituent of the universe, and that states of con- sciousness and of unconsciousness are but other names for states of matter.
In the evolution of the earth, there was, of course, a time when consciousness did not exist ; and, however much we may endeavor to evade the difliculty of explaining its origin by pleading the gradations from inorganic to organic nature and thence to the animal, yet the fact is undeniable, that all that part of nature which lies on one side of an indefinite period of time in the past must have been wholly unconscious, while, on this side of the line, there has been a continuous succession of consciousness; or, if we limit our vision to the present order of things, we find that everything below a certain undefined type of organic structure is
Atomic Collision and Non- Collision. 287
wholly unconscious, while everything above that type is conscious. Now, science does not explain how, in the order of evolution in the past, or in the order of reproduction and growth in the present, the unconscious becomes the conscious ; moreover, no basic fact has been brought to light indicating an ultimate sameness between the unconscious and the conscious, and thus pointing to the possi- bility that the latter may be only a modification of the former.
Thus far, therefore, consciousness has no scientific genesis. By the scientific genesis of consciousness we mean its established pro- cedure from something which existed before it, the nature of that something, and the method of that procedure. The difficulty of discovering its genesis is so great that men even of the highest scientific attainments and tendencies are tempted to fall back upon the theological explanation of the fact, and say that it has no genesis, but is a special creation. I shall not pretend to say whether science will ever admit a special creation. But I can safely say that science can never admit a special creation of any' thing so long as we can show that it had, or that it probably has, or that it possibly may have, a genesis.
Science gives us no reason for the existence of consciousness. Yet consciousness exists, and has its historical beginnings, and must have had its paleontological beginning. If science cannot justify the existence of consciousness, I believe it is because its essential nature has not been understood ; and hence the term has been limited to that phase of it which is associated with animal life, regardless of the necessary inference that its appearance in connection with the- animal organization could have been possible only because of its preexistence in some other, disguised form, under the name of unconsciousness, in vegetable and in inorganic matter, in the same manner that light may be said to exist in the invisible rays of the solar spectrum.
In the investigation of consciousness, we can make no assured progress until we shall have discovered a state — a state of some- thins; — in the true sense of the term. On the other hand, when we shall have discovered a state — a state of anything, whether we call it a state of matter, or of spirit, or of neither, so long as it is a state in the true sense of the term — we have found the basic fact of consciousness, the fact which makes consciousness possible, the fact which links the miscalled unconscious to the conscious,
288 TTie Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
the fact which justifies the existence of consciousness, becomes the key to its genesis and its modifications, and enables us to un- derstand the meaning of the unconscious in the true sense of that term.
Let us, in thought, reduce matter to its simplest conceivable form — that of an atom. Now, so long as that atom of matter remains at rest, it is in what may be called a negative state. I do not mean that it is not in motion, and is, on that account, in a negative state ; for, in the sense in which we use the word state, and in the sense in which we think it should always be used, neither motion nor rest, as such, is a state of matter. Motion and rest, as such, merely consist in a change and a non-change in the relative position of matter to matter, and are, therefore, phenom- ena of relation only, and have nothing to do with the state or states of the matter thus at rest or in motion. But, when I say that the atom of matter, when nt i-est, is in a negative state, I Biniply mean that nothing is happening to the matter itself, con- sidered apart from all other matter and from all its relations to other matter. If, on the other hand, we suppose the same atom of matter to be in motion, it is equally in a negative state, because the motion does not affect the matter of the atom in any way, but merely changes its relation to other matter. Therefore, whether the atom is at rest or in motion, it is equally in a negative state ; because nothing is happening to the matter which constitutes it.
If, now, we suppose two such atoms in the negative state (either both in motion, or one at rest and the other in motion) to meet each other, something happens to both of them at the moment of the collision. Of course, I do not mean that the motion of both is changed ; but I mean that something happens to the matter itself which constitutes the atoms — something which is neither motion nor rest, but, nevertheless, something which is different from the nothing that was happening before the collision. This also is, strictly speaking, a state of matter, which, being the very opposite of what we have denominated the negative state, may be called the positive state.
If I am asked, what is the physical nature of that something which happens to matter at the moment of atomic collision, I reply, that, not having as yet determined what matter, in itself, really is, I cannot now answer ; nor is it necessary that such a
Atomic Collision and N on- Collision. 289
question should be answered at present, the obvious and important fact being, that matter is susceptible of two states, which are just the opposite of each other — two states which are related to each other as affirmation and negation. Now, it is a law of affirmations and negations that they mutually explain and interpret each other; and that, without both, neither could be conceivable. It is thus that light interprets or explains darkness, and darkness light; and this kind of an interpretation of the one by the other is just as complete and valid to him who is totally ignorant of the physics, physiology, and psychology of light as it is to him who is familiar with those aspects of the subject. To all minds, in the last appeal to consciousness, darkness is the absence of light, and light is that which displaces darkness. We know fully as much as that, per- haps, about the two states of matter. We know that the negative state is the absence of the positive, and the positive state is that which displaces the negative; and this becomes a conscious reali- zation, as in the case of light and darkness, when we ascertain, as I think we shall, that the positive is the conscious state of matter, while the negative is the unconscious state of matter. When this shall be ascertained, it will be evident that, in the act of atomic collision, matter runs into consciousness, loses its material aspect, and can no longer be described in the terms of matter. Tlius, at this early stage of our discussion, our final conclusion is foreshad- owed, namely, that matter and consciousness are in their ulti- mates the same.
The negative state of matter, being the absence of — the nega- tion of — the positive state, is, of course, not susceptible of de- grees. On the other hand, the positive state, being induced by the collision of matter with matter, must be variable, the de- grees of variation being dependent upon the rapidity and the rela- tive direction of the motion of the colliding atoms. Having once admitted that the positive state is induced by the collision of mov- ing matter, we are compelled to go a step farther, and admit that the varying degrees of the velocity, and the varying relative dii*ec- tion of the motion of the moving matter, at the moment of cblli- sion, must induce varying degrees of the positive state, running downwards approximately to the negative state, and upwards in- definitely from the negative.
^_ In the positive and the negative states of matter we have the XIY— 19
290 The Journal of S])eculative Philosophy.
conscious and the unconscious universe — the negative being the unconscious and the positive the conscious. I, of course, use the terra conscious in a wider sense than that which is usually given it, as I embrace under that term all the degrees of the positive state of matter, including, not only human and animal conscious- ness, as is generally done, but also including all degrees of the positive below that of human and animal consciousness, as well as all degrees above it. The positive or conscious states of matter may, therefore, be divided into three classes (each class contain- ing, of course, many degrees) : namely, the sub-conscious, the con- scious, and the supra -conscious. The conscious embraces all degrees of human and animal consciousness ; the sub-conscious embraces all degrees below human and animal consciousness; and the supra-conscious embraces all degrees above human and animal consciousness. The states of matter, therefore, form an unbroken series, consisting of the unconscious, the sub-conscious, the con- scious, and the supra-conscious, which are shaded off into each other through countless degrees.
The following considerations give us conj&dence in the forego- ing theory of consciousness.
1st. Having found that matter is susceptible of a state, in the true sense of the term, I decline to search any farther for con- sciousness, but take it for granted that that state is the conscious state. Were I now to search for consciousness in some substance other than matter, I could only hope to find what I have already found; that is, something wliich is susceptible of a state; and that state I would have to call the conscious state, just as I have already done in regard to the state of matter. If I am not satisfied to call the state of matter a state of consciousness, I "could be no better satisfied in calling the state of the other substance a state of consciousness. And so I must continue my search indefi- nitely, always finding states, and always unwilling to recognize the true value of my findings. Therefore, I can only bring this chase after the ultimate conscious substance to an end, by at last imagining that I have finally reached a substance which does not need another substance to be conscious of its states, because, in that ultimate, hypothetical substance, state and consciousness are synonymous — are one and the same thing, and hence need no me- diator. I would thus travel in a circle, and end where I began.
Atomic Collision and Non- Collision. 291
Therefore, as this oneness of state with consciousness is the ulti- mate fact which all theories must reach, and which no theory can evade, and as I have found a state in matter, there also I must recognize consciousness to be.
2d. Spencer has endeavored to show " that something of the same order as that which we call a nervous shock is the ultimate unit of consciousness. ... A unit of consciousness being the cor- relative of a rhythmical motion of a material unit or of groups of such units." The italics are mine. Now, the " nervous shock " of Spencer, as " the correlative of a rhythmical motion of a material unit or of groups of such units," is utterly barren and unfruitful until we engraft upon it the positive state of the material unit or groups of units as developed by atomic collision. We have seen that mere motion cannot raise matter out of the negative state which it is in when at rest ; and what is said of matter in this respect must be equally true of spirit or substance of the mind, supposing for the moment that there is such a thing. Matter merely in motion, like matter at rest, amounts to nothing; it is suffering nothing and doing nothing. But we cannot possibly conceive of matter except as being either at rest or in motion, or as being in collision ; and if matter, whether at rest or in motion, is in a negative state, existing as though it did not exist, the real phe- nomenon— the real outcome of the universe of matter and motion — the thing accomplished, and the only thing accomplished, is collision — the awakening of matter into its positive state. If this is true of inorganic matter, it must be equally true of organic matter. In the nervous system of man and of animals, there must be either atomic rest, which amounts to nothing, or atomic motion, which also amounts to nothing; or there must be atomic collision, which does accomplish something — does induce a state of matter which is the essence of Spencer's " nervous shock," and without which that nervous shock, like mere motion and rest, would amount to nothing. Therefore, the unit of consciousness (human and animal) is that positive state of nervous atoms v/hich is induced by their collision, not by tiieir mere motion. But it is evident that this unit of human and animal consciousness can dif- fer in quality and degree only, not in kind, from the positive state of the atoms of inorganic bodies. If the positive state, in any of its degrees, is consciousness, it is consciousness in all of
292 TJie Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
them, extending down through the sub-conscious, and up through the supra-conscious.
3d. Consciousness, as an unquestionable fact, is legitimately within the domain of science ; but, the only thing that science can do with it is, to ascertain its relations. What is it related to ? The prevailing theory is that consciousness and motion are so in- timately related that no other fact or phenomenon can stand be- tween them ; that, whether consciousness be regarded as a state of spirit or as a state of matter, its immediate forerunner — its causal antecedent — is a mode of motion in either a material or a spirit- ual substance. We have already seen, however, that mere motion does not, and cannot, induce a state or constitute a state of matter at all different from the state which it is in when at rest. What- ever the immediate causal antecedent of consciousness may be, therefore, we can say, with confidence, that it is not, and cannot be, motion, spiritual or material. Between consciousness and motion there always stands, and ajways must stand, that other phenomenon, atomic collision. Atomic collision, therefore, is the invariable antecedent and the inevitable antece<lent of conscious- ness, and intervenes between motion and consciousness. Hence, if the question be, whether motion or collision is the causal ante- cedent of consciousness, we are compelled to say that it is collision. Moreover, as we know of no phenomenon which stands between collision and consciousness, and as we cannot conceive of either the possibility or the necessity of any intermediate phenomenon be- tween them, we are equally compelled to say that atomic collision and consciousness are related as cause and effect.
4th. The following double dilemma has constantly presented itself to-the psychologist. While, on the one hand, it has seemed evident that matter cannot act upon mind, nor mind upon matter, on the other hand, it has seemed equally evident that matter must act upon mind, and mind upon matter. In other words, mind and matter are said to be so different from each other that they cannot act upon each other; yet mind seems to be constantly moving matter, and matter constantly moving mind. The theory of mind or of consciousness here presented encounters no such dilemma. This will be better understood by the reader after he shall have perused the sixth argument of this discussion, from which it will be seen that consciousness does necessarily move
Atoinic Collision and Non-Collision. 293
matter, and is the only thing that can move matter. With regard to the other part of the double dilemma, it is evident, from what has already been said, that mind or consciousness is a state of matter which is induced by matter.
5th. The mind is a compound of related elements. But how can states of consciousness be related, and in what does that relation consist ? Aside from the theory of consciousness here presented, there is but one other which we are called upon to consider, namely : that consciousness is a mode of motion in either matter or spirit ? According to this theory, if a sensation is a mode of motion, a perception must be two or more related modes of motion. But how can modes of motion be related ? A mere relation of proximity cannot cause modes of motion to affect each other. This is true physically as well as mentally. Proximate atoms or bodies in motion do not modify each other's motion simply by being proximate ; and we may hear a sound and see a light, both at the same time, yet the two sensations do not modify each other unless they are related through something more than proximity and simultaneousness. There is but one other way in which modes of motion can be related, namely : by an arreat, increase, or re- tardation of each other. An arrest of each other would cause un- consciousness, if we suppose consciousness to be a mode of motion. An increase or a retardation of each other would still leave them simple and independent of each other, and not blended into com- pound motions as sensations are blended into perceptions; and, hence, that increase or retardation of the motions would, in the case of sensations or of any other states of consciousness, merely increase or diminish their intensity, still leaving them separate and unchanged in quality. Probe this question as we may, we finally come to a point where, in order to conceive- of states of consciousness as related to each other, and therefore as modifying each other, we must conceive of them as interpenetrating each other in time and space, that is, as located in the same ultimate part of whatever is regarded as the substance of the mind, and as existing simultaneously in that part. Such a conception, however, is incompatible with a conception of a state of consciousness as a mode of motion. The motion of an atom, or of a molecule, or of a mass of matter, however often it may be changed in direction or in velocity, always remains simple — never becomes compound.
294 The Journal of Speculatkie Philosophy.
In the light of the theory here presented, the above difficulties disappear ; and the relation between two or more states of con- sciousness, in such a manner as to modify each other, not merely in degree but in quality, becomes not only a phenomenon which can be conceived of and understood, but one which, it is perceived, must also be inevitable. For example, if the atoms A and B col- lide at the same moment with the atom C, the state into which G is thrown by the double collision cannot be the same as that which would be induced by a collision with either ^ or ^ alone, but is necessarily a modification of both such states, and partakes of the nature of both. The simultaneous interpenetration of states is complete. If two nervous molecules, each composed of many atoms, collide, there would be, simultaneously with the molecular collision, a collision of the atoms of each molecule among them- selves, so that each atom would simultaneously collide with several others at varying angles and with varying degrees of intensity ; and hence each atom would be thrown into a compound state, the resultant of the modifications of the several atomic collisions upon each other. A single collision of two such nervous molecules in the sensorium would induce that positive state which may be re- garded as the unit of consciousness* (human and animal), cor- responding to Spencer's " nervous shock." If, however, the two molecules, as the result of that vibratory motion into which they are thrown by a corresponding vibratory motion reaching them from an organ of sensation, collide again and again with great rapidity, the superimposed and interpenetrating states thus awak- ened so modify each other that the unit of consciousness — the "nervous shock" — is converted into a compound state of con- sciousness— a sensation ; a simple noise, for instance, is converted into a tone. In the same way, the more complex composition of the higher mental phenomena may be explained by the mutual modifications of superimposed and interpenetrating but less com- plex states of consciousness.
6th. It is a question which has agitated the ages, whether there
* With the understanding, however, that this unit of consciousness is not simple but compound, and yields, to an ultimate analysis, its affirmative and its negative elements, as I have endeavored to show in an article entitled, "Time and Space considered as Negations," published in this Journal, October, 1879.
Atomic Collision and JV on- Collision. 295
is outside of the mind anything that resembles those states of con- sciousness called sensations and perceptions. I believe that the highest expression of thought of the present day upon that ques- tion is, that our states of consciousness are only symbols of the realities, not necessarily bearing any more resemblance to tlie realities than the algebraic x does to the unknown quantity which it represents, I do not propose here to take up the consideration of that difficult subject, the perception of external objects; but I wish merely to show the reader how it is possible for the theory of consciousness here presented to shake his conviction, as it cer- tainly has shaken mine very recently, in the truth of the prevalent doctrine that our states of consciousness are merely symbols of realities ; and how it may possibly prove to be the long-sought reconciliation between the subjective and the objective.
If a ray from the sun creates in me a sensation of light, the fact may be expressed as well, perhaps better, by saying that it produces in me a state of conscious illumination. But as the con- sciousness and the illumination are one and the same thing, the expression of the fact may be simplified by saying that the ray from the sun produces in me a state of illumination ; and if that simple sensation be abstracted from all other actual and possible, associated states of consciousness, so that it remains as the sum total of the in(lividual mind, then we may correctly say that that individual mind, thus reduced to its simplest form, is an illumina- tion. At one end of the ray from the sun, the inner cerebral end, we therefore find matter in a positive state, matter in a state of consciousness, matter in that state of consciousness called illumi- nation, matter in a state of illumination, Now, if, from that inner cerebral end of the ray, where we find matter in a state of illumi- nation, we follow that ray towards the sun, we find all along its line, from the brain through the nerves, the special senses, and the ether to the sun itself, a continuous chain of undulations with their inevitable atomic collisions, which are of the same character, though not necessarily of the same degree or quality as those in the brain itself — in other words, a chain of atoms in positive states — states of consciousness which we have no reason for believing are different in kind from those of the brain-atoms, and which therefore are states of conscious illumination. Illumination, there- fore, as a conscious state, is an all-pervading state of matter, not
296 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
peculiar to the animal organization, but existing in the animal organization simply because that organization is matter, and, as such, is susceptible of the states of matter.
Of course, if we admit the correctness of the above illustration, we must accept its legitimate consequences, and say, that all sensa- tions are localized, modified manifestations of all-pervading states of matter. This general conclusion pushes us to another, still more general and comprehensive. Force, like light, heat, sound, etc., is a sensation — a state of consciousness, under any theory of con- sciousness ; and under the theory here presented, if it is a state of consciousness, it is not limited to the nervous tissue, but is a state present in colli<Sing matter wherever it exists. This conclusion drives us one step farther, and brings us face to face with the fol- lowing ultimate fact. All sensations, in their final analysis, are phenomena of resistance, involving force, therefore, as their men- tal constituent ; hence, that state of consciousness which we call force is identical with sensation in all its forms, and through sensa- tion it is identified with the positive state of matter in all its vari- ous dee-rees and their modifications whether of the sub-conscious, the conscious, or the supra-conscious. Consciousness and force, then, are identical, all-pervading states of matter.
The identity of the positive or conscious state of matter with force may be reached by a somewhat different method. It is evi- dent that no theory of aggregates or clusters of atoms, whether forming vibrating molecules or revolving vortices, can enable us to evade the consideration of what must necessarily happen to the ultimate atom. The law of the atom must govern its compounds ; and the fate of the atom must decide the fate of the molecule and of the vortex. Let us, then, suppose that two atoms move towards each other, on the same line, with equal velocities, and collide. Being unparticled and indivisible, as atoms must be supposed to be, they are necessarily non elastic, for the reason that elasticity is merely the phenomenon of atoms, molecules, or particles, recov- ering the relative positions out of which they had been forced ; and in a simple atom there being no related elements, there are no relative positions to be lust or recovered. The two colliding atoms, then, being non-elastic, would simply neutralize each other's motion ; and instead of the law of the continuity of motion we should have the law of motion annihilating its equivalent of mo-
Atomic Collision and N on- Collision. 297
tion. Therefore the ultimate and speedy result of that molecular vibration, which is the life of the universe, would be the collision of the atoms which make up masses, organic and inorganic, solid, liquid, and gaseous, suns, planets, and satellites, and hence the an- nihilation of all their atomic motion — all their life. Therefore the law of the continuity of motion constrains us to suppose that the pos- itive state of matter which atomic collision induces is a state of force which compels the colliding atoms to rebound from each other with a velocity equal to that which they had before the collision.
7th. Within the last few years, the phenomena of unconscious cerebration have risen from comparative obscurity and neglect, and have taken a position in the front rank as subjects of the greatest interest and importance, demanding an explanation, and threatening some of the cherished convictions of modern psycholo- gists. The very term, unconscious cerebration, carries with it, of course, a theory of the nature of the phenomenon itself — a theory which was the outo;rowth of the current idea, that there can be no mind without consciousness (human or animal consciousness). To have called the phenomenon unconscious thought would have seemed absurd, as absurd as to have called it unconscious con- sciousness. To save the current idea, therefore, it was called cerebration — physical action, not mental action — a brain activity without thought, but, nevertheless, an activity which may be sub- sequently reproduced in connection with consciousness or thought ; or, without being reproduced, may modify subsequent kindred mental action or thouo-ht in the same mind.
The few isolated facts which are ordinarily relied upon to prove that there is such a thing as unconscious cerebration are but as a drop to a boundless ocean of similar facts. When this subject shall have been pro[)erly unfolded, it will be seen that the pheno- mena of consciousness (human and animal), even within the limited sphere of the nervous system, are related as an iniinitesimally small part to a vast aggregate of unconscious cerebrations (sub- conscious, and perhaps supra-conscious states) which form the bulk and body of all mental phenomena. But the impoftant point in this connection is the fact, so clearly demonstrated by the acknowledged phenomena of unconscious cerebration, that the unconscious (the sub-conscious, and perhaps the supra-conscious) modifies the conscious (human and animal), and that the two hecome
298 The Journal of &j)eculatwe PJdlosophy.
hlended into compound states, thus proclaiming their sameness or kinship, and showing that mind runs down deeper into matter than is generally supposed.
In conclusion, we have shown that the positive states of matter induced by atomic collision are states of consciousness. We have also identified force with consciousness. Therefore, matter and consciousness are the all of things. Have we still on our hands, then, an irreconcilable duality — the duality of matter and con- sciousness— or is it possible for us to reduce one of them to the other ; and, if so, which one shall we retain as the universal, cos- mical constituent ?
If there is anything which we positively know, or which we know positively is, it is our states of consciousness. Conscious- ness, then, as an ultimate fact cannot be surrendered. Therefore, the only remaining question is : Must we, or can we, surrender matter as a separate ultimate? I shall not, in this connection, amplify the answer to this question, but shall simply present it in the following condensed form :
What is matter? As we have already shown, matter is that something whose modifications are states of consciousness. But if the ultimates of matter are not already ultimates of conscious- ness, no modification of the former ultimates can convert them into the latter; or, in other words, ultimates are non-convertible into each other. Moreover, in the act of atomic collision, matter and consciousness, the thing modified and its modification, are causally and efliciently related. But there can be no causal or efficient relation between things unless they are in their ultimates the same. Hence matter and consciousness, in their ultimates, are the same ; and the modification and the thing modified are, in the last analysis, reduced to states of consciousness, or, what amounts to the same thing, consciousness; and, therefore, con- sciousness is the ultimate, unitary cosmical constituent. In the col- lision of forces or states of consciousness, one becomes matter to the other. To every individual, matter is all those forces or states of consciousness which impinge upon his consciousness in such a way as to make him realize them as something separate and apart from himself If, in this article, I have seemingly used the word matter in a different acceptation, it was provisionally only, until this, my final conclusion, could be reached.
Anthropology. 299
ANTHROPOLOGY.
TBAN8LATED FBOM THE GERMAN OF IMMANTTEL KANT, BY A. E. KROEGEE.
PART I.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIDACTIC,
Concerning the inanner in which to recognize the Internal as well
as the External of Man.
BOOK I. CONCERNING THE FACULTY OF COGNITION.
Concerning the Intellectual Faculty, in so far as it is based on
the Understanding.
§38. The understanding, as signifying the faculty to think (or to represent to itself somewhat by means of conceptions), is also called — in distinguishment from sensuousness, which is called the lower — i\\e, upper faculty of cognition, and this, because the faculty of contemplations — whether real or empirical — involves only the particular in the objects, whereas the faculty of conceptions con- tains the general of the representations, under which the mani- fold of sensuous contemplations must be subsumed, in order to produce unity in the cognition of any object.
Hence the power of the understanding is assuredly far more aristocratic than the power of sensuousness, with which even beings without understanding, as animals, etc., can get along by means of instinct, if absolutely necessary, even as nations drift along without a head; whereas a head (chief) without followers (understanding without sensuousness) cannot accomplish anything at all. Hence, there is between the two no dispute of rank, even though the one may be entitled the lower and the other the upper faculty of understanding.
The word Understanding is, however, taken also in a peculiar signification, seeing that it is subordinated — as one of the members of the classification — with two other faculties, to the understand- ing in its general signiticance: in which case the upper faculty of
300 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
cognition consists — materialiter., i. e., not for itself alone, but in regard to the cognition of things — of Understanding, Faculty of Judgment, and Reason. And now let us institute observations concerning man ; how one man is different from the other in the gift of these talents, or their accustomed use or abuse, firstly in the case of a healthy mind, but next in the case of a disease of the mind.
Anthropological Comparison of the three Upper Faculties of Cog- nition with each other.
§ 39. A correct understanding is not that which glitters by the multitudinousness of its conceptions so much, as rather contain- ing the faculty and ability to arrive at a cognition of the object in hand and its truth. Many men have many conceptions or notions in their heads, all of which will ultimately approximate to what we have thought of them before, but yet will never arrive to full agreement with the object in its determinations ; he may have conceptions of great extent even of already existing conceptions : the correct understanding which attains to all the conceptions of all common cognition is called common sense. He calls out with Juvenal's watchman. Quod sapio satis est mihi, non ego euro — esse quod Arcesilas aerumnosique Solones. It is, of course, under- stood that the natural gifts of a straight and correct understand- ing will always proceed modestly in relation to the extent of its presumptive knowledge and to the person gifted w^ith it.
§ 40. If the word Understanding signifies the faculty of cogni- tion under rules and hence under conceptions in general, so that it embraces the whole upper faculty of cognition, we must not conceive it as embracing those rules in accordance to which nature guides man in his conduct, even as it rules in the animals that are compelled by a natural instinct, but as embracing those only which he himself nnakes.
Whatever man learns and thus intrusts to memory he accom- plishes only mechanically (in accordance with the laws of the re- productive power of imagination) and without any understanding. A lacquey, who has merely to dress up a compliment according to an established formula, needs no understanding ; that is to say, he need not think for himself; but he needs think for himself"
Anthropology. 301
when in the absence of his master his house arrangements have to be taken care of, in which event many rules of conduct not liter- ally to be prescribed might become necessary.
A correct understanding, 2i practiced power of judgment, and a thorough power of reason, constitute the whole extent of the intel- lectual power of cognition, especially in so far as it is also judged in regard to its applicability to practical purposes.
A correct understanding is what is usually called common sense, in 80 far as it involves applicahility of the conceptions to the pur- poses of their use. Now, even as the sufficiency {stifficientia) and precision (prcecisio) when united constitute the applicahility (or adeqtiateness), that is, the quality of the conception — neither more nor less than the object needs — [conceptus rem adcequans) a correct understanding is the first and foremost of the intellectual facul- ties, because with the least means it effects its purpose.
Cunning — the brain for intrigue — is often considered a pro- found, though abused, power of the understanding ; but in truth it is only the mode of thinking of very shallow minds, and very different from that sagacity of which it assumes the appear- ance. You can deceive an open-hearted man only once ; and this grows afterwards to be very obstructive to the designs of the cunning.
The house servant, or the servant of the state, who stands under proper orders, needs only common sense (understanding) ; the offi- cer, to whom only the general rule is prescribed, it being left to his own discretion what to do in a special case, needs power of judgment ; the general, who has to overlook the possible cases and determine the rule whereby they are to be governed, must possess reason. The talents required for these various occupations are of very different kinds. " Many a one glitters in the second rank, who would be invisible in the first one " {tel hrille au second rang qui s' eclipse au premier).
Simply to argue is not to have understanding, and to put forth, like Christina of Sweden, maxims against which their own actions stand in opposition, is irrational. It is in these cases as with the answer which the Earl of Rochester gave to King Charles II., when the latter, finding him in a reflective attitude, asked him : "What are you so profoundly cogitating?" Answer: "I am making Tour Majesty's epitaph." Question : " How does it read ? "
302 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
Answer : " Here lies King Charles 11., who in his lifetime said
many wise things, but never did a wise one."
To keep silent in company, and only now and then to drop a
very general judgment, looks as if the person were very sensible ;
even as a certain degree of coarseness passes for (old German)
honesty.
Remark.
Now, the natural understanding can, by culture, be enriched with many conceptions and furnished with rules of conduct ; but the second intellectual faculty, namely, that of analysis, or oi dis- tinguishing whether a certain special case comes under a certain rule or not, the power of judgment (jtidicium), csinnot be taught, but only practiced. Hence its growth is called ripening, and itself is designated as that understanding which does not come before years. This is easily understood, indeed ; for teaching is accomplished by a communication of rules. If it were, therefore, possible to establish rules for the faculty of Judgment, there would have to be general rules, according to which we might be able to decide whether a special case falls under a certain rule ; but this would give a retrogressive search ad infinitum. This, then, is the understanding of which men say that it does not come before years, which is based on one's own long experience, and the judg- ment whereof the French Republic expects to gain from the House of the so-called Elders.
This faculty, which concerns itself only with that which is practicable, proper, and appropriate for the technical, sesthetical, and practical power of judgment, is not so glittering as that faculty which aims to extend the boundaries of reason ; for it simply ac- companies common sense, and forms the connecting-link between it and reason.
§ 41. Now, if the understanding is the faculty of establishing rules, the power of judgment, the faculty of discovering whether a particular case comes under a particular rule, then reason is the faculty to deduce the particular from the general, and hence to represent the latter according to principles and as being necessary. Hence we can also interpret it as the faculty to judge and, in a practical aspect, to act, according to principles. For every moral judgment, and hence also for judgments respecting religion, man needs reason, and cannot base himself on dogmas and established
Anthroj)ology. 303
habits. Ideas are conceptions of reason that can find no corre- sponding object in experience. They are neither contemplations, as tliose of time and space, nor feelings (such as the pnrsuit-of- happiness doctrine seeks), both of which belong to sensuousness ; but conceptions of a perfection which we may always approximate, but can never fully attain.
Casiddry^ without sound reason, is a use of reason which misses the final purpose of reasoning, partly from impotence, partly from losing sight of the true point of view. To rave with reason signifies to act according to principles in regard to the form of one's thoughts, but in regard to the substance or the purpose to apply the means just the reverse of those principles.
Subalterns must not argue, because often the principle accord- ing to which they should act must be concealed from them, or, at least, remain unknown to them ; but the commander (general) must have reason, because it is impossible to give him instructions for every possible case. But it is unjust to require that the so- called layman Qaicus) should not make use of his own reason in matters of religion, but should obey the salaried Glergyman (cleri- kus), hence another's reason, since those matters must be held as matters of morals ; because in moral matters each individual must be responsible for his own doing and not doing, and the clergy- man will not, nor even can, undertake to account therefor at his own risk. But in these cases people are very apt to find more safety for their person in this, that they renounce all their own power of reason, and passively and obediently submit to the estab- lished dogmas of saintly men. This they do not so much because they feel their incapacity as regards insight, for the essential ele- ment of all religion is, after all, morality, which soon becomes revealed of itself to every man ; but they do it out of cunning partly, in order that they miglit put the blame on others, in case a mistake may have been made, but chiefly in order that they may happily escape the essential thing, change of heart (which is a much more difficult matter than the mode of worship).
Wisdom, as the idea of the legitimately perfect practical Jise of reason, is too much to require of man ; but even in the smallest de- gree it cannot be imparted by another: man must produce it out of himself. The rule to attain wisdom separates into three max- ims, that lead to it : 1. Self thinking ; 2. In communicating with
304 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
other men to think yourself in their place ; 3. Always to think in harmony with yourself. The age wherein man attains com- plete possession and use of his reason may be determined about as follows : In regard to \i\s> proficiency — of his artistic faculty, what- ever may be the object — in the twentieth year ; in regard to his sagacity (ability to use other men for his own purposes) in the fortieth year ; finally, in regard to his wisdom, in the sixtieth year. But in the latter epoch it is more negative, that is, more inclined to see all the follies of the first-mentioned two faculties. One may now say: "It is a shame that we must die just when we have first learned how to live well ;" and when even this judg- ment is rare, since the desire to live grows all the stronger the less value it has in working as well as in enjoying.
§ 42. Even as the faculty of discovering the particular to be subsumed under the general — the rule — h .Q2l\e6. power of judg- ment; so the faculty to find out the general for the particular is called wit {ingenium). The former faculty makes it its object to discover the differences between the manif )ld, the partly identical ; the second to find the identity of the manifold and partly different.
The preeminent talent in both cases is this : To observe and note even the minutest similarities or dissimilarities. The fac- ulty necessary for this is called sharpsightedness {acumen), and remarks of that kind are called suhtilities, which, if they neverthe- less do not further cognition, are termed pure quihhling, or mere arguing {vance argutationes), which, though they may not be called untrue, may still be held as involving a useless expendi- ture of the understanding in general.
Hence, sharpsightedness is confined not only to the power of judgment, but also pertains to wit ; the only difierence being, that in the first case special attention is paid to exactness (cognitio exacta), in the second case to the richness of the productive mine — whence wit is also called exuberant ; and even as nature in the production of fiowers seems rather to indulge in play, whereas in the production of fruits she seems to carry on business, thus the talent shown in wit is held lower in rank (according to the pur- poses of reason) than that which appertains to the power of judg- ment. Common sense claims neither wit nor sharpsightedness, which indeed would furnish a sort of luxury of brains, whereas common sense limits itself to the real need.
Raphael and Michael Angelo. 305
KAPHAEL KED MICHAEL ANGELO.
TEANSLATED FEOM THE GERMAN OF HERMANN GRIMM, BY IDA M. ELIOT.
After finishing the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, he took up again his other art, for the sake of the monument, and in the followino; years we find a new element which renders his life less sad. He learned to know Yittoria Colonna, the woman who was at that time the most renowned princess in Italy. Besides letters and poems which passed between the two, we have the account of an eye-witness who saw them together and heard them talk.
About the year 1540 Francesco d'Ollanda, a portrait painter in the service of the King of Portugal, visited Italy, and was ac- quainted with Michael Angelo as well as Yittoria. The manu- script containing the account of his journey, written to the King, was discovered in Lisbon by Count Raczynsky, and extracts were published in Portugal in a book on art. From this French version I translate a few fragments into German.
" While I was thus spending my time in Rome," writes Fran- cesco, " one day I visited Messer Lattantio Tollomei, who, through the friendly mediation of Bosio, Secretary to the Pope, had made me acquainted with Michael Angelo. Lattantio stands in high esteem, not only on account of his native nobility, but because he is nephew to the Pope. He was not at home, but had left word that he would wait for me at Monte Cavallo, in the church of San Silvestro, where he, with the Marchioness of Pescara, was listening to a lecture on Paul's Epistles. This Marchioness of Pescara- Yittoria Colonna, sister of Ascanius Colonna, is one of the most celebrated ladies in all Italy or Europe, in other words, in the whole world. The purity of her character, her beauty, her knowl- edge of the ancient languages, her intellect — in a word, all the virtues which adorn a woman and may be mentioned in her praise, cause her to take this high position. Since the death of her hus- band she lives in modest retirement. Having satisfied her desire for splendor during her former brilliant life, now she gives herself up wholly to the love of Divine things and to doing good, comes as a help to poor women, and lives as an example of true Cliristian XIY— 20
306 The Journal of Speculative Philosopliy.
piety. I owe mj acquaintance with her also to the goodness of Lattantio, one of her warmest friends.
" She begged me to be seated, and when the reading and ex- planations were finished, she turned towards me and Lattantio. ' I may be mistaken,' she said, ' but it seems to me as if the Master Francesco would more willingly have heard Michael Angelo speak upon painting than Fra Antonio give a reading.'
" That vexed me. ' My lady,' I said, ' your Excellency must needs assume that I understand only what concerns the art of painting. True it would be very pleasant to me to hear Michael Angelo speak, but if one is to talk about the passages from Paul I prefer Fra Antonio.'"
Here I interrupt the account. His memoirs seem to be a natu- ral and certainly truthful account of his experiences, and the style of the recorded conversation is not dull, although a little prolix — a style not peculiar to him, but universally adopted and admired at that time. We have numerous " raggionamenti " from the Italy and a great many conversations from the Germany of that time. To-day one addresses the public directly, but at that time it was the custom to personify the public, and then write out the controversy. The arguments of the learned schools, the oral dis- cussions taking place in every station of life, the model of the Platonic Dialogues, all these, taken together, gave to literature this form as a very common one. If, then, our Portuguese describes details in a circumstantial manner, and takes pleasure in empha- sizing little points, it may not be so much owing to his acute power of observation and his good memory as it is the result of skill acquired in the use of that literary form. "What he writes must not be considered as a short-hand report, but the events de- scribed are certainly not false or altered.
His own character is shown with considerable clearness. Un- consciously he states things so that they make him appear in a favorable light. One learns him by seeing what vexes him and about what things he gives sharp answers. He often says with emphasis that he could have become acquainted with many cele- brated people, had he so wished. Notwithstanding this, he takes great care to tell us whenever he did meet any noted person. He shows himself to be one of those good-hearted, narrow-minded, but sensitive natures, who, perhaps, most of all, enjoy life, and
Raphael and Michael Angela. 307
know how to satisfy their vanity in an innocent and open fasliion.
Thus he had been at once touched by Yittoria's remark. " ' Don't be disturbed by that,' broke in Lattantio ; ' the Marchioness cer- tainly did not mean to say that, because one understands painting, for that reason he can understand nothing else : we, in Italy, place art too high to think so. But perhaps what the Marchioness said was suggested by her intention of procuring for us, besides the enjoyment already obtained, another delight — that of hearing Michael Angelo speak.'
'' ' If that was so,' I answered, ' then her Excellency has vouch- safed me no unusual favor, for I know too well that she is accus- tomed to give much more than one has dared to ask.'
'' The Marchioness smiled. She called one of her people, and turning to me, said, ' One must enjoy giving to him who knows how to be grateful, but to-day I shall have, in giving, no less joy than Francesco will have in receiving.'
" ' Go,' she said, to the servant, ' into Michael Angelo's house, and tell him that I and Messer Lattantio are here, that it is beauti- fully cool here in the church, and that we are sitting quite alone with the doors closed. Ask him whether he would not like to spend a little of bis valuable time with us here, so that we might be so much the gainers. But do not say a single word about Master Francesco's being here.'
" I admired the way in which the Marchioness knew how to manage details so gracefully, and whispered this remark to Lat- tantio. She asked what we were saying to each other.
" ' Oh,' said Lattantio, ' he merel_y remarked how wisely your Excellency always managed, as, for example, in sending this mes- sage. For while Francesco knows only too well that Michael Angelo belongs more to him than to me, yet, before they have met, Michael Angelo will do his best to avoid him. They may not be able to separate after they become acquainted.'
"'I know Michael Angelo too well,' said the Marchioness, 'for me not to have known this. Meanwhile, how shall we manage to persuade him to talk about painting when we succeed in getting him here ? '
" Fra Aml)ro8io, from Siena, one of the most celebrated min- isters of the Pope, had until now spoken no word. ' I think that
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is worthy of consideration,' he said. ' Michael Ang-elo knows that the gentleman from Spain is an artist, and will hardly agree to speak about his art. I believe it would be best for the gentleman to hide himself somewhere so that he could listen,'
" ' It would perhaps be harder than you think to hide the " gen- tleman from Spain " away from Michael Angelo's sight,' I an- swered the reverend man, a little bitterly. ' For, even were I hidden, he would still perceive my presence even better than you through your glasses can see me standing here. Only wait until he comes, and see if I have not spoken truly.'
" The Marchioness and Lattantio laughed, but for my part I did not join, nor did Ambrosio, who might have learned from this that he would find in me more than a mere painter.
" After a few moments of silence there was a knock at the door. Every one feared that it was some one else than the Master, who lived quite under Monte Cavallo. Luckily, however, the servant of the Marchioness met him close by San Silvestro. Michael Angelo was going to the springs, and came through the Esquiline street, talking with his color-grinder, Urbino. So he fell right into the trap, and it was he who knocked at the door,
" The Marchioness rose to receive him. She remained standing for awhile, then she begged him to be seated between herself and Messer Lattantio. Then she began to speak. Unconsciously she added dignity to those whom she addressed and to the place where she was. With an art that cannot be described nor imitated she spoke of one thing after another. She did it with as much ear- nestness as grace. She merely touched upon painting, so that after- wards she could draw the great artist more securely. She managed like a general who does not try to storm the fortress, but attempts to take it by surprise. But Michael Angelo saw the ruse, and guarded his walls by well-posted sentinels. He knew how to neutralize her attacks by every kind of counter-action, but at last she conquered, and truly, I do not know who could have held out any longer,
" ' It is a known fact,' she said, ' that one is always wholly con- quered if one dares to attack Michael Angelo in his own kingdom — that of finesse. And you see, Messer Lattantio, there is only one way of conquering and silencing him — one must speak of law- suits or of painting,'
Raphael and Michael Angelo. 309
" Suddenly he turned upon me with astonishment. ' Pardon me, Meister Francesco, for not havinfi; seen you before. I saw no one except the Marchioness. But since God ordains that you are here, then come to my aid as a colleague.'
