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Full text of "The Journal of speculative philosophy"

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The University of Toronto 



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THE JOURNAL 



OF 



SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 



VOLUME XVIII. 



EDITED BY WM. T. HAREIS 



NEW YOEK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 

LONDON : Trfibner and Company. 

1884. 



Entered, according to Act of Cono:reB», in the year 1885, by 

WILLIAM T. HARKIS, 
In the Oflace of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



^ 



CONTENTS. 



PAOB 

Abbot, Francis Ellingwood, The Moral Creativeness of Man, 188 

Aboriginal American Literature, Dr. Brinton's Prospectus of, 224 

Alcott, A. Bronson, Sonnet on R. W. E., 219 

Anthropology, Problem of, by Ludwig Noire (Tr.), M. B. Bonner, 337 

Antinomies, Mathematical, and their Solution, George S. Fullerto7i, 38 

Berlin Philosophical Society, Prize Essay on Hegelian Dialectic, 444 

Blow, Susan E. (Tr.), C. F. Goeschel on the Immortality of the Soul, 21 

" " Dante's Inferno, 121 

Bonner, M. B., The Problem of Anthropology by Ludwig Noire (Tr.), 33Y 

Boolis Received, List of, 112 

Bradley's Priaciples of Logic, 8. W. Dyde, 28*7, 399 

Brinton, Dr. D. G., Prospectus of Aboriginal American Literature, 224 

Bulkeley, B. R., Two Ways to Teach, 109 

Burns-Gibson, J. (book notice), Ill 

Ghamplin, Virginia, Notice of " La Revue Philosophique," 220 

Channing, W. E., " Gulshan I Raz," 202 

" " Selections in Prose and Verse, .^ I. ■ . ' , . \ . . 439 

Creator and Creature, W. H. Kimball, 214 

Dante's " Inferno," Susan E. Blow, 121 

De Morgan as a Logician, Oeorgc Bruce Halsted, 1 

Descartes, A View of the Philosophy of, jfe'. Hawksley Rhodes, 225 

Dewey, John, Kant and Philosophic Method, 162 

D'Orelli, A., Dr. A. L. Kym's Problem of Evil (noticed), 188 

Dyde, S. W., Bradley's " Principles of Logic," . . . \ 287,399 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, A Poem on, Fannie R. Robinson, 109 

" " " Dialectic Unity in Emerson's Prose, , , W. T. Harris, 195 

" " " R. W. E. (Sonnet), A. Bronson Alcott, 219 

Euripides, Chorus from the Heracles of (Tr.), C. E. 8. 212. 

Evil, Problem of, A. L. Kym's Treatise analyzed by A. D'Orelli, 188 

Fichte's Facts of Consciousness (Tr.), (completed), .... A. E. Kroeger, '^1,1^2 

FuUerton, George S., The Mathematical Antinomies and their Solution, .... 38 

" " Space of Four Dimensions, 113 

" " The Argument from Experience against Idealism, .... 356 

General Ideas, A New Theory of, Payton 8pence, 366 

Goeschel, C. F., on the Immortality of the Soul (Tr.), .... 8man E. Blow, 21 

Gulshan I Raz selections from, versified), . . Bj W. E. Channing, 202 



[y Contents. 

PAGE 

Halsted, George Bruce, De Blorgan as a Logician, 1 

Harris, W. T., Rowland G. Hazard's Works, 71 

" " The Dialectic Unity in Emerson's Prose, 195 

Hazard, Rowland G., Works, W. T. Harris, 71 

Hegelian Dialectic, Prize Essay on, Berlin Philosophical Society, 444 

Hegel's Idea of the Nature and Sanction of Law, Walter B. Wines, 9 

Hegel's Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Tr.), . . . F. L. Soldan, 174, 274 

Holland, F. M., Rise of Intellectual Liberty (notice of), 108 

Homer's " Iliad," A Study of, D.J. Snider, 89, 300, 425 

Idealism, Popular Statement of, W. 3L Salter, 246, 383 

Idealism, Argument from Experience against it, George S. Ftdlcrton, 355 

Ideas, General, A New Theory of, Payton. Spence, 366 

Iliad of Homer, D. J. Snider's Study on. (See " ' Homer's Iliad.' ") 

Immortality of the Soul, C. F. Goeschel on (Tr.), Susan E. Blow, 21 

Intellectual Liberty, Rise of, By F. M. Holland, 108 

Kant and Philosophic Method, John Dewey, 162 

Kant's Critique of Judgment, T. B. Viblen, 260 

Kimball, William H., Creator and Creature, 214 

Kroeger, A. E., J. G. Fichte's Facts of Consciousness (Tr.), 47, 152 

Kym's, A. L., Problem of Evil (noticed), A.D'Orelli, 188 

Law, Nature and Sanction of (Hegel's Idea of), Wcdter B. Wines, 9 

Lockhart, Father, Introduction to Rosmini's Sketch, etc., 332 

Loomis, H., Magic or Miracle, Which ? 215 

Magic or Miracle, Which? H. Loomis, 215 

Mathematical Antinomies and their Solution, George S. Fullcrion, 38 

Moral Creativeness of Man, Francis F. Abbot, 138 

Noire, Ludwig, The Problem of Anthropology (Tr.), M. B. Bonner, 337 

Pallen, Conde B., Rosmini's Innate Idea, etc., 311 

Platonist, The (second volume), 107 

Religion, Hegel's Introduction to the Philosophy of (Tr.), . . . F. L. Soldan, 174, 274 
Revue Philosophique, July to December, 1879 (noticed), . . . . V. Champlin, 220 

Rhodes, E. Hawksley, A View of the Philosophy of Descartes, 225 

Robinson, Fannie R., Ralph Waldo Emerson, 109 

Rosmini's Innate Idea, etc., Conde B. Pallen, 311 

" Sketch of Modern Philosophers (noticed), 332 

Salter, Wm. M., A Popular Statement of Idealism, 246, 383 

Selections in Prose and Verse, W. E. Channing, 439 

Snider, Denton J., A Study of the " Iliad," 89, 300, 425 

Soldan, F. L., Hegel's Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Tr.), . . . 174, 274 

Space of Four Dimensions, George S. Fullerton, 113 

Spence Payton, A New Theory of General Ideas, 866 

Theism, Thoughts on (noticed), J.Burns-Gibson, 111 

Two Ways to Teach, B. R. Bulkeley, 109 

Veblen, T B., Kant's Critique of Judgment, 260 

Wines, Walter B., Hegel's Idea of the Nature and Sanction of Law, 9 



THE JOTJENAL 



OF 



SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 



YoL. XVIII.] Jaotart, 1884. [Ko. 1. 

DE MORGAN AS LOGICIAN. 

BY GEORGE BRUCE HALSTED. 

Augustus De Morgan was born, in 1806, in India, where his 
father was in the East India Company's service. 

When sixteen years old he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, 
to pursue mathematics, gaining, in 1825, a Trinity scholarship, 
and coming out fourth wrangler in 1827. He was prevented 
from taking his M. A. degree, or from obtaining a Fellowship, by 
his conscientious objection to signing the theological tests then 
required at Cambridge. Jevons says : " A strong repugnance to 
any sectarian restraints upon the freedom of opinion was one of 
De Morgan's most marked characteristics throughout life." 

At the age of twenty-two he became professor of mathematics 
in University College, London. As a teacher, De Morgan was 
particularly gifted. A voluminous writer on mathematics, he 
contributed essentially to those expansions of the fundamental 
conceptions which have rendered possible the new algebras, such 
as Quaternions and the Ausdehnungslehre, and have generalized 
the whole idea of a mathematical algorithm or calculus. 

But it is his logical work that will give De Morgan his most 
lasting fame. Here he stands alongside of his immortal contem- 
XYIII— 1 



2 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

porary, Boole. The eternally memorable year in the history of 
Logic -was 1847, in which George Boole issued " The Mathe- 
matical Analysis of Logic, being an Essay toward a Calculus of 
Deductive Reasoning," and De Morgan published his principal 
treatise, called "Formal Logic; or, the Calculus of Inference, 
Necessary and Probable." 

It is much to be regretted that the great memoirs produced in 
1850, 1858, 1860, 1863, by De Morgan, are so comparatively in- 
accessible in the " Cambridge Philosophical Transactions," for it 
seems impossible to adequately convey in short space their value 
to logicians. Certainly, his " Syllabus of a Proposed System of 
Logic," published in 1860, however important, cannot be taken 
to replace even the papers of 1850 and 1858, in which the same 
matters appear, and lacks altogether the charm of the memoirs. 

De Morgan had met in his life an unusual amount of bad loffic. 
His great combination of logical with mathematical learning, and 
his prominent position in London, the great metropolis, made him 
the man to whom resorted all Circle-Squarers, Angle-Trisectors^ 
Perpetual-Motionists, etc. Adding this curious experience to his 
great bibliographical knowledge of what had been attempted in 
that way in the past, he formed a large book, called " A Budget 
of Paradoxes," which is one of the most interesting treatises ever 
written on what may be called extended fallacies. 

From the broad field of his published writings it is our inten- 
tion only to select, first, a few points for special mention, and then 
state some ideas on the general way in which he has influenced 
for good the world of thought. 

De Morgan first gave that thorough treatment of contrary, 
negative, or contradictory terms which has since been so much 
praised. Bain says : " According to the true view of contrariety, 
as given by De Morgan, the negative is a remainder, gained by 
the subtraction of the positive from the universe ; the negative of 
X^vs, JJ—X^ and may be symbolized by a distinct mark, x ', whence 
^and a? are the opposites under a given universe ; not-^is a?, and 
not-a? is X!" It is just in reference to this point as to the term or 
name that De Morgan says : " Next it is clear that a name excludes 
as well as includes : every object of thought is related to man^ for 
instance, as either in the name or out. The logician has always 
excluded the privative name, not-man, for instance, as all but use- 



De Morgan as Logician. 3 

less : a certain practice of his own really makes it so. For he will 
have no tmiverse — or total sphere of thought — except the whole 
universe of possible existence ; or, at narrowest, the whole uni- 
verse of objective reality. 

" He forgets that, more often than not, the universe of the exist- 
ing topic of thought is limited. We are talking of animals, for 
example, and nothing else; then not-man becomes so definitively 
significative that we have a separate name for it, 'brute. 

"Logic ought to give us that command of thought which will 
prevent our mental vision from being obstructed by the casual ab- 
sence of a name." 

Of the separation of logic and mathematic our author says : 
" The effect has been unfortunate. . . . The sciences of which 
we speak may be considered either as disciplines of the mind, or 
as instruments in the investigation of nature and the advancement 
of the arts. 