" ' You give too good an excuse for me not to pardon you,' I answered. ' But it seems as if the Marchioness with one and the same- light has produced two very different effects, as the rays of the sun at the same time harden one thing and melt another. The sight of her has made you blind for me, but I see and hear jou only because I see the Marchioness. Besides, I know that a man of taste must feel himself so occupied when in the presence of her Excellency that he has no thoughts left for a neighbor. And since it is so, I shall not now feel constrained to follow the advice of a certain priest.'
" The company laughed again at this reply. Fra Ambrosio rose, took leave of the Marchioness, greeted us, and went away. He remained one of my best friends afterwards."
Here ends the first chapter of the account.
I will make one remark before I begin the second. The Marchioness had said that one must speak with Michael Angelo either of painting or of lawsuits. The word lawsuit throws a significant light upon the letter from the artist to Pope Paul III., in which he sets forth in detail all the wrongs he has suffered from the beginning. He was one of those geniuses who, on ac- count of their intellectual wealth, are cut off from practical affairs, are led to make a thousand promises through their good nature, and are imposed upon by people. All at once they see what they have come to, grow angry, and insist upon their rights. Their neglect of practical matters is now very troublesome to them. Everything ought to be as they have planned it, but strict jus- tice will not permit it. Michael Angelo confessed openly in one of his letters that, unfortunately, he had followed no method in his affairs. The very ones who look with horror upon every law- suit at such times are the most eager to employ courts, so as to appear as innocent in the eyes of the business world as they know they are to themselves. That letter which people have considered as the production of some unknown defender is nothing but the outbreak of feelings excited in this way.
We have a charming description of the Marchioness, who was
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very conscious of her influence over Michael Angelo, and who ex- ercised this power in the most graceful manner. The friendship between these two is well known in history. Yittoria was of an age when love and friendship need not be in opposition in a wo- man's heart, and in hers they united in forming a feeling which was equally removed from coldness and from passion. But both reverence and passionate devotion speak from the poems which Michael Angelo wrote to her. Her letters to him are still in ex- istence, unprinted, at Florence, in possession of the Buonarotti family. He complained that he was separated from her, and wrote altogether too often, she thought ; so she asked him once to write less often. She said that his letters caused her to be late at the evening service in the chapel of St. Catherine, and they must keep him in the morning from beginning his work at St. Peter's.
Throughout her letter there > is expressed such confidence in her friend, and such high appreciation of his love, that this re- pulse meant to him no real discouragement, nor a desire for his departure.
Yittoria never came to Rome or to the neighborhood without going to see him, and often she came merely to see him. He openly declared what he owed to her; that she had entirely changed and transformed him.
Yittoria Colonna was born in the year 1490. In 1509 she married the Marquis of Pescara, who often was obliged to leave her when he went to war. When alone, she longed for his pres- ence, and in this way her first sonnets were written. They had no children. In 1525 he died. She came to Rome, and was there during the troubles of the following year, which were harder for her to bear because her own family, that of the Colonnas, were the most to blame in this affair. She entered the cloister of San Silvestro, where she wrote many of her poems, but she soon left it. In 1536 she became acquainted with Miciiael Angelo.
She was at that time forty -six years old ; Michael Angelo was sixty-two. While he was a man whose youth was not affected by his years, so, on the other hand, Yittoria Colonna's beauty seems to have been imperishable. There are many portraits which bear her name, but not one of them has sufficiently authentic proof to be considered genuine. Her soft hair must have had a reddish
Rajpliael and Michael Angelo. 311
golden tinge. Poems which were written in her honor praise her beauty. In addition to this, let us imagine the beautiful figure, the queenly bearing, and the renown which was bestowed on her poems and her family. These were somewhat veiled by her giv- ing up a life in the world, although she had none of that false be- lief 'that devotion to God requires that beauty and worth should be despised. Thinking of these things, we may imagine a woman at whose death a man like Michael Angelo might well lose con- trol of himself through grief. Condivi describes how he stood at her deathbed in despair. She died in 1547. Afterwards, in his old age, he said that he repented of nothing more than that he did not at that time kiss her brow, instead of merely kissing her hands. Yittoria's death was as terrible a blow to him in his age as the fall of Florence was in his younger days.
Very few of his poems show evidence that they were written to Yittoria. But in a great many the sentiment is a proof that they were written while he was thinking of her. From her let- ters it appears that he sent to her at Yiterbo the sonnet beginning
" Oarico d'anni e di peccati pieno."
It seems to me very natural that her name should not be men- tioned in the deepest, most passionate verses. He loved her with his whole soul. . It has been believed that, if the facts could be given, his relation towards her would be found to be a more ideal one — that he felt for her a so-called spiritual love, springing up from a sort of religions union of their hearts. It seems to me the nature of the man is opposed to this. Goethe in his old age was still roused (by the beauty of a maiden) into passionate feeling, which he poured forth in glowing lines. Michael Angelo's poems, in which he complains of Love because she has seized upon him so powerfully in his old age, need no artistic explanation ; they cannot be transposed from the earth to the region of the clouds. He loved Yittoria; she forbade him to tell her so, but at the same time she did not hide the fact that she could never lay aside the veil which she had assumed at the death of her husband. If we suppose that the relation between them was different, a great many of his poems are unintelligible, while, taken naturally, they express his feeling very clearly.
I will quote one that has always touched me, not because it
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expresses a passionate longing, but because it gives, in a calm and resigned tone, the most tender and spiritual flattery which could be given only in this way. He must have been talking with Yittoria about age, and how beauty passes with years. As a consolation, he sent her this sonnet. [This is in Symond's collection, headed " A Prayer to Nature."]
" That thy great beauty on our earth may be Shrined in a lady softer and more kind, I call on Nature to collect and bind All those delights the slow years steal from thee, And save them to restore the radiancy Of thy bright face in some fair form designed By Heaven; and may Love ever bear in mind To mould her heart of grace and courtesy ; I call on Nature, too, to keep my sighs, My scattered tears to take and recombine, And give to him who loves that fair again. More happy he, perchance, shall move those eyes To mercy by the griefs wherewith I pine, Nor lose the kindness that from me is ta'en."
Another sonnet I refer to Yittoria. [In Symond's translation this sonnet is referred to Toniraaso de' Cavalieri.]
" With your fair eyes a charming light I see. For which my own blind eyes would peer in vain ; Stayed by your feet the burden I sustain. Which my lame feet find all too strong for me ; Wingless, upon your pinions forth I fly — Heavenward your spirit stirretli me to strain ; E'en as you will, I blush and blanch again — Freeze in the sun, burn 'neath a frosty sky. Your will includes and is the lord of mine ; Life to my thoughts within your heart is given ; My words begin to breathe upon your breath. Like to the moon am I that cannot shine Alone — for lo ! our eyes see naught in heaven Save what the living sun illumineth."
Michael Angelo's poems were not published while he lived, except a few, of which his friends gained possession. I will quote only one more line. He carved a crucifix for Yittoria, and sent it to her with the words written :
" Non ci si pensa quanto sangue costa."
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Among her poems I have found nothing which could have been dedicated to Michael Angelo.
JSTow let us go on with Francesco's story.
" The Marchioness spoke : ' His Holiness has had the goodness to allow me to build a nunnery. I wish to have it erected near thi? place, on the slope of Monte Cavallo, where the ruins of the portico stand, from which, according to the story, Nero looked down upon the burning city. The steps of holy women ought to wipe out the last traces of the bad man. I do not know, Michael Angelo, in what proportions I shall erect the building, nor upon which side would be the best entrance. Would it be impossible to combine our new edifice with the old remains still standing there, so that these might do us good service ? ' ' Certainly,' he answered, 'the ruined portico might be used as a bell-tower!' He answered so seriously, and with such conviction, that Messer Lattantio could not help remarking upon it. The great artist continued: 'Your Excellency can build a cloister in that place very satisfactorily, and when we leave here we can make a little detour that way ; perhaps, when on the very spot, some useful sug- gestion may occur to us.'
'"I had not the courage to propose it to you,' said Yittoria, *but I see that the saying of our Lord, deponit potentes et exalta- mt htimiles, is always true. Besides, you have the serviceable habit of giving us generously of your wisdom, while others are lavish of their ignorance. For this reason your friends hold your character in higher esteem than your works, and those who have not learned to know you personally prize what is of the least value only — your works. For my part, it seems to me worthy of the highest praise that you finish your works with such excellence, avoid useless talk, and refuse the requests of many princes who desire to possess something from your hand, so that, by concen- trating your efforts, one perfect work is brought into existence.'
" ' Madonna,' answered Michael Angelo, ' you give me more praise than I deserve, perhaps. But, since you have led me to the subject, permit me, in my own name, and in that of other^ artists whose character is like mine, as Meister Francesco, to lay before you a complaint against a portion of the public. Atnong numer- ous false rumors which are spread concerning the lives of cele- brated masters, there is none that is so willingly believed as that
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these men are eccentric in their behavior, and, if one tries to make their acquaintance, are repelling and uncompanionable. And yet these masters are only quite natural in their behavior. Silly men, however, not to mention a few who judge more reasonably, consider them fanciful and capricious. Nothing js farther from the character of a true artist than such a reproach. I agree that certain peculiarities of the painter can be developed only where painting abounds ; that is, in the few countries like Italy, where it is in its most perfect state ; but idle people are wholly unfair when they expect that an artist who is absorbed in his work will spend his valuable time in empty compliments on their account. Few enough paint conscientiously, but the people who blame a man because his hio-hest aim is to finish his work in the most care- ful manner, neglect their duty in a higher degree than those artists who give themselves no trouble about 'their work. Great artists at times indulge in such behavior that it is useless to at- tempt to do anything with them ; but it is not because they are proud, but because they seldom meet with a true appreciation on the part of others, or because they will not lower their superior minds by useless talk with people who have nothing to do, and who only drag them out of their deep train of reflections. I can assure your Excellency that even his Holiness is tiresome to me when he comes with the question of why I do not go oftener to the Vatican. When it is about some unimportant matter, I be- lieve I can help him more by staying at home than by appearing in his presence. Then I tell him, without circumlocution, that I prefer to work for him in my own way to standing by him all day long, as so many others do.'
" ' Happy Micliael Angelo ! ' I exclaimed ; ' of all princes the popes alone look upon this sin with indulgent eye.'
" ' The very sins which princes should pardon first of all,' he continued ; then, after a pause, he added, ' 1 may say, indeed, that the important things which have occupied me have gained for me such liberty that, in conversation with the Pope, unconsciously I have put on my felt hat and gone on talking quite unconcernedly. This was not sutticient to make him punish me; on the contrary, he let me live as 1 chose, and it was at these very times that my mind was the most eager to serve him. Should any one be foolish enough to place himself in solitude with his art, and, because he
Rajpliael and Michael Angela. 315
finds pleasure in being alone, should <>ive up his friends and turn all the world against him, then they would have the right to find fault with him. I, however, act. in this way from my natural feeling, and because I am forced to it by my work, or because my character cannot endure formal courtesy, so that it would be the greatest injustice not to allow me to do as I choose, especially as I desire nothing from any one else. Why does the world demand that one should be interested in her empty pastimes ? Does she not know that there are sciences which take such complete hold of a man that not the least part of his being is able to give itself up to these ways of killing time? If he has nothing to do, like you, then, for ail me, he may die the death, if he does not observe your etiquette and ceremonies. But you seek him out only to do yourselves an honor, and it gives you the greatest pleasure that he is a man to whom popes and emperors give orders, I say that an artist who cares more for the demands of an ignorant people than for those of his art, whose personal conduct has no peculiarity or oddity, or who has a very slight reputation in that line, will never be a superior nature. Clumsy, ordinary men can be found in abundance, without using any lantern, on every street corner throughout the world.'
" Here Michael Angelo was silent, and the Marchioness rejoined, ' If the friends of whom you speak were in the least like those friends of antiquity, the evil could be better borne. When Apelles was lying ill, in the midst of poverty, Agesilas visited him secretly and put some money under his pillow. His old servant stood aghast when she found the money, but he said, laughing, " No one but Agesilas can have done this, and you need not be aston- ished at it.' "
Let me insert here that Michael Angelo was not rich, though not the opposite. He always had a great many orders, and re- ceived large sums of money. For his Last Judgment alone he had a yearly payment of two thousand scudi.
" Next, Lattantio told us his ideas. ' Great painters,' he said, ' would exchange places with no other human beings. I|i their superiority they were satisfied with the small sum which they gained from their art. The genius of a great painter knows how empty are the lives and pleasures of the rich, who consider that they alone are powerful. Their names will go out of the world
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with them, without their having had any intimation of those things which are the worthiest for men to know and to care for. Such men have never really lived. However much they have heaped together treasures, the genius gains for himself an undying name through his works. The world's fortune is not worth wishing for, as a whole or in part, and the reason that genius has respect for itself is because it breaks through the way which would not open for the desires of commonplace spirits, because they would not at all be able to perceive it. A ruler may well be less proud of the possession of his kingdom than an artist of the power of represent- ing a single one of the created works of God. It is no easier for the ruler to conquer a formidable enemy than for the artist to execute a work which entirely corresponds to his idea. When the Emperor Maximilian pardoned a painter condemned to death, he said these memorable words : ' I can make counts and dukes ; God alone can create a distinguished artist.'
" ' Give me some advice, Messer Lattantio,' said the Mar- chioness, when he ended. ' Shall I ask Michael Angelo to clear up my thoughts a little in regard to painting ? For, in order to prove to us that great men are reasonable and not governed by whims and fancies, it is to be hoped that he will play us at this time no trick, as he has formerly done.'
" ' Madonna,' answered Lattantio, ' Master Michael Angelo ought always to make an exception in favor of your Excellency, and freely give to us those thoughts which he so rightly keeps hidden from the world.'
" ' Your Excellency,' replied Michael Angelo, ' has but to com- mand. Whatever seems to you worthy shall be laid at your feet. I am all obedience.'
" Smiling, Yittoria continued, ' Since we are now on such matters, I should like to know what you think of art in the Neth- erlands, for it seems to me to be on a more devout path than ours.' "
" Now Michael Angelo began to express his ideas. All that he said was beautiful and just ; but, since the book of the Count Raczynsky is to be had everywhere, I shall quote only a few sen- tences.
" ' Good painting,' he said, ' is noble and devout in itself, for nothing can with more power elevate or excite a pure soul to
Baphael and Michael Angelo. 317
piety than the laborious striving after finished representation. It touclies the divine and is one with it. Good painting is only a copy of its perfections, a shadow of its painting, a music, a melody ; and only a very profound intelligence can always feel how great this work is. For this reason it is so seldom attained and so sel- ddm brought to view,' "
He now spoke of painting in different countries, and the works of art in Italy. Every word is striking, and the reading of the whole account, from which I have quoted here a few fragments only, would certainly be very useful to the lover of art. His last sentence, I think, is particularly fine. The Marchioness, as will be seen more clearly from what follows, in spite of the loftiness of her views, has insisted upon considering the subject of painting quite like an amateur. To her a devout picture is one which represents a holy subject: to him it is one which was painted when the artist devoutly yielded himself to the beauty of nature. " Only an artist can feel where piety is to be found. He may paint a flower in the hand of Mary with the same divine reverence that he paints her face, and he who pictures the suffering Christ, with eyes distorted by grief and forehead marked with swollen veins, is often infinitely farther off' from the divine than he who knows how to give to a modest portrait of a child the breath of innocence which he has recognized and felt."
A trace of the childlike is found in everything that Michael Angelo does. In this he is like Beethoven, who, obstinate as a lion, would sufi'er no opposition, and yet quietly resigned himself to fate, which treated him so harshly.
He expresses in his poems sorrow for a wasted life. Many times he renews his laments over years past unused, and he ends one of the many sonnets in which he pours out his despair with the proverb, repeated for ages by the wisest spirits, " He is the happiest whose death follows nearest to his birth."
"Ah, woe is me, alas! when I revolve My years gone by, wearied, I find not one "Wherein to call a single day my own. Fallacious hopes, desires as vain, and thoughts Of love compounded and of love's woes — (No mortal joy has novelty for me), Make up the sum : I know — I feel 'tis so,
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Thus have I ever strayed from Truth and Good : Where'er I go, shifting from right to left, Denser the shades, less bright the sun appears, And I, iniirm and worn, am nigh to fall."
He may have written this after Vittoria's death. We feel that now he was entirely alone. But, while that thought lay deep in his consciousness, he was still the old master among artists, and carried on his works with power. These were extended over a wider field than ever. In 1540 Pietro di San Gallo died, and to Michael Angelo was given the chief direction of the building of St. Peter's. At first he made the excuse that he was no architect, but finally, when the Pope commanded, instead of requesting him, he accepted the office. Dr. G-ulil gives the letters written on the sub- ject. In them Michael Angelo does full justice to his old enemy Bramante. Besides this occupation, besides his painting, besides his sculpture, he is occupied whenever there is any building going on. Gates, churches, bridges, fortresses, palaces, must be erected according to his specifications.
Cosmo de Medici, Grand-duke of Tuscany, who tried in vain to persuade the great man to return to his fatherland, never attempted any important building without submitting the plans to him. Once, in the year 1555, after the death of Julius III., who had succeeded Paul HI. in 1549, when Marcellus was elected, Michael Angelo seems to have been inclined to exchange Pome for Flor- ence, but he changed his plans soon after, on the death of the Pope, and the election of Paul IV. He remained at the head of the works which were begun, and in the following year was obliged to fortify Rome for the Pope, because an attack from the French was feared. When the French army really drew near, Michael Angelo fled into the mountains of Spoleto, where, accord- ing to his letter to Vasari, he had a great deal of pleasure, but at the same time great inconvenience and heavy expenses.
To speak of his works might have some significance for me were I writing in Rome or Florence, or for a public who is famil- iar with those cities ; I am so myself only in a very small degree. But, from Yasari's account alone, he who has no idea of the im- portance of these cities in themselves, or of their flourishing con- dition at the time of Michael Angelo, may at least understand that his activity far surpassed the limits within which now a great
Hap/iael and Michael Angela. 319
painter or arcliitect moves. We might make a sort of comparison between his work and that of a great English engineer of the present day. !Now it is the highest aim of architects who buihl and construct to use material in accordance with its capabilities, and, in grand simplicity, to build enormous structures; but in those days the material received essential modifications from the mind of the builder. Those buildings seem to us like an ap- proach towards a colossal sportiveness. But the time will return when one will work in the same way. Then beauty, splendor, and tasteful grandeur were desirable things. The palaces were adorned with grand fagades, the decorations were on an extrava- gant scale. Cosmo had his whole palace, which had been painted by Yasari, copied to the most minute details, and sent to Rome for Michael Angelo to look at it, and say that it was all right. When the Grand-duke himself came to Rome, he visited Michael Angelo, and had a personal interview, for during the last of his life his extreme age prevented the great man from going to Florence.
Cosmo loved and honored him, although his vanity may have had some share in this. When a pnnce presented Goethe with an order, when, in our day, Humboldt receives a decoration, the honor is the same on both sides. We have testimony enough of the lofty height upon which Michael Angelo was placed. But envy and hostility dogged his footsteps. Under Paul IV., Piero Ligorio was one of those engaged at work on St. Peter's. He said publicly that Michael Angelo had become childish, and so the latter wished to stop his work and go to Florence. We have a letter written in 1560 to Cardinal di Carpi, in which the gray- haired old man of eighty-six years complains of the remark as implying that he was not doing his duty, and, in the most bitter terms, begs for his discharge. He did not possess the calmness of Goethe, who was always followed by the scorn and envy of incom- petent men ; but Goethe did not stand upon the plane on which he stood. Goethe represented confidentially, as it were, the Ger- man literature and culture of his time, with the air of a man who stands outside of the thing. Michael Angelo represented gen- uine art as opposed to pope and world, was always occupied by practical work, and was continually surrounded by a circle of new pupils, who were bound to him by love, as he was to them. He knew exactly for himself how high he stood. He had proved
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it. The Popes, the Emperor, the King of France, the Sultan, Venice, Florence, all wished to claim him for their own. He always succeeded, but he knew the price which had been paid to give him this place. All art formed around him, and felt in him its centre of life; with the most unsellish love he gave himself up to men ; he had the courage, and will, and power to grant what was asked of him. Now, when a few, whom he had surpassed and looked beyond, threw stones in the way of him who had pushed rocks from the path — not to keep him back, but merely to make themselves noticed for a moment — wdien this made him very indignant for the time, then we lind his anger very natural, and in accordance with his fiery, impetuous temper.
I wish to mention two more letters only. In 1556 he writes to Yasari about the death of Urbino, who, when a young man, had entered his service during the hard days of Florence, and had re- mained with him. Cellini also speaks of him, and of his violent devotion to his master. He mentions this in speaking of the use- less mission to Michael Angelo, whom he was to allure to Flor- ence on Cosmo's business. Michael Angelo was overwhelmed with grief at the death of this man. Although he himself was old and weak, he took care of Urbino, and passed whole nights with his clothes on, sitting by the side of his sick-bed.
" I have had him with me for twenty-six years," writes Mi- chael Angelo, '' and have found him a man of inestimable fidelity. And now, when I had made him rich, and had hoped to find in him the staff and protector of my old age, the only hope I have left to me is that I shall see him again in Paradise. And God has shown me that this must happen, by means of the blessed death which He let him die, for what troubled him most was not that he should die, but that he must leave me behind in a treacherous world, with so many troubles. The best part of myself has in- deed gone with him, and there is nothing left except an endless sorrow."
The other letter is written in the year following to Urbino's widow. She had thought herself very much injured by some of his arrangements, and he wrote to satisfy her. He enters into the details of her household affairs in the simplest manner, and puts himself at her point of view, so that she must understand him. He was godfather to her two sons. He wrote as follows :
Rajphael and Michael Angelo. 321
" I saw very well that you were angry with me, but I did not tnow the reason. From your last letter I think I have discovered the cause. When you sent me the cheese, you wrote at the same time that you wanted to send other things, but the handkerchiefs were not yet ready. I, wishing that you should not be at any ex- pense on my account, answered you that you ought not to send me anything more, but rather ask something from me, and in that way give me pleasure, for you might know, and indeed you have proofs of it with you, how much I care still for the blessed Urbino, although he is dead, and how dear to me is everything that belonged to him.
" You wish to come here or to send little Michael Angelo to me ; as to this, I must write you exactly how things are. I cannot indeed, advise you to bring Michael Angelo here, for there is no woman in the house nor even any housekeeping, and as the child is still young some misfortune or difficulty might arise. The Duke of Florence, however, a few months ago, urged very strongly that I should return to Florence, where he offered me the great- est inducements. I asked permission to delay awhile, that I might arrange everything here, and leave the building of St. Peter's in good hands, so I may, perhaps, stay here the whole summer to put all my affairs in order, as also, to put your mone}^ here into bonds. In the autumn, then, I shall return to Florence to stay, for I am old, and have no time to come again to Rome. I shall settle matters with you then, and if you will let me have Michael Angelo I will cherish him with a deeper love than even the son of my nephew, Leonardo, and will teach him everything that his father would wish him to know. Yesterday, March 27, I received your last letter."
It is said that his letters are mere jottings, but this one has, most of all of them, unconstrained expression. He wrote just as he thought, one thing after another, without any regularly ar- ranged order. Whenever he intended to express an opinion, he did it simply and in a straightforward manner, often so near the truth that it gave offence to people. He looked very sharply, and judged in the same way that he looked. "It is indeed a pity to see thy piety," he remarked to a sculptor. " Tell thy father that the living figures which he makes are better than the paint- ed ones," was the message sent to Francesco Francia through his son, a beautiful youth. " Titian has a good color, but he can- XIY— 21
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not draw," he said without hesitation, when the Yenetian was in Rome, and he had visited him. On the other hand, when before the great bronze doors of Ghiberti he exclaimed, " These doors are worthy of being the doors of Paradise." Petty men who strove to rival him were conquered in the most pitiless manner ; he treated the greatest and the least with the same harshness that he used towards himself, for he criticised his own works in the most unsparing fashion. All this sharpness of judging might have been counteracted by his noble character, by his unselfish- ness, by his conscientious disregard of external honor ; but there was sometliing more — he spoke the truth not only without reserve, but he often gave to his sentences an ironical meaning; he made men feel that he was superior to them, not only in art but in mind ; that no one can forgive. In this way throughout his life he drew upon himself so much hatred. For one who is injured always re- curs in his wounded pride to the offending word, and does not consider the meaning of the whole, or whether merely the thing, and not the person, was criticised. And, what was worst of all, his remarks were not witty nonsense that one could forget, but truths which struck a man down. If he said, " You understand nothing ot paintings," he destroyed him. He allowed no trifling in his art. When he was painting the Last Judgment, and wanted some of his pupils to help him, he made a division into those who could help him and those who did not know enough. These last he sent off. Finally, he sent them all aw^ay together, and painted alone. He had but one thought — that was his work.
Althougli his character was earnest, although he acknowledged an ideal, and, indeed, carried it so far that he would seldom, if ever, make a portrait, because copying a person seemed to him very poor work — still he had not the nature of a gloomy philoso- pher. He seems to have shown another side which was quite nat- ural ; he took pleasure in singing, violin playing, and gay com- pany, laughed heartily at what was comic, and often in talking used good-natured wit, as well as irony. His character has some- thing quite German in it ; he had humor, a word hardly under- stood by the Romans, which suits him exactly in many respects. In one of his sonnets he describes with quiet amusement how he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel while lying on his back, and what a comical figure he made. We have a stanza of eight
Rajjhael and Michael Angelo. 323
lines from him, containing an ironical declaration of love, in which he represents, by means of all possible comparisons, how the loved one stays in his heart and cannot come forth. The Rape of Gany- mede is quite naive, as if some innocent old painter in Germany had painted it. An eagle is bearing the boy aloft, and is already high up in the air, but on the earth sits his faithful dog, who looks np to the sky after him and piteously howls in astonishment and pain. Vasari tells a number of little anecdotes about him, whose only point is in their harmless fancy, and from which we caTi see very plainly that Michael Angelo led a life that was simple and natural, somewhat like that which one understands by the expres- sion a " real artist life " in Munich or Diisseldorf. But he was, be- sides, a man who recognized no superior except the Pope, and he treated even him almost like an equal. He might have said, like Diogenes, " Stand aside out of my sunshine," and the one to whom he said it would have stepped aside as if the request were quite a usual one. He always found natures that could under- stand him.
His century was great and youthful. If we consider his long life, the number and extent of his works, his outward circum- stances and his private life, the beginning and the end of his career, then we must say that he appears equipped for a powerful career, and he found a field worthy of his steps, men who loved and understood him, princes who honored and employed him, events by means of which every part of his mind was cultivated. It is a rare good fortune when a great genius lives in such an eventful time; if to-day a man were born with the same talents, wdth the same eager power, he would find nothing the same that Michael Angelo found it. No one knows, indeed, what will hap- pen and what might happen. If one reasons in this way, one thinks in parallels. We say sometimes, if Beethoven had lived in other times, had met other men, perhaps he would have developed more freely ; his depth of soul might not have been greater, but his mind would not have been so often distracted and pained by the poverty of his life. By poverty I do net mean any lack of nMoney. It is a current opinion that the rarity of great geniuses is owing to a mistaken political economy, and that one ought to assist peo- ple into geniuses ; as if a bulltiuch could be changed into a night- ingale by good food.
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In regard to Beethoven I call it poverty, because he knew no Lorenzo, no Julius, no Vittoria Colonna, because the princes towards whom he turned never responded to him, because his con- certs were hardly applauded, while Rossini roused the public to great enthusiasm. The great Michael Angelo, or, as he was gen- erally called, the divine Michael Angelo, experienced no such fate; — his bark never turned into narrow channels, where it must pass with difficulty or might be obliged to remain stationary ; he had from the first the wide sea before him, sailed under full canvas, encountered storms, to be sure, but remained always in the open ocean, and passed far ahead of every one that followed in the wake which his keel made as it cut deep through the water.
But one thing was denied to him — the feeling of satisfaction which many a man in poorer circumstances often has in large measure. In spite of all that he received, he felt the emptiness and the vexation of human life ; he longed, like all great minds, for that freedom which is granted man only in his youth, before he feels the slavery of existence. Raphael knew nothing of this longing ; life was not revealed to him. Heaven and earth met before his eyes, and he walked over the ground as if on clouds. A shadow never rested on the spirit of his creations, even when he was painting something horrible. It appears on the canvas, sharp and horrible, but always like a play or drama, just as the tragedies of Shakespeare always remain mere plays.
On a picture that Marcanton has engraved from a drawing of his, we see the plague, il morbetto. Stretched lifeless, with swollen features, a woman- is lying on the ground. A naked child has crawled to her, and stretches toward her breast. A man is bend- ing down over her ; with one hand he holds his nostrils, with the other he is taking away the child. Behind them a figure is sit- ting, with head supported on the right hand, while the left one is thrown on top the head — that is all one sees ; but it seems as if Death were waiting impatiently. A statue of Mercury separates the picture into two parts : the interior of a house and the street. In the house it is dark, and a man is holding a torch low down to light it up. On the ground are three young calves, lying together, dead. A living one has come near them, smelling around with outstretched head ; he drives it away. In the background an old man is stretched out, dying ; two nuns are going near him.
Rayhael and Michael Angela. 325
I never see the picture without a sort of shudder, but the ideal- ism of the conception prevents any feeling of disgust, although the disgusting is represented. One feels that the artist surmounts everything. He saw or heard of the Plague, in imagination the scenes rose before his eyes, he put them on paper, and what he reprteented was the truth. Wherever he looks, he sees forms: he commands, they appear to him, and he paints them. Happiness and beauty, splendor and luxury surrounded him ; that is the air which breathes around his works ; but, besides, he represented the most mournful and frightful. He did not work like Michael Angelo on stern forms in whose very smiles there was that deep melan- choly which spoke to the artist's heart of the lost freedom of his fatherland.
Both together, they represent their century : Raphael, the youthful courage, the abundance, the sunny springtime of its life ; Michael Angelo, the gloomy thoughts which slumbered under all, the dark powers which, warmed in the depths of the earth, at first merely made the gardens above bloom, but gradually burned them to a barren waste. Raphael lived, as it were, on horseback, and died before the death of the roses whose fragrance intoxicated him. Michael Angelo went on foot with republican simplicity through his ninety years. Both were great men ; whoever sees their works and hears of their lives, feels himself even to-dav warmed by the fire of their souls and consoled by their happiness and misfortunes.
The story is that Michael Angelo was almost blind in his last years ; that he caused himself to be led to his works that he might feel them with his hands. But, long before, he had written a sonnet in which he says that neither painting nor carving in mar- ble gives him any satisfaction now; that to be happy he must remain absorbed in the thought of Divine things. Here are verses by him, in which his thoughts become a prayer in the translation of J. A. Symonds.
" Oh, make me see Thee, Lord, where'er I go 1
If mortal beauty sets my soul on fire, *
That flame when near to Thine must needs expire, And 1 with love of only Thee shall glow. Dear Lord, Thy help I seek against this woe, These torments that my spirit vex and tire ;
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Thou only with new strength canst reinspire
My will, my sense, my courage faint and low. Thou gavest me on earth this soul divine ;
And Thou within this body weak and frail
Didst prison it — how sadly there to live I How can I make its lot less vile than mine?
Without Thee, Lord, all goodness seems to fail.
To alter Fate is God's prerogative."
He died in Rome in 1564. His will was very concise. " I leave my soul to God, my bodj" to the earth, and my property to my nearest relatives." In his house in Florence is preserved a letter, in which Daniel da Yolterra writes to Michael Angelo's nephew that he must come to Rome as soon as convenient. In a postscript he be^s him to lose no time, but travel directly through. Michael Angelo himself has written his name below, although, on account of trembling, he could not finish the Buonarotti.
He died on February 17. His body was taken to Florence, and buried there with ceremotiy. Yasari was commissioned to design his monument. He lies in Santa Croce, where, near him, are the monuments of Dante, Macchiavelli, Galileo, and Alfieri. The year in wjiich he died was that of Shakespeare's birth.
Notes and Discussions, 327
NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.
COLERIDGE'S ''ANCIENT MARINER:'
Those who regard the "Ancient Mariner" as an exhibition of unconscious genius — a mere product of exuberant fancy, weird and thrilHng in its eifect, exquisite in its versification, but without final end or aim — have but a faint comprehension of the deep, subtile, and peculiar mind from which it emanated. He who could say of him- self : "I am by the law of my nature a reasoner. I can take no interest whatever in hearing or saying anything merely as a fact — merely as having happened. I must refer it to something within me before I can regard it with any curiosity or care. I require a reason why the thing is at all, and why it is there and then rather than else- where or at another time ;" who, at a very premature age, even before his fifteenth year, was deeply interested in metaphysics ; and who owned that the faults of language observable in his juvenile poems were mostly owing to the effort he made and was always making to give a poetic coloring to abstract and metaphysical truths, was of all men, least likely, in the prime of his poetical period, to write a mere musical farrago, which, whatever may be said of its rhyme, if taken literally, can scarcely be accredited with a superabundance of reason.
Coleridge had already written a number of his minor poems, be- sides contributing largely in prose to the " Watchman," which he edited, and had acquired some reputation as a lecturer, when, in 1796, he made the acquaintance of, and shortly after formed a close friendship with, the poet Wordsworth. It was at the beginning of the career of each, and the influence which they exerted upon one another is incalculable. During the following year they entered into an agreement to publish a volume of their joint works, each engag- ing to treat his subjects after the style which had already become peculiar to him. Wordsworth was to seek to give interest to what is common and usual ; in other words, to treat those subjects which are generally considered as more especially belonging to prose; Coleridge was to give to the weird and improbable a charm which was to spring from the truth of the feeling rather than from the truth of the inci-
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dent portrayed. The volume appeared in 1798, and contained, among other poems by Coleridge, the subject of our sketch.
That the poem fully meets the demand which the author made upon himself will scarely be questioned. The feeling is undoubt- edly true. We are convinced that, under the circumstances, one could not have felt otherwise or suffered less than did the Mariner ; but the circumstance, or rather the cause of the train of circum- stances, is so slight (a man kills an albatross — a bird — and for that act he and all his comrades — a whole ship's crew — suffer the most unspeakable horrors of body and of mind which he, the offender, alone survives) that it could never, despite its almost unapproachable rhythm, exert the fascination it does if we did not feel that the thin tissue of its fable concealed a deeper meaning; that the whole poem is merely a symbol, which is all that a work of art can ever be, of a higher truth.
Only a short time before the ''Ancient Mariner" was written, Wordsworth read Coleridge some cantos of his then unedited poem upon the growth of an individual mind (" The Prelude "). Coleridge was enthusiastic in its praise, and besought him to continue and ex- pand it, making, at the same time, some suggestions as to how it should be done. We quote Coleridge's account, to be found in his "Table Talk": "Then the plan laid out and I believe partly sug- gested by me was, that Wordsworth should assume the station of a man in mental repose — one whose principles were made up and i^re- pared to deliver upon authority a system of philosophy. He was to treat man as man — a subject of eye, ear, touch, and taste — in con- tact with external nature, and informing the senses from the mind, and not compounding a mind out of the senses; then he was to de- scribe the pastoral and other states of society, assuming something of the Juvenalian spirit as he approached the high civilization of cities and towns, and opening a melancholy picture of the present state of degeneracy and vice; thence he was to infer and reveal the ]n-0( f of and necessity for the whole state of man and society, being subject to and illustrative of a redemptive process in operation, shoAv- ing how this idea reconciled all the anomalies, and promised future glory and restoration. Something of this sort was, I think, agreed on. It is, in substance, what I have been all my life doing in my system of philosophy."
Wordsworth never executed the project, but we believe Coleridge did in a measure. The thought, in its passage through the alembic of his fervid imagination, took upon itself something of a personal
Notes and Discussions. 329
character, and he has given us the development, not of the race, but of the individual; he has shown us the "macrocosm in the micro- cosm." What all his life he labored to execute, and for which, for lack of constructive ability, all his genius and all his labor availed him naught — to erect a system of Christian philosophy — we believe he accomplished in his twenty-fifth year, when he wrote the "Ancient Mariner. "
It was the author's intention, in our opinion, to present the Fall from the innocence of ignorance, from the immediacy of natural faith ; and the return, through the mediation of sin and doubt, to conscious virtue and belief. Regarded in this light, the poem may be said to have a two-fold character : it may be considered either in a universal or in a particular sense — the Ancient Mariner may repre- sent Life or a life. In either case he offers to the passer-by, selected on account of his fitness to hear, his receptivity, a view of the "terrible discipline of culture" through which man must pass in order to reach self-consciousness and self-determination.
" It is an ancient mariner, and he stoppeth one of three." Not to all men is it given to behold the solution of life's deepest problem : " Many are called, but few are chosen." But him to whom, even for a moment, the Eternal Verities are once unveiled, the wedding- feast — the pleasure and profit of mere worldly existence— calls in vain. Strive as he may, "he cannot choose but hear" the voice of his own soul.
"The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared." Man, with all his weakness and all his power, with all his potentialities for good and evil, commences the voyage of life. The journey is bravely begun, childhood and youth pass brightly and cheerily, till, " over the mast at noon," maturity is reached. No specific time is intended. The terms childhood and youth apply to the period of unconsciousness, of the utter indifference of the Me and Not-me ; when the Me be- gins to be conscious of its existence through the pressure upon it of the Not-me, maturity is reached, at whatever age. It is not our inten- tion to dwell upon the consummate art which the poem displays, but we find it difficult altogether to avoid calling attention to the beauty, especially when it also represents the adequacy of its form, Mark, at this point, how significant is the pause which allows time to pre- sent the final relinquishment on the part of the wedding-guest of all thought of escape ; whatever interruption he makes henceforth is in the interest of the narrative, and betrays its control over him ; he no longer seeks to retard or dismiss it. A point of departure is also
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reached, the preparation is complete, and the motive may now make itself felt. It is the tightening of the belt as the race begins.
"And now the storm-blast came." The world, with its buffets, its sorrow, and care, its wild-beast struggle for mere existence, con- fronts him. In his horror and fear, he looks wildly around in search of such sympathy and comfort from his fellows as he needs and thinks he shall surely find, only to discover each chased by the same in- exorable necessity, and powerless or too utterly lost in his own affairs to afford him aid. Balked of human help he "grows wondrous cold," and is about to perish when faith in a higher than human sympathy — the albatross — crosses his path to save and bless him. For a time the bird brings peace, but only for a time. In a wanton moment, scarce knowing what he does, he strikes the blow by which he loses sight and consciousness of the spiritual — the true sin against the Holy Ghost, which, if persisted in, shall not be forgiven.
Why does he kill the bird ? This is the question of questions. It is the problem of Original Sin. Man is, by nature, evil, and his first conscious, merely natural act, is necessarily a sin against the spiritual. He is then in a state of negation. Spirit is too strong not to resist the natural impulse, and thereon commences the battle between good and evil, which must either end in the putting under foot of the natural, in the negating of the negation, or man dies like the beasts that perish. The conflict is the appointed task of man. Each man must of himself work out his own redemption ; he must himself prepare the way for that regeneration which is the promised victory over sin and death.
At first the nature of the man recoils before this daring act of the will. "Ah, wretch! said they, the bird to slay." But when the mist and fog of ignorance and unconsciousness disappear at the ap- proach of the glorious sun of knowledge which now arises, "nor dim, nor red, like God's own head," all fear is forgotten, and in a burst of exultation the cry changes : "'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, that bring the fog and mist." Man has now become as a god, knowing good and evil, and the ship rushes blithely on. Suddenly its course is stayed: "The breeze dropt down, the sails dropt down, 'twas sad as sad could be." Knowledge is not sufficient ; man must not only know, but do. He has lost view of the spiritual, and the natural alone cannot content him. He has lost his faith, and with it hope and the power to labor, for the right faith of man not only brings him tranquillity, but helps him to do his work.