" In the former point of view their object is to strengthen the 
power of logical deduction by frequent examples; to give a view 
of tlie difference between reasoning on probable premises and on 
certain ones by the construction of a body of results which in no 
case involve any of the uncertainty arising from the previous in- 
troduction of that which may be false ; to establish confidence in 
abstract reasoning by the exhibition of processes whose results may 
be verified in many ways ; to help in enabling the student to ac- 
quire correct notions of generalization ; to give caution in receiv- 
ing that which at first sight appears good reasoning ; to instil a 
correct estimate of the powers of the mind by pointing out the 
enormous extent of the consequences which may be developed out 
of a few of its most fundamental notions; and to give the luxury 
of pursuing a study in which self-interest cannot lay down pre- 
mises nor deduce conclusions. 

" As instruments in the investigation of nature and the advance- 
ment of the arts it is the object of these two sciences to find out 
truth in every matter in which nature is to be investigated, or her 
powers and those of the mind to be applied to the physical prog- 
ress of the human race, or their advancement in the knowledge of 
the material creation." 

Though fond of laughing at metaphysics,'De Morgan did not 
see that it could be entirely gotten rid of. 



4 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

^' Right or wrong," he says, "human beings are made to be 
metaphysicians, children most of all, uneducated persons more than 
educated. We know all about can and coAinot from our cradles ; 
we never feel the same assurance about is and is not. A philoso- 
pher, in a dark age, may determine to set out with a knowledge 
of the naturally possible and impossible ; but not even a philoso- 
pher ever pretended to set out with a knowledge of the existent 
and non-existent." 

In our author's system the order of the premises is changed, the 
Minor Premise being written first — e. g. : 

Vinegar is an acid. 

All acids contain hydrogen. 

.'. Vinegar contains hydrogen. 

Thus we see instantly what before was considered very wise in 
Lord Bacon to have observed, that the form of the syllogism re- 
sembles the mathematical axiom — things equal to the same thing 
are equal to each other — for by this arrangement we bring the 
middle terms right together, and see just how the extremes are 
brought into connection through their relation to the same middle 
term. And so we see immediately why every Syllogism must 
have three, and only three, Terms — the Minor, Major, and Middle. 
If there be four terms, either in form or in fact (from the ambigu- 
ity of either of them), the two terms of the conclusion will not 
have been compared with one Middle Term, and the regular con- 
clusion does not follow. 

We have in the same way the following canons for testing the 
validity of Syllogisms : 

1. If the Minor and Major Terms, each being compared with 
the same third or Middle Term, both agree with it, they agree 
with each other. 

This underlies all Affirmative Conclusions. 

2. If the Minor and Major Terms, both being compared with 
the same third term, one agrees and the other disagrees with it, 
they disagree with each other. This is the foundation of negative 
conclusions. 

Further, Aristotle and all the old logicians said that the 
whole of the middle term must be taken in at least one of the 
premises. 

As they put it, the middle term must be distributed at least 



De Morgan as Logician. 5 

once in the premises, otherwise the minor term may be compared 
with one part and the major with another part of it. 
From 

Some men are poets, 

Some men are Indians, 

nothing follows. But the Aristotelians were too broad in their 
generalization, as De Morgan clearly showed in his doctrine of 
Plm*ative Judgments. 

For example, if we have given the premises, 

Most men are uneducated. 
Most men are superstitious, 

according to Aristotle we are not warranted in drawing any con- 
clusion ; for the middle term is men, and in neither premise is any- 
thing said about all men. But, in point of fact, we can draw the 
perfectly valid conclusion, 

Some uneducated men are superstitious. 

Again, Aristotle is contradicted by numerically definite judg- 
ments. In these there is inference when the quantities of the 
middle term in the two premises together exceed the whole quan- 
tity of that term. Lambert first thought of this principle. De 
Morgan, without any knowledge of Lambert, reconceived it and 
extended its use. 

Suppose we grant the premises. 

Two thirds of all human beings are women. The number of 
married w^omen is never greater than the total number of men. 

It follows that half the entire number of women are single. 

Still, easy and certain as such reasoning is, it looks very like an 
example of how difiicult it is, to a logician trained only in the 
traditional logic, that in a Princeton "Manual of Logic " the only 
numerically definite syllogism given was erroneous, and stood so 
for years. I stated this to the author, and. in the latest stereo- 
typed edition it has been changed. The Syllogism he gave was 
as follows : 

" 60 out of every 100 are unreflecting. 

" 60 out of every 100 are restless. 

" Therefore, 20 out of every 100 restless persons are unreflect- 
ing." 



6- The Journal of Speculative Pliilosophij . 

After pointing out to him the fault in what he had been teach- 
ing for years, the following has been substituted : 

" 60 out of this 100 are unreflecting. 

" 60 out of this 100 are restless. 

'' .'. 20 restless persons are unreflecting." 

Anotlier point on which Aristotle and the old logicians laid 
great stress was what they termed the Figure of a syllogism. 
This they treated cumbrously and at indefinite length. De Mor- 
gan has given a much more concise, but at the same time much 
clearer, exposition of it. The Figure of a syllogism depends upon 
the situation of the middle term in the premises. 

There are four figures. In the first figure the middle term is 
the subject of the major and predicate of the minor. In the sec- 
ond, the middle term is the predicate of both, and in the third the 
subject of both. The fourth occurs when the middle term is made 
the predicate of the major and subject of the minor premise. 

De Morgan represents the subject of the conclusion — that is, the 
minor term — by a?, the middle term by y, and the predicate of the 
conclusion — that is, the major term — by s, and says : 

" A Syllogism is the deduction of a relation between two terms 
from the relation of each term to a third. The first figure of the 
logicians is that of direct transition — x related to z through x 
related to y and y to z. 

" The fourth figure is that of inverted transition — x related to z 
through z io y and y to x. 

" The second figure is that of reference to (the middle term) — x 
related to z through a? to y and z to y. 

" The third figure is that of reference from (the middle term) — x 
related to z through y io x and y to z. Thus, when the notion of 
figure is taken into account, its force and meaning are best seen 
by stating the combination of relation in the different figures. 

" So when we say 

" Kings are men, 

" All men are mortals, 

" Therefore, kings are mortals, 
we are saying that kings being a species of men, men in 
turn being a species of mortal beings, therefore, kings are a spe- 
cies of mortals ; and we are speaking in the first figure, for when 
we say that a species of a species is a species of the genus, we 



De Morgan as Logician. 7 

compare the minor with the major by the relation which the 
minor stands in to the middle, and the middle to the major. 

" When we say 

" Common salt contains no hydrogen, 

■" All acids contain hydrogen, 

■" .*. Common salt is not an acid, 
we use the second figure, and compare both major and minor 
with the middle. 

" This is equivalent to saying species and genus of the same 
are species and genus of one another. 

" Again, if we say 

" No tribes are without religion, 

^' Some tribes are cannibals, 

" .•. Some cannibals are not without religion, 
we use the third figure and compare the middle term with 
both major and minor. 

" The fourth figure is simply the first with the concluding rela- 
tion inverted." 

Here we see stress laid upon the consideration of relations, and, 
after all, we feel sure that De Morgan's greatest work was connected 
with his development of the Logic of Relatives, independently dis- 
covered by Leslie Ellis after reading Boole's " Laws of Thought." 
One of De Morgan's last memoirs, in the tenth volume of the 
" Cambridge Transactions " was on the Logic of Relations, which 
is, in the mathematical sense, a far-reaching generalization of the 
old logic. In our modern mathematics everything is generalized 
as far as possible. Thus the notiou of imaginary magnitude in 
analysis, and of imaginary space in geometry, has become funda- 
mental and all-embracing, including the real as a. special case. 
Every study of a generalization or extension gives additional 
power over the particular. We need to go beyond and look back 
from an elevation. 

Any first-rate mathematician working in logic would attempt 
to generalize, and, in fact, Boole generalized, the scholastic logic 
in a manner entirely different from De Morgan. In the " Vier- 
teljahrsschrift fiir wissenschaftliche Philosophic," page 250, the 
celebrated critic, A. Riehl, says : " Das allgemeine, den aristotel- 
ischen Syllogismus als speciellen Fall einer speciellen Methode 
umfassende Problem des Schliessens hat Boole nicht nur gestelltj 



8 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

sondern aueb gelost. Niemand, der sich gegenwartig oder kiinftig 
mit Reform der Logik bescbiiftigt, darf am "Werke Boole's vor- 
beigelien." Boole is obtaining world-wide liomage. Herbert 
Spencer says : " In tlie work by Professor Boole, ' Investigation 
of tlie Laws of Tbougbt,' tbe application to Logic of methods like 
those of matliematics constitutes another step far greater in origi- 
nality and in importance than any taken since Aristotle." 

But let us not forget that De Morgan's generalization, though 
difierent in kind and direction, lias done, perhaps, as much 
toward breaking away the old incrustation that covered the logic 
germs. 

In his view of the subject, the purely formal proposition with 
judgment, wholly void of matter, is seen in " There is the proba- 
bility X that X^is in the relation L to J"." The syllogism is the 
determination of the relation which exists between two objects of 
thought by means of the relation in which each of them stands to 
some third object which is the middle term. 

The pure form of the syllogism, when its premises are abso- 
lutely asserted, is as follows: Xh in the relation L to Y, Y\& 
in the relation Jf to Z ; therefore Xis in the relation '' L of Jlf,'^ 
compounded of L and J/, to Z. In ordinary logic, which admits 
only the relation of identity, the actual composition of the relation 
is made by our consciousness of its transitive character. The 
requisites of the copular relation, in the system of ordinary syllo- 
gism, are convertibility and transitlveness. 

Any relation which possesses these qualities may take the place 
of "is" in the common 'syllogism without impeachment of its 
validity. 

A relation is transitive when, being compounded with itself, it 
reproduces itself; that is, L is transitive when every Z of Z is Z. 
For example, " brother." Thus, from the transitiveness of the con- 
necting relation in ordinary syllogism, ^ is ^ and £ is C gives 
A is C, since, from the convertibility of the terms, A is B gives 
B is A. Here at last we have broken away from that paltry 
narrowness which sickens us with the assertion that our minds in 
pure thinking can use nothing but the relation of identity — the 
Jevons sophism that thought cannot move because all thinking 
is the substitution of identicals. 

So we see that in logic, as in mathematics, we may develop a 



On HegeVs Idea of the Nature and Sanction of Law. ^ 

whole system of theorems about symbols which are to be used in 
a given manner ; and then to make this whole system true of a 
desired relation we have only to show that the relation fulfils the 
one or two fundamental principles of the system. De Morgan 
treated of convertible and inconvertible relatives, repeating rela- 
tives, non-repeating relatives, transitive and intransitive relatives, 
and inaugurated a general system. 

On three out of his four pairs of simple propositions three 
separate algebras of logic have been founded. 

Resurrected and revivified, Logic has joined the ranks of the 
on-marching sciences. 



ON HEGEL'S IDEA OF THE NATURE AND SANC- 
TION OF LAW. 



BY WALTER B. WINKS. 