A fearful calm follows : life is at a standstill. To add to his
Notes and Discussions. 331
misery, he beholds on all sides aspirations, hopes, endeavors, and beliefs ; but none which he can make his own. He is isolated and despairing. "There is water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink." The world around him seems content with a happiness which holds no charm for him. Its pursuit of fame, of wealth, of pleasure, does not allure him. It appears to hold no thought of a conflict such as is wasting him ; it lives at ease, encompassed, as he thinks, with wonders and terrors. He grows to distrust its fair out- side ; the evil within him drives him to see evil in all without him ; the world is the shadow of himself, and as such he fears and suspects it. "The very deep did rot." "Yea, slimy things with legs did crawl upon the slimy sea." Still, even this madness has its lucid in- tervals. ' ' Some in dreams assured were of the spirit that plagued us so ;" and there are times when he has a glimpse that his torment is not a useless and vain torture ; that there can be no victory with- out a battle. He has an intuition of the two elements which are at war within him ; he feels that there will be no peace until the spiritual conquers. But he has no power and sees no means by which to assist himself. He is sunk and lost in self — mere finite subjectivity. He makes one effort, but it is in the wrong direction : he will conform to the world and its law. The cross — the emblem of true and living faith — is removed from his neck, and the albatross — the dead faith of creeds and rituals — takes its place.
There is, there can be, no peace in a mere outward conformance to customs that are dead to us ; there may be stillness, but there is no serenity. Nothing has changed ; the ship is still becalmed ; all is weariness and distaste. "There passed a weary time, a weary time." The "glazed and weary eye" wanders listlessly toward the west ; the moody and miserable mind of man peers hopelessly and indifferently into the future, and sees a "something in the sky." He watches it, carelessly at first, then more and more eagerly, until at last it assumes proportion and a shape. The final stage of his " temptation in the wilderness " is reached. At last he has discovered a solution to his problem : he will negate the spiritual ; he will fall down and worship the evil one, and he will be saved, and all the glory of the world shall be given unto him. The thought fills him with a horrible joy, and he calls up his whole being to rejoic^ in the promised deliverance. His cry, " A sail, a sail ! " is answered by a " grin " of joy. " The western wave was all aflame," the future now is glorious with earthly promise, "when the strange shape drove suddenly betwixt us and the sun."
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With horror he discovers that it is only a skeleton bark. No kindly, helpful hands are extended from its side to aid him ; the only companion of Unbelief is Death — here and hereafter. The game has been played ; Unbelief has won the will of man ; Death claims his other faculties, and darkness and fear envelope him. To doubt the All is to doubt himself, and this, the worst of unbeliefs, now fastens upon him. '' One after one, by the star-dogged moon," every aspiration and noble desire, every power and every purpose, "with heavy thump, a lifeless lump," drops down and perishes, only turning ere they die to curse his negligence to use, or worse, his abuse of them.
''Alone, alone, all, all alone, alone on a wide, wide sea!" The suffering soul of man in the wide expanse, in the crowded immensity of the world, is isolated by its agony in that Gethsemane where the best beloved are left behind, and the bare spirit goes up alone to meet and wrestle with its Maker. And oh ! the horror, the shrink- ing, the bloody sweat of it all ! The grace and beauty of life have departed, and only a sickening sense of guilt and wretchedness, of bitter self-loathing and self-disgust remains : " A thousand, thousand slimy things lived on ; and so did I."
" I looked ujjon the rotting sea " — the world which is his shadow, upon which he has projected his Me — " and drew my eyes away ! " ''I looked upon the rotting deck" — his own inner consciousness — ''and there the dead men lay." "I looked to Heaven," but his un- belief has closed that to his prayer. "I closed my lids and kejot them closed," but he cannot shut out the view, "for the sky and the sea, the sea and the sky " — doubt of all around and of all above him — "lay like a load on my weary eye, and the dead" — doubt in himself — "were at my feet!" The talent which the lord of the country gave to his laborer to keep for him has been returned, and he hears the well-earned sentence : " Take, therefore, the talent from him, and cast the unprofitable servant into outer darkness." The lowest deep is reached. On this plane there is no more to suffer or to know. Hell is sounded.
This is the culmination of the poem ; no higher point, no greater misery is possible. It has been gradually, but powerfully and tem- pestuously, working up to its climax, and now the change is marked, truly and unmistakably, by the altered movement. Hitherto the transitions have all been sudden, the epithets harsh, and the tone hard and rebellious. The stars have "rushed out;" the breeze "dropt down;" "at one stride" came the dark. We have had
Notes and Discussions. 333
*' glittering eyes" and ''bright" eyes and looks that were "fire;" the '' blocdy sun," the "broad and burning sun." The moon has been "horned" and "star-dogged." Now :
" The moving moon went up the sky, ^ And nowhere did abide ;
Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside."
The wild tempest of passion and revolt has raged itself out ; the warring elements have become quiet from sheer exhaustion. Wrapped in this momentary calm, man now finds time to look away from self and cast his eyes outward. '' Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes." Now that his desire for the earthly has perished, the world is transfigured. All its horror, its wickedness, its coldness, have vanished. It is no longer a "den of lies;" no longer a "charnel-house," for over and through it rushes the eternal stream of life, and power, and purpose. His hard destiny has crushed out of him all warm and hopeful life, but at the same time it has purified him of all particularity. " Within the shadow of the ship, I watched their rich attire." Gradually he grows to feel himself a part of this transcendent movement, and, as the persuasion gains upon him, each particular aim and thought, each selfish purpose and desire, seems poorer and more trivial to his view, till, in a rush of love and humility, he bows his stubborn head ; " I blessed them unaware." " The self -same moment I could pray." The first renunciation of self has been accomplished, and now heaven and its glory open upon his adoring gaze. In his worship, man renounces his particular aims and interests ; appealing to the Absolute as absolute, he becomes conscious of their union and his subordination. With the knowledge that the subjective and objective will are one, he attains his freedom : " The albatross fell off, and sank like lead into the sea."
■ He no longer feels himself a being lonely and aj^art. He has united himself with the All — making the union his own act by ac- cepting and agreeing with it, by becoming conscious of it — he feels that he is free, because he feels that the necessity, too, is his. In this full confidence he dismisses every private fear and anxiety, and sinks into a healing repose : "The gentle sleep from heaven, that slid into my soul." But contemplation, even of the Highest, is not the true destiny of man. His slumber calms and soothes him, but it is of short duration — the need for action soon returns. He awakes to find that the time, which had seemed to be passing so eventlessly, has not
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been lost. During its wise silence ''the great rain of his strength, which sweepeth away ill-set foundations," has been falling, and it has brought him strength and comfort ; he is still wretched and self- distrustful, but he has gained power and patience to endure. He has east himself into the stream of being, and he is now irresistibly floated onward : " The loud wind never reached the ship, but now the ship moved on." The great and triumphant effort has been made. Man has willed, purely and decidedly, the good ; and now the stream of goodness flows in upon him.
The dead faculties are aroused by the same impulse : " Beneath the lightning and the moon, the dead men gave a groan." They perform their accustomed tasks, but in an unconscious way : "They raised their limbs like lifeless tools." The old activity, the old sen- tient volition has not returned ; "'Twas not those souls that fled in pain, that to their corses came again, but a troop of spirits blest."
In his abrogation of self, man has entirely sunk all individuality ; practical effort is abandoned, and he lives in the theoretical alone. From an unconscious immersion in the objective, he passed over into the particular phase, in which he went so far as to deny it — the ob- jective— all validity. In this process he attained a consciousness which assisted in his restoration. He knows noAv that the objective and subjective are one, but knows it only in such a way that the ob- jective is that one, and that in it the subjective is absorbed. His return is into the realm of Abstract Universality, an universality which subjugates the individual and denies all his personal aims. But God himself as Absolute Subjectivity involves the element of particularity, and, therefore, the particular or personal part of man, although on the merely natural side a something to be denied or overcome, on the spiritual or spiritualized natural is a something to be preserved and -honored : "It is in the world that spirit is to be realized."
The power of the spirit, which "under the keel, nine fathoms deep," had "made the ship to go," has brought him thus far ; it is now time to supplement grace by works : " The sails at noon left off their tune, and the ship stood still also." The new insight which recalls him to the world seems for a moment to loosen the band which binds him to the spiritual. But spirit is itself that band, and "in a moment she 'gan stir, with short uneasy motion."
Now the old movement, on an advanced plane, is duplicated ; he passes over into the antithesis again. But this is a concreter phase ; a conflict is unavoidable, because it is the sphere of the negative, but
Notes and Discussions. 335
the old spirit of revolt is cancelled. Man now is not only willing but anxious to do his work ; he is only uncertain as to what that work may be, and whether he is worthy to perform it. Tossed back- ward and forward by conflicting emotions, and finally overcome by their violence, he sinks into a lethargy. The body is inactive, but th3 soul is not asleep. It is a council chamber in which a debate is being carried on between doubt (not the old doubt of all things, but doubt of himself, his right to recognition, knowing himself to be chief among guilty sinners, he doubts his call to "preach Christ and him crucified ") and the new insight which teaches him that to every man to whom the power is given belongs the right, to every man who has won the victory the triumph is due : "I heard, and in my soul discerned, two voices in the air."
The first voice asks : " Is it he ? Is this the man ?" — who killed the albatross. Is it he who has cast aside, who has destroyed his natural faith, and thus estranged the unconscious spirit of childlike humility and ignorance : "The spirit who bideth by himself in the land of mist aiid snow ; " is it for him who has suffered all the misery of doubt and denial, who has barely been rescued from utter de- struction, to imagine that he has any worth in himself — that his subjectivity has any claim to personality ?
The second voice answers : "The man hath penance done." The sin is condoned, for it has been cancelled. Man turned away from the spiritual, it is true ; but he has returned, richer and better for the lapse, for it has won him consciousness — " And penance more will do." Sin is no positive thing ; it is the disharmony, the drawing apart, the sundering of the attributes of the human soul — pure negativity. Every negative action is followed by its own punishment ; the doer is surrounded by the atmosphere of his deed ; and until "the mortal puts on immortality" man's life is bound to be a succession of pen- ances. Innocence is effortless ; it is spontaneity ; virtue is a perpet- ual struggle. The great distinction between the wicked and the righteous lies in the fact that the fallen human will is in absolute bondage and helplessness, while the righteous man, by his continual struggle, is able to negate his negativity as it arises, to perform for himself the function of negative unity — he is freely self-determined.
" What makes the ship drive on so fast — what is the ocean doing ?" But why is this man being now so irresistibly floated on- ward— what part has the world in his progress ? The last question is answered first : "Still as a slave before his lord, the ocean hath no blast." "His great, bright eye most silently up to the moon is
336 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
cast." Far above all finite differences and determinations, the eter- nally Positive gazes down upon the world which he at the same time fills and governs — of which he is at once process and product — gra- ciously looking upon his reflection; but seeing no sin, and hiding nis face from the wicked because they are not — to him ; forever ac- complishing the purpose which he forever designs — the realization of himself in the self -consciousness of the "creature." The first voice asks again : " But why drives on the ship so fast, without or wave or wind ?" '' The air is cut away before and closes from behind." In the realm of the merely natural, God's freedom is shown in the law of necessity. In the world of spirit man's freedom is God's necessity. When man strives with a single heart to attain truth, by the necessity of his nature, God must will that he shall succeed.
''Fly, brother, fiy." "For slow and slow that ship must go when the mariner's trance is abated." Between the theoretical and the practical — the thought, the creation of the intellect and the actual performance — how wide, how well-nigh impassable a gulf !
"I woke." "The dead men stood together." One more back- ward glance which takes in the whole of the wasted past, and then "this sj)ell was snapt, once more I viewed the ocean green." He is done now and forever with all enervating regret ; he leaves to the past its dead ; the present claims him. He ceases to think of what he has been, and tries to resolve what he shall be ; but, still "in fear and dread," the new path is all untried, and his past errors have de- prived him of confidence. "Soon there breathed a wind o'er me :" tribulation has taught him patience, and "patience worketh experi- ence, and experience hope.^'
"Oh, dream of joy!" "Is this mine own countree ?" The true self-return of human activity is accomplished. Freed from all pre- possessions, he returns into himself, prepared to start anew in his cir- cling movement. He has returned from whence he started, but with what a rich cargo of experience ! As he nears his home, as he looks more closely into his own consciousness, he discerns the true meaning of the conflict in which he has been engaged. "Each corse, lay flat, lifeless and flat." Known now in its true relation, as the blank page on which spirit writes its history, the power of the natural is at an end. " A man all light, a seraph man, on every corse there stood." Man no longer supposes himself to be possessed of single and par- ticular faculties, attributes, and powers, for he sees that spirit informs them all with its unity. The soul of man emits its own light, and serves him as "signals to the land."
Notes and Discussions. 337
''But soon I heard the dash of oars, I saw a boat appear." The Hermit — the new faith which is no longer blind, but blessed with in- sight, which is now belief — comes to " wash away the albatross's blood." As the "skiff-boat" nears the ship the "lights, so many and fair," disappear. Spirit is only visible in the moment of activ- ity. To the outer world the nature of the regenerated man looks "warped;" his faculties "thin and sere." The inner struggle has marred the outer man for those who see no beauty save in perfection of form and delicacy of tint.
" The boat came close beneath the ship, and straight a sound was heard." The time has come for man to make an objective assertion of personality. He is equal to the moment. He allows all finite things to fall away. " The ship went down like lead," and the in- finite, the soul — the essential part of man — rises alone to the surface : " Like one who hath been seven days drowned, my body lay afloat." He has died to the world, and been born anew even in this life. To mere sensuous knowing and finite understanding, the Pilot and the Pilot's boy, the change is superhuman ; they cannot fathom it, and the appearance fills them with terror : "The pilot shrieked and fell down in a fit." "The pilot's boy who now doth crazy go." But the true faith — the Hermit — which is Eeason, investigates. He asks : " What manner of man art thou ?"
"And now, all in my own countree, I stood on the firm land." The circle is complete, he has found himself, the return through the object to subject is accomplished. He has hearkened to the lesson : Neither shall ye say, lo here ! or lo there ! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you."
"At an uncertain hour that agony returns." The necessity for negation of the finite may often return, but man has now learned the potent spell, and the old depths of misery need never again be sounded. "I pass like night from land to land; I have strange powers of speech." Go now whithersoever he must, he will never again leave his home, for he carries it with him — he is at home with himself. He has ceased to regard inaction as the highest good ; ceased to distrust his own worth ; ceased to struggle with his destiny. He accepts the work and the place appointed him ; and, in fulfilling all necessary actions at the same time that he abrogates all merely selfish interests, feels that he commands the universe. In acknowl- edging necessity he affirms his freedom.
"0, wedding-guest ! this soul hath been alone on a wide, wide sea." Wrapped in finite selfhood, he saw nothing of the beauty and XIV— 22
338 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
glory around and above him, and, faint with self-weariness, his heavy gaze saw not the ineffable image within. Tried seven times by fire, all particularity now has vanished, and he has been given to feel the bliss which flows from the union of each with all, and all ■with each. "'Tis sweeter far to me to walk together to the kirk," "And all together pray." He has found that prayer — the soliloquy of the beholding soul when its unity with God has become apparent, and by which that unity is perpetuated — is the only happiness.
*'He prayeth best who loveth best." He rises most nearly to the height of that union who comprehends it, whether he, through belief and love and lowly listening feels it, or, by the piercing power of reason, knows it. " For, the dear God who loveth us. He made and loveth all." The subjective in absorbing all — in making it its own — in loving it — becomes all. Subject and Object in one — true Universal.
"A sordid, solitary thing,
'Mid countless brethren with a lonely heart,
Through courts and cities the smooth Savage roams,
Feeling himself, his own low Self, the whole ;
"When he by sacred sympathy might make
The whole one Self! Self that no alien knows!
Self, far diffused as fancy's wing can travel!
Self, spreading still ! Oblivious of its own,
Yet all of all possessing ! this is Faith !
This the Messiah's destined victory."*
Geeteude Gaeeigues.
St. Loms, January, 1880.
* Coleridge. '' ReVgious J/wsw^'s."— Written December 24, 1794.
AT TEOEEAU'S CAIRN, WALDEN WOODS, 1879.
No more shall summer's heat or winter's cold,
Nor autumn plague, nor rule of greedy gold
Show thee heroic in an alien world ;
Thy track above men's earth-bound minds was hurled,
As some stars roll tlieir circuit out of sight;
Their course we see not, but we see the light.
For all the customs of our social state
Which easy homage gain and tix our fate,
Thy finer spirit felt a native dread ;
Yet questioned it no furtiier than there led
Some certain lamp to light the daily life.
But thought ran on beyond the narrow strife,
Foretelling wiser days and more benign;
In those shall sound no greater name than thine.
John Albee. Newcastle, N. II., September 17, 1879.
Notes and Discussions. 339
SENTENCES IN PROSE AND VERSE.
SELECTED BY WILLIAM ELLEET OHANNTNG.
II.
We deal with the best possible people, assured we shall never ad- mire them, while a little flavoring of human nature would render them attractive. They are like store or green-house fruit — any old apple, wild, is better, especially for cooking. It may be asked that what Employment, Art, or Science soever a man strongly inclines unto, if he continues therein and becomes fixed, he shall obtain a proper Genius, which will mightily assist him in that art. — Try on [On Dreams],
One of the dreadful figures of the village is the sexton, old, ex- tremely bent (almost humpbacked, in fact), with a great brown wig, dirty and clouded with snuff ; he looks like death taking stock.
When autumn comes every one but the poet runs to gather his harvest. To him, the whole year is an autumn with melancholy winds.
Men scatter and waste angelic susceptibilities on poor and barren places. They cast themselves away on the hopeless opportunity, yet as the farmer's skill, the careful culture of the interior is in planting wisely, and laying up good seed to sow again.
Amid the plain faces of each village nature plants one child of in- credible beauty, to convince us that her powers are not asserted, and that, in spite of all our prose, she can anew create the Venus. In the worst of months, there is one serene, sunny day.
If we reach no practical results in life, we shall one day reach the end, which will perhaps be a kind of result if we know it.
The fortunate man is not therefore wise nor happy. The true meaning of fortune is, that which occurs fortuitously.
To associate with famous people is taxed enormously. We must not only beg alms of them, but of their fortieth cousins, who crave their penny — the great man tows a fleet of skiffs to George's banks.
We may be impatient as moralists, because we are too good or are not good enough ; if writers, because no one will read our works ;
340 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
if parents, because our children were ill-constructed ; if friendly, be- cause our friend withdraws. To finish these pieces is the plan of the novice. Nature cannot hurry, nor can take time half enough to ac- complish her everlasting stint, which she ever begins newly.
It is singular that we have not, each of us, human nature enough, such as it is, in ourselves, to prevent us from craving it so madly in our opposites.
Looking at the scarred trunk of the pine, and the delicately graceful sprays of the bending birches, the aboriginal trees, we yet have no dream of their origins, grounded so mysteriously in the occult. Nature provokes us forever to enter her beautiful provinces and cooperate with her — endless suggestion and nothing revealed. The wheelwright chips up the butt of an oak to fashion his hub for the farmer's dung-cart.
The Bible — that is, the hooh ; a somewhat exclusive title in the face of many Bodleians.
No profession is sweet to its professor ; each one hates his trade and task.
Man has been endlessly waved aside by nature. She made him and gave him eyes to see her, and then forgot she had such a pretty baby. And so he asks forever, "Mother, who art thou?" She has also forgotten to answer his question.
Just these low, triste fields ; just this cold, reserved, prudent world ; not Italy, not Arabia, not Persepolis for us.
In spite of what we can do, or can resolve to do, we cannot over- step the ineradicable thread across life's threshold, spun by tempera- ment and training — that transparent line is the brick wall of our state prison.
Man is a pretty, contracted beast, without a satisfaction or a moment of learned friendship, one joy in memory, one hope in the present, or a gleam of knowledge about the future ; his very teeth are artificial, and credited like his eating-house ticket.
An art of itself, thin and naked, in reality a mere insipid thing, unless it be clad and seasoned with some other learning — an art always hungry, always starving, and like Mice feeding on stolen Gates. Yet I know not with what boldness in the midst of trifles and fables, like Tithonus Grasshoppers, the Lycian Frogs, the Myr- midon Emmets, promising to themselves immortal fame and glory. — Cornelius Agrippa [of poetry'].
Notes and Discussions. 341
How ridiculous appear the doings of others, how wise and ad- mirably disposed our own ; they are fools, brainless ; we are so wise and witty — our very apologies are worshipful.
A perfectly homely landscape, seamed with toppling walls, seamed with mossy apple trees ; everywhere a cold, brown grass over the dry fields. If the sun shines, it shines without warmth ; if it sets in gold, it gilds the shingle of wretches. The woods are not at all pic- turesque, the birds that fly through them faintly colored, and from the low, wet dells where the smoky maples lean in their bareness, a cold, despairing damp rises, grave-like and clammy. Nor are the poverty-stricken uplands better, with a few gray stones everywhere split up into little rude fields. The farmers and their men are a cold, selfish, taciturn flock, conversant alone with their homely arts, and hating and spiteful to their superiors in fortune. No building par- takes of the meanest beauty, the ho^^ses are slight shelters of board, cold and unfurnished as the hearts of their inhabitants, and guarded by savage, half- starved dogs, who growl and snap at the legs of way- farers, as if they owed them an indulgence.
A lie on the lij)s of beauty is sweeter than a decalogue of truths from a homely mouth.
Life is a tendency. That only which lies behind it and which it foreshadows has a questionable value. We perceive a kind of force, and credit it with a relation to something that is better than the performance. Some additional interest arises, possibly, from a low probability of future development.
There are men who live by their good days, or can distinguish them from those commonly bad. J. H. said, "I am growing old very fast, and plainly perceive it ; in twenty days I am now unable to get those four or five good days I once had."
We should work over our writing, as the smith works his bar of iron.
It matters not how much fanciful expression and store of learning you have appropriated or inherited, without you also possess that certain constructive ability which can just put it in order. Your exquisite seal bears no impression, because it wants a ring. Haw- thorne's ability as a writer and his literary success came almost wholly of his constructive power — his mind was a sort of cellar.
To see the thin, new moon, and a glittering evening star, hung close above the orange ring of the shadowy horizon, and the ada-
342 The Journal of Sj)eGulative Philosophy.
mantine blue of the low mountain, so clear and ricli, the mirror of repose.
When we observe what dreaded tjTants, emperors, and rulers have accomplished, when we fairly measure the repute of poets, the culture of artists, the methods of science, the frantic loves of youth, the black- ness of palsied age, we might be more content with our own weak- ness, or believe a little less in the majesty of the race we so pride ourselves upon.
No matter how narrow our sphere, how wide our failures, we should resolve to accept these crosses in good temper, seeing we have inherited them, and cannot add to our available stock.
We can never exhaust thought nor the sea. We can possess neither in full, yet both may command our admiration, and we may sail on the surface of both.
Fertile wit, complicating fancy, streams 6f learning, love of creat- ing, and enough experiments, may all fall like lead in the mud for lack of a little art to serve as wings. Good intentions will not fly a kite.
Raphael was a cunning servant of the arts and religion of his time, but his force as an artist over-ruled that unartistic element, and was equal to floating Greek mythology in a Christian tub.
The difference in talent is greater than the difference in its rewards. Society never ceases grumbling at its own performances, and its first creations are classes — a tax or a tyrant its racy bon houche.
Hawthorne had a soft, brocaded-silk side in his character, which no contact with sharps or flats could wrinkle, but slyly rustled on. At the time he was at the height of his fortune his parasites would come and "sit upon him," until he was pressed into the politics of despair.
" It would be well," say progressive religionists, '' to contrive a new and adequate mythology from that of the nations pell-mell, as a compensatory allowance to the Procrustes-bed of the Jews. Children might still say the Lord's Prayer, which is sufficiently omnivorous."
We present the reverse of the Christian scheme : " Love thyself first ; second, thy neighbor. Man is the little God ; so found thy salvation on him. God has no existence save through man."
To some it may seem unpleasing that the whole universe cannot help a man to a thought or perception more than he brought with
Notes and Discussions. 343
him originally fastened, as Prometheus was, to his sandstone ledge. Still, amid the snows of age, he hears the wail of the pitying unhelp- ful chorus, his last time-worn lullaby.
John Sterling had an excellent literary working talent, even if his manner surpasses his matter. He would have loved to be a pagan, bat the dullness of the English liturgy crowded it out.
Keats's letters discover a kindly disposition for a poet. A driving, drifting, unmoored nature, with a partial exploration in the world around or within. He was a prospective madman, and died some- what madly, though otherwise fatally diseased, of that yellow rattle- snake.— Gifford.
The poverty of a man's circumstance exfoliates from the poverty of his understanding. Day by day our possessions contract ; to-mor- row, we are bankrupts.
ON THE STUDY OF PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY.
TBANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF F. W. J. VON 80HELLING, BY ELLA 8. MORGAN. [the TWELFTH " ACADEMIC LECTURE."]
Particular phenomena and forms, which can be cognized only by experience, are necessarily preceded by that through which they are, namely, by matter or substance. Empiricism knows them only as bodies, that is, as matter with variable form ; and even conceives ultimate matter, if it refers to it at all, as an indeterminate number of bodies of unchangeable form, which are therefore called atoms. Hence empiricism has no knowledge of the first unity, out of which everything in nature proceeds, and into which all returns.
In order to reach the essence of matter we must avoid the image of every particular form of it ; for instance, every conception of matter as so-called inorganic or organic, because matter in itself is only the common source of these different forms. Considered ab- solutely it is the act of eternal self-contemplation of the absolute, in so far as it makes itself objective and real in this act. To show this being-in-itself of matter, as well as the way in which particular things with the determinations of phenomena proceed out of Jt, is the province of philosophy.
Of the former (the being-in-itself of matter) I have spoken at length in the preceding lectures, and will therefore confine myself to the latter. The idea of every particular thing is simply one, and the
344 TJie Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
one idea is sufficient to the becoming of an infinite number of things of the same kind — its infinite capacity not being exhausted by any amount of realization. Since the first law of the absolute is that it is indivisible, the particularity of ideas cannot consist in a negation of other ideas, but consists in this, namely, that all is imaged in each in accordance with its particular form. This order in the world of ideas must be taken as the archetype of the knowledge of things of the visible world. Here, also, the first forms will be unities which contain within themselves all other forms as particulars, and produce them. Hence, for this reason, they themselves will appear as uni- versals. The way in whicli they pass over into extension and fill space must be derived from the eternal form of the reflection of unity in multiplicity, which in the ideas are one with the contrary (as shown), but which in phenomena are differentiated. The first and universal type of space-contents is necessarily, that just as the sensuous unities proceed as ideas out of the absolute as center, so as phenomena they are born from a common central point, or — since each idea is itself productive and may be a center — from common central points, and, like their types, are dependent and indei^endent at the same time.
Next to the construqtion of matter, therefore, the knowledge of the creation of the world and its laws is the first and greatest in physics. It is well known that what the mathematical theory of nature has accomplished, since the time when Kepler's divine genius announced the laws known as Kepler's laws, is that it attempted a construction of nature entirely empirical in principle. It may be accepted as a general rule, that everything in any given construction which is not pure universal form can have neither scientific value nor truth. The basis from which the centrifugal motion of celestial bodies is derived is no necessary form ; it is an empirical fact. The Newtonian force of attraction, although, for the consideration which adheres to the standpoint of reflection, it may be a necessary pre- sumption, is for the reason which knows only absolute relations, and hence also for construction, of no importance. The reasons for Kepler's laws may be seen, without any empirical addition, from the theory of ideas and the two unities which in themselves form one unity, and by reason of which every being while absolute in itself is at the same time in the absolute, and vice versa.
Physical astronomy, or the science of the particular qualities and relations of the heavenly bodies, rests, as to its great principles, en- tirely upon general views, and, with regard to the planetary system
Notes and Discussions. 345
especially, it depends upon the harmony which exists between the latter and the products of the earth.
The celestial body resembles the idea, whose copy it is, in this, that the former like the latter is productive and brings forth all forms of the universe out of itself. Matter, although as phenomenon it is the body of the universe, again differentiates itself into soul and body. The body of matter consists of isolated particular things in which the unity is wholly lost in multiplicity and extension, and which therefore appear as inorganic.
The pure historical presentation of inorganic forms has been made a special branch of knowledge, instinctively avoiding any appeal to internal, qualitative determinations. When the specific differences of matter itself have once been comprehended quantitatively, and there is the possibility of presenting it by means of mere changes of form as a metamorphosis of one and the same substance, then the way is opened to an historical construction of the system of bodies, a de- cided beginning having already been made through Steffens's ideas.
Geology, which should have the same idea in reference to the whole earth, should not exclude any of its products, and should demonstrate the genesis of everything in historical continuity and predetermined change. Since the real side of science must always be historical (be- cause outside of science there is nothing which rests originally and only on truth, except history), so geology in the completeness of the highest development, as history of nature itself, for which the earth is only the middle and starting point, would be the true integration and pure objective presentation of the science of nature, to which experimental physics forms but the transition and the means.
As physical things are the body of matter, so the soul which is reflected in it is the light. Through its relation to the difference, and as immediate idea of the same, the ideal itself becomes finite and appears subordinately in extension as an ideal, which describes space but does not fill it. Hence, in the phenomenon itself it is the ideal, but not the whole ideal of the act of subject become object (since it leaves the one phase outside itself in the corporeal), it is the mere relative ideal.
The knowledge of light is like the knowledge of matter, is in- deed one with it, since both exist only in contrast one with thp other (can be truly comprehended as the subjective and objective side). Since this spirit of nature has gone away from physics, its life in all its members is extinguished, for there is no possible transition from universal to organic nature. The Newtonian theory of optics is the
346 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
greatest proof of the possibility of a whole structure being made up of wrong conclusions, all parts of which were based on experience and ex- periment— as if it were not more or less consciously the existing theory which arbitrarily determines the meaning and the result of experi- ments. Unless a rare but happy instinct or a general schematism gained through construction directs the natural order, experiment, which may teach particular things but can never give a complete view, is regarded as the infallible principle of the knowledge of nature.
The germ of the earth is unfolded only by the light. For matter must become form and pass into particularity in order that light, as being and universal somewhat, may appear.
The universal form of the particularization of body is that through which they are identical and mutually dependent. From the rela- tions to this universal form, which is the reflection of unity in differ- ence, must be inferred all specific difference of matter.
The procedure from identity is, in respect to all things, imme- diately and at the same time an aspiration toward unity, which is their ideal side, that which animates them.
To represent the essence of living phenomena of bodies is, next to the objects we have already pointed out, the highest and only object of physics, even when conceived with the ordinary limitation and separation from the science of organic nature.
Those phenomena, as the expressions of activity essentially inher- ent in bodies, have been called dynamic, just as the including whole of the same according to their different determined forms is called the dynamic process.
It is necessary that these forms should be confined to a certain circle and conform to a general type. Only when in possession of such a cir- cle can one be certain neither to overlook a necessary link nor to mis- take appearances which are essentially one. With regard to the multi- plicity and unity of these forms ordinary experimental physics is in the greatest uncertainty, so that every new kind of phenomenon be- comes a reason for the adoption of a new principle, differing from all others, inferring one form from another ad libihim.
If we measure the current theories and mode of explanation of those phenomena in general by the standard already determined, in none of them do we find a necessary and universal form, but all are accidental. For there is no necessity that there should exist such imponderable fluids as are supposed, and it is wholly accidental that these should be so constituted that their homogeneous elements repel
Notes and Discussions. 347
and their heterogeneous elements attract each other, as is assumed in explanation of magnetic and electric phenomena. If the world is made up of these hypothetical elements, we get the following image of its constitution : First, in the pores of coarser matter we find air, in the pores of the air we find heat, in the pores of the latter the electric fluid, which again includes the magnetic fluid, and this again contains the aether within its spaces. At the same time these diiler- ent fluids, contained one within another, do not disturb each other, and each manifests itself after its kind according to the pleasure of the physicist, without any admixture with the others, and each finds its place again without any complication with the rest.
This explanation, besides the fact that it has no scientific value, is not even capable of being perceived empirically.
From the Kantian construction of matter was next developed a higher view directed against the material consideration of phenom- ena, but, in everything which it advanced in opposition, itself re- mained upon too low a standard. The two forces of attraction and repulsion, as Kant defined them, are mere formal factors, conceptions of the understanding found by analysis, which give no ideas adequate to the life and diversity of matter. These are not to be discovered in the relation of these forces, which Kant knew only as a mere arithmetical relation. The followers of Kant and the physicists who attempted an application of his theories, confined themselves to a negative atti- tude toward the dynamic view, as in regard to light they thought they had announced a higher theory than when they described it as altogether immaterial, which then agreed, it is true, with every other mechanical hypothesis — for instance, those of Euler and others.
The common error which lay at the basis of all these views is the conception of matter as pure reality. The universal subject-objec- tivity of things, and especially of matter, must be scientifically re- stored before these forms, in which its inmost life expresses itself, can be understood.
The being of everything in identity as the universal soul, and the tendency to reunite with it when it is placed outside of the unity, is the universal ground of living phenomena, as has been already indi- cated in the preceding lectures. The particular forms of activity are none of them accidental forms of matter, but are the original, inborn, and necessary forms. For, as the unity of the idea in being expands to three dimensions, so life and activity express themselves in the same type and through three forms, which accordingly are just as necessarily mherent in the being of matter. By means of this con-
348 The Journal of Sj>eculatwe Philosophy.
struction it is not only certain that there are only these three forms of the living motion of bodies, but the universal law is found for all particular determinations of the same, from which they can be seen as equally necessary.
I here confine myself to the chemical process, because the science of its phenomena has been made a special branch of natural science.
In modern times, the relation of physics to chemistry has ended almost in a complete subordination of the former to the latter. The key to the explanation of natural phenomena, even the higher forms, magnetism, electricity, etc., should be given in chemistry, and the more all explanation of Nature has been brought back to chemistry, the more it has lost all means of comprehending its own phenomena from the early beginnings of science, when the conception of the inner unity of all things lay nearer the human spirit. The chemis- try of the present day has retained several figurative expressions, such as affinity, etc. , which, however, far from being the intimation of an idea, have become only sanctuaries of ignorance. The supreme prin- ciple and the extreme limit of all knowledge have become more and more things to be recognized by weight (gravity), and those potent inborn spirits of nature which produce indestructible qualities have become mere matter which could be caught and held in vessels.
I do not deny that modern chemistry has enriched us with many facts, although it is still to be desired that this new world had been discovered from the beginning by a higher organ, and it is a ridicu- lous conceit that the stringing together of those facts, held together by the unmeaning words matter, attraction, etc., forms a theory, for they have not an idea of quality, of combination, of analysis, etc.
It may be advantageous to treat chemistry separately from physics, but it must then be considered as a mere experimental art, with no pretension to science. The construction of chemical phenomena does not belong to a special science, but to a general, comprehensive science of Nature, in which it is I'ecognized as one manner of mani- festation of the universal life of Nature, not as phenomena of a peculiar law of conformity, independent of the connection of the whole.
The presentation of the general dynamic process which takes place in the world system, and with respect to the whole earth, is meteor- ology in the broadest sense, and is so far a part of physical astron- omy as the general changes of the earth can be comprehended only through its relation to the general world system.
With regard to mechanics, of which a large part is accepted in
Notes and Discussions. 349
physics, it belongs to applied mathematics ; but the universal type of its forms, expressed as purely objective, is prescribed by physics ; they are as it were the dead forms of the dynamic process.
The province of the latter physics in its ordinary separation is limited to the sphere of the general antithesis between light and matter or gravity. The absolute science of Nature comprehends in one and the same whole as well these phenomena of separated uni- ties as those of the higher organic world, through whose products the entire subject-objectivation manifests itself in its two sides at one and the same time.
A NEW WORE ON KANT.
Professor John Watson, of Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, has a new book in press, entitled, '^Kant and his English Critics," which will appear, it is expected, about the first of next year from the press of M. Macehose, of Glasgow. The book will defend the Critical Philosophy against Empirical Psychology, and will contain a criticism of the latter in its main features, showing, however, that Kant's theory must be freed from certain unwarrantable assumptions which destroy its unity. Our readers are fully familiar with the vig- orous thought of Professor Watson, and will welcome a treatise from him on a theme so important.
350 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
BOOKS EECEIVED.
Die untcr Philonis Werken stehende Schrift ueber die Unzerstoerbarkeit des Weltalls, nach ihrer ursprucnglichea Anordnung wiederhergestellt und ins Deutsche Uebertragen von Jacob Bernays. Aus den Abhandlungen der Koenigl.-Academie der Wissenscbaften zu Berlin. 1876.
The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Edited by J. S. Jewell, M. D. January, 1877. (New series.) Vol. ii., No. 1. Chicago.
[In this number Dr. George M. Beard presented a new theory of trance, and its bear- ings on human testimony, and the editors reviewed at some length Herbert Spencer's "Psychology" and David Feirier's "The Function of the Brain."]
A Brief on the Doctrine of the Conservation of Forces. By Thomas H. Music, of the Missouri Bar. Published by the Author. Mexico, Mo. 1878.
[" The aim of this little pamphlet is not to trace out and define the boundaries of the doctrine, but to demonstrate that it is but of partial and limited application — neither broad enough nor well enough established to form a safe basis for any philosophical system. ... I think that I have shown that in both plant and animal life there are principles of a higher order than any form of force, and which are not transformations or correlations of force ; and, indeed, for which no correlations can be found in physics."]
Mechanical Conversion of Motion. By George Bruce Halsted. (Reprint from Van Nostraud's Magazine. 1878.)
Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der aelteren deutschen Philosophic. II. Nicolaus von Cues.
Oration pronounced before the Massachusetts Council of Deliberation. By Rev. William R. Alger. Boston, June 28, 1878. " The Points of Permanent Miraculousness in Human Life." Boston : Rand, Avery & Co. 1878.
The Atomic Hypothesis from its inception till the present time. By H. E. Robinson. Maryville, Mo. 1873.
The Penn Monthly. September, 1877. (Contains an article concerning Pre-Exist- ence.) Philadelphia : J. II. Coates & Co.
I. Address before the Iowa State Bar Association, at Des Moines, May 17, 1877. By G. F. Magoun, D. D., President of Iowa College. (On The Claims of the Legal Profes- sion to general respect in civilized society.)
II. The Source of American Education, Popular and Religious. (By the same Author.) Reprinted from the New Englander for July, 1877.
Books Received. 351
Eeligion and Science ; the Psychclogical Easis of Religion, considered from the standpoint of Phrenology. A Prize Essay. (Being No. 1 of Science Tracts.) By Francis Gerry Fairfield. New York : S. II. Wells & Co. 1877.
The Theory of Unconscious Intelligence as opposed to Theism. By Professor G. S. Morris, M. A. Being a paper read before the Victoria Institute, or Philosophical Society of Great Britain. To which is added the discussion thereon. London : Ilardwicke & Bogue.
Live Questions in Psychology and lletaphysics. By Professor W. D, Wilson. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1877. (Being six lectures delivered to the classes at Cornell University, on sensation, consciousness, volition, insight, the test of truth, real causes.)
The Eeligion of God and the Scientific Philosophy. By Joachim Kaspary.
Humanitarian. People's edition. Price one shilling. London: The Freethought Pubhshing Company. 1877.
The Best Reading : Hints on the Selection of Books ; on the Formation of Libraries, Public and Private ; on Courses of Reading, etc. With a Classified Bibliography for easy reference. Fourth revised and enlarged edition, continued to August, 1876, with the addition of select lists of the best French, German, Spanish, and Italian Literature. Edited by Frederic Beecher Perkins. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1877.
Rede zum Geburtsfeste des Hoechstseligen Grossherzogs Karl Friedrich von Baden und zur akadcmischcn Preisvertheilung, am 22. November, 1877, von Dr. J. C. Blunt- Bchll. Ueber die Eintheilung in Facultiiten. Heidelberg: J. Iloerning. 1877.
Materialism and Pedagogy. By Professor W. H. Wynn, A. M., Ames, Iowa. (Re- print from the Quarterly Review of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.)
Vierteljahrsschrift fuer Wissenschaftliche Philosophic unter Mitwirkung, von C. Goering, M. Ileinze, and W. Wundt, herausgegeben von R. Avenarius. I. Jahrgang_ Erstes Heft. Leipzig : Fues's Vcrlag (R. Rcisland). 1876.
[Contains articles on the relation of Philosophy to Science (by Fr. Paulsen); on English Logic of the present time (by A. Riehl) ; on the Cosmological Problem (by W. Wundt) ; on the life of the Cephalopoda (by J. Kollmann) ; notice of new books.]
What was He ? or Jesus in the Light of the Nineteenth Century. By William Denton. Wellesley, near Boston. 1877.
Cholera ; the Laws of its Occurrence, Non-Occurrence, and its Nature. By C. Spiuzig, M. D. St. Louis, Mo. 1877.
The Theological Systems of To-day. Are they True ? Read this and convince your- self of their Falsity. Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co. 1878.