There can be no doubt as to the necessity for the acceptance of 
the inevitable. To accomplish the possible, and to refrain from 
attempting the impossible, are equally wise. From this admitted 
truth, as a major premise, with a minor premise supplied in each 
particular case, a practical age has constructed a prudential syllo- 
gism whose conclusion is that to avoid vain seeking after empty 
knowledge and useless inquiry after that which knowledge cannot 
compass is not less commendable than to know all things know- 
able. It should not, however, be forgotten that prudence, while 
often the soundest worldly wisdom, may sometimes be contempti- 
ble meanness. To the palace built by philosophy, prudence sus- 
tains the relation of a cellar to a house : fundamental, useful, even 
necessary, yet not forming a part of its symmetry, and far beneath 
the apartments above, illumined by the sunlight, and through 
which sweeps the pure upper air. 

The maxim, " Seek not to know what you cannot know," com- 
mends itself in many respects. The proposition that it is possible 
to know only what is capable of knowledge calls for no argument. 
It is not its statement, but its application, that is deleterious. The 



10 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy/. 

crucial test of knowledge is too often the subjective capacity of 
the enunciator of the maxim. " I do not know " may sometimes 
be a creditable admission, but does not the very admission disprove 
the possibility of such a subjective negation affording any ground 
for the predication of knowledge, or the lack of knowledge, in 
others ? 

A statement of these preliminary considerations is not unneces- 
sary. It is common to ridicule what is called the "windy throes 
of metaphysicians," and to compare their speculations to the child- 
ish attempt to grasp the prismatic hues of the rainbow. Time's 
echo, however, will throw back such empty laughter on the heads 
of those who evoke it. Tlie tree which grows upon the mountain- 
top may think itself much higher than the hill on which it grows, 
yet it is seen for only a mile, while the mountain towers into the 
sky — a monument of creation, and a mound and gravestone of 
some dead cataclysm. 

The best way to meet an argument that you cannot answer is to 
call the man who advances it a fool. A shrug will often accom- 
plish more than a demonstration. This appears to be the position 
of many at the present time ; but truth will grow and fructify for 
ages after the slioulders have lost the power to come to the aid of 
the feeble reason. 

The study of law, considered in its breadth and entirety, is 
closely connected with that of mental philosophy. To the layman, 
who perhaps attempts to measure the wisdom of its provisions by 
his own notions of what constitutes " common sense," this propo- 
sition may appear a paradox. And even many members of the 
legal profession may, at first blush, question its truth. Yet it is 
believed to be a fact beyond successful controversion that there is 
a philosophy of law ; in other words, that there is some underlying 
principle which makes so-called justice just. A law which makes 
all law legal is apt to escape the memories or the notice of those 
who receive their law through long generations of precedent, and 
whose thoughts never go deeper in their search for precedent than 
the ordinary habits and customs of the mass of mankind. This 
philosophy is not a philosophy of makeshifts; its principle is not 
a principle of expediency ; its higher law is really a law, and not 
& selfish maxim. 

What is the reason of law ? What makes law possible? What 



On HegeVs Idea of the Nature and Sanction of Law. 11 

makes property a fact ? What makes property allowable ? These 
are questions which we would find answers for. If we are told 
that " expediency " is the answer to each, we are still confronted 
with the question : What is the reason of expediency ? It requires 
some sanction, and that can be given only by thought. It is, 
therefore, evident that no satisfactory answer to any of these ques- 
tions can be given until, after an examination of certain prelimi- 
nary points, we have reached some satisfactory conclusion which 
may serve as a basis for a reply. 

All science may, with fairness, be called an explanation. 
When we associate certain phenomena with their causes, we ex- 
plain. The relation of an event is only half perfect unless its 
reason be told. In like manner all science is, in no small degree, 
a sort of natural history of causes and effects. But scientific ex- 
planation is always an explanation within conditions ; the facts to 
be explained are the conditions of the explanation. But these very 
conditions require explanation, and, in order to answer the final 
questions which, spectre-like, haunt humanity — whence? and 
why? and whither? — we must have an explanation of explana- 
tion. But, if what has been already said be true, all explanation is 
conditioned, and if we would have an ultimate explanation, it is 
evident that it must be self-conditioned. Any final explanation 
which will explain the existence of conditions, and therefore exist- 
ence as existence, must bring its own reason for its own self, its 
own necessity, that it is and that it alone is. To put the same 
statement in another and more concise form : All explanation is a 
taking possession of by mind, tlie ultimate explanation is a taking 
possession of, by mind, of all explanations, or, in other words, the 
taking possession of all by mind. This is nothing but self-con- 
sciousness, to understand which is to understand all. Hegel found 
the constitutive process of self-consciousness through the notion. 
That process is the idealization of a particular through a universal 
into a singular. 

This creative effort is, at first, not readily intelligible. It is easy 
to see that two and two make four, but what a void lies before the 
mind when one turns to the question. Why should two and two 
make four f But, though at first it may be difiicult to appreciate 
the notion, it will ultimately be seen to be the radical of thought. 
And it is by the march of this notion, by the continuation and 



12 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

repetition of acts of self-consciousness, tliat tlie ego is developed 
into its categories, which, in their concreteness, are externaliza- 
tion. If this be true, not only do different differences exist be- 
tween subject and object, but at the same time an absolute iden- 
tity. Hence, the reduction of the object to the subject is entirely 
possible, since, in reality, it only reduces itself to itself. This be- 
ing conceded, the transition from the thinking idea to the acting 
idea is not difficult. To theorize is to think about something ex- 
ternal to ourselves. But theory, when complete, converts its ob- 
ject into itself; it has possessed itself of all that the object really 
is ; it has reduced it from externality into subjectivity. 

But what is will? Will is kinematic thought; and thought is 
potential will. 