Revista Europca. Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Lettere ed Arti. 1869-1878. Nuova seric. Anno IX. Editore Signor Carlo Pancrazj, 6 Via del Casteliaccio, Firenze.
Die Wahrheit wird Euch frei machen. I. " Eine Betrachtung ueber sehr wichtige Entweder-Oder." II. " Ueber Einige Sophismen, welche die Nichtsnutzigkeit des allge- meinen Wahlrcchts beweisen sollen." By Moritz Mueller, Sr. Pforzheim. 1^78.
The Watscka Wonder; a startling and instructive Psychological Study, and well authenticated instance of Angelic Visitation. A narrative of the leading Phenomena occurring in the case of Mary Lurancy Vennum. By E. W. Stevens. With comments by Physicians. Chicago : Religio-Philosophical Publishing House. 1878.
352 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
Lectures on the Unknown God of Herbert Spencer, and the " Promise and Potency " of Professor Tyndall. By Rev. George T. Ladd. Milwaukee : I. L. Hauser & Co.
Physiological Metaphysics ; or, the Apotheosis of Science by Suicide. A Philosophi- cal Meditation. By Noah Porter, D. D. (Reprint from the Princeton Review.)
A Criticism of the Critical Philosophy : A Reply to Professor Mahaffy. By James McCosh, D. D. (Reprint from the Princeton Review.)
The Schools of Forestry and Industrial Schools of Europe, with other Papers. By B. G. Northrop, Secretary of the Connecticut Board of Education. New York : The Orange Judd Company. 1878.
Le Opere di Benedetto Castiglia e la Fase Definitiva della Scienze. Recensione di Giuseppe Stocchi. (Estratto dalla Gazzetta di Mantova.) Mantova. 1876.
An Account of the Department of Philosophy in the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology. Boston: Lockwood, Brooks & Co. 1877.
[A very noteworthy " account." A pamphlet of 72 pages of fine print, giving (a) a history of operations, {b) thesis by graduates, (c) work by advanced special students, 1876-'77. The summaries, analysis, conspectuses, and critical discussions in it are of great value, and all testify to the great loss which the department of the "Philosophy of Science " of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has sustained by the depart- ure of Professor George U. Howison, the author of this pamphlet.]
How Shall we Keep Sunday ? An Answer in Four Parts : I. Sunday in the Bible ; II. Sunday in Church History ; III. Sunday in the Massachusetts Laws ; IV. The Working-man's Sunday. By Charles K. Whipple, Minot J. Savage, Charles E. Pratt, William C. Gannett, respectively. Boston : Free Religious Association. 1877.
Science : Her Martyrdom and Victory, a Sermon in Treville Street Chapel, August 19, 1877, during the assembly in Plymouth of the British Association for the Advance- ment of Science. By William Sharman. London : E. T. Whitfield.
American Education Analyzed ; or, a Synoptical Disquisition on the Quality, Culture, Development, Rank, and Government of Man, with addendum describing the order of men to select for office. By Charles Edward Pickett. San Francisco. 1877.
Die Forschunsc nach der Materie. Von Johannes Huber. Miinchen : Theodor Acker- mann. 1877.
Naturwissenschaft, Naturphilosophie und Philosophic der Liebe. Herausgegeben von A. F. Entlcutncr. Miinchen: Theodor Ackermann. 1877.
The Origin of the Will. By E. D. Cope. (Reprinted from the Penn Monthly for June, 1877.) Philadelphia. 1877.
Bi-Metalism : With each Metal a Legal Tender, and freely coinable only in proportion to its value. By H. D. Barrows. Los Angeles. 1876.
'" Darwinism and Morality. By John Watson, M. A., Queen's College, Kingston, Canada. (Reprint from The Canadian Monthly for May, 1876.)
Philosophic und Theologie. Von Dr. Leonhard Rabus, Professor der Philosophic am Kcenigl.-Lyceum zu Speicr. (Beigabe zu dem Jahresberichte der k. bayer. Studienanstalt. Speier. 1876.
Modern Metaphysicians : Arnold Ruge ; the Philosophy of Humanism. Part I. and Part n. (Reprint from the British Controversialist, 1870.) By James Hutchison Stirling, LL. D.
THE JOURNAL
OF
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.
YoL. XIY.] OcTOBEE, 1880. [No. 4.
CEITICISM OF KANT'S MAIN PKINCIPLES.'
BY J. HUTCHISON STIRLING.
If we suppose it to result (from the foregoing *) that Kant's sche- mata, as simply so many self-deceptions, must be held to vanish, we may suppose, aUo, that Kant himself — seeing that, for recep- tion of the contributions of special sense, there can now no longer be question of any a jpi^iori system of forms, half-sensuous and half- intellectual — would admit his whole transcendental enterprise to have failed. In view of Kant's own perfect honesty, we may really allow ourselves to suppose this. It does not follow, how- ever, that others (Sir W. Hamilton, for instance), who opine Kant's causality to be just a separate and peculiar mental principle, would be disposed to sympathize with as much. They know nothing of the schematism ; for them the categories alone exist ; and they have no thought but to place these in direct contact with sense. We may safely assume their possible contention to be insufficient, however, and Kant's conjectural admission to be alone tenable.
My second main objection, now, to the Kantian theory of per- ception concerns the empirical facts which, through the schema,
^ The reference is to the preceding portion of this article published in the July (1880) number of this Journal. — [Ed.
XIV— 23
354 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
are to be subsumed under the catej^orv, into self-consciousness. I assert that these facts — what to Kant are the Erscheinungen — al- ready possess, and must possess, and bv Kant (especially in the case of causality) are admitted to possess, that very necessity (of order or otherwise), which alone it is the business and the use of the category to bestow. Kant, to be sure, names this necessity only "subjective," and still thinks it necessary to call in his peculiar " epigenesis " in order that it may become " objective." The verbal distinction, however, nowise eti'aces the actual facts; and these are such that, on Kant's own terms, his ^/genesis is a A?//;ergenesis that explains nothing. There are twelve categories for the subsurap- tion into consciousness of (to say so) as many sense-successions. The latter, it is to be conceived, differing as the former differ, are respectively to be subsumed, each under each. Those are the rules (II., 139) ; these are the cases. One form of judgment is deter- mined rather than another (III., ^^) ; and the grounds of deter- mination are the e^npirical circumstances (II., '737). No sense- succession but must blow its particular category's own whistle, ring that category's own bell.
We shall take the categories in their order now, and examine them as they come ; only, we shall omit modality as before ; do little more than briefly indicate in regard to the rest ; and reserve our main discussion for causality alone. For we consider always that causality is in every way the decisive and the master category, as well as this, that what objection founds on the empirical facts was, in our first article, scarcely more than suggested ; it was only touched upon.
But we shall advert, first, for a moment to what Kant calls pure perception, space and time. This, too, is an essential part of his doctrine ; and without it, also, that doctrine goes at once to the ground. Kant will have it that space (time likewise) is not an in- dependent entity there in itself and on its own account without us, but a form from within which we throw into things, not they into us ; and his arguments are excellent. Nevertheless, they are inadequate and erroneous. Space is involved in every special case of external perception; but it does not follow that therefore it is not a cognition acquired from without, but only an a priori form projected from within. Suppose actual external bodies in an actual external space really to exist, then sight tutored by touch, or touch
Criticism of Kaufs Main PrincijDles. 355
tutored bj sight, is perfectly adequate to bring us, otherwise con- stituted as we are, to a complete perception of them in the usual understanding of the word. In fact, there is no doubt at all, that space and the bodies in space are precisely such actualities; and just as little that the cognition or perception of them is so acquired. As for the apodictic evidence of the relations of space which is the burden of Kant's other argument here, it is not necessary to have recourse to an a priori source for that either. Indeed, how can mere a priori explain necessity? It may be that (though not yet proved) the a posteriori cannot be necessary, but it does not follow thence that the a priori must be necessary. The light of evidence is as much wanted in the latter case as in the former, and the mere position by no means extends it. The truth is that the apodictic evidence of the relations of space issues from the very nature of space, and not from its position, whether a priori or a posteriori (though the latter is undoubtedly the fact). Space, namely, is the generate or common universal of all forms of ex- ternality as forms of externality ; and, all relations that belong to it, it imposes upon them. Further, space itself is externality as externality; and, simply as being such, all its relations bring with them the very necessity of externality as externality. These re- lations, in a word, are cousequencGS from the very notion of ex- ternality as externality; and as such consequences they necessarily share in all the necessities of their primitive and parent notion as a thought that tnust he thought. Having said this on space, special reference to time is not called for; and what has been said will, generally, suffice for the present. We return to the categories.
And what, on the whole, is to be said here is this. The use of the categories at all is to account for the fact of necessity and ob- jectivity being in existence. But the expedient is supererogatory and gratuitous. Necessity and objectivity as much are, or are as much given, as the contributions of special sense are, or as the contributions of special sense are given. As special sense is there, they are there ; and we have simply to receive them, or we have simply to apprehend them.
To refer specially, the whole result of the category of quantity is the axiom, " All perceptions are extensive magnitudes." Kant, indeed, talks of axioms (in the plural) here, and calls this proposi-
356 The Journal of Speculatme Philosophy.
tion only the " principle " of such. But, axiom or principle, it stands alone as tlie result of the category of quantity. He also exemplities it by such an object as a house. Now, Kant would grant that a house has in this respect no advantage over any one of its component stones, or, as it may be, bricks. Before 1 can apprehend that stone as a stone, or that brick as a brick, am I to suppose, then, that a mysterious spectrum from within my own mind must, first of all, throw itself, fusingly, into it? That is ac- curately, and fully, and truly, Kant's supposition. Common sense says at once No. That stone, that brick, is really as much its own in its quantity as it is its own in its weight or hardness. That stone or that brick has really its quantity in externality to me, and in independence of rae, as it has its solidity in externality to me, and in independence of me. The objection that the color, heat, etc., are in me and not in the object is really inapplicable. The true theory of perception finds the primary qualities in the object, and correctly ascribes the secondary qualities to the same object as their cause. I really am so endowed that I come to ap- prehend the stone or the brick, and truly to apprehend the stone or the brick, as the red or gray, large or small, rough or smooth thing it is out there in space, absolutely on its own account, and quite independent of me. It is not I that give it its quantity. On the contrary, I have to take its quantity simply as it itself gives it me. Kant, of course, never assumed to give the stone or brick its special quantity, but only its general quantity, or its capability of manifesting quantity at all. That question of special quantity (a difiiculty in the Kantian scheme that I hav3 not yiet seen han- dled)— that question of special quantity, I do not boggle at; I take only what quantity Kant allows me, and I say the stone or the brick brings with it that quantity quite in the same way as it brings with it that hardne-s, solidity, etc. Of course, fully to dis- cuss this, one would require to be agreed as regards the theory of perception as perception. That, plainly, we cannot posibly assume here. But still, in independence of every theory, I can assert that, whatever quality I gat from the st(tne as the stone, or tlie brick as the brick, quite in the same way 1 get from it its quantity also. The supposition of a special faculty (or category) within me to give me that quality, or whatever else it may be named, is gratu- itous and idle.
Criticism of Kanfs Main Principles. 357
And as much as tliis we can say, not generally only, but on Kant's own terras. Space, for example, being on those terms quantity itself, pure quantity, and in a priori possession, or native clutch of the mind, to what end still postulate a faculty of quan- tity ? Why endow us, not only Math an innate object^ but actually with an innate notion of it, as though the one being given, and given to a mind, the other were not, even so, a necessary and irre- sistible consequence ? Is it possible that a mind can have the self of an object without at the same time the notion of it ? Did we possess the object a posteriori^ Kant would have no hesitation in styling its notion a derivative ; why should a priori possession make any difference in this respect ? It is still an object there for inspection of the mind, which, indeed, as having it in its own direct naked clutch, ought all the more readily to come to the notion of it. Kant says himself (T54), "just the same synthetic unity which space is, has, abstraction being made from the forrrh of space, its seat in the mind, and is the category of the synthesis of the homogeneous ; " and the question is, why so unnecessarily supererogate ? One can see pretty plainly, too, that, once in space, the stone or the brick possesses synthesis of the homogeneous in its own right ; each is but a synthesis of the homogeneous. And one wonders how, for recognition of this, one requires, over and above the usual perceptive agencies, a special category.
As regards the category of quality, it promises us a positive " antici})ation " of actual sense-percteption. Accordingly one lays one's self out for something very definite this time, for some actual object, or, at least, for some smallest spang or spangle of an actual object. It is disappointing, then, instead of that to receive only this, " sensation has degree." Surely, we think, if the possession of an actual special a priori faculty can tell us no more than that, it is there for very little purpose. On Kant's own terms, indeed, seeing that he allows us sensation in time, we cannot see how, for the cognition in question, more should be required. We have already there all the elements that can possibly be wanted to con- vey it.
If quantity and quality seem thus of undeniably empirical origin, it is not otherwise with substance or with reciprocity. When I think of a certain waterfall that is sometimes large and sometimes small, sometimes gray and sometimes brown, sometimes with stones
368 The Journal of Sjoeculative Philosojphy.
in it and sometimes with leaves, it does not seem to me that, be- sides observation and comparison, I require a special faculty to enable me to think of the fall of water as permanent element, while the others incidentally vary. Ao;ain, the sun, moon, and earth mutually interact, and I am aware of it. I understand all the consequent variety of light, and shade, and form. But then I could evidently learn that from the things themselves ; there is no occasion that I should be taught it beforehand. It is, once more, not I that give it to them, but they that give it to me. It is of themselves that sun, and moon, and earth act and react on each other. They did so in the time of Thales, tliousands of years be- fore I was born ; and they did so in the time of Menes, thousands of years before Thales was born. Beyond all doubt, indeed, they did so even before Adam ; and beyond all doubt, also, they might continue to do so were the last son of Adam dead. It is common knowledge that Kant, or, let alone Kant, Berkeley, would conceive himself free to use this very same language. We know that, and the grounds of it. But the question is, not what he might or would say (any man may say what he likes), but could he consistently say so, or are the grounds sufficient ? The word ideal by which he would rescue his consistency is precisely his inconsistency ; for the qualities, powers, or what-not in regard are really in the em- pirical facts from these facts themselves, and not ideally from us.
Once again, the grounds of determination (what category shall act, that is) are the empirical circumstances themselves (737), and that, too, on Kant's own terms. This we have to see now finally in regard to causality.
We say here at once, then, that the grounds of determination, the whistle that calls, the bell that rings, with the result of the one category causality starting up and asserting itself — these already are necessity, and this necessity is wholly independent of the category itself. The category itself ca?i act -only when it finds a sense-succession to suit — a sense-succession, namely, that is already " subjected to a rule," " a reale, on which, whenever it is, something else ahvays ensues." Is this to explain the necessity that is present in causality, then ? Even for action of his objective necessity, Kant is obliged to presuppose and postulate a no less stringent subjective necessity ; and it is expected of us as well to accept one necessity in explanation of another as to admit that the
Criticism of Kant's Main Principles. 359
name subjective wholly vitiates tlie one, while the name objective as completely establishes the other.
The probability is, as I have said, that Kant, though he worked for long in good faith, and quite blind to this difficulty, did, in the end, awake to it. "Like pain under an opiate," it lies un- easily in his consciousness all through the second analogy, in which he seems perpetually turning back, as it were, to reassure his own seK by repetition of the assertion that necessity cannot lie in what is a posteriori, and must be given to it by what is a priori. And yet " the reale, on which, whenever it is, something else always ensues," that is to be the bell that rings in the category — an a posteriori necessity that is itself a necessity to the a priori ! Kant tells us (III., 6) that Hume's question was, " How can we think something so constituted that, if it be given, something else must thereby also be necessarily given?" To answer this question, then, Kant's very tirst step is to assume a " reale on which, when- ever it is, something else always ensues according to a general rule: " Kant's very first step is to assume the problem ! And for this assumption the only reason offered is, that the assumption is simply necessary; we must assume "conditions of all possible ex- perience." Should we ask further, indeed, as to the reason why we must so assume, there can be no answer but, To fill the cate- gory— the category would be empty else — if the explanation is to explain, the assumption is to be assumed.
Kant's exclusive work has been already described. Roused to curiosity, he inquired into the possibility of an element of neces- sity being still present to a world which, in validity, substance, and place, is only contingent and subjective. Now, strange as it may seem, it is even his success in this inquiry that has caused his failure. Not, of course, that the success could really be success, if the failure is really failure. "I tried, therefore, first or all," he says (III., 9), " whether Hume's objection could not be made gen- eral, and soon found that the notion of cause and effect is, by a great deal, not the only one by means of which the understanding thinks a priori for itself connections in things, rather that<meta- physic out and out consists of such." That is, he speedily got into the center of the vast and majestic fane which he saw rise around him for reason — pure reason, organically distributed, or- ganically complete — and almost directly lost sight of causality it-
360 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
self. lie pleased himself with dreams of system — dreams of an absolute system, guaranteed by an absolute architectonic prin- ciple. Absorbed in such dreams, then, it was not wonderful that he was long of coming to see that it was the very first piece of all in his machinery that would not shut into it. The relation was such a speciiie one, that it obstinately remained impracticable to any a priori., whether of time, or function, or general rule, at the same time that its facts were of such a nature that they asserted their own autonomy, and refused to merge themselves in a foreign dominion, of however splendid a name, of which plainly they stood in no need. But if uneasy conscience or consciousness, on Kant's part, only led to never-ending assertion and assertion in the KritlTc, we must acknowledge quite wakeful attempts at rem- edy in the Prolegomena.
The two judgments are what is most direct and express in this reference. " Empirical judgments, so far as they have objective validity, are," it is said (III., 58), ^''judgments of experience ^ " but those, again, that are only subjectively valid, I name mere judg- ments of sensible perception. The latter require no pure notion of understanding (category), but only the logical connection of the per- ception in a thinking subject. The former, however, besides the presentations of sensible perception, require always further special notions originally generated in the imder standing., which just make it that the judgment of experience is objectively valid.'''' JS^ow, we have only to be able fairly to realize the full scope of every mo- ment in this one passage, to be able thoroughly to understand, also, Kant's whole categorical scheme, or, as I name it, theory of perception. We have to consider, first, our apprehension of sensi- ble impression. To that we are always passive; it is a material a posteriori., and we have always to wait for it. It is also always in apprehension a breadth or multiple of parts ; or, so long as it is only sensuous, it is merely, so to speak, a blur of parts of impres- sion within us, which parts present as yet no fixed order in them- selves, but are only, so far, an indifferent succession. That they should, however, be a succession in my internal faculty of sensa- tion, in my internal apprehension, presupposes time. This is the second movement. My sense-faculty, besides being able to feel, is only able to feel in time., which (time) is simply a law, a form at- tached from the first to my faculty of internal sense, as space
Criticism of Kant^s Main Principles. 361
again is a form, or spectrum, or potential disc, attached from the first to my faculty of external sense. I can only have sensations within, and the time and space into which they are received are necessarily also within, are but original appendicles of my own faculties within. But, further now, a third consideration is that the empirical breadth — the multiple constituted by my received impressions of sense — is a variety : all impressions and all groups of impressions are not alike. All grouping or connecting of im- pressions in apprehension is, however, always in the first instance subjective merely.^ It is, in the fourth place, only in conse- quence of the multiple in the subjective cognition being subsumed under a category that it becomes objectively valid ; tliat is, an ob- ject in actual experience. Kant goes on to explain " that all our judgments (cognitions) are first of all mere judgments (cognitions) of sensible perception, and that, so far, they concern only our- selves, only each one's individual subject: it is only afterwards that we give them a new nexus (in the judgment or cognition of experience), the nexus to an object, namely, in that we will them to be valid, not only occasionally, and not only for us, but always, and for everybody." What causes the impressions in us is utterly unknown, and never asked for by us: what is an object to us is the blur of special sense received into, and further manip- ulated by, our own internal a priori conditions of a possible expe- rience, which conditions are sensuous for the reception, and intel- lectual for the further manipulation.
Kant now proceeds to some illustrations. That the room is warm, sugar sweet, wormwood bitter, these he calls judgments only subjectively valid. And he admits that, referring to formed objects (room, sugar, wormwood), they are not good examples of his own first mere subjective impressions that are there in prepa- ratio7i for objects, even such objects as room, sugar, and worm- wood themselves ; but he uses them only to make intelligible what he means by a subjective validity. Such mere feelings (bitterness, sweetness, etc.), are not only subjective at first — they
' In liis letter to Tieftrunk (XT., 184), Kant denies that combination can, as such, be perceived, unless preceded by a category ; but, on his own showing, the sun rising, a stone warms, which is itself a combination, and a combination whose '' Wahrgenom" menseyn" or " Angenommenseyn" must, even in his eyes, necessarily precede action of the very category !
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are subjective at first and last, and no category whatever could make objects of them. But very different is the case when cer- tain subjective impressions, united in the judgment of sensible per- ception, are finally raised into the judgment of experience. The atnios[)here is elastic. The judgment " sugar is sweet" is mine — ■ it may not be yours, or his, or anybody else's — it may not be even mine at all times ; but the judgment " the air is elastic " is a judg- ment valid, not only for me, and for me at certain times, but valid always, and not always for me only, but always for every- body : the former as a subjective judgment, the latter objective.
By way of reason for this remarkable difierence in facts of ex- perience that seem at first sight situated alike, Kant points out that subjective judgments "express only a relation of two sensa- tions to the same subject, namely myself, and that, too, only in my state of perception for the time," while objective judgments " con- nect two sensations with each other, and this connection stands under a condition which makes it universally valid." He furtiier distinctly implies also that even the subjective state in the one case differs from the subjective state in the other. There is an always and a not for me only in the latter case that is not in the former, though hoth are subjective. Of course, Kant so mixes up the two states (which are hoih present in the objective process), in such manner that we cannot assert him explicitly to admit as much as that. Still, as much as that is really implied in the very evidence of the sense-impressions themselves. This is a very in-^ teresting point, and one regrets that, once coming up to it, Kant should have been contented to handle it with such a half conscious- ness. He is aware that the judgment, sugar is sweet, connects two impressions with my subject, while the contrasting judgment again, " the air is elastic," connects two impressions with each other. He is also aware, but more dimly perhaps, that the impres- sions in the one case convey, even subjectively, very different evi- dence from what they convey in the other. The latter point he would probably have slurred over with the remark that empirical matter certainly differs from empirical matter, and we must just take it as it comes. The former point, too, we may say, though there is a difierence between the facts (in the one case two sensa- tions related to me, in the other related to each other) and their evidence, he leaves even so. Just such is the constitution of the
Criticism of Kanfs Main Principles. 363
different impressions made on me. One can see, however, that both points are very worthy of inquiry. It is, in fact, considera- tion of the one point, the difference of evidence while even still in the mere state of subjective impression, that leads me to object to Kant the indispensable dictation, the imperative necessity, of the simple impressions in every case of causality.
Again, the other point is equally interesting. The impression room is followed in me by the impression warmth, and the im- pression fire is followed by the impression warm room. Why should these two caces, apparently so very much alike, be at the same time so very different that the one founds an objective judg- ment and the other only a subjective one ? They are both cases of causality. The room is as much cause of warmth in me as the fire is cause of warmth in the room. The rationale is really that mentioned, but not followed out by Kant. The room is only warm to me, and it is, at the same time, not always warm to me. The fire, again, warms not me (at least that relation apart for the nonce) but the room ; and the fire is found always to warm the room.
We see hei'e, then, a door opened to the element of difference in the sense-successions themselves. Not all impressions, but only some certain ones, are calculated to become in the end objects, ■while others, differently constituted, remain, and must remain, subjective. Of course, Kant (737) postulates empirical difference for his different categories and cases quite as we may do. Still we object that, at least for long, he remained blind to the full significance of what we may call empirical dictation, especially in causality. We object this generally, and, in particular, we regret that, brought up to such a difference as between sugar-sweetness and air-elasticity, he w^as not arrested by it, but only mentioned and did not stop to investigate so striking a fact. One almost feels, in fact, from the bare premises, that no satisfactory general theory, such as Kant proposed, could be constructed, did it omit to show what difference of validity lay in the mere difference of impression. The perception of this neglect on the part of Kant opens for us, as said, a wide door of remark — so wide a door, in- deed, that, had Kant seen it, it might have given exit — exit, name- ly, into a whole infinite, absolute, external universe. For it is by due inspection of our various materials of sensation and percep- tion that externality as externality is seen to be a fact.
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But we must confine ourselves here to what influence the neglect in question exercised on the fortunes of Kant in reference to causality. And that was that he ignored or did not explicitly recognize this, that the sense-impressions, which were adapted for action of the category of causality, already contained in them- selves^ and actually manifested, a certain order, which order was the signal, clew, or cue, on hint of which it was that the category struck in — on hint of which it was only that the category could strike in. It is here, I say, that, despite his subjective judgment, we are to find the precise distinction, contact with the edge of which is Kant's fatality. This edge, as I have said, Kant only missed seeing for long because he had shut himself into the whole ■problem. This whole problem, namely, rose so very soon com- plete around him that he speedily lost sight of the specialty he started with. Still, it is to be suspected that this edge showed at last to Kant. Suddenly, to his horror (we may surmise) he found that causality would not tuck in and comport itself like the rest. The cause lay in the order of the sense-impressions. In quan- tity and quality, for example, no exact order, so far as sense was concerned, occurred to give pause ; but here such order was a necessary one ; for, plainly, unless there was an order A B, the category of causality, which was a necessary A B of antecedent and consequent, would not find its analogous sense-multiple to subsume — the rule would not find its case. All through the re- spective portion of the Kritik of Pure Reason, Kant, according to our theory, had uneasily rather felt than seen this difficulty ; and so it is that he keeps on asserting and asserting, in every paragraph and in every sentence of his second analogy, that no mere sense-order can contain necessity, that such validity can be due, and must be due, only to the action of an intellectual prin- ciple from within. In the Prolegomena, again, the difficulty, perhaps, is not now only felt ; it appears to be seen also, and it is attempted to be set aside (as said) by the word " subjective." There shall be now, namely, even in the sense-element, already a certain fixed order ; but this order shall be subjective only, and it shall still be the category makes it objective. It is this he would seem to seek to bring out when he contrasts the propositions, the room is warm, sugar sweet, wormwood bitter, with the other proposition that the air is elastic. Merely so mentioned, it is
Criticism of KomGs Main Principles. 365
something of a difficulty precisely to see how the elasticity of the air fits into the problem of causality. But what Kant means, doubtless, is the ordinary experiment or experiments that estab- lish the proposition. I compress a bag of air, and it yields into a dint; I cease to compress, and the dint fills up. The elasticity of the air is the causal antecedent to which the change in both cases is to be ascribed. The difierenee we see here is, as already pointed out, that, in the three propositions, the nexus referred wholly to a feeling in ourselves; whereas in the fourth proposition, on the contrary, the nexus has no mere feeling under it, but is now figured as between object and object — a dint follows compression, etc. Here, plainly, is more than any mere feeling in the mind : here are sense-impressions that come to me always in a certain fixed relation among their own selves. What we call A in that relation is always first, what we call B, again, is always second ; or the order is always an apprehended fixed AB, that even to my own apprehension is absolutely irreversible. Of course, our question is, What is the use of your epigenesis of a fixed order where a fixed order already is ? In fact, does not the whole proposal of this vast and laborious epigenesis on your part originate in the mere assump- tion of an absolute absence of fixed order from the facts of sense, till said epigenesis should descend upon them ? Of course, also, we cannot wonder that Kant, who has his whole triumphant edifice to save, should answer, Do not you see that, though the order is fixed and I grant perception in act to he aware of the fact of it, or to assume the fact of it (his "Wahrnehmen" or " Annehmen"), nevertheless, it is still in sense, wholly within, an afi'air of mere empirical sensation, and can, consequently, be no more than sub- jective, and, as subjective, contingent ? And do not you see, further, that it is only another element from within, an intellec- tual element this time, a category, a single mesh in that wonderful a priori net (which I let into the unity of apjierception as its sys- tematic many of distriliution) — do you not see that it is only such mesh can collect and focus that empirical, contingent, a posteriori many of sense into the unity and necessity of an object th^t is no longer mine, but, so to speak, its own, and, consequently, every- body's? Despite this answer, I hold Kant to remain uneasy and but half reassured. It is impossible to conceive that he did not say to himself, How, after all, am I myself to understand this
366 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
sense-necessity ? Or how am I to say that, what must evidently be somehow known, even in consciousness, as a fixed and irre- versible order of sense-succession, if any cm'respondent category is to be momd to act — how am I to say that this order, though fixed and irreversible, is still subjective and contingent, that is, reversi- ble and unfixed ? Again, this order, whatever it is, must, even in sense, be known : there is machinery provided for it, and, if this machinery is to act, tt must necessarily become somehow aware of that on which it is to act. How, then, am I to say that an order that is fixed and irreversible comes to be known in sense and to sense ? In fact, if there be already this fixed order beforehand, how can I say that it is the category alone gives it ? How do I " perceive or assume " that the heat of the stone always follows the light of the sun, before I can say, the sun warms the stone? Am I to say that only after several consciousnesses of the con- joined sensations my category acts? In that case, suppose I am asked again. How many consciousnesses do you say are necessary ? "Will one, or two, or three, or a dozen — in short, how many of them will be sufficient ? Does that number hold also in all other exam- ples of the due empirical order? If not, why not? Let the re- quired number be what it may also, must it not always terminate in a single conviction ? Is not that single conviction this, that the heat always follows, never precedes, never can precede, the light? Is not that what you mean by the "logical" connection in the subject, through comparison of the two states, etc., while all is still sensuous, and the category has not yet even stirred ? — and is it enough to call that an example of only a subjective and " hy- pothetical " judgment ? The order is a mental conviction on per- ception of certain facts — subjective, if you like, but still a convic- tion due to the facts which 7nust precede conviction due to the category ; to these facts and that con viction what can a category that is something foreign to them, something else, and something from elsewhere, add, whether as regards insight into the facts, or certainty and assurance in the (first) conviction ? To say subjec- tive then and objective now, is it not only so much phrase ? And " hypothetical " — how were facts, in such an order, in such a con- viction, only hypothetical then? — or how are they categorical now that nothing, really nothing but words, has been at all added ? Until conviction (your own " Wahrnehmen " or " Annehmen "), is
Criticism of ICanfs Main Principles. 367
there not absence of every cue, clew, hint, motive, or reason, for the category to stir ? Is it not that conviction that, so to speak, draws string and brings the category, the epigenesis, down ? But, once having that conviction, can you honestly say that more, that the category, that the epigenesis, is required ?
To my mind, Kant must have been long uneasy under such or similar self-questionings, and could only comfort or reassure him- self by glancing again at that " whole of pure reason," and the need that lay for it in a matter of cognition that was only (his mistake) internal affection. That last consideration we must allow to have remained with him always, without a shadow of misgiving ; and, allowing him that, we must allow him also suffi- cient justification for standing by his colors to the last. Had it not remained with him, it is just possible, so honest was he, that he would have renounced his epigenesis ; as, surely, it is credible to everybody that, had he never entertained the one, he would never have thought of the other. Facts of sense are, as mere facts of sense, under every supposition, contingent; but, the moment they are allowed to concern an absolute independent world without, it is understood also how they may bring with them their own principles of nexus. When the dissolving sugar disappears in the water-glass, what is perceived, so far as sensation is concerned (on the retina of the ej'e), is only a white disappearing in a gray. Nevertheless, when objectively perceived, what is before me is a case of causality, and consequently of necessity. But it is not I — it is not any machinery of mine that has made, of a mere change of color, all these objective connections. There was no order in the colors that acted as a string to bring down upon them an epigenesis — a whole fixed system of arrangement from within me. Any arrangement that comes to be discovered belongs to the things themselves, of which the colors on my retina are mere signs. Any necessity, too, is theirs, and not mine. The necessity that is present, in fact, can, in many cases, be put into pound weights and absolute figures. The culvert that yields to a tor- rent is equal to so many hundred-weights, but the torrent is equal to so many more, and hence the yielding — the stoop of the bal- ance. Imagination is imagination, of course, and must be allowed to say sugar and water, stones and mortar, etc., may change; but, despite imagination, the nature of things is once for all so. They
368 The Jo^irnal of Speculative Philosophy.
themselves are arranged according to substance and accident, cause and effect, reciprocity, etc. When I perceive them, I per- ceive also these. These are not only in me to be drawn down upon them. They are also in them. The world is once for all so made — once for all so made, but still a system of reason. I may, as well, think their necessity ; but no thinking of mine can add a necessity to the facts which is not already in them. They may, indeed, not only be imagined to change, but actually change ; there is contingency in the world ; but the result is only a proof in place. You will not change the facts by changing the cate- gory, but you will change the category if you change the facts. So it is that Kant's theory can never come up to the facts of the case. Suppose the necessity we come to be aware of in the facts of sense were only hypothetical so far, it could not, any farther, be made categorical by supervention of a category. Such super- vention could bring no new element to the facts as facts, it could not attach any further character to them that would not be ex- trinsic and adventitious. Any addition, in truth, beyond the facts would be simply illusion : is it for that, for mere deception, that we are to be endowed with such complicated categorical schema ? If we are to have truth, then, the category must only agree with, it must not exceed the facts. The necessity of the category, consequently, is but a repetition of the necessity of the facts themselves. And that is the truth. The necessity is there — there in the facts, and not borrowed from me. Even on Kant's showing, the necessity is already there ; for it is recognition of that necessity that rings the bell for the category. Turn the stop- cock right, and you lower the gas; left, and you raise it. It is vain to say I only saw a hypothetical necessity in the facts, until I let down my category upon them ; it is vain to say they will he BO and so, only so long as / regard them as so and so. All lies in facts, and my regard is simply beside them.
We can even fancy Hume shaking his head at Kant, and re- fusing to take from his hand what he held out to him in it as "voucher." That you hold out, Hume might have said, is some- thing you call category; but, as quite adventitious and alien, I cannot conceive what new force it can lend to the facts, unless, just as in my own case, one of imagination. For this is evident, the law must either be in the facts, or in the category : if in the
Criticism of Kant'S Main Principles. 369
facts, the category is idle ; if in the category, the law is fictitious, alien, and external, as only imjmted to the facts. Or to take it in another way — in all cases of cause and effect, I allow that there is an inference made by the mind of necessary connection. Voucher for this Zcan find none but, philosophically, custom, and, naturally,, instinct. I admit now that custom is not adequate to the apodictic necessity which I allow myself to be present ; but what would you substitute for it, what voucher do you propose in its stead ?, The order in the facts of sense themselves is, for the most part,, allowed by you to be already necessary. To show the voucher I want, then, it would be enough to show how we know as much as that. That how would be already the tie in the facts, and the consequent step in the mind of which I speak. Further, to admit (which, of course, in words you do not always, but which, for action of your category, you simply must) that necessity, and then to allege, as cause or voucher of it, a necessity which only follows it, a necessity which is in the second instance only when the other necessity precedes it in the first — this is sim])ly to perpetrate an example of the preposterous proper. But, again, suppose we assume you to regard, as you sometimes do, the nexus in the facts of sense as only a " usual one," ' how are we to understand you overbid ray proposition then (custom) ? My proposition then, of course, is what I now give up, the effect of what is " usual," namely, on the association of ideas — a principle which, perfectly natural certainly, but merely contingent, can be made apodictic only by imagination. Mine, then, being a fiction of the imagina- tion, can the voucher you ofier be called anything else than a fiction of the understanding ? Rather, as I exalt " usual " into "apodictic" by the imagination, you so exalt it, not by under- standing, but by an imputation of the understanding. Trusting to a certain analogy in the facts, you arbitrarily impose upon them the logical relation of antecedent and consequent ; without
' Kant usually talks very strongly of the order of causal Erscheinungen (even as Erscheinungen) being irreversible. Every many of sense, he says (II., 168) is a succes- sion; and it is only when he " perceives " (wahrnimmt) or previously assumes (oder voraus annimmt) that the order in the succession is one fixed by a rule, that he knows that he has before him an event (Begebenheit). Nevertheless (III., 62), a note rules that, however often we — and others — may have recognized the sun to warm the stone, the conjunction of perceptions remains only a " usual " one till the category acts.
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3Y0 The Journal of 8])eculative Philosophy.
any authority or guarantee whatever for either assumption or sub- sumption. No ; I cannot see that (as you make it in that case) this mere reflection from a category on to my " usual " at all vin- dicates the latter into that grounded and substantial validity which an answer to the problem requires. The action of the cate- gory cannot be else than a mere reflection ; it only lends a validity which the contingency, the mere usualness of the facts, forbids it fully, and legitimately, and assuredly to impart. The question is, " what is the warrant of the apodictic necessity that seems to be present in all cases of causality ? My warrant may prove incom- petent, but it is at least domestic. Whereas your warrant — epi- genesis, or reflection (on hint of analogy) from another sphere — is at once incompetent and foreign. Syngenesis or engenesis is the only supposition adequate to the facts : epig&n.Q'&vs, is in very name a fiction.
We may turn now to a word on Kant's own sense of the diffi- culties here. Yarious passages are to be found, for instance, which actually seem to admit, on his part, a certain unsatisfactori- ness as concerns the categories of relation. He talks of these, indeed (II., 140), as "in themselves only contingent," as wanting "the immediate evidence" of the mathematical categories, as possessing their character of an a priori necessity only "mediately and indirectly " and " under condition of empirical thinking in an experience." This empirical condition seems, from page 168 (see preceding note), to be the becoming aware of the empirical rule. All objects, he tells us there, are, as syntheses of impressions, so many successions in time, " but so sbon^" he says, " as he per- ceives or assumes that in the succession there is a reference to the preceding state of things, out of which the immediate impression follows according to a rule " — then he knows that he has an event before him. We are told (p. 203) that the categories act " only by means of a universal condition of sense,''^ and (p. 202) that consequently the category of causality would be empty " were the time left out in which something ensues on something else accord- ing to a rule." The power of the empirical element is signalized on page Y37 too : " whether I can be empirically conscious of the sense-multiple as at the same time, or in succession, depends on circumstances or empirical conditions." He never forgets, how- ever, even in these connections, to insist on the ultimate necessity
Criticism of Kanfs Main Principles. 371
and objectivity as duetto the category. On page 87 we learn that the notion of causality can never be inductively acquired, for what is usual can never amount to what is necessary, and the notion itself implies the necessity of an absolutely universal rule: *' the effect does not merely attach itself to the cause, but it is occasioned by it and follows from it ; " the cause (p. 185) is " some- thing so constituted, that when it is, something else always and infallibly ensues on it." Such expressions contrast rather with the " usual " of the note just seen.
But, as might only be expected, it is in the Prolegomena^ and not in the Kritih, that we are to find positive evidence of Kant vacillating as in presence of a difficulty which he is at length aware of. The two judgments (as commented on hefore) come at once in proof here. In that work he explains (p. Q^) that the "logical conjunction," to which he refers as preceding the category, and as taking place in the sense-materials alone, is the process of comparison by which a character of generality, even so far, is added ; the category only follows. Page 75, he says : " It is possible that there should be found in perception a rule of rela- tion which prescribes that on a certain presentation of sense another (but not vice versa) should always follow." The necessity or universality, then, attributed to the facts, even in anticipation of the category, is in the above passages conspicuous. And we have just seen how Kant elsewhere seems to regard that neces- sary universal as no more than a " usual !" That is what the note on page 62 intimates of the subjective judgment in the case of the stone and the sun : " It is a mere judgment of perception, and contains no necessity, let me have ever so often experienced it, and let others have ever so often experienced it ; the percep- tions find themselves only usually so connected." When we compare these utterances, the vacillation they imply must be quite unmistakable ; a nexus which was constant and infallible, etc., is now only " usual." But we have only to point to Kant's own reasoning (II., 87, and 728) to learn that what was only lisual could be no cue or clew or hint to a necessity that was apodictic. The notion of a cause, he' says, " absolutely demands that something A should be of such a nature that another something B follows out of it necessarily and according to an ahsolutely universal rule. It is quite evident, indeed, that whatever, on these grounds, Kant
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urges against Hume's proposed explanation of causality, by the effect of custom, can, on the very same grounds^ be urged against the order-clew in the subjective perceptions that Kant figures to precede action of the category, being anything less than abeady itself necessity, seeing that it is to be the pi'ecise cue and clew to necessity. Kant objects to Hume that, were necessity allowed to his mere custom, such necessity were only falsely angediehtet ; and we, in the same way, can object to Kant that were his " subjective necessity " only a " usual," or were it only subjective in the sense of being only supposed, and not absolutely felt and known in consciousness as simply necessary, it could never pretend to be what it must pretend to be — an infallible cue and clew to his " objective necessity." As no subjective necessity, arising from frequency of association, could be allowed Hume as enough in explanation of an objective necessity, so nothing less than neces- sity of conviction, pure and simple, can be allowed Kant subjec- tively to precede application of his category objectively ; in which case, evidently, the category at all were a piece superflu- ous. In fact, the necessity of Kant's category is quite as much angediehtet as the necessity of Hume's custom : it is quite as adventitious.
Enough now, on this head, whether as regards reasoning or quotation, has been probably accomplished ; and, before pro- ceeding to what are contemplated as the concluding considerations of this essay, I shall turn for a moment to a small point that is suggested in reference to Schopenhauer. This point concerns Schopenhauer's perpetually vaunted, but feeble and futile, theory of objectivity. That is to the effect that we perceive only our own internal affections, but we project them, as objects, into a time and space of our own, by virtue of our single category — causality. The affection, that is, being assumed as cause of its own self, becomes apparently projected, as an apparently inde- pendent object. How insufficient this is will appear at once, if we but consider, in this reference, the illustrations which we have just seen from Kant. The w^armth of the room, the sweetness of the sugar, the bitterness of the wormwood, are certainly affec- tions ; but they remain such, and cannot possibly be projected as causes of their own selves. It is true we conceive the warmth to be objectively in the room, the sweetness objectively in the sugar,
Criticisin of Kanfs Main Principles. 373
and the bitterness objectively in the wormwood ; but still the room is the room — it is not warmth projected as cause of warmth; the sugar is sugar — it is not sweetness projected as its own cause ; and so with wormwood and bitterness respectively. Room, sugar, wormwood, are even other sensations ; they are not those of warmth, sweetness, and bitterness. They are, in fact, not only other sensations, but groups of such. ]^ow, in Schopenhauer's theory, there is no provision for the reference of one affection to any other than its own self ; and less, if possible, is there any provision in it for projecting a variety of sensations into groups of such in a new region of objectivity. With sensations of color, taste, etc., and the single category of causality, it is im- possible to conceive of the objective construction of groups. Kant was well aware of that ; he, for his part, took care to have his mathematical categories in order to present us with objects at once sensible and, so to speak, stereoscopic, and also his dynamical categories in order to connect these objects, as well existentially the one to the other, as likewise in relative union to our faculties themselves. Kant's construction may show, in the end, as but an impregnation of the air on a bare mistake ; but it was a construc- tion, and no mere random toss. Kant had reflected on what must go to make up a theory ; it is difficult to see that Schopenhauer ever reflected at all ; he dealt only in discontinuous and precipi- tate projpos.
In disputing any position, it is always not only fair, but an absolute requisite for success, to set that position accurately in the light in which it was seen by its own promoter. Now, Kant's own most general word in this reference is his adduction of the standpoint of Copernicus. Borrowed from Hume (as I show else- where), it (p. 670) is to this effect : " Copernicus, not getting on well in explaining the movements of the heavens on the assump- tion that the entire starry host turned round the spectator, tried whether it would not succeed better with him if he supposed the spectator to turn and the stars to remain at rest." This, he inti- mates, is what in his own sphere he himself has attempted. If perception is to adapt itself to the object (this is the burden of his further remark), then all knowledge must be waited for, tnust he a posteriori, and cannot be a priori j but an a priori knowledge becomes quite possible in idea, should the object have to adapt itself
3Y4 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
to the perception (because then, plainly, the conditions to which it must adapt itself being discovered, would amount to a priori ele- ments of actual perception). This, then, is the single Kantian point of issue, and if we withdraw it we withdraw at once all. ^ow, there is no question but that this point is withdrawn. Let our perception be submitted as it may to sensational signs, it is quite certain that it attains at last to a knowledge of an independent external universe which is in itself a rational system for our exploit- ation. So far, then, it is quite certain that Kant's idealism, like all subjective idealism, of what name soever, must perish or has perished. But still it is of interest to see how, even on its own terms, the system is inadequate and fails. That is, we shall grant the new Copernican position, with all that accompanies it, and let its own principles decide. Things, then, are only our own affec- tions illusively alienated into the world which we fancy ourselves to perceive as external, independent, and its own. Still affection, or what we call sensation, is a thing wholly of its own kind, and independent of us. We cannot prescribe it, we cannot dictate to it, we must take it as we find it, and absolutely as we find it ; as such, we cannot even modify it — receive it into, or dispose it in, whatever peculiar conditions of our own we may. We can say of it, then, only that it is as it is : for, so far as depends upon us, it might be infinitely difierent ; it brings no principle of necessity with it. But such principles are : there is a ruled and regulated context of experience. Kay, such principles micst be ; for, all knowledge else being contingent, there could not possibly be any ruled and regulated context — anything we could call experience at all. These principles, then, are Kant's transcendental prin- ciples; or we may define them principles unavoidable in actual experience, and sufficiently verified by experience, but yet of a validity that, as universal and necessary, transcends, and cannot be derived from experience. This is a very accurate definition, and Kant thinks himself to occupy in what it indicates a position absolutely impregnable, whether as regards what is necessary or as reo-ards what is contino-ent. We hold, of course, Kant to be wholly mistaken, and the two elements not to be separated in that way, the one from the other, like so much oil and water, but to be equally proper to, and inseparable from, the concrete, even as form and matter are. Kant, however, under pressure of his own
Criticism of Kant^s Main Principles. 375
other supposition, was forced to discover a whole system of neces- sity within us that should cause an objective stringing together of the subjective sensations, to add itself to these as tliey came into us. That system was the furnishing of self-consciousness with twelve different functions of unity, to whose action on special sensation in the elements of time and space the whole said ruled and regulated context of experience was to be attributed. And now to apply, how all that lay before Kant's mind as an answer to Hume we may probably realize in this way. The rising of the sun and the warming of a stone are simply two con- tingent sensations, and as such tiiey will always be contingent; nevertheless, I view them as necessary, because, all unconsciously, I have reduced them into a form within me. This form origi- nates within me, as I say, all unconsciously. I have a certain logical function of judgment which is called antecedent and con- sequent. Now, that being a priori in my mind, and finding a priori in my mind a spectrum of the succession of time, can- not help amalgamating with a certain modus of that spectrum, which modus is in strict analogy with said logical function, and must attract it. This form within me, thus instinctively and un- consciously produced, at once seizes (through analogy) on such a succession as rising sun and warming stone, and raises it into the felt necessity of the intellectual function, at the same time that its own elements, as such, can only be regarded as contingent.
This is, undoubtedly, the gist of Kant's answer to Hume, and to the very quick of it. Neverthebss, it contains nothing that in the foregoing has not been met, and I am not requii'ed to repeat, whether as regards the one element or the other. I will only say this :
It is quite untrue that the schema is an a priori form there already in the mind, an a priori product, on the one hand, of an a priori category and, on the other, of a priori time. There is not any one schema under any one category due in any way or ways whatever to time at all. To talk of time even in any approach to this connection is simply Andichtung^ simply^ false and groundless imputation. Under quantity, the schema is not any reference to time, but a glance at general objective form. Under quality, the schema is not any reference to time, but a glance at general objective matter. Under relation the schema is
376 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
not any reference to time, but a glance at several general objective connections. And of all these glances there is not one that is not merely empirical. In the three categories of relation, in especial, there is simply an assumption from experience of all that in ex- perience the system is there to explain. In fact the whole credit of this a jpriori system is derived from the traffic with time — a traffic that, though a constant repetition of words in cur ears, has not a vestige of foundation in fact. Only this traffic has been so deluding, and the enormous construction so imposingly laid out, with specious distinction after specious distinction, and plausible name after plausible name, that it was no wonder the brave, good, true, clear-minded, fertile-minded Kant took in, not the whole world (for we are " mostly fools "), but his own honest and per- fectly transparent self. And having said this, we need not say what may be similarly said of the categories themselves, or any other of the main Kantian presuppositions. They are all alike — baseless contrivances (ingenious enough, laborious enough) towards the impossible realization of an equally baseless assumption.
KANT'S PRINCIPLES OF JUDGMENT.*
BY JOHN WATSOlf.
Still following the lead of formal logic, Kant, after considering the pure conceptions, goes on to consider the pure judgments of the understanding, or the fundamental propositions which formu- late the unity of individual objects and the unity of their mutual connection. These judgments or propositions embody the last result of the investigation into the problem of critical philosophy in its positive aspect, viz. : How are synthetic judgments a jpriori possible ? The materials for the final answer have already been given in the JEsthetic^ taken along with the Deduction and Sche- matism of the categories, and little remains except to show in detail how the elements implied in real knowledge are joined together
* This article forms one of the chapters in a forthcoming work on " Kant's Theory of
Knowledge."
Kanfs PrinGiples of Judgment. 377
in a system constituting the known world. Kant, however, after his manner, goes over the old ground again, and shows, but now more in detail, on the one hand that the opposition of intelli- gence and nature, from which the dogmatist starts, cannot explain the actual facts of our knowledge; and, on the otlier hand, that w'e may explain knowledge when we recognize the constructive power of intelligence in nature. By a roundabout road he has come back to the problem, Hume's statement of which " roused him from his dogmatic slumber," but he has come back enriched with the spoils of a large conquest of new territory. Not only has the single question as to the application to real objects of the law of causality expanded into the comprehensive question as to the fundamental laws of nature as a whole, but tiie point of view from which the relations of intelligence and nature are contem- plated has been completely changed. IS'o longer does philosophy perplex itself with the irrational problem. How do we come to know objects existing as they are known beyond the confines of our knowledge? but occupies itself with the rational and soluble problem as to the elements involved in our knowledge of objects standing in the closest relations to our intelligence.
Even in our ordinary consciousness, in which we do not think of questioning the independent reality of the world as we know it, we draw a rough distinction between objects immediately per- ceived and the relations connecting them witi»>jeach other. Things, with their distinctive properties, seem to lie spread out before us in space, and by simply opening our eyes we apparently appre- hend them as they are. On the other hand, we regard these ob- jects as continuing to exist even when we do not perceive them, and as acting and reacting upon each other. Thus, although in an unreflective or half-unconscious way, we draw a distinction in our ordinary every-day consciousness between individual objects and their relation to one another. Moreover, the separate parts of individual objects and the degrees of intensity they display we also recognize, and we count and measure them. Corresponding to this broad distinction between objects and their relations, we have respectively the mathematical and physical sciences. Mathe- matics, abstracting, in the iirst place, from objects in space and -,.time, fixes upon the relations of space and time themselves, and, after dealing with these abstractions, it goes on to apply the re-
378 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
suits thus reached to individual objects. The physical sciences, borrowing from mathematics its results, proceed to inquire into the connections of objects with each other. Thus, mathematics and physics deal respectively with the spatial and temporal rela- tions of individual objects, and with their dynamical relations. It is at this point that critical philosophy begins its task. In the science of mathematics, on the one hand, and in the physical sci- ences, on the other hand, our knowledge of nature is systematized ; and the problem of philosophy is to show what are the essential
, conditions of such systematic knowledge. Assuming the results of mathematics and physics to be true, the question still remains, whether nature, regarded either as a complex of individual objects,
>or as a system of laws, is independent of the activity of thought. This problem neither of those sciences has taken any notice of. The mathematician goes on making his ideal constructions with- out for a moment questioning tlie necessary truth of the conclu- sions he reaches, and therefore without attempting to show from the nature of knowledge how we can know them to be true. The physicist assumes that matter is real, and that it is endowed with forces of attraction and repulsion, expressible in mathematical symbols, but it is no part of his task to justify that assumption. But philosophy, aiming to explain the inner nature of knowledge, cannot evade the double problem : lirst, what justifies the suppo-
> sition that mathematical propositions are necessarily true, and are applicable to the individual objects we perceive? and, secondly, wliat justifies us in assuming that there are real substances, real connections, and real coexistences ? Now, looking more particu- larly at the nature of that which is known in relation to knowl- edge, we may farther divide the known world, as perceived, into concrete objects and the spatial and temporal determinations of such objects. We may, in other words, ask what is implied in the ordinary experience of individual things, and in the fact that we can count or measure them ; as well as what is implied in the scientific application of quantity to such objects, and in the rules of quantity considered by themselves. As a complete theory of knowledge must explain the possibility of the various kinds of knowledge which we undoubtedly possess, it must be shown how we come to know individual objects, and to apply quantitative relations to them. Philosophy has therefore at once to justify
KanCs Principles of Judgment. 379
the universality and necessity of mathematical propositions, and to explain by what right mathematics is applied to individual tilings. The possibility of mathematics, regarded simply as a science determining the relations of space and time, has been ex- plained in the JEsthetic, where it was pointed out that space and time are a priori forms of perception. The general result of the ^Esthetic is to show : (1) that the demonstrative character of mathematical judgments arises from the fact that these rest upon specifications of the forms of space and time, which belong to the constitution of our perceptive faculty, and (2) that mathe- matical judgments are not mere aujilyses of preexisting concep- tions of numbers, figures, etc., but are synthetical judgments rest- ing upon the active construction of numbers and figures them- selves. But the elements of knowledge implied in mathematical propositions, and in their application to individual objects, can only now be completely set forth. For in these there are implied, not only the forms of space and time, but certain pure concep- tions or categories. It should be observed that the question as to the application of mathematics has nothing to do with our reasons for determining special objects by mathematical formulae; we are not asking, for example, how we can determine the distance of the sun from the earth, but simply how we are entitled to apply the category of quantity to any object whatever in space. In answer- ing this question, philosophy abstracts in the meantime from the actual relations of things to each other, as well as from the con- crete properties of things, and from the specific determinations of space and time. It has to point out what is implied in the knowl- edge of any individual object of perception ; but it does not seek to determine what are the specific differences of objects. These differences may be summarily expressed by the term " manifold," and, as this manifold involves a relation to our perceptive faculty, it may be called the "manifold of sense." The meaning of the term "manifold" therefore varies, according as we are referring to the properties of individual things, to their spatial and tem- poral relations, or to the determinations of space and time them- selves. In considering the principles which justify the applica- tion of mathematics to phenomena, Kant uses the term in all these senses, but in no case does he mean by it more than what may be called isolated points of perception, that is, mere differ-
380 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
ences taken in abstraction from their unity. From the point of view, then, of the critical philosophy, the objects of perception are not real external objects, but merely the sensible, spatial, or tem- poral parts out of which objects are put together. The manifold, e. ^., of a house are the spatial parts or the sensible units, which, together, make it an object, and mark it out in space; the mani- fold of a line are the parts or points, by the successive construc- tion of which the line is determined. This mere manifold, which ■. is really only an abstract element in known objects, is all that is due to perception ; the unity of the manifold is contributed en- tirely by the understanding. •
Turning now to the relations of objects, as distinguished from objects themselves, we can see that our problem is somewhat changed. So far we have supposed real things to be known ; now we must inquire what justification there is for that assumption. Granting that we can prov^e all objects in space and time to have extensive and intensive quantity, we must still ask on what ground we affirm that there are real substances, real sequences, and real coexistences. There can be no doubt that, in our ordinary con- sciousness, we have the conceptions of substance, cause, and reci- procity ; but philosophy must be able to show that these concep- tions have an application to real objects. Our question, then, is -as to the possibility of ultimate rules or principles of judgment, which are at the same time fundamental laws of nature. In those universal principles, which the scientific man assumes in all his investigations, and which form the prolegomena to scientific treatises, we have indeed a body of universal truths ; but they are limited in their application to external nature. Our aim is, on the other hand, to discover and prove the objective validity of the principles which underlie nature in general, as including both external and internal objects; or, what is the same thing, to show that there are synthetical judgments belonging to the constitution of our intelligence, which account, and alone account, for the ex- istence and connection of real objects.
In accordance with the distinction of individual objects and the relations of individual objects, the principles of judgment natu- rally separate into two groups, which we may distinguish respec- tively as the mathematical and the dynamical principles. Fol- lowing the clue of the categories, we find that these groups again
Kanfs Principles of Judgment. 381
subdivide into two sets of propositions. Mathematical principles prove (1) that individual perceptions, whether these are simple determinations of space and time, or concrete objects, are exten- sive quanta, and (2) that in their content individual objects have intensive quantity or degree. In the dynamical princii)les it is shown (1) that there are real substances, real sequences, and real coexistences, and (2) that the subjective criteria of knowledge are the possibility, the actuality, or the necessity of the objects exist- ing in our consciousness.
From what has been said, it will be easily understood why Kant divides the principles of judgment into two classes, the mathe- matical and the dynamical. The former are not mathematical propositions, but philosophical propositions, formulating the pro- cess by which the axioms and definitions of mathematics are known and applied to concrete objects. For the method of phi- losophy is quite distinct from the method of mathematics. The mathematician immediately constructs the lines, points, and figures with which liis science deals, and only in that construc- tion does he obtain a conception of them. The proposition that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points is not obtained by the analysis of the conception of a straight line, but from the actual construction of it as an individual perception. The axioms and definitions of mathematics are, therefore, imme- diately verified in the perception or contemplation of the objects to which they refer. Philosophy, on the other hand, must show how there can be conceptions which yet apply to perceptions ; how, for example, we are justified in saying that there is a real connection between events. Any direct reference to immediate perception is here inadmissible, for from such perception no uni- versal proposition can be derived. The two principles, that " all perceptions are extensive quanta" and that "the real in all phenomena has intensive quantity or degree," are called mathe- matical, because they justify the assumption that the axioms and definitions of mathematics are necessary, and, at the same time, because they account for the application of mathematics t© indi- vidual things. As to the first point, the axioms in mathematics rest upon the immediate perception of the object constructed by the determination of space and time. And, while the necessary truth of such axioms admits of no doubt, philosophy, having un-
382 . The Journal of Speculative PJiilosojyhy.
dertaken the task of showing the relation of intelligence to all its objects, must be able to point out what in the constitution of in- telligence gives them their binding force. The axioms of percep- tion, therefore, express in the form of a proposition the supreme condition under which mathematical axioms stand ; showing that, unless the mind, in constructing the pure perceptions on which those axioms rest, possessed the function or category of quantity, there could be no necessity in a mathematical proposition. "Even the judgments of pure mathematics in their simplest, axioms are not exempt from this condition [the condition that synthetical judgments stand under a pure conception of the understanding]. The principle that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points presupposes that the line is subsumed under the con- ception of quantit}', which certainly is no mere perception, but has its seat in the understandino- alone." Besides showino; the possibility of mathematical propositions, the axioms of percej)tion and anticipations of observation justify the application of mathe- matics to known objects. A complete theory of knowledge must evidently explain why the ideal constructions of the mathema- tician hold good of actual objects in the real world, for the propo- sitions of mathematics might be true in themselves, and yet might have only the coherence of a well-arranged sj-stem of fictions. In showing how there can be a knowledge of the laws of nature, we must, therefore, explain what justifies the scientific man in making free use of the conclusions of mathematics. ITow, there is a distinction between the way in which we establish the truth of the mathematical and the dynamical principles respectively. In both cases we have to show that the pure conceptions of the understanding apply to real objects. But, in the case of the mathematical principles, we deal directly with individual objects as immediately presented to us, without making any inquiry into the connection of these objects with each other, or into their re- lations to a knowing subject. This is the reason why the cate- gories of quantity and quality, unlike those of relation and mo- dality, have no correlates. Talking individual perceptions just as they stand, without seeking for any law binding them together, we necessarily exclude all relation. To prove the mathematical j)rinciples, we must show that they rest upon, and presuppose, the categories of quantity and quality ; but this we can do simply
Kanfs Principles of Judgment. 383
from the contemplation of the immediate determinations of space and time ; and hence the evidence for them may be said to be direct or intuitive. And as these principles, in referring to immediate unrelated objects of perception, show how the parts of the object are put together, they may be called constitu- tive, in distinction from the dynamical principles, which, as bind- ing together concrete objects already constituted as concrete, may properly be called regulative. Every object of perception must conform to the mathematical principles, since these show what are the essential conditions without which there could be no indi- vidual objects for ns. The dynamical principles, again, are not principles of dynamics, such as Kewton's three laws of motion ; for these, while they are necessarily true, do not reach the uni- versality of principles of judgment, but apply only to corporeal existences. The dynamical principles are so called because they express the ultimate conditions, without which there could be no science of nature at all. The Analogies and Postulates are dy- namical, because they show how we can account for the relations of objects to each other, or to the subject knowing them. Thus, when- it is said that matter has repulsive and attractive forces, it is evidently presupposed that one material object acts upon an- other, and hence that there is a causal connection between them. The justification of this assumption of real connection is the task of philosophy. ]^ow, this cannot be done by directly bringing the immediate objects of perception under the categories of rela- tion and modality. For the dynamical principles do not hold good of perceptions simply as such, but involve the connection or relation of such perceptions. Hence they cannot, like mathe- matical principles, be directly proved. The mere fact that indi- vidual objects, to be known at all, must be known as in space and time, shows that they must conform to the nature of space and time, and must therefore admit of the application of mathematical formulas to them ; but it does not show that they must be con- nected with each other. Hence, in the proof of the dynamical principles, it is necessary to show that real objects are something more than immediate perceptions, that real events cannot be immediately apprehended, and that the coexistence of real objects is not accounted for, if we suppose them to be directly perceived or contemplated. The real existence, therefore, of known objects.
384 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
which it was not necessary to inquire into in the proof of the mathematical principles, comes directl}^ to the front in the inves- tigation of the reality and connection of objects.
The first step toward a full comprehension of the Principles of Judgment is to realize with perfect clearness that Kant does not, in the fashion of a dogmatic philosopher, separate absolutely be- tween nature and intelligence, things and thoughts, sense and understanding. Unless we put ourselves at the right point of view, and make perfectly clear to ourselves the necessary rela- tivity of the known woi'ld and the world of knowledge, the rea- soning of Kant must seem weak, irrelevant, and inconclusive.
^ That Dr. Stirling has not done so seems to me plain from the fact that he supposes those principles to be abstract rules, which are externally applied to knowledge independentlj^ supplied by the senses. The net result of the Esthetic, as I understand Dr. Stirling, to say is, that space and time, together with the ob- jects contained in them, are not realities without, but ideas within. And from the Analytic, taken in conjunction with the yEsthetie, we further learn that sense gives us a knowledge of individual facts or objects, but only in the arbitrary order of a mere succession in time; while the understanding brings those facts or objects under the categories, and so makes necessary or objective what before was merely arbitrary or subjective. On the one side, therefore, we have the " manifold of sense," a term which is applied not to " a simple presentation alone, but even to such compound presentations as the phenomena in any case of cau- sality;" on the other side we have the rule of judgment, under which the manifold is subsumed. And Dr. Stirling objects, with manifest force and conclusiveness, that this account of the rela- tions of sense and understanding is untrue, and the proofs of the various principles utterly inconclusive, since no rule of judgment could possibly make any succession of perceptions necessary, un- less there w^ere already necessity in the perceptions themselves.
;, I accept unreservedly this criticism of Kant's theory, as inter- preted by Dr. Stirling. If sense gives us a knowledge of real objects, facts, or events, it is perfectly superfluous, and worse than superfluous, to bring in the faculty of thought to do that which has been done already. First to attribute knowledge to one faculty, and then to introduce a new faculty to explain it over
Kanfs Principles of Judgment. 385
again, is sure evidence of tlie failure of a pliilosophical theory to accomplish the end for which it was designed. But I cannot believe Kant to have blundered in this fashion. The vigorous blows which Dr. Stirling believes himself to be showering upon Kant', really fall only upon a simulacrum which he has fashioned ^ for himself out of Kant's words read in a wrong sense. It is as well at least that it should be distinctly understood that, in accept- ing Dr. Stirling's interjpretation of Kant's theory of knowledge, we at the same time commit ourselves to his radical condemnation of it. For my own part, I must decline to follow Dr. Stirling either in his interpretation or in his condemnation.
It is not, as I venture to think, a fair representation of the Esthetic to say that it merely makes space and time, and the objects in them, ideas within the mind, instead of actual realities without the mind. I lind it difficult to attach a precise meaning to such language as, that " we know an actual outer space, an actual outer time, and actual outer objects, all of which are . . . things in themselves, and very fairly perceived by us in their own qualities." This may mean that space and time, together with individual objects and events, are completely independent in their own nature of all relation to intelligence. It may be, in short, an acceptance of the common-sense realism which one is accus- tomed to associate with the name of Dr. Reid. In that case, I prefer Kant to Dr. Stirling. But if the meaning is, as I am fain to think, tliat space, time, and concrete things are not dependent for their reality upon us, although they are relative to intelligence, I do not understand why Kant should be so strongly rebuked for making space and time forms of perception instead of sensible things. One may surely reject the subjectivity of space and time, and yet see in the Esthetic a great advance on previous systems. A theory may have in it an alloy that lessens its absolute value, and may yet contain a good deal of genuine gold. Kant's view of space and time, were it only for the necessity it lays upon us of conceiving the problem of knowledge from an entirely new point of view, and of seeking for a theory truer than itself, possesses an importance difficult to over-estimate. I do not see how any one who has undergone the revolution in his ordinary way of thinking, which the critical philosophy, when thoroughly assimi- lated, inevitably effects, can any longer be contented simply to XIY— 25
386 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
announce that space and time are realities, without feeling him- self called upon to explain at the same time what relation they bear to intelligence. Ordinary realism, and its offspring, psycho- logical idealism, have received their death-blow at Kant's hands, and no attempt to resuscitate them can be of any avail. Kant himself, at least, was firmly convinced that, in maintaining space and time to be forms of our intelligence on its perceptive side, he was initiating a reform of supreme importance in philosophy. Dr. Stirling speaks of Kant's doctrine of the external world exactly as if it were identical with the sensationalism of such thinkers as Mr. Huxley and Mr. Spencer. But it is surely one thing to say that space and time are given to us in feelings set up in us by an object lying beyond consciousness, and another thing to say that they belong to the very constitution of our intelligence in so far as it is perceptive. If space and time are forms of per- ception, we can no longer go on asking how a world of objects lying beyond the mind gets, in some mysterious way, into the mind. Kant never, in his philosophical theory, makes any attempt to prove the special facts of our ordinary knowledge, or the special laws of the natural sciences ; these he simply assumes as data which it is no business of his to establish. But, although he leaves the concrete world just as it was before, he does not leave the philosophical theory commonly put forward to ex^Dlain it just as it was. From the critical point of view, things can no longer be regarded as unintelligible abstractions, as they must be in any theory which, by extruding them from the inner circle of knowl- edge, virtually makes them unknowable ; being brought into relation with our intelligence, there is no barrier to their being known and comprehended. I cannot see that it is doing Kant justice simply
^ to say that space and time, and the objects filling them, which before were without the mind, are by him brought within the mind. He certainly holds them to be " within," but they are
;> within, not as transient feelings, but as permanent and unchange- able constituents of knowledge, belonging to the very nature of human intelligence. Omit the " human," and we have a view of the external world which is consistent with its reality in the only intelligible meaning of the term, and which yet denies space and time to be subjective any more than objective. Kant here, as always, is greater than he was himself aware of, and that seems to
Kanfs Principles of Judgment. 387
me criticism of a very imsympatlietic and uniiistructive sort which closely scans the mere outward form of his theory, and fails to see behind the form an idea rich in suggestiveness and far-reaching in its issues.
Dr. Stirling's appreciation of the Esthetic seems to me to be inadequate ; his view of the relations of sense and understanding, as expounded in the Analytic, I regard as a complete inversion of ' the true view. The objects of sense fall completely apart from the forms of thought. A broad distinction is drawn between per- ceptions and judgments about perceptions, and sense is supposed to have completed its work before thought begins to operate. The Critique we must, therefore, regard as a Phenomenology, tracing the successive phases through which our knowledge passes on its way to necessary truth. All our knowledge is at first simply an immediate apprehension of special facts, coming to us without order or connection ; and only afterwards, when thought brings into play its schematized categories, is necessity imposed upon our perceptions. I maintain, on the contrary, that sense does not give a knowledge of individual objects, facts, or events; that of itself it gives us no knowledge whatever; and that under- standing does not externally impose necessity upon perceptions, but is essential to the actual constitution of known objects, facts, or events. The Critique I therefore regard, not as a Phenome- nology, but as a Metaphysic, i. e., as a systematic account of the logically distinguishable, but not the less real, elements that together make up our knowledge in its completeness. The im- portance of the issue at stake may perhaps excuse the repetition of some points I have already tried to explain.
The Critique may almost be said to part into two independent halves, in the first of which Kant speaks from the ordinary or uncritical point of view, and in the second of which he advances to the critical, or purely philosophical point of view. This im- plicit division arises partly from the fact that, as Kant never attempts to prove a single qualitative fact or special law of nature, in referring to the data which he has to explain, he natiarally speaks in the language of everyday life, and, therefore, seems to be accepting the common-sense view of things ; but it partly arises also from his accepting the account of the process of knowl- edge given in formal logic as true outside of the sphere of phi-
388 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
losophy proper. According to the ordinary conception of our knowledge of things, sense immediately reveals to us actual objects lying outside of our consciousness, and passively taken up into it. In speaking of the facts demanding philosophical explana- tion, Kant does not, as he might have done, deny this assump- tion at the very threshold of his inquiry, but seeks gradually to undermine it by shoveing the conclusions to which it leads. Moreover, Kant's own theory of knowledge harmonizes with the ordinary view in these two points : (1) that sense or feeling sup- plies to us all the concrete element in our knowledge of ex- ternal objects, and (2) that it also reveals to us the particular feelings belonging to ourselves as individuals. N^ot withstanding this partial agreement, however, the divergence of criticism and dogmatism is radical and complete. For it is one thing to say that sense contributes the concrete element in knowledge, and >quite a different thing to say that it gives us a knowledge of con- crete objects. The latter statement is only true of sense, under- stood in the loose and popular meaning of the term, as when we speak of " sensible objects," or the " world of sense." Taken simply as an expression of the fact that we have a knowledge of external objects apparently by immediate appreliension of them, such language may be allowed to pass ; but, in the philo- sophical meaning of the term, sense is a name for the particular, not for the individual. This follows directly from Kant's concep- tion of space and time as forms of perception, not realities per- ceived. So long as these forms were supposed to be actual real- ities existing in themselves, apart from any relation to us, it seemed correct enough to say that by sense we directly receive into our minds at once individual objects, and the space and time in which they are contained. But, if space and time are not real- ities without our consciousness, but potential forms coming into existence for consciousness on occasion of knowledge, it is evident that our view of the relation of objects to knowledge must be radically changed, and therefore our view of that which belongs to sense as distinguished from thought. Things which exist be- yond our consciousness cannot be contained in space and time, which exist only within consciousness. The distinction of the inner from the outer world is no longer a distinction of ideas within the mind, and material or actual realities without the mind ; in-
KanCs Principles of Judgment. 389
ternal feelings and external objects are alike within consciousness, being logically distinguishable, but not really separable. The con- trast of internal and external objects arises, so far as sense is con- cerned, from the fact that external objects are informed by space as well as by time, while our internal life passes in time alone ; but otherwise our perceptions, and what we know as objects of perception, are composed of the same elements. Knowledge al- ways comes to us in successive apprehensions ; and this is true, whether we look at our feelings as in time, or at known objects as in space. Now, as sense is the faculty by which we imme- diately contemplate the particular taken by itself, it contributes a mere "manifold," which is not yet an individual object, but only the sensuous material for such an object. On the inter- nal side we have a series of feelings, perpetually coming and go- ing, and, therefore, destitute of universality, unity, or connection. Isolate this mere series, as the dogmatist does, from objects in space, and these feelings are not knowable even as a series. On the other hand, separate the external from the internal, and the former becomes unknowable and unintelligible. This is the sum of the Refutation of Idealism. Sense, therefore, while it contrib- utes the particulars implied in our actual knowledge of objects, cannot of itself give us any knowledge whatever. "We might as well claim that, from the mere form of space or time, we can know definite objects as hold that the special senses reveal to us con- crete things. The dogmatist makes the problem of knowledge very easy for himself by assuming that we immediately appre- hend actual objects ; the actuality he assumes, and the knowledge of actuality he figures to himself as a direct glance of sense. But, now that sense is seen to be capable of supplying only a series of unconnected particulars, a new mode of explanation must be adopted. The actuality of things must be explained, and not simply assumed ; and the manner in which the mere particularity of sense becomes for us the knowledge of individual objects must be shown. The individualitv of things, so far as sense is con- cerned, vanishes with their supposed independence of our intelli- gence, and we are left, by the progress of philosophical reflection, with a mere "manifold of sense," an unconnected congeries of particulars, entirely destitute of unity, connection, or system. To explain our actual knowledge of objects and of their connections
390 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
witli each other, we require to produce the universal element belonging to our intelligence, by the action of which on the par- ticulars of sense real knowledge takes place. We have discovered the faculty of diflPerences ; we must now show what is the faculty of unity, and how it produces the various kinds of unity which we can see to be implied in our actual knowledge.
It will be evident from what has been said how Dr. Stirling has been led to suppose that Kant regards sense as giving us a knowledge of individual objects or facts. Unless we resolutely keep before our minds the fact that the Critique is an analysis of the logical constituents of our actual knowledge, and not on account of the temporal stages, by which the individual and the race advance to knowledge of the highest kind, we shall inev- itably confuse the popular with tlie critical point of view. When he is leading up to his own theory, and simply stating the facts he has to explain, or when he is criticising the dogmatic theory of his predecessors, Kant naturally speaks as if sense immediately reveals to us special objects or events. From the philosophical > point of view, however, sense he conceives of as the faculty w^hich supplies to us the isolated differences which thought puts together and unites into individual objects or connections of objects. The " manifold of sense " is, therefore, simply that element in knowl- edge which supplies the particular differences of known objects. And these differences, of course, vary with the special aspect of the known world w^hich at the time is sought to be explained. In the Axioms of Perception, for example, in which Kant is seeking to show that individual objects in space and time are necessarily extensive quanta^ the special fact of knowledge to be explained is the apprehension of objects as made up of parts forming in- dividual aggregates. These parts Kant regards as directly per- ceived or contemplated. The " manifold " may be the parts of a line, the parts of any geometrical figure, or even particular figures regarded as constituents of more complex perceptions ; or, again, it may be the parts of individual objects in space. But in all of these cases the particulars, as dae to sense, are, when taken by themselves, mere abstractions ; they are, in fact, not even known as particulars apart from the synthetic activity of imagination, as guided by the category of quantity. To have a knowledge of the parts of a line, or the parts of a house, as
K(m£s Prvnciples of Judgment. 391
parts, is to know at the same time the combination of those parts. But the combination takes place for us only through the act by which we successively determine space to particular parts, and in that determination combine them. Thus, in the knowledge of the line, there are implied both the particular ele- ment of sense and the universal element of thought. We do not first perceive the line and then apply the category, but, in per- ^ ceiving the line, we apply the category. And, as in all recognition of objects in space we necessarily determine the particulars of sense through the schema, as silently guided by the categor}^, we may express this condition of our knowledge in the proposition, " All percepts are extensive quanta.''^ This proposition, there- fore, rests upon a discrimination of the elements which we are compelled to distinguish in explaining how we know any individual object to be a unity of parts ; it is not a proposition which we acquire by reflection before we know objects to be extensive quanta. Observing that all external objects which we can pos- sibly know must be in space, and having seen space to be a neces- sary form of thought, we can say axiomatical ly that eve7^y percept is an extensive quantum / but this proposition is not one which jprecedes the knowledge of objects as quanta.^ but one which is re- quired to explain the fact of such knowledge. On Dr. Stirling's view, sense gives us a knowledge of individual objects as extended, and thought " varnishes " this knowledge with necessity. How Kant could possibly suppose sense to give us the perception ot things in space, without at the same time determining these as extensive quanta. I am unable to understand. But, in truth, Kant makes no such supposition ; what he holds is that spatial objects are known as extensive quanta in the act by which the productive imagination determines their parts successively, under control of the category of quantity. The necessity is implied in our actual knowledge, and philosophical reflection merely shows it to be there.
The "manifold," again, assumes a different aspect when Kant goes on to deal with the dynamical principles. Here the question is no longer in regard to the quantitative parts of external objects, but in regard to the philosophical justification of the permanence, the causal connection, and the mutual influence of these objects. In our ordinary and scientific knowledge we take it for granted
392 The Journal of Speculatwe Philosophy.
that we know real objects, whicli do not pass away with the mo- ment, but persist or are permanent. Permanence, in fact, is the mark by which we ordinarily distinguish actual existences from passing feelings or creations of the imagination. To show philo- sophically how this assumption is justiiied from the nature of our intelligence is the object of the First Analogy of Experience. ]^ow, the ordinary explanation of the permanence or actuality of an external object is, that we simply see, apprehend, or observe the object, and immediately know it to be permanent. But the consequence of this assumption, as the psychological idealist has seen, is that the actual object itself is not apprehended or perceived at all. So far as the theory can show, we have indeed a conscious- ness of ideas or feelings supposed to represent actual objects, but we do not really come in contact with those objects tiiemselves. Kant, taking up the problem at this stage, points out what is really implied in a series of feelings or ideas, and from this he shows the necessity of the action of thought on sense for the knowledge of actual objects as permanent. The " manifold " here is individual objects regarded simply as revealed in the direct glance of sense. If we immediately apprehend or perceive objects to be permanent, we cannot have more before us than separate percepts, coming the one after the other. I open my eyes and see a house ; I move my eyes and see a tree, then a mountain, etc. ; but T cannot, as is usually supposed, see the house, tree, moun- tain, etc., to be permanent substances. At each successive mo- ment a fresh presentation of sense comes before me ; and, as im- mediate apprehension does not go beyond the moment, I can say nothing about objects when they are not actually present. Thus, the ordinary explanation of the permanence of things really re- duces actual objects to successive alFections or feelings, coming and going like the phantasms of a dream. They are a mere " mani- fold of sense," a number of unrelated feelings, really incapable of revealing to us any actual or permanent thing. The true expla- >nation of the fact that we have a knowledge of permanent exter- nal things or substances must bring in an element quite distinct from sense, and this is the element of thouo-ht. The mere isolated particulars of sense never could give us a knowledge of actual objects; only thought in conjunction with the manifold of sense can do so. Kant, then, does not, as Dr. Stirling supposes, hold
Kaufs Principles of Judgment. 393
that sense first gives us a knowledge of actual things, while thought comes after and makes this special knowledge universal and necessary. On the contrary, he argues that if we are to ex- plain the actual fact that we do have a knowledge of permanent things, we must not say that sense gives us a knowledge of real substances, but, on the contrary, that it supplies only the particu- lar differences of things, leaving to thought, in conjunction with the imagination, the combination or unification of those difi'er- ences. Kant simply shows, by an inquiry into the mental condi- tions, without which a o-iven kind of knowledge would be im- possible, what are the logicallj^ distinguishable elements in that knowledge ; and to convert such purely metaphysical distinctions into temporal phases in the development of our knowledge is to turn his theory upside down.
A proper comprehension of the way in which criticism trans- forms the dogmatic or psychological conception of the nature of sense makes the corresponding transformation of the ordinary view of the nature of thought easily intelligible. As sense sup- plies the particular element in knowledge, so thought reduces the particular to unity. From the dogmatic point of view, judgment is always a process of analysis. Kant does not deny that analyti- cal judgments are valuable within their own sphere, but he denies that they in any way enable us to solve the problem of philosophy. For such judgments, valuable as they are in bringing clearly before our minds what we already know in an obscure and half-uncon- scious way, cannot explain the process by which we obtain a knowledge of actual things and their connections. The analysis of such pure conceptions as substance and cause can never estab- lish the application of these conceptions to real objects, but only brings out explicitly what we mean when we speak of substances or causes. Analytical judgments thus fall outside of the domain of philosophy proper. They rest upon the purely formal principle of contradiction. If we but express in the predicate what is implied in the subject, and do not attach to the subject a predi- cate inconsistent with it, we conform to the only condition de- manded by the analytic judgment. The afiirmative proposition, "Body is extended," satisfies this condition, since "extension " is an attribute implied in the conception of "body;" the negative proposition, "Body is not immaterial," is a correct analytical
394 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
judgment, since it merely excludes from the conception of body an attribute contradictory of it. We can thus see wherein the essential vice of the dogmatic theory of judgment consists. The dogmatist supposes we may establish the objective application of a conception by simply showing that a given judgment is not self- contradictory. Wolff, e. g., thought he could prove the conception of causality to be true of real things, because that conception, when analyzed, yields the judgment, " Whatever is contingent has a cause." But the judgment is purely analytical, only ex- pressing explicitly what is implicit in the conception of the "con- tingent." How, then, are we to account for the application of con- ceptions to real things ? How, in other words, can we show that there are judgments which are synthetical, and yet rest upon con- ceptions ? This question, insoluble on the dogmatic method, may be answered by the critical method.