The great German metaphysicians, Hegel and Kant, sought to 
establish the truth of the freedom of the will. Their pride of 
reason was humiliated by the admission of the notion of necessity. 
To admit compulsion was, in their view, to admit that they were 
things, made after the image of a stone, rather than men made 
after the image of God. They could not rest under the imputa- 
tion of being shuttlecocks between the battledoors of events. 
They were resolute in" the search after better and truer means of 
escape than some so-called advanced thinkers of to-day, who seek 
a rescue from the Fate of knowledge through the Fetish of igno- 
rance.' 

To-day, among certain schools, free-will is laughed at. As long 
ago as the time of Dr. Johnson, even that great man said, "We 
feel that we are free, and that is all about it." And we can im- 
agine the laugh which accompanied such a statement. Yet Dr. 
Johnson's argument is, perhaps, as excellent as any that can be 
urged in favor of free-will, since any philosophy which would com- 
mand respect must guard against being repugnant to common 
sense. The cry of the rabble is not to be accepted as the test of 
true philosophy ; but if, when a truth has been demonstrated and 
brought under the cognizance of ordinary men, they fail to appre- 



' Huxley finds satisfaction in the thought that there are things which we cannot 
know, such as cause, substance, and externality ; and on the strength of this (negative) 
belief he claims to be considered orthodox. Herbert Spencer appears to find a re- 
markable source of joy in feeling that he cannot find any interpretation of the mystery 
of subject and object, and in his inability to understand the power manifested therein. 



On HegeVs Idea of the Nature and Sanction of Law. 13 

■ciate it, or find it repugnant to all tlieir conceptions, there is strong 
reason for suspecting the philosophy to be in the wrong. But an 
idea has found lodgment in the brains of a certain class of thinkers 
that " freedom " means " motivelessness." The argument is, that 
because a man cannot act without a motive, he is a slave. But 
what constitutes serfdom ? Is it not true that he who acts from 
motive intelligible to himself acts freely, while all other action is 
the result of necessity ? Surely freedom is to obey one's self rather 
than to yield submission to something external to one's self If this 
be so, a man's motival action is free, because his motives are his 
own, so that there can be no incompatibility between moral neces- 
sity and mental (or moral) freedom. 

In nature, the cause repeats itself in the eflfect ; the spark is 
repeated in the explosion ; the motion of the arm is repeated in 
the motion of the stick. But in the operation of the will the 
motive is not repeated in the act. It is the nature of the agent 
that is repeated in the performance — not the nature of the mo- 
tive. Our language aiFords an incidental corroboration of the 
truth of this statement. With regard to physical nature, we use 
the word cause ; in reference to the will, we employ the term mo- 
tive. But it must not be forgotten that it is only moral necessity 
that is freedom. A man may be the slave of his appetites, and 
then he is not free. It may be argued that, just as a man's higher 
motives are his own, so are one's desires and appetites ; and, if 
obedience to the one be freedom, it is folly to call submission to 
the other slavery. To understand this subject thoroughly, how- 
ever, it is important to distinguish between the two meanings of 
the word " mine.'''' In one sense, subjectivity belongs to the inner 
me ; but is not objectivity doubly mine ? Have I not acquired 
objectivity and reduced it to possession ? Does it not, then, be- 
long to the inmost me ? Is it not of my very essence, even that 
essence realized ? If an affirmative answer be given to these 
questions, it must follow that one is truer to one's self when one is 
true to the universal " mine" than to the particular " mine." 

But the objection may be urged, with plausibility, that the very 
particulars which one obeys are externalized and realized. One's 
desii'es are the outcome of nature and spirit, and what is nature 
but the realized idea ? Such an argument, while plausible, pos- 
sesses no logical weight. We are dealing with free-will, and this 



14 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

can exist only when will wills itself. One feels that one's sensu- 
ous motives have a kind of externality to one's self; but to be 
free one must obey one's own motives ; will must will itself; just 
as the end of reason is reason, so the object of the will is will, and 
therefore it is free. Hence it is that the ordinary opinions of man- 
kind, in reference to the freedom and slavery which a man may 
undergo in himself, have a deep foundation in actual fact. Each 
man feels that he is less a man when he is dragged at the heels 
of his senses, and more a man when he frees himself from that 
democracy and submits himself to the restraint of the monarch 
reason. Each man stands in graceful pride in the freedom of 
that restraint which is imposed by universal reason ; each one lies 
in chains who yields to the natural motives which are the sole 
lights, the sole guides of animals and things. Such lights are like 
the stars, particular and sparse, while the light of reason is like 
the day, universal and wide. It is true freedom, therefore, for 
each man to conform his will to the universal ; in this way only 
can he become in the true sense a man ; in this way only can the 
evolution of nature from thinghood to manhood be effected. 

Now, free-will is the root of law, although (as has been already 
said) at the present time many so-called philosophers scout the 
idea of free-will. Man, they say, is ruled by his organism. This 
organism is a thing, just as is a cabbage, and is influenced only 
by externals. There is nothing but a sequence of events, and 
men are causes only as is the cue that propels a billiard-ball ; but 
the force is not to'be found in the cue, nor in the arm, nor in the 
man, nor in the food, the sun — the conditions that caused his 
growth. " Before Abraham was," this force existed ; it has under- 
gone more curious exigencies in its long day than Caesar's clay. 
About its beginning nothing is known ; it and matter are the twin 
Melchisedecs. 

Does it ever occur to such people to consider what, then, is 
the meaning of law ? Can it have any ? If there is no free-will, 
what justification is there for legislative enactments ? Why 
should there be a penalty for theft, or a right of civil action for 
breach of contract ? Insane persons are held irresponsible for 
their acts and are allowed to escape punishment, because they are 
not free agents — in other words, because they are not under the 
control of reason. But, according to some modern thinkers, na 



On HegeVs Idea of the Nature and Sanction of Law. 15 

man so controlled {i. e., no sane man) is free ; why, then, should 
the latter, under this hypothesis, be liable to punishment if the 
former are to be exempt ? 

Men, however, will not believe such advanced thinkers, and 
Dr. Johnson's argument is as good as theirs. We are free ; other- 
wise law has no meaning, and to eliminate free-will is to overturn 
the very foundation of the temple of justice. 

But free-will is, at first, isolated self-identity ; in other words, 
it is primarily abstract. If two components constitute a whole, 
either part, separated from the other and considered in itself, is 
abstract. Free-will, as it at first emerges, has the character of 
singleness or abstractness. It is like one leg of a pair of com- 
passes. In its very singleness, however, and by its very oneness, 
it is constitutive of the person ; it is a person. But the person's 
personality must be realized ; for, because it is thinking will, it has 
in it, implicitly, the notion. The notion is the very concreteness 
of the universal, the particular and the singular. And as realiza- 
tion is always through something other than itself, and as free- 
will, as the person, is an abstract inner, and its immediate other 
must be an abstract outer, it follows that f^ee-will can be realized 
only through an external thing. In this we have property. Here, 
then, we have the notions of person and of property, which Hegel 
calls the abstract self-internal and the abstract self-external. 

It is beyond the scope of the present article to enter upon any 
discussion of the manifestation of the notional evolution into ab- 
stract right, morality, and observance ; in which we again find the 
universal, the particular, and the singular. For the will, which is 
universal in law, passes into a particular phase and becomes inner, 
as conscience, in morality, and finds its true concreteness in observ- 
ance. We must confine our attention to the philosophy of law ; 
and, while these subjects are intimately associated with it, and their 
exposition would admirably illustrate the inner motions of the no- 
tion in the philosophy of abstract right, their consideration would 
require too much time and space to be profitable in this connection. 

Legality, then, or abstract right, divides itself into property, 
contract, and penalty ; and here again we find the singular, the 
particular, and the universal. For in property we find the single 
will, in contract we find several, or particular, wills, and in pen- 
alty we find the will of the whole, or the universal will. 



16 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Fii*st, then, of property. We have already seen that will is 
realized through, or by means of, an abstract self-external, a thing 
without will; and, while will is realized only through this thing, 
it in its turn finds its meaning only in will. From this statement 
certain things evidently follow. A man, being in his nature sin- 
gular, can be possessed only of the singular. That only would be 
liis immediate other. The universal can be the other only to the 
universal, and hence cannot be tlie subject of private property. 
Property, therefore, has its sanction, its meaning, only in nature, 
in the spirit of the person. From the very statement of the na- 
ture of concreteness, it follows that it is a man's duty to possess, 
or be a proprietor, since it is only in this way that his abstract will 
can be realized. A man who possesses nothing still remains ab- 
stract implicitly. But let it not be understood from this state- 
ment that it is a man's duty to be rich. The notion does not dic- 
tate as to how much or how little a man shall own ; all that it 
dictates is its own evolution into the idea, into the objective spirit. 
The man who makes life subservient to a bank account is not 
making humanity an end to itself, but a means to a wretchedly 
trivial end. Such an end, if made a ruler, will misrule. The man 
whose object and aim is a triviality will become trivial. A life 
with an external motive will become an external life, and, there- 
fore (as a sequence from what has been said), will become deformed, 
one-sided. It is only by cherishing noble ends that man can do 
nobly. It was a sentiment of Milton, no less beautiful than true, 
that he who would write an heroic poem must make life an heroic 
poem. The proverb, "Like master, like man," holds true of the 
end (master), and of the means (man) chosen to attain it. The 
meaning of the obligation is not vulgarity, but a fuller life, a 
more complete being, and in this sense it is every man's duty to 
be an owner. But will, even when set in the object, requires 
enunciation, which can be effected only by an act. This is seiz- 
ure, which term is here used as synonymous with occupation. 
The judgment determines that the object seized belongs to the 
party seizing ; in other words, his will has predicated of it, " it is 
mine.'''' The very immediacy of the body to the mind is sufficient 
enunciation of property in that; and any injury done to that in 
which I have set my will is an injury done to my will. Seizure, 
then, is the bringing of a more external into relation to that less 



On HegeVs Idea of the Nature and Sanction of Law. 17 

external property, my body. Of course, the mode of seizure, or 
occupation, varies. I may move into a house or hold a coin in my 
hand. Hegel treats the whole subject of possession under three 
heads, and divides seizure itself into bodily seizure, formation, and 
designation. Here, then, is a rise in generalization from indi- 
viduality to universality. Designation Hegel considers the per- 
fection of occupancy. Not only is possession shown by bodily 
seizure, but by formation. Instead of taking a thing into rela- 
tion to his less external property, he can place his less external 
property in it. He who bestows labor upon a thing enunciates 
his possession by formation ; and, lastly, by naming, labelling, or 
the employment of signs, he demonstrates appropriation, or that 
he has set his will in it. 

But even bodily seizure demonstrates proprietorship roughly — ■ 
that is, that one has set one's will in the object ; and even this is 
a kind of designation, for that is only another name for a sign, 
and, as a corollary from what has been already said, all the forms 
of occupancy are only less general instances of the ultimate im- 
port, a less general demonstration of the fact that a thing is willed 
mine. 