We have seen that sense can only contribute the particular element in knowledge, and that the universal element is supplied by thought. A conception, therefore, on which a synthetical
> judgment is to rest can be nothing but a pure universal, having in it no concrete element. In all thinking which yields real knowl-
> edge the particulars of sense must be reduced to unity by being referred to a single supreme self, for, on any other supposition, there would be no unity in our knowledge as a whole. It is nothing to the point that we may not, in our ordinary conscious- ness, be aware that the self is the supreme condition of any real knowledge. It is enough if we can show that in all knowledge^of reality the " I " must be present, and must manifest its presence in the actual fact of knowledge. Certainly, if we take the self apart from its activity, as manifested in knowing, we cannot get beyond the merely analytical judgment, 1 = 1; but, when we seek to explain actual knowledge, we are compelled to see that, were
>there no identical " I," expressing its activity in uniting the par- ticulars of sense, we could have no connected knowledge. The " I think," or " I unite," is, however, but the general expression of the condition of any real knowledge. But, as all knowing is definite knowing, or the thinking of the real world in specific ways, to intelligence as thinking there must belong universal forms or functions of unity, enabling ns to reduce the manifold of sense to definite nnity, order, and system. How do we know that to
Kanfs Principles of Judgment. 395
thoiifflit there belono; such forms or functions ? We know it from the fact that in our actual knowledge, the reality of which no one doubts, we do form real judgments. The fact that there are such- judgments we do not seek to prove ; our object is simply to show what the constitution of our thought must be on supposition of such judgments. Now, if the self is the supreme condition of unity, and the categories the forms potentially capable of reduc- ing the special manifold of sense to specific unities, we can see how real judgments are possible, and what will be their character. A real judgment must be the act by which the categories, as pure uuiversals, come together with the manifold of sense. One other point, however, must be mentioned in order to complete our ac- count of the conditions of real knowledge. All our knowledge comes to us in successive acts, and hence real judgments must operate upon the manifold of sense under the form of time. We must, therefore, explain how actual knowledge is possible, in ac- cordance with the fact that we know real objects and their con- nection in a series of cognitions. Accordingly, it will be our aim, in setting forth the various classes of real judgments, to point out how the manifold of sense is related to the schemata or general determinations of time.
I have endeavored, in the account just given of the relations of thought and sense, to emphasize the view which I take of the ^ Critique, that it is an exposition of the constituent elements which we may logically distinguish in knowledge, not on account of the order in which our knowledge is developed in time. In every recognition of an external object as an extensive or intensive quantity, we bring into operation the categories of quantity and quality respectively, and this we do in the act by which we suc- cessively combine the particulars of sense. In our actual knowl- edge of a given substance, a given connection of events, or given objects as mutually influencing each other, we connect the mani- fold of sense under the silent guidance of the categories of sub- stance, cause, and reciprocity, and connect them according to tbeir respective schemata. And when we express what is implied in any of these actual cognitions, we are able to state the prin- ciple in a universal form, because the categories, as belonging to the very nature of our thinking intelligence, necessarily combine tbe manifold always in the same way. The principles of judg-
396 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
ment are therefore at once '^'h\\o&o'^\r\c,2l propositions and ultimate laws of nature. Just as a mathematical judgment is a proposition belonging to the science of mathematics, and at the same time a law manifested in the particular object to which the proposition refers; just as any scientific proposition goes to form the body of the science to which it belongs, and yet formulates a law to which all facts of a certain kind must conform ; so the philosophical judgment that "all percepts are extensive quanta,^'' or that "in all changes of phenomena substance is permanent," is not only a proposition belonging to the science of philosophy, but a law or principle manifested in our actual knowledge. When Kant speaks of bringing phenomena under a rule of the understanding, he does not mean that -wejirst know the phenomena in question, and then bring them under the rule, but he means that, unless they were brought under the rule in the act of knowing them, they could not be known as real in the particular way which at the time we have under consideration. When, indeed, we Tejiect upon our knowledge, we express the act by which thought unites the manifold of sense in the form of a rule or proposition ; but our reflection does not create the rule, but only recognizes it. Had not the rule been silently employed in the actual process of knowing the real object or connection, we should never discover it. Did Kant really mean to say that we first know real facts by sense, and afterwards subsume them under conceptions, his po- lemic against dogmatism would be a huge ignoratio elenchi j for, on this interpretation of his theory, the facts known by sense fall completely apart from the conceptions supposed to reduce them to unity, and the possibility of real judgments becomes inexjDlica- ble. So miserable a failure in his explanation of knowledge I refuse to attribute to Kant. His real view is that thinking in- •telligence either constitutes objects as such, or connects objects with each other, by oi)erating upon the detached manifold of sense. In the apprehension of a house, e. </., I must have not only the separate impressions coming to me as my eye runs over it, but I must put together its spatial parts in the act of generating them ; and, as the parts are j)ut together under the guidance of the cate- gory of quantity, in apprehending the house I at the same time know it as an extensive quantum.
Kant makes no attempt to connect together the various princi-
Kanfs Principles of Judgment. 397
pies of judgment ; on the contrary, lie regards each as independ- ent and complete in itself. And it is easy to understand why he takes this view. Starting as he does from the notion of knowl- edge as completed, and embodied more especially in the mathe- matical and physical sciences, he naturally seeks only to demon- strate that such knowledge is inconceivable, if we persist in mak- ing an absolute separation of intelligence and nature, instead of conceiving of nature as constituted in its universal aspect by neces- sary forms of perception and of thought. In seeking to explain the demonstrative certainty of mathematical propositions, and their application to individual objects, and in seeking to show what are the universal laws of nature, he simply takes up one aspect of knowledge after another and points out the intellectual ele- ments involved in each. Dealing, not with the temporal origin of knowledge, but with the logical constituents involved in it, he sets the various elements of knowledge apart by themselves, and com- bines them in a system, the form of which is chiefly due to his own external reflection. But while Kant does not so much render the " very form and pressure " of thought, as simply place its ele- ments side by side; and wliile he is very far from tracing out, in all its delicate completeness, " the diamond net" with which intel- ligence envelops the particulars of sense, his presentation of the various principles of judgment follows half unconsciously, and ap- proximates closely to the natural order of logical evolution. It is well also to observe that, although he speaks of those principles as the highest laws of knowledge, and therefore of nature as a whole, Kant really concentrates his attention on external nature ; in fact, he has expressly pointed out that the rules of the understanding are only verifiable in relation to objects in space, as contrasted with the succession of mental states in time. On the other hand, he virtually assumes space to be already determined, and only seeks to show how its parts can become known to us successively. In the first principle, formulating the axioms of perception, he ab- stracts from all the concrete wealth of the universe, and from all the connections of things, and limits himself to the question as to how space and objects in space are known as in time. And the answer he gives naturally is, that every individual object of per- ception is an extensive quantum, known to us in the successive addition of units, as guided by the unseen influence of the category
398 TTie Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
of quantity. In what other way the external object may be de- termined, Kant does not here inquire, but confines himself to the proof of the proposition, that no external object is knowable at all without being known as an extensive quantum. His next step is to ask whether in the knowledge of external objects there is any universal and necessary characteristic ; and he finds that while we cannot anticipate the special properties of things, since these are perpetually'changing on us, we can anticipate that all objects capa- ble of being known at all must have intensive quantity or degree.
> So far the question has not been raised as to what constitutes the reality, the connection and the mutual influence of objects. But this question is foi'ced upon us the moment we make afiirmations in regard to the relations of objects. We can no longer refer to our perceptions in proof of the reality of our knowledge. We have therefore to show by what right we assume objects to be per- manent and actually connected. In the three Analogies of Ex- perience this question is taken up, and it is proved, first, that the knowledge of real objects involves the application of the category of substance to the manifold of sense through the schema of the permanent ; secondly, that the knowledge of real sequences can
> only be explained, if we presuppose the schema of order in time, as limiting the category to the particular determinations of sensible perception ; and lastly, that the knowledge of real external ob- jects, as mutually influencing each other, implies the schema of coexistence in time, as standing under the category of reciprocity. In the Postulates of Empirical Thought, Kant, having now con- sidered external objects as such, and external objects as related to each other, raises the question as to the relation of external things to our thought of them. And the subjective criteria of knowl- edge he finds to lie in the possibility, the actuality and the neces- sity of our ideas. The final result of the whole investigation is to revei'se completely the ordinary conception of the relations of intel- ligence and nature. The world of real things is not, as dogmatic philosophy had wrongly assumed, an independent congeries of real things externally taken up into our minds, but a system of
^ objects constituted for us by the activity of our intelligence act- ing on the particulars of sense.
Philosophic Outlines. 399
PHILOSOPHIC OUTLINES— COSMOLOGIC, TPIEO- LOGIC, AND PSYCHOLOGIC.
BY H. K. JONES.
The empirical sciences generalize and systematize facts, par- ticulars, comprising as tlieir principle the immediate formal and onaterial causes. Philosophy divests the empirical particular of its separateness, and establishes its character and reason in the cause, efficient andjinal of all things.
Science is empirical, doxastic, demonstrative ; philosophy is speculative and dialectic. And so philosophy is not a science, either of physics or of metaphysics ; neither of mathematics nor of politics, nor of ethics, nor of logic, nor of theology, nor of psy- chology, nor of cosmology — but a science of sciences, it speculates and judges all these in their respective grounds and final reasons.
Thus philosophy and empirical science may be deemed predica- ments respectively of primary and secondary causation. They are accordingly correlate and reciprocally interrelated. The cor- poreal frame of science is physical, inanimate. That of philosophy is spiritual, psychical, animate — fountained in the supreme idea, which contains within itself the unities and essences of all things, as effects depending from their causes.
The idea of the soul is not a thought, nor a mere thinking ma- chine ; but an entity self-conscious — a living form with a think- ing faculty. And, in the cognition of true being, the factor of sentience is logically prior, and the act of thought posterior. Jove himself is a royal soul with a regal intellect.
True philosophy realizes the contact of the spiritual affection or sentience with living ideas, and so hints and glimpses of the first cause are beheld and contemplated, and they generate in the attentive soul knowledges divine. Man thinks and feels. Con- ventionally, science is predicated of the processes of abstract thought ; philosophy of the concrete processes of the thinking and sentient faculties of the soul. The blood of science is water, the blood of philosophy is the wine of life. Science is inductive
400 The Journal of Sjpeculative Philosophy.
in its method — philosopliy is deductive in its method. It is deemed expedient to outline discursively the point of view and the method somewhat characteristic of the proposed course of dis- cussions.
Caste is an idea, a principle universal in the mental generations of man. The Oriental quaternary castehood still frames the social fabrique, whether individually or collectively considered. Man, in the social g-enesis of this planet, is ever intellectual, moral, mer- cenary, and desidcrative. His motives are science, heroism, re- ward, and sensuality. In the Platonic idiom we predicate of the social order — the servile class, and the mercenary class, and the auxiliary class, and the guardian class. In the Oriental idiom, the Sudra, the Yaisya, the Kshatrya, and the Brahman.
(1.) Those who through life employ sense without intellect are conversant only with sensibles — esteem sensibles the firsts and the lasts of things — apprehend that whatever among sensibles is painful is evil^ and whatever among them is pleasant is good. And their life endeavor is to avoid the one, and to procure as much as possible of the other. This life is • depraved in sen- sibles, and is therefore full of servitude, and is the remotest from God, the true good — these souls issue from the foot of Brahma.
(2.) The mercenary caste, those who traffic in affairs, opining that magnitade and parvitude of soul are mensurable by corpo- real bulk of things, and that the massing of worldly riches and honors and power is the chief good. And in this phantasy they toil from the cradle to the grave — these souls, these soul forces, these social forces are the mercenaries, the Yaisya caste, and these issue from the thigh of Brahma.
(3.) The auxiliaries, the military class, the forces of the social moralities and heroic virtues, the social will forces of the church and the state, constitutive of the civil institutions, admin- istrative of the laws, and defensive and protective of the common weal — this is the Kshatrya caste. These issue from the arm of Brahma.
(4.) The guardians, the governors, the intellectual social forces, intellectual soul forces, mind exalted to the intelligible, the su- pernatural consciousness, to the sphere of the pure thought, to the sphere of ideas, the sphere of universals, exempted of the image of sense in the cognition of true entity, the true sacerdotal
PhilosophiG Outlines. 401
order, mind in the transcendency of ideas and principles — these forces issue from the mouth of Brahma, and in this meru, this golden mountain of the gods, in this seat of Jupiter Olympus, in this Zion, the mountain of our King, this summit of the beauty and the joy of the whole earth, must we establish our observa- tory, would we adequately survey the broad fields or fathom the golden mines of the Platonic philosophy. This mental eminency must we achieve and occupy, rightly to estimate and identify and unify all systems of philosophic thought.
These four orders of the social forces are generalized as two, because the mercenary and the epithumetic are unified in the irrational corporeal, while the moral and intellectual are unified in the rational, the spiritual. And hence the natural man and the spiritiial man. He in whom desire leads and mercenariness ministers is natural, earthy, and he in whom intelligence leads, and will and conscience minister, is the spiritital man^ the divine man. History is comprehended in its permanent and transient fac- tors. Each of the historic generations, or greater social cycles, requires, as the fruition of its gymnastics, the solution of its life problems, universal and particular, and the thought which is ade- quate to this constitutes its philosophy. And philosophy has hence its two factors, the permanent and transient, in that it is comprehensive of universals and of particulars as its extremes.
On the one hand, humanity is free, through all its geons, and herein lies the permanent factor^ which threads into unity the philosophic systems of the world — that speech and discourse of things which transcend a\\ patois and idiom of particular systems and faiths and times, in which we are face to face in personal dis- course and fraternity with all that is^ and therefore with all that hasheen or sJiall he — a fraternity with the angels of God, and all the great ages, in whose light are dissipated, as mists and fog be- fore the sun, the partial conceptions of universal history.
On the other hand, humanity \s> protean^ through the perpetual mutations of the temporal forms. And in this term of the philo- sophic triad is grounded the necessarily unstable, yet, may be, adequate thought which speculates the differentiating insignia of the social fabrique of the difierent ages, and herein lies the tran- sient factor of philosophy ; and this., when exclusively assumed, is the ground and material for all the illiberal and contentious con- XIY— 26
402 The Journal of Sj)ecuiatwe Philosophy.
ceit of narrow minds. That humanity renders social manners and institutions the most different and even opposite in their forms, vehicular and instrumental of the same common ends, cul- ture in wisdom and virtue, is inconceivable to the illiberal con- ceit, and therefore conclude the egotisms, " None, ere our time and manners, can have achieved philosophy."
A philosophising endeavor which assumes exclusive validity of the transient elements of the world will begin with subjecting all systems of philosophy and of faith to the crucible of unbelief, and end with predicating truth of nature only, and of physics, and sensible and conventional forms.
In the last quarter century there has culminated this period of unbelief, immanent in the lifetime of every generation. The public spirit is irreverent, undevout. It rates nature's phenomena as the ultimate verities, rather than the disclosures of the truth concealed behind them. Its trust is in physics and matter, its thought rejects the immaterial and the supernatural as unsub- stantial and unknowable, and unavailable for the uses of the practical life. Human society has a very limited endurance, con- sistently with the public morality and religion, of this abstract realistic thought.
Philosophy, the handmaiden of religion and the servant of all, must from this time relumine for this generation the problems of man's existence. The mind of this country is in the dawn of the Christian philosophy, the epoch of the idealities of the Chris- tian dispensation ; and whether we discourse in the modern or more ancient dialect of things, the prime indication of the age seems to be the cognition and identification of the supernatural, its relations and correlations with the natural, its identification as a factor in all life and in all human history and experience, and science and philosophy, its manifestation in nature and in the physical constitution of man, and in the social institutions, the family, the State, and the Church.
In the prevailing thought and science, or reputed sciences of our current time, this theme is reputed " tey^ra incognita^'' ab- stract, abstruse, foreign and unrelated to the practical interests of humanity and the world. On the other hand, it is esteemed by some as most concrete, most practical, most immanent in the life of the world, most identifiable, and most eminently ^nciwaJZd.
Philosophic Outlines. 403
In this latter appreciation must be found the dignity and adaptedness of this theme — indeed, its indispensableness as a key — to the aim and range and method of the Platonic philosophy, whose aim and range is the comprehension of the existence of man as a being of the supernatural order, and therefore eternal and immortal ; while in the former appreciation are grounded a public opinion and a popular science which find neither voice nor speech in man, nor in nature, nor in the universe of any other entity than nature's physics, with her mechanics and chemistries; and from this witness the public ear hath scarce ever heard that there is a spirit.
We hear much in our day (indeed we hear almost nothing more) of natural forces and natu7'al latv, with a quasi-disavowal, if not an absolute repudiation, of will forces in nature, and intelli- gence in nature, in the world of sensibles, as well as in the con- stitution of man ; and, owing to reasons accessible to philosophy, there is a dominant tendency in our current scientific thinking to what may be denominated physical and realistic abstraction, the cognition and verification of a physics without a metaphysics, a natural without a supernatural, a sensible without an intelli- gible, a material without a spiritual, a real without an ideal, a lower world without an upper world, and, consequently, a natural order without an intelligible order, natural law without mind, nat- ural forces without will forces, and a kosmos without a logos. And the end of this contemplation, scientifically and historically judged, must be the identification of nature, physics, matter, as the absolute and the only. And even already, as noticed above, in the name, and prudence, and modesty of science, we are en- joined from this ground, that all else, the realm of the intelli- gible, the supernatural, the ideal is not merely the " terra incog- nita,^^ but even the very unknowaMe, because non-extant.
It may be fairly questioned whether a true science of nature ever was, or ever can be achieved, without the connate science of the supernatural. It may be fairly questioned whether the plaudits of genius in the pursuit of the abstract natural sciences, arrogated by modern civilization, may not entitle us to a very dubious reputation. And, indeed, it is scarcely questionable that a culture of this order, an exclusive trust in and use of the abstract knowledge of those secrets of nature which empower and
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arm mankind unto a mere terrestrial giantliood, shall not ulti- timately yield fruits conjoint with the causes and processes of social and moral insanity, and dissolution and decay.
A prime element in all philosophical process is the clear dis- cernment of the correlatedness of cause and effect, that through- out the realms of mind and of nature they are related in discrete, and not in continuous degree, so that in all things cause is utterly exempted of its eifects. The cause cannot become the effect of itself, nor can the effect become the cause of itself. And this is especially maintained and manifested in the relations of mind and matter. Mind cannot become matter, and matter cannot become mind. Mind is supereminent, native in the prerogative of causa- tion, and matter distino-uished only in the subordination of effects. The law, therefore, of mind is liberty, and the law of matter is necessity.
The forms of mind and the forms of matter are the two factors of the universe. The forms of mind produce. The forms of matter are the produced. The^e. producing powers are the super- natural. These produced forms are the natural. There is no- thing in the physical and material processes that can form the honeycomb. Some power acting from without this chain of pro- cesses has constrained this result. Matter by no physical law ever gets itself moved into this shape.
The steam-engine is a material shape, but nature by no physi- cal process ever moved matter into this shape. Some master power standing outside the chain of her processes has wrought in her chambers. An idea in the mind of man has through his will produced this form. There is nowhere else than in the world of mind a power capable of this production. Matter by any natural law or physical process never moved itself into this shape. The cause is the supernatural form in the mind. The effect is the natural form. The one is the producer. The other is the pro- duced.
And now mark. Ideas rule. All works of all arts are ideas realized, produced into material shape, adumbrated in material effigy. No artist or artisan lays hand to the artificial realization, except from the preexisting form in the mind. If the ideal form be poor and indistinct, his production must be poor. If the ideal be exalted in excellence, then shall the ^production be informed
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and animate with beauty and dignity and power. Bat, in all her adyta, nature has no such secret ; no law or process which ever moved matter into the form of the Phidian statue. This form and this power have their fountain in the mind and will of man, a true supernatural power, since by its own force it pervades the sphere of nature, and dominates her processes of cause and effect, so as to bring to pass what would never come to pass within her domain from her own internal action. Matter has no capability to move itself into such shapes.
But what of the corporeal frame of animated nature? and chief of the corporeal frame of man — the masterpiece ? This, again, is a natural body — a material shape. It is a production and has a prodticer. It is an effect, and must have a producing cause. Should the materialist, or the scientist, or the philosopher, discover lying upon yonder plain this tenement, void of its tenant, would lie predicate and reason, concerning its cause and history, that it had never tenanted another order of entity than nature's mechan- ics and chemistries ? No, he must agree with all mankind that this form had been tenanted and used by that order of entity which thinks, and feels, and wills, and acts, and loves, and hates, and hopes, and fears, and that desires, and restrains, and limits desire. For there are reasons and principles compelling the be- lief of man that nature has no such secret in her laboratory, no such production known to her laws, her dynamics and chemis- tries. This form of a human body never oozed up out of the ground, but a power above nature — a supernatural power — hath wrought within her chambers, appropriating her laboratory, her alembics, and retorts, and chemicals, and her square and compass, and her ropes and pulleys — a master workman, appropriating her implements and materials to his own ideal aims by the force of his own will, constrainino; her instrumentalities and methods to the production of that which would never come to pass within her domain from her own free internal action.
Matter does not think, matter does not feel. Matter is not self- moving unto predilected forms. The other factor in nat^ire's workings is an entity that thinks and feels, and is self moved, and moves upon and in matter, manipulating it into shapes instrumen- tal of its own ideal aims and ends. This entity is mind, soul, man, daemon, angel, deity. And so man is seen bearing in hand
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to-daj his primeval commission — to siibdue the earth and have dominion over it.
Man is not a material being, nor yet a physical being. Physics and matter are his subordinates, his means, and instruments in time. But from these he subsists not at all. He is a plant of celes- tial genus :
" Onr birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And Cometh from afar.
" Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness. But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God, which is our home.
" Heaven lies about us in our infancy, Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy.
" The yonth who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is nature's priest. And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended.
" At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day."
Man is an entity of the supernatural order. No physical forces or material forms can ever become component of mind, or of men- tal processes. These natures are diverse, and not related in con- tinuous degree. And the lower nature cannot become the higher nature, nor intrude itself into its sphere. Universally, matter is the not-me — the otherness to mind.
Man appropriates the material elements, forces, and forms to the subsistence of his corporeal nature — like to like — and so must nur- ture himself with the knowledges of truth and the participations of good divine. In nature he finds provision for his gymnastics ; in the heavens, provision for his subsistence. And of man there ia a physical body, and there is a spiritual body, and the spiritual body is the true human body, and the natural corporeality is its
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effigj', and only when and where this true body abides, there only can this material Q^2,j be manifest ; and whenever this true, this essential human form takes itself away, then and therefrom its effigy — the material frame — the apparition, must disappear. " I heard this day that none doth build a stately habitation but he tiiat means to dwell therein." And, so long as the tenant abides, the tenement is maintained.
If the man, the supernatural, abide within the material habi- tation for a hundred years, it presents a certain identical form, common to the race and peculiar to the individual, denominated the human form. But let that part of the man that thinks, and feels, and wills, and moves of itself orderly unto rational ends and aims, but depart, and in a day, a month, that material habitation is but a formless mass of rubbish. What was it that demonstrated human form for a hundred years ? Was it the material part that cannot of itself, when constituted, maintain its form for a day ? or does the truth here stand forth, that human form is a predicate of the soul alone, and not in any true sense of the material body of a man ? " Forma mentis eterna." Says an eminent physiologist, the material body is the organ hy which we act upon the material world.
So much appears in the nature and constitution of man con- cerning the supernatural and the natural, the mental and the material, the spiritual body and the natural body. And now of this supernatural, may and ought we to predicate hnowledge — science"? Do we know anything of man's thoughts and opinions, of his reasonings and judgments, of his conscience, his motives, his will, and his passions, and affections, and desires, and deeds ? Do we not know as much at least about them as we do about nature's physics and mechanics and chemistries % Do we not know as much about mind as we do about matter % Says Mr. Stewart : " Of all the truths we know, the existence of mind is the most certain. Even the system of Berkeley concerning the non-existence of matter is far more conceivable than that nothing but matter exists in the universe. To what function of matter can that principle be likened by which we love and fear, and are excited by enthusiasm and elevated by hope, or sunk in despair? "
Then there may be, and should be, and is, a science, a knowing of the supernatural, as well as a science of the natural, and it is a
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science which in the order of the universe underlies and fountains all material science, and it is plainly the original of which the latter is the derivation. This science is, therefore, that true know- inp; of the supernatural and its logical process of manifesting and *' bringing clearly to light the spiritual unity of the vvorld, not as contradictory of the material unity, but as underlying it and being the source from which it depends. And a natural without a supernatural is mere sense without the reason — a kosmos with- out a logos."
And now from this plain of observation let us transfer the view to the planet — the great globe — the habitation of the race, with all its intelligible orders, and their relations with its physical and material economies and sensible forms. And hereof let it be pro- posed, that there is a natural world, and inferentially, that there is a supernatural world, a world of natural substance, and a world of spiritual substance, a world of natural forms, and a world of men- tal or spiritual forms, and that these worlds are correlates, i. e., a natural world cannot exist without a spiritual world, and a spiritual world cannot exist without a natural world, any more than a human body can exist without a man, or a man without a human body.
Of the relations of the intelligible and the sensible worlds, says the Duke of Argyle, " We know of mind only as itself and as nothing else. The difference between it and all other things seems infinite and immeasurable. The difficulty of distinguishing mind and matter arises, in part at least, not from any misconcep- tion as to what mind is (for of this our knowledge is direct), but to a misconception of what matter is, and what the forces are which we call material forces. Close analysis of the phenomena of nature, and of our own ideas in regard to them, has already prepared us to believe that those forces which work in matter? and produce in us the impressions from which we derive our con- ceptions of it, are themselves immaterial, and can be traced run- ning up into a region where they are lost in the light oi mind. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body sanctions and endorses the notion that there is some deep connection be- tween spirit and form which is essential, and which cannot be finally sundered, even in the divorce of death."
And now, in these two correlated worlds oF mind and matter, in the macrocosm as in the microcosmic constitution of man, mind
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moves matter — "mens agitat molem" — mind is the moving cause in matter. As mind moves in nature, matter is moved, and " mens omnibus una," mind through and in all things is OTie and the same. The psychic form is the parent of the physical pro- cesses, and the prototype of the natural body, and without a super- natural there could be no natural form. Were there no life forms in the supernatural sphere, there would be no sensible forms in nature. The supernatural is the sphere of causes, therefore the physical is the sphere of effects. But what are these life forms from which all material shapes are said to depend ?
" Tliere are, indeed, many and wonderful regions in the earth, and it is itself neither of such a kind nor of such a magnitude as is supposed by those who are accustomed to speak of the earth, as I have been persuaded by a certain person." Whereupon Sim- mias said : " How mean you, Socrates ? For I, too, have heard many things about the earth, not, however, those things which have obtained your belief. I would therefore gladly hear them." '' Indeed, Simmias, the art of Glaucus does not seem to me to be required to relate what these things are ; that they are true, how- ever, appears to me more than the art of Glaucus can prove, and besides, I should probably not be able to do it, and, even if I did know how, what remains to me of life, Simmias, seems insufficient for the length of the subject.
"However, the idea of the eai'th, such as I am persuaded it is, and the different regions in it, nothing hinders me from telling. I am persuaded, then," said he, " in the first place, that it is of a spherical form," and, as respects its material aspects: " Yet fur- ther," said he, "that it is immensely great, and that we who in- habit some small portion of it, from the Kiver Phasis to the Pillar of Hercules, dwell abont the sea like ants or frogs about a marsh ; and tliat many others elsewhere dwell in many similar places, for tluit there are everywhere about the earth many low regions of various forms and sizes, into which there is a confluence of water, mist, and air. But that the pure earth (the essential earth itself) is situated in the pure heavens (in which are the stars), and -^hich most persons who are accustomed to speak about such things call ether.
" That we are ignorant, then, that we dwell in its low regions, and imagine that we inhabit the upper parts of the earth, just as
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if any one dwelling in the bottom of the sea should think that he dwelt on the sea, and, beholding the sun and the other stars through the water, should imagine that the sea was the heavens ; but through sloth and weakness should never have reached the sur- face of the sea, nor, having emerged and risen up from the sea to this region, have seen how much more pure and beautiful it is than the place where he is, nor has even heard of it from any one else who has seen it. This, then, is the very condition in which we are ; for, dwelling in the lowest regions of the earth, we think that we dwell above it. But tliis is because, by reason of our weak- ness and sloth, we are unable to reach to the aerial summit. Since, if any one could arrive at this summit, or, becoming winged, could fly up thither, on emerging from hence he would see, just as with us, fishes emerging fi'om the sea — behold what is here — so any one would behold the things there. And, if his nature were able to endure the contemplation, he would know that that is the true heaven, and the true light, and the true earth.'''' . . . And, again : "In that earth all things that grow, grow in a manner propor- tioned to its nature — trees, flowers, and fruits ; and, again, in like manner, its mountains and stones possess in the same proportion smoothness, transparency, and more beautiful colors, of which the well-known stones here that are so highly prized are but the ex- uvise, such as sardin stones, jasper, and emerald, and all of that kind. But there, there is nothing subsists that is not of this char- acter, and even more beautiful than these.
"And that earth is adorned with all these; and, moreover, with gold and silver, and other things of the kind, so that to behold it is a sight for the blessed. Tliere are also many other animals, and men upon it, some dwelling in mid-earth, others about the air as we do about the sea, and others in islands which the air flows around, and, in one word, what water and the sea are to us for our necessities the air is to them, and what air is to us, that ether is to them.
" But their seasons are of such a temperament that they are free from disease, and they surpass us in sight, and hearing, and smell- ing, and everything of this kind, as much as air excels water, and ether air in purity. Moreover, they have abodes, and temples of the gods, in which gods really dwell, and voices, and oracles, and actual visions of the gods, and such like intercourse with them.
Philosophic Outlines. 411
The sun, too, and the moon and stars, are seen by them such as they really are. And their felicity in other respects is corre- spondent with these thinjn^s."
The planet, as the man, has a natural sphere and a supernatural sphere. Its natural sphere is constituted of material forms, and its supernatural sphere is constituted of intelligible forms. There is a world of sensible forms, and there is a world of intelligible forms, and the material world, universally and particularly, de- pends from the supernatural world, and that is a sphere of essen- tial forms, of which nature's forms are the phenomena and effigy. And those essential entities are in the truest sense organic. There are mountains and valleys, and rivers and seas, and precious stones, and gold and silver, and trees, and flowers and fruits, and there are animals, and men and women, and heroes and heroines, and angels and daemons, celestial and infernal ; and that sphere is the supernatural factor of the planet. Abstract it from physics, and nature will as universally collapse and disappear as the ma- terial body of man when his spirit departs from it. Matter has in and of itself no capability and no predilection for moving itself into these shapes of nature.
And are there any other people, any other intelligible order, occupying this planet besides those mortals that are manifest to our senses in this low-down mortal plain ? And do we run the planet ? And do we single-handed and alone keep this ball in motion ? Where, and in what relation to it and to us, may be those whom the many thousands of ages have garnered hence, who like our- selves have trooped through this valley and have passed on? Are they anywhere, and have they any business in it? Do they at all belong to the scheme and movement of the world ? Sings an American poet : " Oh ! I believe, of all those billions of men and women that tilled the unnamed lands, every one exists this hour, here or elsewhere, invisible to us, in exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of what he or she did, felt, be- came loved, sinned in life.
" I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen, world counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world.
" I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much as we belong to it, and as all will henceforth belong to it."
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Let us see what we can see. Either the visible inhabitants of this mortal plain arbitrate and predetermine historic eventualities according to the predilection of the mind and will of man ; or else, on the other hand, the curriculum and processes of history are arbitrated and projected by some higher cause, of whose ends man here is the servant.
One day a nation was born, and angels sat in the council of the Most High, and they commissioned the nation to the high preroga- tive and service of standard-bearer of universal empire, and they fashioned and delivered by the hands of their servants this stone, to be made the head of the corner : " The Creator has endowed all men with certain unalienable rights (rights that may not there- fore be alienated by the hand of man), among which are life, lib- erty, and the pursuit of happiness." The years passed by and the nation forgot. And in its oblivion it dreamed and said : We run the planet, we are the builders, and we like not, and we reject this old corner-stone. This is a mere " o-litteringgeneralitv," "a mere rhetorical flourish." This, rather, shall be the head of the corner : ^' The black man has no rights which the white man is bound to respect."
And behold ! At midnight, in the night when the nation slept this sleep, and dreamt this vain dream, there appeared in the hori- zon a sign and a wonder, appearing at first no bigger than the hand of a man. John Brown appeared in Harper's Ferry with a dozen and a half of comrades, all unarmed. In the measures of human estimation, this was a most insignificant transaction. He was adjudged guilty of insurrection and revolt and rebellion against the laws and governments of the States and of the IS'ation, and they took him and they hung him. And this was deemed, and in all ordinary instances would have proved, a settler of the business ; and, overladen with dishonor and shame, his name should have become a reproach and a hissing through tiie land. And yet nothing of this consequence happened. From the hour of his ex- ecution the repose of the nation ceased. The earth shook from Maine to Florida, and from JS^ew York to San Francisco. His name entered the rostrum, and the press, and the pulpit, and the ballot-box, and was heard on every tongue. One part of the nation agreed he was a malefactor ; the other part agreed he was infatuate ; for even his friends admitted it to be quite inutile and
Philosophic Outlines. 413
incredible, therefore, tliat a man in his senses should lay down his life for B, principle.
But what is the reason the nation could not sleep any more from that day to this ? Let us see what we can see. This little drama of Harper's Ferry is a drama of three acts.
First Act: Proclamation of a national revolution having for its end the equality of all men before the law — the very unveiling of that old corner-stone which the builders had rejected.
Second Act: This revolution to be effected by force of arms, and not by moral suasions, as many quacks had said and sung.
Third Act: These arms to be the arms of the National Gov- ernment, and not the arms of agitators and desperadoes, as the many shrieked and feared.
These were precisely the three most heinous heresies in the category of the national execrations — precisely the measures this nation had not even the firstlings of, neither in heart nor in mind, neither will nor hand, to do. And so tlie nation affirmed, with one accord, we will not. And so Mr. Lincoln, the true mouth- piece of the nation's mind, proclaimed, from time to time. We make no war with the peculiar institution of the States. All we ask is your allegiance — the Union as it was, and the Constitution as it is. And for which boon we proffer, as oar part of the bar- gain, to submit to the last disgrace and humiliation — the use of our patriot soldiery to capture fugitive slaves and return them to their bellisrerent masters. And so we warred with Bull Eun disasters, and Manassas' contemptuous defiance and counterfeit campaigns, and Chickahominy graveyards, as the fruits of our arms. And we offered a bonus for an antiiem to celebrate and inspire our cause, and there were hundreds of unrewarded com- petitors for the prize, when at last the earth was caused to open her mouth, and a song was put into her mouth : "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground, but his soul is marching on." And from a hundred fields of battle the cannon echoed and the mountains and hills reverberated, and the rivers and the fountains and the valleys chanted "" John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground, but his soul is marching on." And Vicksburg fell, and Richmond fell, and the chains fell from off the limbs of mil- lions of slaves, and the oligarchic confederacy collapsed as a bub- ble. And now mark. From the day of John Brown's entrance
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into Harper's Ferry to this day, this great nation, with all its civil and military resources, has been devoted to the one business — the enactment of the drama epitomized in that event — prosecuting a revohition having for its end the equality of all men before the law. And this by force of arms, and by the arms of the Federal Government — and, mark well, not because this nation had the mind to do it, or the will to do it, as was before said, but because some power above took it by the nape of the neck and put it right along, of necessity, to this business, which was framed and delivered into its hands from the councils of the Eternal.
Yerily, the visible inhabitants of this planet do not run the planet. They do not predilect and arbitrate the social destinies and the temporal eventualities of history. These all have their parentage in the unseen powers, and here is manifest the super- natural facto?' in the history of the state.
And now, furthermore and finally, each and every generation of mind, constituting the great measures of history, has its foun- tain and form in its idea of divinity. And this is contained in a special incarnation and its dispensation. And from this idea and fountain all their distinctive social institutions of Church and State, their sciences, and arts, and laws, and manners and customs have their type and determination.
Divinity epitomizes unto man its own nature, through the mir- acle of the incarnation, which is called the manifestation of Deity. And this is the seed of the succeeding mental generation, and essential history is ever a stream flowing from this fountain, and is not a mere social and successive order of temporal eventualities. And of these fountains of social genesis and history, Kreeshna, and Zoroaster, and Osiris, and Apollo, and Odin are examples. These are historic instances and forms of the Name given under the Heaven whereby mankind is lighted and lifted up.
The divine mediatorship is a univei'sal. Neither the origin nor the subsistence of the order of human souls, in this alien order of physical nature, is effected without this. And therefore, so long as the race of man exists on this sublunary abode, so long and so perpetually must have been and must still be exercised this mediatorial function.
Myth is the idiom of mysticism — the very technique of discourse of subjects of the supernatural order, and a universal element in
PhilosojpJiic Outlines. 415
history. And it never is nor was the inane drivel and childish babble of a puerile age. But mystic habiliment is the native in- vesture of mystic subject — of true entity. And k true mythology — a science of myth — will discover in this mythic inco/rnate medi- atorship^ of all the generations of earth, the very connective link, the very pneumogastric nerve, between the supernatural and the natural orders, without which the natural order has no possible subsistence.
Said Kreeshna to a very ancient discipleship : " I am the Lord of all created beings, having command over my own nature. I am made evident by my own power; and as often as there is a decline of virtue, and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world, I make myself evident ; and thus I appear from age to age for the destruction of wickedness, for the preservation of justice, and for the establishment of virtue."
In Egypt, one day. Ostitis was born, and a voice came into the world with him, saying, " The Lord of all things is now born." And the Temple of Ammon reechoed with a loud voice, " Osiris, the great and good king, is now born." And he drew mankind by laws, and arts, and worship, from a beggarly and beastly life. He was the manifestation of divine love and wisdom unto men ; he was betrayed and put to death by the malice of the evil one; he was buried and rose again ; he went into the world of the good daemons, whence he was the helper of his discipleship on earth, and was the judge of the dead. He finally ascended back to the sphere of the gods from which he came out.
One day, in the Friendly Isle, Apollo was born. Earth smiled, and the goddesses shouted aloud for joy. His food was the nectar and ambrosia of the gods. He announced his mission to be, " To declare to men the will of Jove." He walked upon the ground, and it became covered with golden flowers ; he was the god of the arts of use and beauty; he was the power of healing, and so vanquished the great earth-serpent — bestial sense in the souls of men. He built the temple again among men, and as a blazing star descended into it, and abode in it. He was exalted unto the heavens. Thence he was the oracle and the prophet, and he was the shepherd and the physician, and he was the lawgiver and the king of men, and
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" To him all Nature's tribes their difference owe, And changing seasons from his music flow; Since to his care the figured seal's consigned, Which stamps the world with forms of every kind."
And, says Plato : " There remaineth to hirn — the Delphian Apollo — the greatest, noblest, and most important social institutions — the erection of temples, sacrifices, and other services of the gods, and likewise the rites of the dead. Such things as these, indeed, we neither know ourselves, nor, in founding the State, would we intrust them to any other, if we be wise; nor would we employ any other interpreter than that of the country, for surely this god, being the natural interpreter to all men about such matters, he in- terprets to them sitting in the middle, and, as it were, navel of the earth ; " the divine mediator to that generation between God and man.
One time Odin came down out of Asagard — the home and city of the gods. He vanquished the enmity of earth ; he led man- kind from barbaric unto rural and civic arts, and to conquest in the battle of life; he established in the mind of man two king- doms— manheim and godheim — the principles and powers of the kingdoms of nature and of the supernatural. He ascended into godheim, whence he often manifested himself to his friends, whom he inspired and led to victory in their earthly conflicts and strng- gles. He finally disappeared from godheim and went back to Asao-ard, from which he came out.
One day, not long ago, a child was born in Bethlehem of Ju- dea, and they called his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, " God with us" And behold ! there came wise men from the East, saying, " Where is he that is born king of the Jews, for we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him ?" And when they saw the star, that it stood over the child, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. He announced that he came down from heaven to declare the counsels, and to do the will of his Father, that he might enlighten and raise up the race of mor- tal mould. He organized a terrestrial order of apostles and dis- ciples. " He was crucified, dead, and buried ; he descended into Hades ; the third day he rose from the dead ; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God, the Father Al- mighty. From thence he judgeth the living and the dead." And
Philosoj)hic Outlines. 417
he leadetli and helpeth this generation unto all victory and acliieveineut.
And so in Kreeslma, and Zoroaster, and Osiris, and Apollo, and Odin, and Jesns Christ, was the Logos that illuminates the world and lighteth every man that cometh into the world. And so the annals of all the generations — from China and India, through Persia, and Chaldea, and Egypt, and Greece, and Scan- dinavia, and Christendom — their religions, their sciences, their arts, their philosophy, their architecture, their poesy, their music, their painting, their sculpture — all of every age — establish their hy- parxis in the mythic fountains, in the incarnations and oracles of the dispensation.
Says Mr. Emerson : " 'Tis certain that worship stands in some commanding relation to the health of man, and to his highest powers, so as to be in some manner the source of intellect. All the great ages have been ages of belief — I mean when there was any extraordinary power of performance, when great national movements began, when arts appeared, when heroes existed, when poems were made, the human soul was in earnest, and had fixed its thonghts on spiritual verities., with as strict a grasp as that of the hands on the sword, or the pencil, or the trowel."
In Scripture dialect, Jesus was the son of a carpenter — he was the young mechanic. This foretokens and portends a mechanical generation ; mind in the science and use of the mechanical powers. I met one day a college friend who had resided in India a quarter of a century. We were recounting together the marvellous achieve- ments in Christian mechanics during that period. As an instance I related the event of the then past year ; how that, when the great continental belt, the Pacific Railroad, was consummated in the interior of the continent, the strokes of the hammer that drove the last nail were heard in the great cities of the two seaboards ! " Yes," said he, " and we heard it in Bombay." And no greater miracle did any historic faith of the world ever work by the hand of man. And in the late World's Exposition it is noteworthy that the unprecedented and unparalleled mechanical invention and construction characterized exclusively the Christian nations. Let us briefly advert to the fountain, and see what we can see.
One day, when he was come nigh to Jerusalem, Jesus sent two of his disciples to a place where they should find an ass tied, XIY— 2Y
418 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
whereon never man sat, saying to them, Loose him and bring him to me, and, if any man say anght, tell him the master hath need of him. And they brought the ass, and they spread garments upon him, and Jesus sat upon him. And they cast their garments and the branches of the trees in the way, and the multitudes that went before, and they that followed, cried, "Hosanna! blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord ! Hosanna in the highest ! "
And it came to pass in the processes of the Christian generations, as they neared the ends and fulfilments of the dispensation, that certain two discipleships, Religious Faith and Natural Science^ were sent forth in the earth by the Master to the region where the mechanical earth powers were hitherto tied up — a beast of work whereon never man sat. And they loosed these earth forces, and they have brought them unto the service of the Master in his kingdom of a Christian manhood. And behold ! the fire and the water and the lightning and the light obey and become organic and serving entities. And now the Christian man bids these pow- ers move his machinery, grind and prepare his food, and spin and weave his raiment, and print and carry his thought, and scatter the seeds of universal education and religion and freedom through- out the habitations of men — and they do it ! He builds him a huge palace upon the waters, fills it with tons of notions, and bids the water and the fire move it to this point and to that, through a continent, across seas and vast oceans — and they do it ! And when Nature's road is out of the way, he mounts his servant upor wheels, and again, at the nod of his master, away he darts with huo-e burdens, taken from the backs of beasts and men, across mountain, plain, and river, woodland and prairie, with scarce no- tice to the buffalo and the wild man to clear the track.
But again, he wants a more fleet messenger, to go on errands ; and he calls down the lightning of heaven, bids it go, exchange thought and sympathy, and carry tidings between the ends of the earth — and it does it !
But the steam factory and the steamboat and the steamship and the steam-car and the steam-press and the telegraph and the pho- tograph and the world expositions, however wonderful as facts, as results, are lost to the view in their ominous significance of the eternal appearing and operation of the supernatural powers, through
Philosophic Outlines. 419
the instrumentality of the lowest principles of nature. And that the eternal Son of God again descended into our world is a cause whose effects must follow, a prophecy which the characteristic events of this present age are explaining. Behold ! what manner of man is his discipleship of this day, that even the water and the fire and the light and the lightning obey and serve him? And as his dialectic vision shall be further opened toward the supernatu- ral, and his scientific intelligence more opened toward nature, who may dream or guess what and how many servants in Nature's realm yet wait the bidding of this young master ? Already, in- deed, upon the instrumentality of organized science, that "colt whereon never man sat before," the discipleship of this generation is realizing a triumphal procession into its Jerusalem of marvellous fulfilments.
Hear the summary, as condensed in the comprehension of the Great Napoleon. Said he: "I know men, and I tell you that Jesus is not a man. The religion of Christ is a mystery which subsists by its own force, and proceeds from a mind which is not a human mind. We find in it a marked individuality, which orig- inated a train of words and maxims and events distinctively its own. Jesus borrowed nothing from our knowledge. He exhibited in himself a perfect example of his precepts. Jesus is not a phi- losopher ; his proofs are miracles and he came into the world to reveal the mysteries of heaven and the laws of the spirit. Alex- ander, Csesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires ; but upon what did we rest the creations of our genius 'i Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love. And at this hour millions of men would die for him.
" It was not a day or a battle which achieved the triumph of his cause in the world. No. It was a long war, a contest of centu- ries, begun by the apostles, and then continued by the floods of Christian generations. In this war, all the kings and potentates of the earth were on one side. On the other, I see no ariny, but a mysterious force — some men, scattered here and there in all parts of the world, and who have no other rallying point than one com- mon faith in the mysteries of the cross. I die before my time, and my body will be given back to the earth, to become the food for worms. Such is the fate of him who has been called the great Napoleon. What an abyss between my deep miseries and the
420 The Journal of Sjpeculative Philosophy.
eternal kingdom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, and adored, and which is extending over the whole earth. Call you this dy- ing ? Is it not living, rather ? "
No; the divinity of this dispensation is not dead. And it is precisely because this divinity, who now sitteth aloft, delivered aforetime the curriculum of this generation, and, as Prophet, Priest, and King leads from on high this mortal race unto its fulfilments, that they that have an eye to see may see, exalted in the heaven, the God of the faith and the God of the country ; and not a vola- tile thing of sense or imagination, but a presence manifesting it- self in the forms of social thought and deed. Over religion, philos- ophy, politics, science, art, broods a mighty world-spirit whose name is Christian. And there is to be seen, visible in all terres- trial things — not in this nor in that ism— not in this nor in that carcass where the eagles are gathered together — but in the diffusion of a distinctive increment of heat and light into the universal mind, manifest as the lightning that shineth out of the East even unto the West — there is to be seen, by those that have the goodly prospect, establishing itself through the lapse of the centuries, upon the ves- tiges of the former times and taiths, an invincible empire, united, homogeneous, and all-powerful to fulfil its destinies and its im- pulses, embracing within its broad arms the men of ever}- nation, creed, and clime. And all the combined hosts of earth, hierarchs, and autocrats, and sham democracies cannot move a printing- press, or construct a railroad, or plant a telegraph post, or stir the deep waters of the public mind, or lash its shoals into commotion, except as the servants and instruments of this empire. Here is manifest the supernatural factor in the Church, The God of the dispensation rules, and therefore men may work and trust.
And this factor is a universal in history. There never was a human country without a god. There never was a historic faith that wrought miracles in the earth by the hand of man without a god, Man does not previde ; man does not provide. Man does not frame and project the curricula of the terrestrial generations ; man does not arbitrate the social destinies of the race. Therefore it still gets truly said that the idea of divinity threads and unifies the annals of universal history.
N(jtes and Discussions. 421
NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL ELEMENT IN SHELLEY.
BY GEOEGE 8PEN0EE BOWER.
The century in which we live has, according to Mr. Freeman, originated a fresh instrument of research, a new point of departure for the acquisition of knowledge, a sort of third Eenaissance of the human intellect. This instrument he believes to exist in the Com- parative Method as applied to different branches of inquiry. We see now, to a greater extent than formerly, that the principles of law, religion, politics, art, or philosophy, characteristic of a given people in a given age, are not final, but must be collated with those existing in other countries at the same epoch, or those existing at other epochs in the same country, if we would determine the grand ele- ments of truth which underlie the various modes of its manifesta- tion, and disengage the central mass of what is rational and eternal from the outlying margin of the merely temporary and conventional.
Another tendency of mind, necessarily related to the above and proceeding on parallel lines with it, is the tendency to regard the genius of a great man in connection with precedent conditions and the past history of human endeavor, as well as in its isolation and heaven-derived strength ; to see how such men are, in a manner, necessitated by the previous progress of humanity toward the attain- ment and realization of truth ; and in what sense they mark a step forward on the well-beaten road. And not only so, but the minds of such men are considered also in their relation to contemporary influences, and are thus recognized as being intricate and complex totalities, with many other elements entering into their composition than the particular ones assigned to them in each case by popular opinion and speech, which, as it necessarily cannot spend time over a multitude of names, labels them once for all poetic, philosophic, critical, or statesmanlike, and has done with it. We see a great spirit as it is constituted by the delicate balance and interdependence of several different faculties, each with its bearing on the others, and each, moreover, having its point of contact with corresponding
422 The Journal of Sjpeculative Philosophy.
spheres of contemporary intellectual actiyity. A really transcendent genius, of whatever cast, cannot — except for purposes of convenience and brevity of expression — be enclosed within a stereotyped category, or characterized in terms of a stereotyped definition. Words must expand themselves beyond such limits if they are to become adequate to the elasticity of the mind whose inmost workings they wish to expound — if they are to satisfy the demands of philosophical accuracy and completeness. Can we understand Plato or Bacon by calling them philosophers ? Shakespeare, Dante, or Goethe by calling them poets ? Were not the former — though from different standpoints — as much poets as philosophers, and the latter — also from different standpoints — as much philosophers as poets ? ' Such spirits as these are complicated organisms, and must be judged as such. To dissect their wholeness, to disturb the existing harmony of parts and corre- lation of faculties — still more, to sever one faculty from its organic connection with the rest, and to describe it as being the life itself — this is to deprive these spirits, in our attempted explanation of them, of all that which makes them what they are.
In the productions of a really great mind there exist implicit many other elements than those which have procured for that mind its special designation in popular speech — elements which it is the task of criticism to render explicit. The true Master-spirit, the Finished Scholar, as Fichte would call him (meaning by the term a good deal more than is ordinarily meant), is one who exhibits — must, by the nature of him, exhibit — not only knowledge, but also Love of Wisdom ; and not only Love of Wisdom, but also Power of Making ; who is always, in fact, Man of Science, Philosopher, and Poet in one — and this by whatever distinctive appellation he may be known to the world. And thus it is that in any poetry which deserves the name — and such all would consider Shelley's to be — it is not unrea- sonable, and may perhaps be instructive, to seek out evidences of the more strictly speculative and philosophical side of its author's genius.
1 Wr. Masson, in his " Essay on Shakespeare and Goethe " (" English Poets," pp. 1-3V), brings out the deeply philosophical element in the mind of the former. He says on p. 13, after objecting to such phrases as " William the Calm," "WiUiam the Cheer- ful," etc., when regarded as expressing the whole or even any considerable part of Shakespeare's mind, " If we were to select that designation which would, as we think, express Shakespeare in his most intimate and private relations to man and nature, we ehould rather say William the Meditative, William the Metaphysical, or WilUam the Melancholy." See the whole essay.
Notes and Discussions. 423
It is, indeed, sometimes objected that it is wrong and ridicvilous to expect philosophical doctrine, moralizing rhetoric, or didactic purposes from poetry or productions of art. It is urged that the poet or the artist ought simply to interpret and combine and add coloring to whatsoever inward emotions and sympathies and enthusi- asms of mind come within the range of his experience, or that of liis country and age ; or to translate tlie phenomena of outward Nature as affecting mind : and, in either case, to idealize and unify tlie otherwise chaotic fragments around him with sole reference to the beautiful, the simple, or the harmonious as standards ; and that, therefore, it is not his province to strike attitudes as a pedagogue, or a dogmatizer, a preacher, or for the good of society. As Shelley himself says, in" Peter Bell the Third" —
" their station, Is to delight, not pose."
Such is the principle on which Mr. Austin vigorously insists in an essay which appeared a few months ago in the "Contemporary Eeview." The principle itself is perfectly sound, and is approved by such excellent critics as Goethe ' and De Quincey ; but when Mr. Austin goes on to found on that principle his objection to all at- tempts— such as that of Mr. Stopford Brooke, whom he selects for special condemnation — to find in poetic works and unearth there- from latent elements of theology, philosophy, or morals, he appears to me to be confusing two separate things. Poetry must not con- sciously strive to make itself useful, to give pleasure, to produce moral effects, or to inculcate definite views on questions of meta- physics— all this is outside the proper aim and intention of the poet. So much is quite true ; but surely it is not to be denied that all the above are (unintended, no doubt, but none the less actual) results of the poetical, as of most other forms of composition ; though none would wish the author of such poetry to distort himself, and tran- scend his legitimate sphere, in the conscious endeavor to realize these results. So that neither is Mr. Stopford Brooke to be blamed for finding theology in Wordsworth, nor Conington for extracting the idea of the "Glorification of Labor" from Virgil's "Georgics," nor Plato for seeing moral lessons in Homer, and denouncing them, moreover, as bad moral lessons, nor, lastly — to come down t© our
' The reader will remember a fine passage in " Wilhelm Meister," where he protests agaiust the " lightly moving, all-conceiving spirit of the poet " being chained to a ken- nel, like a house-dog, or made to plough, like an ox.
424 . The Jouymal of Speculative Philosophy.
present subject — is it unreasonable or extravagant to attempt to evolve from Shelley's works those philosophical principles, which it would have been ridiculous in him to have consciously endeavored to inculcate by their means ; just as it would have been ridiculous in Wordsworth, Virgil, or Homer to have proposed to themselves, as their several objects, the writing of treatises on divinity, farming, and ethics respectively.'
But, apart from this necessity in criticism of studying a great mind in all its aspects, and in all its relations to the various objects of thought, I would further claim consideration for my subject by drawing attention more particularly to the specially close relation- ship and mutual implication of Poetry and Philosophy, and to the many intellectual features which they possess in common. The " old quarrel " between the two no longer exists. Men see now, as they did not see in Plato's time, that the one is to a great extent in- volved in the other ; that while Poetry reposes very frequently on — if not developed, at all events, inchoate — principles of philosophy, Philosophy, on the other side, when of a constructive and not a merely negative and skeptical character, breathes aspirations which fairly entitle her, in some of her moods, to enter the legitimate do- main of TToiTjaig or Creation. It is the object of both to pierce be- neath and behind the outward veil — the " schein " — of the phenom- enal world to the inwardness and reality of things ; or, if the less sombre of the twin sisters loves to linger awhile and hold converse with Nature in the outer courts of the temple, and on the lowest flights of steps, it is only because she knows that these are in truth nothing but encircling courts and ascending steps, and that she must mount upward and onward through the shrine, which is redo- lent of a far deeper and more spiritual incense than they, to the altar itself of Ideal Beauty. She uses Nature's forms merely as the firm setting — the solid background — to the airy phantasms of her own conjuring. Philosophy endeavors to draw by main force. Poetry to lure by her enticements, the Earth-spirit from behind her lovely but (in itself) illegible vesture of Space, and the Spirit of the Time from behind the dial-face of recorded history ; but both are products of a common root. Each is ever whisj)ering to herself, half in tremulous awe, and half in tumultous rapture, that now at length —
6 x^V^fi-^Q ovket' ek KaXv/Lt/idruv earai SedopK^a^
' Shelley himself frequently expresses his horror of consciously didactic poetry. See especially his preface to the " Prom. Unbound," vol. I., p. 26*7, ed. Mrs. Shelley ; also, " Defence of Poetry," p. 18.
Notes and Discussions. 425
and that the secret of the universe will be laid open to view. Each (as regards the history both of the race and the individual) is born of wonder, of reverence toward the boundless expanse of the world around us, and the bottomless profundity of the world within us. They act alternately as vehicles for expressing one another. The poet is often, perhaps without being specially conscious of it, work- ing ou.t the severest problems of morals and metaphysics ; the meta- physician, in his desperate endeavors to break down the barrier which divides him from the sanctuary of Truth, often uses language which kindles — cannot but kindle — into the ruddy flame of imagina- tive inspiration, and employs himself on ideas which finally land him in a region far beyond that where the mere discursive exercise of the understanding would be of any avail.*
Hence only is it that we can explain the significance and true value of the well-known " intellectual midwifery " practised by Soc- rates. He saw men burning with thought which could not find vent in the channels of ordinary language. Now, if the subject of such philosophic emotion happened to be a man of lively genius, a Plato, for instance, he solved the difficulty by finding an extraordi- nary language, burst forth into ecstatic song, and became, in fact, a mystic — I use the word in no bad sense — and a poet. The ordinary souls, however, felt what they could not put into words — they were vexed with " the pain of a great idea ; " and it was for this malady of thought that Socrates offered his services. The gifted spirits did not need them ; but it was this blind yearning in the commoner in- tellects of essentially poetic impulses, without the means of poetic expression, which the great psychological doctor pitied and sought to alleviate. In both these orders of mind, however, honestly and earnestly grappling with philosophical problems, arises that creative longing (incipient, indeed, in the one class, and only fully devel- oped and self-conscious in the other, but equally existing in both), which is usually considered proper to poetry alone as distinct from philosophy. In reality, however, both Poetry and Philosophy are aspirations toward the Infinite through the Finite, toward the Meta- physical (Behind- or Beyond-the-Physical) through the Physical, toward the Supernatural through the Natural. Plato's description of the philosophic life — 6fj,olo)aig tw Oem — will also apply to that of the true poet. He, as much as the philosopher, seeks the general in the parti 3ular, the spiritual in the material, the ideal in the reality,
1 On this see a fine passage in ShelleyN " Defence of Poetry," pp. 11, 12; also p. 55.
426 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
the permanent in the variable and evanescent. Both abjure the accidents and specialities of life, or, so far as they come in contact with them, employ them not so much for their own sakes as in the way of incarnations, symbols, or illustrative examples of what is neither special nor accidental.
These considerations may suffice by way of reply to a not impos- sible question of the reader's on seeing the heading of this essay : "What have Poetry and Philosophy to do with one another ? " Dis- missing, however, for the present the general question of the close kinship and constant interaction existing between these two great forms of intellectual movement, we have, as to the present subject of inquiry, independent evidence that Shelley's mental habits and tastes led him originally in the direction of metaphysical study quite as much as in that of poetry. As to the question of fact, it will be sufficient to quote the following distinct statement of Mrs. Shelley, who says (in the preface to vol. I. of the '' Essays, Letters from Abroad, Prose Fragments, etc."), alluding to the detached thoughts on metaphysical questions contained in that collection : —
" The fragments of metaphysics will be highly prized by a meta- physician. Such a one is aware how difficult it is to strip bare the internal nature of man, to divest it of prejudice, of the mistakes engendered by familiarity, and by language, which has become one with certain ideas, and those very ideas erroneous." (The above remark, by the way, illustrates our position that the poet and the philosopher are, at least, supplementary the one to the other. The latter gives us the eternal properties of thought disengaged from adventitious accretions ; the former holds up to our view the embod- ied energies of pure passion disenthralled from qualification by trivi- ality and custom.) "Had not Shelley deserted metaphysics for poetry in his youth, and had he not been lost to us early, so that all his vaster projects were wrecked with him in the waves, he would have presented the world with a complete theory of mind ; a theory to which Berkeley, Coleridge, and Kant ' would have contributed \
• Is there any evidence of Shelley's having studied Kant in the original, or of his having become seriously acquainted with his doctrines through Coleridge ? The above words almost seem to imply, but do not necessarily imply, that he had done one or the other. He first refers to Kant in " Peter Bell the Third : " " The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair, For Born's translation of Kant's book ; A world of words, tail foremost, Where "... etc. There are no traces, however, of a Kantian influence in his po- etical writings. Indeed, it is antecedently improbable, as I shall endeavor to point out that a mind constituted as Shelley's was, could have had any sympathy with the dualistic attitude of Kant.
Notes and Discussions. 427
but more simple, inexpugnable, and entire than the systems of these writers. . . . These intense meditations on his own nature thrilled him with pain. Thought kindled imagination . . . etc."
In these last words we see how his philosophy merged in his poetry, yet without being lost or swallowed up in it ; in fact, it was this oneness of his ratiocinative thought and his creative fancy, which combined to produce that peculiar intellectual quality which stands out so conspicuously in his life, and his life's work —
" in alto intelleto un puro core, Frotto senile in sol giovenil flore; E in aspetto pensoso, aninia lieta."
The fact of his philosophical tastes being thus beyond all question, let us now consider the particular direction which these tastes took. Every philosopher, it has been said, is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. We may perhaps exj^ress the distinction more appro- priately in modern phraseology, if we say that every man is either a believer in some one of the diSerent forms assumed by dualism, the system, that is, which divides existence (using that form in its widest possible signification) into two separate worlds of nature and of spirit, of outward and of inward, of objects and of ideas, and sets these two worlds over against one another as alien and irreconcil- able, and not mutually commutable or expressible, the one in terms of the other ; or else he holds to the reduction of all kinds of exist- ence, both in the sensible and the intelligible universe, to some one element, whether that element be thought, which chokes itself with matter, or matter which gives the "promise and potency" of thought ; that is, he gives in his adherence to monism in one or other of its shapes. It was ably pointed out in an article on Kant's philosophy, which appeared in the June number of "Macmillan's Magazine," that it is generally the practical and analytical mind which devotes itself to the former type, while the creative, imagina- tive, synthetic orders of intellect usually take up enthusiastically with the latter. It is obvious which system Shelley, the most deli- cately imaginative of all imaginative poets, jnust have made his own, if he was not to abdicate every prerogative, and mutilate every char- acteristic feature of his genius. He never could have believed in any form of dualism. It is almost equally obvious that, of the two kinds of monism alluded to above, he must ultimately have adopted that which conceives mind as always prior to nature, as constructing its own world, and as finding itself, and itself only, in material phe-
428 The Journal of Sjyeculative Philosojphy.
nomena. I say "ultimately," because Shelley did, as will be seen, find a temporary resting-place in materialism, but, as might be sup- posed, did not derive satisfaction from it for more than a very brief period. But the two forms of monism were the two opinions be- tween which he for a moment halted : he never doubted as to the relative merits of monism itself and dualism. He gives dramatic expression in a magnificent passage in the " Hellas " to the conflict between dualism and common sense, on the one hand, in the person of Mahmud, and monism and inspiration, on the other, as repre- sented by Ahasuerus, in a manner which leaves little doubt as to the side on which he himself stood. The passage is, perhaps, in all his works, the most purely philosophical in language, and at the same time directly expressive of the particular views on such questions which he always held in the maturity of his powers. On both grounds it is well worthy of being quoted in full : —
Mahmud. Thou art an adept in the diiferent lore Of Greek and Frank philosophy. . . .
Thy spirit is present in the past, and sees The birth of this old world in all its cycles Of desolation and of loveline"S3 ; And when man was not, and how man became The monarch and the slave of this low sphere, And all its narrow circles — it is much, I honor thee, and would be what thou art Were I not what I am ; ... . Ahasuerus. Sultan ! talk no more
Of thee and me, the future and the past ; But look on that which cannot change — the One, The unborn, and the undying. Earth and ocean. Space, and the isles of life or light that gem The sapphire floods of interstellar air. The firmament pavillioned on Chaos, With all its cressets of immortal tire. Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably Against tlie escape of boldest thoughts, repels them As Calpe the Atlantic clouds — this Whole Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers, With all the silent and tempestuous workings By which they have been, are, or cease to be, Is but a vision ; all that it inherits Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles, and dreams; Thought is its cradle, and its grave, nor less
Notes and Discussions. 429
The future and the past are idle shadows
Of thought's eternal flight ' — they have no being ;
Naught is but that it feels itself to be.
Mahmud. What meanest thou ? thy words stream like a tempest i Of dazzling mist within my brain — they shake
^The earth on which I stand, and hang like night
On heaven above me. What can they avail ?
They cast on all things, surest, brightest, best,
Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.
Ahasuerus. Mistake me not! All is contained in each. Dodona's forest to an acorn's cup Is that which has been, or will be, to that Which is — the absent to the present. Thought Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion, Reason, Imagination, cannot die ; They are what that which they regard appears, The stuff whence mutability can weave All that it hath dominion o'er — worlds, worms. Empires, and superstitions. What has thought To do with time, or place, or circumstance?
In this splendid rliapsody, this hymnic glorification of the might and majesty of creative thought, we have Shelley's quasi-formal ex- position of the poetic side of the philosophy which claimed his al- legiance, namely, idealism ; we have the reasoned tenets of Berkeley, clothed, not in syllogisms, but in language " transmuted by the secret alchemy" of inspiration to such "potable gold" as flows fresh from the inmost depths of Plato's eagle spirit — such words as burn with ruder glare and less restrained vigor in Neo-Platonic mysticism — such figures as gleam for us once more out of darkness in that des- perate struggle of abstract thought to find an opening for itself from out of the cavern of common speech in which it is enchained, and to turn the ''idola" of its prison into its vehicles and instruments, which characterizes the efforts of a Fichte, a Hegel, or a Coleridge. The indirect influence of Shelley's metaphysics on the general tone of his productions will be considered below ; meanwhile, for their direct manifestation and exposition, could we desire anything finer ?
' Shelley constantly insists on the eternity of Thought in his poetry : cp. in the same drama ; —
" Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity."
(Vol. II., p. 153, of Mrs. Shelley's edition.)
430 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
Could Plato himself have chanted a nobler poean to the eternal idea of the good, or to the imperishable and all-pervading energy of reason and her children ?
There can be no doubt, then, of Shelley's rejection of dualism, of which step, indeed — besides that we might almost conclude on a priori grounds that it would have been an absolutely ,necessary one for a man of his intellectual calibre — we have evidence enough not only in the above passage, but also in other plain declarations scattered throughout his prose works. He speaks, for instance, in the short fragment " On Life " (" Essays, Letters from Abroad, etc.," ed. Mrs. Shelley, vol. I., page 225), of "the shocking absurdities of the popular philosophy of mind and matter, its fatal consequences in morals, and their violent dogmatism concerning the source of all things," where it is plain from the context that he is alluding to the common-sense or dualistic theory of the universe. Nor does an ex- amination of the subtler tones and influences in his poetry lead us to suppose that he ever entertained for a moment a belief in the sepa- rate action of matter and mind as independent co-factors in the building up of the intelligible world.
But though Shelley's consistent rejection of Dualism is beyond question, as also is his equally consistent adoption of Monism, in some form or other, through all periods of his literary career ; when we come to ask which of the two main forms of the latter it was that he accepted, here the case is different, and we find that his attitude is not always the same.
Shelley began by believing in Materialism. This, however, was only a temporary stage ; and, even while he did hold the tenets of that system, he held them in such a way, and with such qualifica- tions, as to show that his real bent was towards Immaterial sm, or Intellectualism, his passage to which was not long in being brought about. Materialism, I have said, could not hold a man of Shelley's vivid imagination in bondage for long. We may distinguish two main types of it, a lower and a higher, each of which Shelley aban- doned in turn, beginning at the lower, or French type, which pro- duced no influence on his poetry. The other kind — the Baconian — left its mark on " Queen Mab,"and other very early pieces. With regard to the former — the crude realism of Condorcet, D'Alembert, Diderot, and other analysts of the French Revolution — Mrs. Shelley says, in her "Editor's Notes to 'Queen Mab :'" "His readings were not always well chosen" {sc, about 1810); "among them were the works of the French philosophers. As far as metaphysical argument
Notes and Discussions. 431
went, he temporarily became a convert." This lasted but for a very- short time. It is evident that such almost brutal realism, if once seriously believed in, would, whatever else it might do, kill poetry outright. It was this chemical analysis "usque ad atomiim," this dissection of nature's unity, this spirit which revels in the slavish task of grinding the most ethereal beauty into elemental dust grains indistinguishable from one another, and
" Viewing all objects UBremittino-ly t. In disannexion, dead and spiritless, And still dividing, and dividing still, Breaks down all grandeur" —
which has excited the heartfelt abhorrence, in different times and countries, alike of Wordsworth, of Coleridge, of Keats, of Schiller, of Carlyle, of Plato,' and of all true poets. Any one who could imagine Shelley in his poetic character seriously accepting the princi- jDles and procedure of a Condorcet or Helvetius, could picture to him- self Hobbes or Gassendi wi'iting lyric odes.
Enough, then, of this philoso})hy. Its bestial unsightliness could never have been allied with " The Witch Poesy ; " and though, in the notes to "Queen Mab," Shelley makes profuse quotations from Bailly's "Lettres sur les Sciences 4 Voltaire," Cabanis's "Eapports du Physique et du Moral de I'Homme," and Baron d'Holbach's *' Systeme de la Nature " (of which last, indeed, he had at one time projected a translation), and works of a similar character ; yet the poem itself, immature as it was, presented beauties which far tran- scended the sphere of the exercise of the French scalpel, and indeed must have done so, if it was to be a poem at all. A man, we say, is often better than his theories ; and it is clear in this case that the poet was better than his annotations ; though even in one of his notes he writes : "This negation " {sc. of the Deity) "must be un- derstood solely to affect a creative deity. The hypothesis of a per- vading spirit, co-eternal with the universe, remains unshaken."
The last sentence seems to give us a notion of the kind of transi- tion stage in his opinions by which Shelley escaped from French ma- terialism to a somewhat higher and more etherealized doctrine, a sort of semi-material pantheism. "Queen Mab" was written in 1810. But, during 1814 and 1815, on turning to the list of books wliich
' In Plato's case, it was the poet in him more than the philosopher which cried out against " the brood of hard and repellent men, who will understand nothing but what they can grip in their hands " (Theoetetis).
432 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
Shelley recorded as having been read by him in those years ("Edi- tor's note on the Early Poems ;" Mrs. Shelley's ed., vol. II.), we find that those of them that related to philosophy were of a decidedly higher character than the productions of the French Encyclopedie, which he had studied in 1810. They included, for instance, " Locke on the Human Understanding," Bacon's "Novum Organon," and Eousseau's " Reveries d'un Solitaire." It will be seen that he had not yet attained to idealism, though he was working up to it ; * but that he had definitely abandoned the French philosophy for some- thing higher. Indeed, in the "Defence of Poetry" (vol. I., of "Es- says, Letters, etc.," p. 42) he animadverts somewhat severely on the moral doctrines which were the inevitable issue of, or were inseparably bound up with, the corresponding metaphysical creed of the analyti- cal philosophers. "Their exertions," he writes, "are of the highest value, so long as they confine their administration of the concerns of the inferior powers of our nature within the limits due to the supe- rior ones. But while the skeptic destroys gross superstitions, let him spare to deface, as some of the French writers have defaced, the eter- nal truths charactered upon the imaginations of men." He might have applied to the Encyclopedic the words he elsewhere applies to
slavery —
" Thou frost of the world's prime,
KiUing its flowers, and leaving its thorns bare! "
But what was this "something higher," by means of which Shelley bridged over the chasm which divided the lower Materialism of 1810 from the Idealism which he finally made his own ? It is difficult to determine it within other than very vague limits, as Shelley, even while he adhered to it, which was only for a short period in his men- tal development, had not — nor, indeed, was it to be expected of a poet — formulated it to himself with any precision. But we may easily conjecture, from the general tenor of his productions at about this time, what, in its broad outlines, it must have been, and how it gave him a stepping-stone to Berkeleianism. The French Mate- rialism (or perhaps, more strictly, sensationalism), allied as it was to the exclusively analytical and skeptical instinct, was death to the synthetic action of the spirit " of imagination all compact ; " but we can easily enough conceive another kind of materialism — a mate- rialism in a somewhat stricter sense — which would give room to the poet for his revels in the realm of fancy, without enabling him to
' He had begun to study Berkeley, at the instance of Southey, as early as 1812, ac- cording to Mr. W. M. Rossetti (introductory Memoir of Shelley, p. 167).
Notes and Discussions. 433
rise at once thereby to the highest platform from which Thought can view the world, and herself in the world. It is a theory not without grandeur, though a false one, which regards the successive flights and gradations from ascidians to the most complex organisms, from sense to the loftiest imagination, from barbarism to the most intricate civ- ilization, from atoms and ether to the most variegated livery of the visible universe, from animal appetite to the most heroic morality, as being one and all nothing but different illustrative aspects of the grand serial evolution of all existences from the primal vXrj, or from the formless and unfeatured void. It is a view of life and things ' which is often laid hold of by one of those natures which plunge enthusiastically into scientific pursuits without being corrupted by them, or rendered utterly one-sided — natures which always retain in their composition some not inconsiderable tincture of poetry, and are struck with reverential awe in the face of the spectral abstraction of matter which they have invoked from the vasty deep, not seeing, however, that, after all, it is an abstraction, and, as such, is born of that which should primarily claim their allegiance — " the mother of all we know " — namely, Thought. It is a view which recommends itself to a Thales in ancient or a Tyndall in modern times. It was adopted conspicuously by Bacon, in whose works, perhaps, it was that Shelley came upon that sort of reconciliation of philosophy with poetry which he could not find in the coarse sneers of a D'Hol- bach. We can easily understand that this gave him, at all events, a resting-place not incompatible with magnificence of creation and dalliance amid the richest fancies ; and also how the doctrines of Physical Development and Physical Pantheism, peculiar to such a sys- tem, would in his mind gradually and necessarily shade off into the parallel doctrines issuing from immaterialism, namely those of what we may call Intellectual Development and Intellectual Pantheism, and how he would thus be brought definitely within the sphere of the attraction of idealism. Even in ''Queen Mab,"' as I hinted above, the encyclopaedic dissecting tendency almost disappears (in the poem itself, as distinct from Shelley's commentary thereon) be- fore the Baconian conception of Nature, a conception which, it is
' I would especially refer to the following passages, as expressing a mental attitude which ascribes to Nature the grandest and most poetic attributes, and leaves less to the action of mind (contrast with Shelley's later utterances from 1815-1822). The refer- ences are to Mr. W. M. Rossetti's edition, vol. I. : (1) Pp. 20, 21 ; " Spirit of Nature "— " symmetry ; " (2) pp. 39, 40, " Spirit of Nature "— " strength ; " (3) p. 41, " These are my Empire " — " reality ; " (4) p. 53, " 0 Happy Earth " — " perfectness."
XIY— 28
434 The Journal of Sjpeculative Philosophy.
true, gives more weight to the external than to the internal, which inclines to refer and conform spirit to matter rather tlian matter to spirit, which, in Bacon's own words, "doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things," rather than " submitteth the shows of things to the desires of the mind ; " but one which at the same time sees the march of natural causes and the gradual and fruitful multiplication of energies with the eye of poetry.
It is noticeable, too, that at this period (1814, 1815) Shelley was studying these very philosophers whom, in the "Defence of Poetry," he pronounces to be, in the true sense of the term, poets. He says (on page 11 of that treatise), " Lord Bacon was a poet," and refers particularly to his " Filum Labyrinthi," and his "Essay on Death ; " and on page 44 (note) he remarks : " Rousseau was essentially a poet. The others " (he alludes to Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire), " even Voltaire, were essentially reasoners," and adds that the world could have dispensed with the latter, useful as they were, but never with the former. This rejection of the "mere reasoners," in com- parison with such "poets" as Bacon, and, in a less degree, Rousseau (to whom he joins, on page 11, Plato), when we consider that the reasoners mentioned are all, except Locke, French, either by nation- ality or in mental characteristics, serves to show us, when taken to- gether with a passage on French skepticism, quoted a page or two back, that Shelley's dissatisfaction with them was due, not so much to the fact that they referred everything to matter, as to the fact that they did so in such a way as to leave no room for the poet in which to exercise his creative energy, no place for the sole of his foot, no solitary crag for his winged spirit to "mue her mighty youth, and kindle her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam." It was in Bacon, and men of his stamp, that Shelley found that synop- tical grasp of things, in their entirety and yet in their interconnec- tion, which imagination so dearly loves ; and, finally, after once having accepted him as a refuge from what, as being destructive to fancy, he loathed, he was insensibly led on to that higher monistic system, to wit, idealism or intellectualism, which he never after- wards abandoned. How may we conjecture this next step to have been accomplished ?
For a poetic mind to pass over from the notion of the consecutive evolution of all kinds of existence out of the primeval atom of mat- ter, to the analogous notion of the consecutive evolution of all kinds of existences from the primeval idea — the simplest germ of thought — is quite natural. Matter, say the adherents of the former theory, gives
Notes and Discussions. 435
"the promise and potency" of all forms of life, motion, and even thought itself. Thought reposes on sense, sense on motion, and mo- tion presupposes matter. Is, then, matter really the prius to thought ? How is this any more explicable than to say that thought is prior in time, as it is in dignity, to matter — that matter could never have ex- isted but as determined by intelligence ? The latter view is at least as conceivable as the former ; and when such considerations were clearly established to the mind of a man like Shelley, we can easily imagine that, if he still doubted between the two, his poetic predilections would definitely turn the balance in favor of idealism. He would naturally and necessarily replace material pantheism by what I have called an intellectualized doctrine of pantheism, and material evolu- tion by intellectual evolution. He would transfer his worship and allegiance from Nature to the intelligence for which alone Nature is possible, and which in phenomena finds only what she herself has put there. Instead of the doctrine of the flux of external phenom- ena, he would adopt the doctrine of intellectual flux, which regards all things as ultimately thoughts, and all such particular thoughts as manifestations of tlie successive qualifications issuing from the process of thought itself. * Thus in this triple theory of intellectual evolution, pantheism, and flux of existences, he would find as much breadth and as grand an aspect of the universe, at least as much truth, and — for the poet — infinitely more depth and meaning than in the correlative doctrines of material evolution, pantheism, and flux of phenomena. It was, however, not without value to him to have held for a short time previously the corresponding material tenets, as these, by their largeness of grasp, conducted him gradually to a view of things which he possibly might not have attained without some such convenient stepping-stone ^ —
" For speculation turns not to itself Till it hath travelled, and is married there Where it may see itself."
I am aware that it would be quite ridiculous to suppose that
' Shelley's lines (in the little poem called " Love's Philosophy ") : " Nothing in, this world is simple ; all things by a law divine in one another's being mingle," is an echo of either of the two parallel doctrines of "the flux of things " to which I have referred.
"^ It is interesting to know (from the extracts from Williams's diary, given in Mr. Gar- nett's article in the " Fortnightly Review," for June) that Shelley was a student of Spi- noza's work, and meditated — and partially executed — a translation of his " Tractatus Ethico-politicus."
436 The Journal of Speculati've Philosophy.
any sucli precisely formulated process as the above took place in Shelley's mind ; it is merely suggested that, whether consciously or unconsciously, he worked out something like it, and that so, after having tried a lower and a higher, a more analytic and a more constructive system of materialism, he was finally landed in the truer type of monism known as the immaterial or intellect- ual philosophy. For the truth of such a hypothesis I would ap- peal to the reader to carefully examine his poetical works in their chronological order. As regards direct statements of the change in his metaphysical views, which came over him in about the year 1815 (when his study of Berkeley, commenced in 1812, had definitely borne fruit), I may quote the following passage from the "Essay on Life" (in "Essays, Letters, etc.," voL I., p. 226), written at that time : —
"It is a decision against which all our persuasions struggle, and we must be long convicted before we can be convinced that the solid universe of things is 'such stuif as dreams are made of.' The shock- ing absurdities of the popular philosophy, . . . etc., [the next words have been quoted above] . . . had early conducted me to materialism. This materialism is a reducing ' system to young and superficial minds.' ['Quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore' of 1810 !] It allows its disciples to talk, and dispenses them from thinking. But I was discontented with such a view of things as it afl'orded ; man is a being of high aspirations, 'looking both before and after,^ whose ' thoughts wander through eternity,' disclaiming alliance with transience and decay ; incapable of imagining to himself annihila- tion ; existing but in the future and the past ; being, not what he is, but what he has been and shall be. Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit in him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being. Each is at once the centre and the circumference ; the point to which all things are referred, and the line in which all things are contained. Such contemplations as these materislism and the popular philoso- phy of mind and matter \sc. Dualism] alike forbid ; they are only consistent with the intellectual system."
On p. 242 of the same volume, he says : —
" By considering all knowledge as bounded by perception" [this last word is evidently used in a larger sense than the ordinary one. It was the unconscious use of " percipere" by Berkeley in this wider meaning, as almost="intelligere," which gave a good deal of its plausibility to his ^system], "whose operations maybe indefinitely
Notes cmd Discussions. 437
combined,' we arrive at a conception of Nature inexpressibly more magnificent, simple, and true than accords with the ordinary sys- tems of complicated and partial consideration,"
Shelley, then, had now come to believe in the world of nature and of spirit as both existing solely for universal mind ; but he did not believe in a Personal God. It may be asked : why did he not, like his master, Berkeley, take this further step ? The fact is that, though Shelley called himself, and Mrs. Shelley called him, a Berkeleian, in reality he was never a thorough-going disciple of Berkeley, though he was nearer to being so than to anything else. Berkeley's Personal God was too much of a " Deus et machina " to attract Shelley. On the contrary, it probably repelled him as a pedagogic device "for the refutation of atheism," as unbecoming tlie resolute earnestness and dignity of the true philosophic search for truth — in fact, as one of those "pitiful sophisms" (as he says on one occasion of the current proofs of the immortality of the soul) "which disgrace the cause." Moreover, Shelley's personal hostility to all creeds and dogmas, and the influences which the bitter conflicts of his youth had left behind on his delicately strung imagination, were certainly not without their share in determining him to stop short at this point.
But in another respect, yet ultimately from the same causes, he went beyond Berkeley. The latter attributed something to the "percipere" of individual minds, but a great deal more to the action on those minds of a Personal Deity. The two together gave the "esse." Now, Shelley eliminated the latter element ; consequently, to produce the same result he had to attach vastly more importance, and ascribe a far more extensive influence, to the creative work of singular minds, and ultimately to that of the universal but imper- sonal mind, to which he, in the last resort, referred the former. It is true that he says sometimes in his prose works, " mind cannot create ; it can only perceive ; " but, in the first place, in all such passages the word "perceive" is used in the enlarged sense men- tioned above ; and, secondly, to determine his real beliefs we must look not so much to their direct exposition as to their indirect influ-
^ This sentiment is reflected in " Peter Bell the Third " (Mrs. Shelley's edition, vol. II., p. 392) :—
" Yet his was individual mind, And new-created all he saw In a new manner, and refined Those new creations, and combined Them, by a master-spirit's law."
438 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
ence on the tone of his poetry, whence it will be apparent that he attributed far more to the active and constructive operations of indi- vidual minds than was possible to a rigidly consistent Berkeleian. Berkeley, indeed, marked off such intellectual activity in particular minds from their supposed passivity in the reception of influences from external phenomena, and totally denied the existence of the latter. So far Shelley followed him ; but then Berkeley went fur- ther, and affirmed, which Shelley did not, the existence of another kind of passivity in particular minds as distinct from their activity, a passivity, namely, in regard to the ideas imparted ''ab extra" by the Deity.
What would have happened had Shelley lived to attain old age — the calm old age of Goethe, for instance — we cannot tell ; but we may conjecture that, after emerging from the same youth-period of ** storm and stress," and the same stages of, first, doubt, and then a grand catholic Nature-worship, in his mental growth, which the German poet had passed through, he would finally, like him, have learned to attach their proper value to these and other sides and aspects of life, and would have brought his well-buffeted vessel into a haven of assured, though quiet and temperate, conviction — convic- tion protected against assault from without no less than purified from dogma within. But all this is mere conjecture. Before passing on to facts concerning Shelley's idealistic tenets, I subjoin (hoping that it will not be considered too pedantic) a tabular exposition of what my view is of the stages in his philosophical development, as already determined.
Philosophy divides itself into two main branches, viz. :
I I
Dualism (rejected by Shelley absolutely). Monism.
Materialism (lower type). Immaterialism (higher type).
I 1
I I . I . . I, . .
French Materialism ^ Baconiaji or Modified Berkeleianism. Pure Berkeleianism
(I). Spinozistic (Universal Mind with- (I^)-
Materialism "^ out Personal God. In-
(II). tellectual Pantheism.)
(HI).
It will be seen from the above table, taken in conjunction with the pages preceding it, that Shelley adopted (I) up to about 1810. He
' Or more properly, perhaps. Sensationalism. ^ Scarcely strict Materialism at all.
Notes and Discussions. 439
then abandoned it for (II), to which he adhered till about 1812 or so, when he began gradually to incline toward (III), which he defi- nitely adopted in 1815, and retained till 1822, the year of his death. (IV) He never reached at all.
Such, then, or something like it, was the genesis in Shelley's mind of the metaphysical creed which he finally adopted. We may take a somewhat modified Berkeleianism as the ultimate expression of his most matured thoughts on philosophical questions (as is evident from the poet's more considered utterances as to his beliefs in the last years of his life, as well as from the statements of Mrs. Shelley'), and, what is of more importance, as ruling by far the larger and better part of his poetry. And here I may quote one or two passages from both Shelley himself and Mrs. Shelley, by way of showing the con- sistency with which — after having once thoroughly solved his pre- liminary doubts — he advocated and held fast to his system up to the end ; after which I will conclude by noticing, from a consideration of his poetical works themselves, the nature and extent of the influ- ence which that system exerted on them.
The first passage is from Mrs. Shelley's preface to her edition of the *' Essays, Letters from Abroad, etc." (vol. I., p. xii.) : —
" Shelley was a disciple of the Immaterial Philosophy of Berkeley. This theory gave unity and grandeur to his ideas, while it opened a wide field for his imagination. The creation, such as it was perceived by his mind — a unit in immensity, was slight and narrow compared with the interminable forms of thought that might exist beyond, to be perceived perhaps hereafter by his own mind ; or which are per- ceptible to other minds that fill the universe, not of space in the material sense, but of infinity in the immaterial one."
These remarks had immediate reference to Shelley's incomplete " Essay on Life." In this fragment, which we may assign to 1815, he himself says (p. 225 of the same volume) : —
" The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those who are unable to refuse their assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived."
* Cp. Mr. W. M. Rossetti ("Introductory Memoir of Shelley," pp. 165-168), who was among the first, after Mrs. Shelley, to notice the influence of Immaterialism in Shelley's poetry.
440 The Journal of Sjoeculative Philosophy.
Again (pp. 328, 229) :—
" The view of life presented by the most refined deductions of the Intellectual Philosophy is that of unity. . . . The diiference is merely nominal between those two classes of thought which are vul- garly distinguished by the names of ideas and external objects. Pur- suing the same thread of reasoning, the existence of distinct individual minds, similar to that which is employed in now questioning its own nature, is likewise found to be a delusion. The words, '/, Tou, They,' are not signs of any actual difference subsisting hetiueen the assemblage of thoughts thus indicated, but are merely marks to denote the different modifications of the one mind."
Here we have a distinct enunciation of the doctrine of the uni- versal, but impersonal, mind which marked off Shelley's immaterial- ism from that of Berkeley.' The two passages, then, just quoted, when taken together, show that Shelley held the modified Berkelei- anism, which has been already described, in 1815, which year marked the first term in his best period. He died in 1822. If, now, we take a passage from the "Defence of Poetry," written in 1821, expressing exactly the same views, and showing, moreover, indirectly how those views fell in with his poetic instincts, we shall see that he kept true to intellectualism during the last seven years of his life, the years when he produced all his finest works — " Alastor," " Mont Blanc," "Laon and Cythna" ('' The Eevolt of Islam"), "Julian and Maddalo," "Prometheus Unbound," "Cenci," "Epipsychi- dion," "The Witch of Atlas," "The Sensitive Plant," "Hellas," and " Adonais." In that treatise (Vol. I. of "Essays, Letters, etc.," p. 51) he writes :
" All things exist as they are perceived ; at least in relation to the percipient. ' The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven or hell, a hell of heaven. ' But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. It makes us the inhabitaiits of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges
^ He concludes the fragment with a curious sentence. While freely admitting that existence =thought, which again implies mind, he yet says : " It is infinitely improbable that the cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind." Does this mean that he had not yet quite purged himself of the higher or Baconian Materialism, from which, at about this period (181.")\ his passage to Idealism would have been made?
Notes and Discussions. 441
from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. It justifies the b6ld and true words of Tasso : ' Non merita nome cli Creator e, se non Iddio ed il Poeta.'"
It is, perhaps, worth mentioning, before passing on to the main thread of the argument, that, though Shelley was certainly well acquainted with Berkeley's works (as has been already seen), yet it seems to have been through the "Academical Questions" of Sir Wil- liam Drummond, a faithful follower of the Intellectualist school, that he made his most rapid and searching approaches towards Ber- keleianism. He had read this treatise before writing " Queen Mab " (1810), and even after he had begun to read Berkeley (1812) ; he refers to his co-disciple Drummond more often than to their common master. In the " Essay on Life " (1815), for instance, he writes : —
" Perhaps the most clear and vigorous statement of the Intellectual system is to be found in Sir William Drummond's ' Academical Questions.' After such an exposition, it would be idle to translate into other words what would only lose its energy and fitness by the change. Examined point by point, and word byword, the most dis- criminating intellects have been able to discern no train of thoughts in the process of reasoning which does not conduct inevitably to the conclusion which has been stated."
Again, in 1817, in his preface to "The Eevolt of Islam," after having characterized "metaphysics and inquiries into moral and political science," as having in his day become " little else than vain attempts to revive exploded superstitions" — hinting, no doubt, at what he elsewhere calls the " popular philosophy" — that is, Dualism — he adds, in a note : "I ought to except SirW. Drummond's 'Aca- demical Questions,' a volume of very acute and powerful criticism" ("Shelley's Works," ed. Mrs. Shelley, vol. I., p. 64).' In "Peter
^ It is curious to compare these statements of the last period of his philosophical development with a notice of Sir W. Drummond in his first period — the period of "Queen Mab." In one of the notes to that poem we find the following: " Had this author, instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of Atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have been more suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the toleration of the philosopher" (Rossetti's ed. of Shelley, vol. I., p. 74). This is the language of the poet in his early days of French philosophizing and dogmatic Atheism. He saw in Drummond then only the impugner of Atheism and Materialism, and, in that character, regarded him as expressing views inconsistent with the skepticism
442 The Journal of Speculative Philosojjhy.
Bell the Third " (written in 1819), he again just refers to Drummond in the lines,
"I looked on them [«c. five thousand pages of German psychologies] nine several days, And then I saw that they were bad ; A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise — He never read them : in amaze,
I found Sir William Drummond had."
As to the special character and merits of Sir "W". Drummond's work in philosophy, I cannot speak for myself, as I have been un- able to procure a copy of it. The treatise to which Shelley alludes appeared in 1805, and was of sufficient importance to attract the attention of Lord Jeffrey, who wrote an article on it, where he says ("Essays," vol. III., p. 351) : ''though it gave a violent headache, in less than an hour, to the most intrepid logician of our fraternity, he could not help reading on till he came to the end of the volume." He then proceeds : —
" Mr. Drummond begins with the doctrine of Locke ; and exposes, we think, very successfully, the futility of that celebrated author's definition of substance, as ' one Tc7ioius not wliat ' support of such qualities as are capable of producing simple ideas in us. Having thus discarded substance in general from the list of existences, Mr. Drummond proceeds to do as much for the particular substance called matter, and all its qualities. In this chapter, accordingly, he avows himself to be a determined Idealist. . . . His reasoning upon this subject" (viz., primary qualities being on the same footing as secondary) " coincides with that of Bishop Berkeley. . .' etc."
So much for one main source — as far as books could constitute such a source — of Shelley's Immaterialism. And now as to the general coloring of his poetry attributable to that system of philoso- phy. First of all, I propose to instance one or two characteristic passages (all belonging to the period 1815-'22), where he has intro- duced or probably reflected — of course in a more or less imaginative form, and with all the illuminative hues with which he knew so well how to enrich his thought — his peculiar metaphysical doctrines. ^
which he seems to have thought that, as a Berkeleian, Drummond should have alone maintained. It required further and deeper study to enable Shelley to see the eon- Btructive elements and fertility for poetic uses in Intellectualism. At that period he certainly had not arrived at such a view.
' In one or two cases, indeed, he was on the verge of sacrificing poetry to philosophy. Mr. W. M. Rossetti truly says, in his introductory " Memoir of Shelley : " " In Shelley
Notes and Discussions. 443
Apart from tlie long passage quoted above from the " Hellas," we have, in the " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," as it were, the religious and a3sthetical counterpart to the merely ratiocinative side of intel- lectualism. Shelley here appears no longer as the mere lay believer in the articles of his creed, but as the high-priest and rapt votary of the divinity Jwhich it recognizes in her loveliest aspects as — not sensuous, but — ideal, intellectual beauty. In "Alastor" and "Epi- psychidion " the poet represented himself in the character of one who prosecutes the bootless quest of that perfect union of loveliness of form with transcendent intelligence which can be realized only to lose its ideality, or, if it retains the latter, is seen for an instant, only to vanish away the next "par levibus ventis, volucrique simil- lima somno." In a similar strain, he cries out, in the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty:" —
" I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine : have I not kept the vow ?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Eacli from his voiceless grave : they have in visioned bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatched with me the envious night : They know that never joy illumed my brow, Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This woi-ld from its dark slavery,
That thou, O awful loveliness, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express."
In these lines speaks the adherent of Immaterialism, but of an immaterialism richly dight in poetry's coat of many colors. With less of imaginative addition, the opening verses of "Mont Blanc" speak for themselves : —
"The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid Avaves (Now dark — now glittering — now reflecting gloom — No\v lending splendor, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters), with a sound but half its own ..." etc.
the predominant quality of all is the ideal . . . this tinges most of his work, and at times even blemishes it. He was himself particularly attached to the metaphysical ele- ment in his poetry, which is of course one great constituent of his idealism." He also speaks of "a peccant element of unrealism, a slippery hold upon the human" charac- terizing his narrative poems. Shelley himself thought that his powers were too raeta physical and abstract to allow of his succeeding in tragedy. But here he formed a too low estimate of himself, as " The Cenci " alone shows.
444 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
Shelley concludes the poem, addressing the mountain : —
'•And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, If to the human mind's imaginings Silence and solitude were vacancy? "
This last has a decided ring of idealism in it. So, too, have the following lines from the " The SensitiYC Plant : " indeed, in their insistance on the eternity of thought, and on the transcience of everything else, except as existing in and treasured by thought, they almost remind us of Fichte or Hegel : —
" .... In this life Of error, ignorance, and strife, Where nothing is, but all things seem. And we the shadows of the dream.
" It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant, if one considers it. To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery.
" That garden sweet, that lady fair, And all sweet shapes and odors there, In truth have never passed away : 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed ; not they."
So much, then, by way of instancing in certain parts of Shelley's works the more immediate reflection of his idealistic philosophy. Now let us consider the influence which that philosophy exerted on his poetic moods, and in determining the forms and language and metaphoric clothing assumed by his imagination. And this latter is really the more important point to investigate ; for, just as the vivid- ness and practical efficacy of a man's theoretical beliefs on questions of morality is better seen in his daily life and works than in isolated and formal professions of faith, so the real hold a particular system of metaphysics has on the mind of a poet is better seen in his general conception of the scope of his art, in his use of the instruments of creative energy, and in his way of dealing with concretes and abstrac- tions, as traced in the main tenor of his productions, than in selected passages comprising, so to sj)eak, official subscriptions to the articles of his doctrine.
Neither Shelley himself nor his best critic, Mrs. Shelley, were in any doubt as to the general effect produced on his imagination by the philosophy of Immaterialism. ''The unity and grandeur"
I^otes and Discussions. 445
which, in Mrs. Shelley's words/ it "gave to his ideas," and "the wide field for his imagination," are results ascribed to it in quite as emphatic language by the poet himself (in a passage already quoted — "Essays, Letters, etc.," vol. I., p. 242). Mrs. Shelley again, in her note on the "Pronietheus Unbound," writes : —
" It requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem. They elude the ordinary reader by their abstraction and delicacy of distinction ; but they are far from vague. It was his design to write prose metaphysical essays on the nature of man, ivliicli would have served to explain much of what is obscure in his poetry ; a few scat- tered fragments of observations and remarks alone remain. He con- sidered these philosophical views of mind and nature to he institict tvith the intensest spirit of poetry."
Indeed, the kind of stamp which Intellectualism would leave on the writings of a man of Shelley's nature would not be difficult to surmise from a priori considerations. A system of immaterial phi- losophy gives less importance to the external, as such, than to the internal, to the phenomenal than to the spiritual, to the objective than to the subjective. In matter it sees nothing but the vesture and outward efilorescence of some product of mind ; while in every affection of mind — in the waking vision, the vivid dream, the appar- ently lawless flight of fancy — it sees a supreme reality. In a con- crete object it sees only the shrine of an abstract idea ; in an abstract idea, on the other hand, it sees the only true existence and the only true divinity. It idealizes and humanizes the material ; and the ideal it personifies and clothes with the definite outlines of individ- uality. To the adherent of such views as these the work of poetry would appear only as a richer and higher exercise of the same faculty which, from the strictly metaphysical side of Idealism, is occupied, as has been said, in "substantializing relations and bringing sub- stances into relation."
Now, this twofold use of imagination is just that for which Shelley is most conspicuous. Every poem that he wrote during his best period illustrates one or both of these two modes in which creative
' Passa,Q;c quoted above from the preface to the " Essays, Letters from Abroa?d, etc." The question has been sometimes raised as to Mrs. Shelley's capability of appreciating her husband's powers. I may take this opportunity of remarking that it certainly seems to me that, notwithstanding all that has been written on Shelley since, no better account of the salient features in his genius is to be found than in the prefaces and notes written by her to his different works.
446 The Journal of Speculative Philomphy.
thought may exercise itself upon its object, namely, on the one hand, bodying forth and materializing ideas ; on the other, spiritualizing phenomena, whether of material nature, physical forces, or human action. I do not, of course, mean to deny that every good poet per- forms this double function more or less constantly ; but Shelley does so to an almost preternatural degree — a degree which, taken together with what we know of his unfailing taste for philosophical pursuits, leads us to suppose that his metaphysics, if they did not create the particular paths along which his fancy travelled, gave them, at all events, a (so to speak) theoretical justification.
The latter of these two correlative tendencies of imagination — ten- dencies which are largely supported by, if they do not issue from, a spec^^lative doctrine of idealism — is not unf requently noticed by Mrs. Shelley. She says, for instance (Shelley's " Poetical Works," L, 372) : " Shelley loved to idealize the real — to gift the mechanism of the material universe with a soul and a voice. " When, however, she adds, "More popular poets clothe the ideal with familiar and sensi- ble imagery," implying that Shelley did not do so to any great ex- tent, she forgot that the same cast of mind which sees in the variable phenomenon only the unchanging ideal is, for the very same reason, so enamored of the creations of phantasy, and so possessed with the conviction of their eternal self-subsistence, that it is ever seeking to relieve itself from its tortures in the endeavor to embody them in substantial and yet communicable shapes. " To clothe them in familiar and sensible imagery ; " there is indeed the difficulty — a difficulty great in proportion to the vaporous delicacy of the con- ceived ideal. It was the hopelessness of attaining to a perfect repre- sentation of siich ideals, without destroying and dissolving them as such, which inspired those sublimest poems, "The Alastor" and "The Epipsychidion." But that Shelley had an ardent love for ideal forms issuing fresh from the clear wells of inspiration within, as well as those to be discovered lurking and latent under realities without ; and wished, moreover, not only in the domain of art, but also in that of practical morality (both of which are built on the eternal contradiction between the perfect constructions of speculative reason and imagination, on the one side, and the limited human pos- sibilities of action and unlimited human frailties, on the other), to impress these forms, as nearly as possible in their pristine purity, on surrounding facts — is elsewhere, though indirectly, recognized by Mrs. Shelley. In the preface to her edition. of her husband's poeti- cal works (vol. L, p. xi.), she says : " He loved to idealize reality ;
Notes and Discussions. 447
and this is a taste shared by few. We are willing to have onr pass- ing whims exalted into passions, for this gratifies our vanity ; but few of VIS understand or sympathize with the endeavor to ally the love of abstract beauty and adoration of abstract good . . . with our sympathies with our hindT
Shelley's attitude towards the ideal must therefore be looked at from two points of view. It is the first of these — the idealization of the else meaningless and incoherent phenomena of Nature — which is perhaps too prominently insisted on by Mrs. Shelley ; it is the sec- ond, the substantializing creations of thought, which is, certainly, too prominently insisted on by Macaulay ; ' but we cannot form a true estimate of Shelley's poetry without recognizing the equal exist- ence and mutual interaction of both these mental forces in his genius.
Shelley's idealization of Nature was one which takes no heed of special facts or phenomena except as material on which to beget the forms of abstract beauty. He views the shifting flux of things with complete indifference as to those things for their own sakes ; and looks not so much at, as through, the sensuous shapes which Matter presents to him : —
" Nor much heeds he what things they be, For from them create he can Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality."
His works teem with examples of Mr. Ruskin's '' Pathetic Fallacy " — which so-called fallacy, however, is all that distinguishes mental painting or sculpture from mere mental photography — of events or phenomena, selected, combined, added to, and embellished, in such a way as to form nothing but the setting for the clearer display of some gem-like radiancy of thought or emotion. They abound in what Mr. Stirling (''Secret of Hegel," Preface, p. xlvi.) notices as
* He writes : — " The strong imagination of Shelley made him an idolater in his own despite. Out of the most indefinite terms of a hard, cold, dark, metaphysical system, he made a gorgeous Pantheon, full of beautiful, majestic, and life-like forms. . . . The Spirit of Beauty, the Principle of Good, the Principle of Evil, when he treated of them, ceased to be abstractions. They took shape and color. They were no longer mere words. . . . As there can be no stronger sign of a mind destitute of the poetical faculty, than the . . . tendency to turn images into abstractions, ... so there can be no stronger sign of a mind truly poetical than a disposition to reverse the process, and to make indi- vidualities out of generalities." This passage is a good instance of Macaulay's inca- pacity to look at things from more than one side. He insists on one element in Shelley's genius very properly ; but then he is not content without not only ignoring, but denying the other.
448 The Journal of Sjyeculative PJdlosojjhy.
instances of Vorstellungen or picture-thoughts, midway between tlie absolutely abstract conceptions of philosophy and the concrete figures and "idola fori" in ordinary use. Every energy of Nature is trans- mitted by him, and bathed in "that light which never was on sea or shore." It would be idle to begin quoting here : instances will occur to the reader in the most lavish abundance, or, at all events, may easily enough be found by opening Shelley at almost any page.
It will be of more interest to dwell a little before concluding on the correlative aspect (described above) of the domination exercised by idealism on such a fervent fancy as was that of Shelley to start with. The externalizing of imagination-born forms is to the spirit- ualizing of given phenomena as concave to convex of one and the same curve, as obverse to reverse of one and the same coin. The lat- ter has been noticed again and again in Shelley's j^oetry ; the former not so often, and is perhaps less obvious.
Other poets, of course in abundance, had personified ideas and ideal relations "ante Agamemnona ; " but none of them had done so with the boldness and constancy and sweet wantonness of Shelley. Setting aside such poems as the "Prometheus Unbound," the "Hel- las," and "The Revolt of Islam," which form a sort of trilogy, re- garded as presenting embodiments of one sublime central idea, viz., the perfectibility of man by means of reason and will alone — an idea which, by the way, brings him near several philosophers of different schools who have discussed the accidental character of evil, and the possibility of effecting its gradual evanescence by human means' — even setting aside these, we find that in most of his other poetry, at all events from 1815 to 1822, Shelley, with his grand, imaginative audacity, never hesitates to objectify and individualize conceptions which, from their excessive abstractness and airy elasticity, would cause any other poet to shrink from confining them within form or outlines, and to relegate them in despair to the cold limbo of pure,
' E. g., Kant, J. S. Mill. For Shelley's belief that evil in human things is an accident that might be expelled by the united will of mankind, vid. Mrs. Shelley's note on " Pro- metheus Unbound " (vol. I., p. 370, of " Poetical Works "). In " The Revolt of Islam" the influence of Godwin is perceptible. Shelley, like Schopenhauer, regarded the Ego as confronting and warring against existing facts ; and, like him, he believed that evil could be eliminated. But, as might be expected, their conceptions of the method of effecting this were diametrically opposite. Schopenhauer wished to reduce activity, life, subjectiveness, will, to the Nirwana of the impersonal and objective ; thus would be en- sured a " divine tranquillity without one pleasure and without one pain." Shelley, on the contrary, said : " Let every personality express itself to the utmost, and elevate to its ownp latform the discordant facts of existence."
JV^otes and Discussions. 449
colorless intelligence. In the ''Alastor," for instance, "Silence, too enamored of that voice, locks its mute music in her rugged cell." And, besides Silence, we have a whole legion of abstractions anthro- pomorphized elsewhere, such as Hope, Mutability, Misery, etc. A very subtle emotional process is objectified in the words, 'Ho hope till Hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates." Of this sublimely paradoxical way of making that which is negative positive, of transforming what appears to others as shadow into sub- stance— of giving Silence its ''mute music," and Hope the power of "creating from its own wreck,"' — we have another still bolder instance in the "Fragment on Misery." The poet calls on personified Misery to ie happy : —
" Come, be happy! Sit near me, Sliadow-vested Misery. Coy, unwilling, silent bride, Mourning in thy robe of pride. Desolation — deified !"
Nor is he afraid of pursuing the metaphor to its extremest
issues : —
" Kiss me — oh ! thy lips are cold ; Bound my neck thine arms enfold — They are soft, but chill and dead ; And tliy tears upon my head Burn like points of frozen lead.
" Hasten to the bridal bed — Underneath the grave 'tis spread ; In darkness may our love be hid, Oblivion be our coverlid — We may rest and none forbid.
" Clasp me till our hearts be grown Like two shadows into one ; Till this dreadful transport may Like a vapor pass away In the sleep that lasts alway.
" We may dream in that long sleep. That we are not those who weep; Even as Pleasure dreams of thee, Life-deserting Misery, Thou mayest dream of her with me."
- Cj). a somewhat similar expression hi the " Prometheus : " —
"... the killaby Of winds that die On the bosom of their own harmonv."
XIY— 29
450 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
It is scarcely conceivable that the force of imagination could go fur- ther in incarnating the most negative abstractions. Similarly, Mu- tability, the negation of Permanence, is often personified, and not only personified, but regarded as itself permanent, and the only perma- nent : —
" Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow ; Naught may endure but mutability." ^
In the ''Prometheus Unbound" even Echoes, which are to voice as shadow to substance, are given a positive existence, and aj^pear, calling on Asia and Panthea to follow : —
Echoes (unseen.) "Echoes we: listen! We cannot stay : As dew-stars glisten, Then fade away."
Thus we have constant Inconstancy, musical Silence, happy Mis- ery, and Echo with underived voice. Such is the kind of way in which Shelley revels in substantializing the negative and personify- ing the ideal and abstract. Anything related to Thought, Sound, Space, or Time he loves to clothe with a more or less definite indi- viduality. Every one remembers Shelley's beautiful pictures of the "Hungry Hours," the " Stray Hours," etc. One in particular of these, which is singularly grand, and comes, like so many other of his best images, from the " Prometheus," may be mentioned here. At the beginning of the fourth act is introduced " A Train of Dark Forms and Shadows," who are introduced singing : —
"Here, oh ! here:
We bear the bier, Of the Father of many a cancelled year !
Spectres we,
Of the dead Hours be, We bear Time to his tomb in Eternity." ^
' Cp. The two Odes to Mutability, a conception frequently personified in Shelley's works.
' Other conceptions anthropomorphized in Shelley are Thought (" by the snake Memory stung " — Adonais), Death, who " blushes to annihilation" (Adonais), Dream, (P. Unb.), Oppression, Loveliness, Science " with cloedal wings," Spirit of Night, Love, Breath, Wisdom, Eternity, Shame, " Desires and Adorations, Winged Persuasions, and Veiled Destinies, Splendors and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies, and Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, and Pleasure, blind with tears " {cp. " happy Misery "), Incarnate April, Frost the Anatomy, Moon of Love, Eter- nity, etc. The " Prometheus," in particular, unfolds before us a whole phantasma- goria! pageantry of abstractions.
Notes and Discussions. 451
It would, of course, be ridicu.lously fanciful to suppose that the above-mentioned tendencies of Shelley's genius are to be laid, even to any considerable degree, to the credit of his metaphysical system. That system only afforded him, as I said above, a reasoned back- grourd for the uses of imagination which he indulged — afforded him a legitimation or '^ deduction" (as Kant would call it) for what might otherwise have appeared to him to be merely the lawless aber- rations of creative power. One who firmly believed in the reality (in the highest and truest sense) of everything created or combined by mental faculties, could never be ashamed of following the mazes of Thought to their utmost bound, and would never shrink from tasting to the full "the feasts of beautiful discourse" {" eorcdoeig 7]aXC)v Xoycjdv,^^ Plato).
But there were, no doubt, several other and more important elements which went to the forming of Shelley's poetry. Just as a stage in the intellectual development of a nation cannot be fully understood without tracing back to their sources both of the two distinct streams, the intellectual and the social, which unite to pro- duce it (take, for instance, the jiessimism of Lucretius in Rome, or of Schopenhauer in Germany ; in either case we find a double ex- planation of the origin of the system, the one consisting in an ac- count of the previous successive stages in the evolution of philo- soj)liical principles, the other in an account of the gradual growth of social forces and conditions), so the direction assumed by the imaginative energy of such a poet as Shelley cannot be entirely com- prehended without taking into consideration both the intellectual habits and moral tendencies attributable to his personality, and also the spirit of his time ; either of which was, no doubt, an ingredient in his composition as a poet of at least as much importance as the particular philosojjhical views which he entertained.
In the first place, the intellectual, and more especially, the poetic atmosphere which he breathed, and in the midst of which he moved and had his being, was decidedly favorable to the growth of the particular faculties mainly exercised by him. " While with the Greeks," it has been said ("Guesses at Truth," first series, p. 98), "the unseen world was the world of shadows, in the great works of modern times there is a more or less conscious feeling that the, out- ward world of the eye is the world of shadows, that the tangled web of life is to be swept away, and that the invisible world is the only abode of true, living realities." It was the object of the school ushered in by Wordsworth to learn to reverence in Nature, mainly
452 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy
and primarily, "the Divine Ideal which underlies all appearance" (Fichte), and Shelley could not have been unmoved by such influ- ences. (At the beginning of his last and best period, 1815-1822, he wrote his lament over Wordsworth, beginning " Poet of Nature," etc. ; "0 there are spirits in the air," was addressed in thought to Coleridge * at about the same time. )
As to his personal characteristics, every one has heard of his abnor- mally acute sensibility and impulsive temperament. In the different lives of him which have been written, we are constantly having stories of his vivid dreams, which he could not persuade himself loere dreams, and which often drove him from his room with cries of hor- ror ; ^ nay, more, of his waking visions, of the reality of which he used to be equally convinced. This nervous intensity of imagina- tion, giving all the force of positive existence to every long-pondered creation of his mind, to every
" incommunicable dream And twilight phantasm, and deep noonday thought,"
must have worked with his philosophy to produce the kind of poetry it did. Bearing in mind these passionate susceptibilities of his — moral as well as intellectual — we can, moreover, explain, without having much recourse to his metaphysical doctrines, the passionate and generous spirit which would at one time "sadly blame the Jar- ring and inexplicable frame of this wrong world," and at another would declaim with fiery vigor against "the harsh and grating cry of tyrants and of foes," ' which was ever dissatisfied with the seem- ingly immobile and unplastic facts of his social environment, and which yet always believed against experience, and hoped against hope, that Man — even " cruel, cold, formal Man" — could and would, by willing it, emancipate himself from inveterate i^rejudice and self-
' Cp. the fine description of Coleridge in Shelley's " Letter to Maria Gisborne " (vol. III., p. 53, in Mrs. Shelley's ed.).
^ In the vividness of his dreams, Shelley reminds us of Coleridge, De Quincey, and Blake. In " Essays, Letters, etc.," vol. I., pp. 248-'51, he gives some account of the phenomena of dreams, and is beginning to recount one which occurred in his own ex- perience, when, as he afterward wrote, he was obliged to leave off through being over- come " by thrilling horror."
^ Was Wordsworth, a poet more at ease with circumstances and his fellows, thinking of these words when he spoke of his " hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of hu- manity, not harsh nor grating, though of ample power to chasten or subdue ? " At any rate, in these two passages, the different characters of the two poets are well ex- pressed.
Notes and Discussions. 453
ishness, from "old custom" and ''legal crime," and stand forth once more in purified rejuvenescence.' His energies were always devoted to stamping, as far as he could, the things and circumstances around him with the impress of an ideal — an ideal which, since it was very truth and reality to him, he wished to see externalized, and thus become equally so to others. The untiring zeal in endeavoring to imprint such ideals on the face of the actual conditions of exist- ence, which we see reflected in such poems as the "Hellas" and the "Prometheus," the "passion for reforming the world,"'* which he so fearlessly avowed ; these, no doubt, came from his moral character ; but in the construction of " the beautiful idealisms of moral excel- lence," with which, as he says, it was his "purpose to familiarize the more select classes of poetical readers," it is not perhaps extrava- gant to attribute something to the working upon his imagination of the speculative principles of Idealism.
Thus both intellectual and social environment, and personal ten- dencies of sentiment and character, largely assisted the philosophy of Shelley in determining the cast of his poetry ; but we must not any the more lose sight of this last factor as a distinctly important one, especially when we remember that Shelley was within an ace of becoming a metaphysician pure and simple ; ' that, even as it was, he was throughout his life "philosophy's accepted guest," and that he himself regarded metaphysical studies as an element in the train-
' Shelley's tone, though pessimistic at times (e. ^., in both the two beautiful pieces on " Mutability "), is in general distinctly optimistic as to the possible future of the human race. See the concluding choruses of the " Prometheus Unbound," and, above all, the soft, halcyon verses of prophecy and hope which conclude the " Ilellas," and lull to rest the fierce discords of the opening of the drama.
* Shelley's preface to the " Prometheus Unbound." He somewhat bitterly alludes to the many disappointments which await the earnest reformer, in the lines at the close of the third part of " Peter Bell the Third : " " And some few, like we know who, damned — but God alone knows why — to believe their minds are given to make this ugly hell a heaven ; in which faith they live and die." The second part of Shelley's " Defence of Poetry," which unfortunately he did not write, was to have contained " a defence of the attempt to idealize the modern forms of manners and opinions, and compel them into a subordination to the imaginative and creative faculty." Here we see a meeting point of his moral character with his idealism.
^ According to Mrs. Shelley (editor's note on " The Revolt of Islam "), " Shelley pos- sessed two remarkable qualities of intellect — a brilliant imagination, and a logical ex- actness of reason. His inclinations led him (he fancied) almost alike to poetry and metaphysical discussions, ... he said that he deliberated at one time whether he should so devote himself to poetry or metaphysics." Cp. also editor's note on the "Cenci"(ii., 116).
454 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
ing — though not of course the making — of a poet (vid. his preface to '' The Eevolt of Islam").
In examining the philosophical element in the writings of a poet, "we accustom ourselves, on the one hand, to regard the poetic mind as not "of imagination all compact," but as a whole which very various forces combine to build up ; and, on the other hand, to notice the special bond which unites poetry and philosophy as corre- lative and interdependent factors in constituting the best possible view of the universe, as it exists for human thought. When once we perceive the mutual interaction of Poetry and Philosophy at every stage in the intellectual growth of all nations, we begin to detect the philosopher in Schiller, Wordsworth, Sophocles, and Shakespeare, as well as the poet in Kant, Spinoza, Plato, or Bacon ; and we understand both orders of mind the better for being able to do so.
Thus it is that Shelley is a particularly favorable subject of study — because, as has been pointed out, in him the poetic afflatus and the metaphysical impulse were so evenly and harmoniously balanced and interblended. Shelley would have been in many respects a dialecti- cian— a " ovvoTTLKog " — after Plato's own heart. We set Schiller over against Kant, and Shakespeare over against Bacon, sometimes, to explain one another ; but to explain Shelley the philosopher, we resort to Shelley the poet, and to interpret Shelley the poet, we appeal to Shelley the philosopher. We must not, certainly, in con- sidering the character of his poetry, forget either the acute sensibil- ity and passionate devotion to ideas, which was given him by nature, or the times and circumstances and literary surroundings amid which he lived : —
" By solemn vision and bright silver dream His infancy was nurtured. Every sight And sound from the vast earth and ambient air Sent to his heart its choicest impulses."
All this we must take into consideration in estimating his work ; but the words which immediately succeed the above in the " Alastor " we must also remember, if we would read him aright as a poet ; we must recognize that throughout his life, apart from these other in- fluences,
" The fountains of divine philosophy Fled not his thirsting lips."
It is this latter aspect of his genius that I have endeavored to bring prominently forward in these pages.
Books Received. 455
BOOKS KECEIYED.
As Regards Protoplasm. By James Hutchison Stirling. New and improved edition, completed by addition of Part II. in reference to Mr. Huxley's Second Issue, and of Pref- ace, in reply to Mr. Huxley in " Yeast." London: Longmans, Green, & Co. 1872.
The Old Faith and the New. I. and II. By J. Hutchison Stirling. (A review of Dr. Strauss's Book, published in The Athenaeum, June 21, 1873.
Strauss's Relations to Hegel and to the Church. By Robert Bell. (Reprint from the Theological Review, April, 1877.)
Life's Mystery. (From " Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics." By William Thomas Thornton. London: McMillan & Co. 1873.) Edited by Richard Randolph. Philadelphia: Henry Longstreth. 1873.
The New Faith of Strauss. By Henry B. Smith, LL. D. (Reprinted from Presby- terian Quarterly and Princeton Review, April, 1874.)
A Thesis on the Dual Constitution of Man ; or, Neuro-Psychology. By S. S. Laws, A.M., M. D. (Reprint from Archives of Electrology and Neurology, November, 1875.) New York. 1875.
Essays on Modes of Government and Instruction of Boys. By Robert D. Allen, Superintendent of the Kentucky Military Institute, Farmdale, Ky.
The Ethics of Spiritualism ; a System of Moral Philosophy, founded on Evolution and the Continuity of Man's Existence beyond the Grave. By Hudson Tuttle. Chi- cago: Religio-Philosophical Publishing House. 1878.
Zur Philosophic der Astronomic. Von Johannes Huber. Miinchen : Theodor Acker- mann. 1878.
Das Gedachtniss. Von Johannes Huber. Miinchen : Theodor Ackermann. 1878.
Giacomo Barzellotti. II Pessimismo dcllo Schopenhauer. Firenze Tipografia di G. Barbara. 1878.
Boletin de la Institucion libre de Ensenanza. Aiio I, Num. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Marzo, Abril, Mayo, Junio, 1877. Madrid: [Educational Journal of Spain].
The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. [Being a reprint from the Methodist Quarterly Review (vol. xxvii.) of a review of B. P. Bowne's Examination of Spencer's First Princijjles.]
Six Years of Educational Work in Birmingham. An Address delivered to the Bir- mingham School Board. By the Chairman, Joseph Chamberlain, Esq., M.P., November 2, 1876. Birmingham.
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National Educational League. Report of the Executive Committee, presented at the Eighth Annual Meeting held in the Offices of the League, 17 Ann Street, Birmingham, on Wednesday, November 8, 1876.
Robertson of Brighton. By Edwin D. Mead, Boston, Mass. (Reprint from the New Englander for July, 1877.)
Education the Need of the South. A Paper read before the American Social Science Association at its Meeting held at Saratoga, September, 1877. By Dexter A. Hawkins, A. M., of the New York Bar. New York. 1878.
The Perception of Color. By G. Stanley Hall. (From the Proceedings of the Amer- ican Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. xiii.) Presented March 14, 1878.
Neurology and the Human Soul. By Professor W. H. Wynn, Ph. D., State Agricul- tural College, Ames, Iowa. (Reprint from the Lutheran Quarterly.) Gettysburg. 1878.
Erinnerungs Stabe aus dem Leben des Dr. Karl Weinholtz. Rostock. Verlag des Verfassers. 1878.
[In the second of these birthday poems, the doctor alludes pleasantly to the Journal of Speculative Philosophy for October, 1877, which came by post on his birthday.]
Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der aeltem deutschen Philosophic. I. Johann Kepler. Von Rudolf Eucken.
Deutscher Wahrschatz von Karl Weinholtz (Theilc I-IV.) Rostock. 1872.
[A poetic psychology : I., is the Introduction ; II., the Doctrine of Sense-Perception (" Sinn ") ; III, the Doctrine of the Understanding (Verstand); IV., the Reason (Ver- nunf t). ]
Deutscher Tanzwart von Karl Weinholtz. 1872.
Treatise on Politics as a Science. By Charles Reemelin. Cincinnati : Robert Clarke & Co. 1875.
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