Possession itself may be considered under three heads. The 
first of these is, as we have seen, seizure ; the second, use j the 
third, alienation. These are not stereotyped in their separateness ; 
they are known in their transitions. 

The evolution of seizure into use will illustrate what has been 
not unhappily termed the "life-flux" of the notion. All seizure 
is appropriation by will. Will makes the object its own. But 
in this process the will must be regarded as positive, and the 
thing determined as negative. The will, then, being particularly 
determined by the thing, is particular will in a desire, and the 
thing negative, being particularly determined, is only for the will, 
and, consequently, serves it. This is the whole m.eaning of use- 
Hegel defines use thus : " Use is the realization of my desire 
through the abstraction, destruction, consumption of the thing; 
the selfishness of my nature is thus manifested, which, according- 
ly, thus accomplishes its destiny." According to the same author- 
ity, use is the real side of property, and is often employed as an 
argument by those who have wrongfully taken possession. Such 
persons argue, " The thing was of no use to the man from whom 

xyni— 2 



18 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

I took it." Yet, as Hegel justly points out, such an argument is 
bad as against the actual assignment of will. If will be already 
in the object, use can give no title to another whose will is not in 
it ; or, rather, whose seizure is secondary. How, then, originates 
prescription ? From the fact that seizure may become an empty 
symbol, the will which made occupation or designation a force 
may have passed away, and the property is then really without 
an owner; and thus property may be acquired or lost, in lapse of 
time, by prescription. From the very necessity of enunciation 
through bodily seizure, formation, and designation, follows the 
necessity for continued manifestation, and it is in this way that 
prescription has a meaning and a right. 

But, as will may in time lapse for want of enunciation, so it 
can be withdrawn by negation. If a thing become mine when I 
have willed it mine, it is evidently not mine when I have willed 
it not mine. In the latter act consists alienation. And when two 
individual wills meet, one willing alienation and the other pro- 
prietorship, we find what is technically termed in law " consent," 
and therefore what is designated a contract. 

Thus we have arrived at the second moment of the notion of 
abstract right. 

In this connection it may not be out of place to remark that, 
although much of this evolution may seem unfamiliar, much of it 
is sanctioned by man's ordinary experience, and the foregoing ex- 
planation of consent (although closely following Hegel) agrees 
with the definition in use among lawyers.' Philosophy collects 
the drift truth scattered through the world, and constructs, from 
the isolated fragments, a homogeneous whole. 

It is in this unity of different wills that property reaches or ap- 
pears in its highest manifestation ; it is a unity in which difference 
is at the same time negated and affirmed. But the very essence of 
the notion is the identification of differences and the differentiation 
of identity. In this act we see a proprietor (whose will has met 
the will of another, and where " consent " has resulted) at once 
ceasing to be yet remaining and becoming a proprietor ; and from 
this may be deduced the right of cancellation of the contract in 
case of a laesio ultra dimidium vel enormis. 



1 Grotius, " De Juro Belli et Pads," lib. 2, ch. ii, s. 4 ; Story's " Eq. Jur.," sec. 221. 



On HegeVs Idea of the Nature and Sanction of Law. 19 

The historical progress of law, through many of its simplifica- 
tions, through the extinction of many of its symbolisms founded 
purely in sense, and through the actual changes in the signs of 
possession, is an object of interest to the lawyer. The conversion 
of subjectivity into objectivity, which we find in passing from 
property to possession, requires some formalities to eflPect itself; 
for possession is tlie expression of will, and expression is only a 
particular externalization. The history to which we have referred, 
then, must be studied in relation to expression, and its progress 
in time will be found to be regulated by the advance of the possi- 
bilities of expression, or the facility for the passage of the subjective 
into the objective. 

But it will be clear, to any one who has followed us so far, that 
contract is not manifested as will. The act of contract, in that it 
is particular, is a manifestation of wills in community, but not of 
will in universality. How, then, does the element of universality 
attach to contract ? We answer, Only through its sanction or pre- 
scription by the universal will. It is not possible, in this connec- 
tion, to enter into a consideration of the remedies under contract. 
These remedies, as every one knows, fall into one of two classes, 
viz. : the right of civil action, and penalty. 

This leads us to the consideration of the third head under our 
general division, i. e. — Penalty. 

As contract is under the sanction of the universal will, it fol- 
lows that any one who intentionally negates the community of 
wills negates by his act the absolute will, and afiirms in its stead 
his own particular self-will. This, in its essence, is crime. 

What is the remedy ? If crime be a negation of the universal 
will, it can be corrected only by an afiirmation of the universal 
will in the same regard, which affirmation must be a negation of 
the particular will. In this consists penalty. A realized negation 
of the absolute will is force ; hence the criminal, in such negation, 
has resorted to force, and the reaffirmation must be by a negation 
of self-will. Every one knows the effect of a double negative, and 
that will illustrate in some degree the process of thought. The 
criminal must be subsumed under his own law — force. In other 
words, he must be compelled to undo his own compulsion, which 
is evidently to restore him to his own right. But this can be 
efficiently done only by a disinterested representative of right. 



20 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Mere individual counter-assertion would be interminable, hence 
the restoration of the true inmost will of" the criminal can be ef- 
fected only by means of a jndge, who is the representative of the 
universal, because (his feelings being apart from the inquiry) he 
can decide in conformity with the objective standards of right. 
And, since the relation of justice can be made actual only through 
the knowable existent, punishment must relate to either the per- 
son or the property of the criminal. It must not be forgotten tha.t 
punishment has its foundation in the very nature of will. A more 
thorough comprehension of the inexorable facts of thought would 
do much to bring about a better understanding of the true posi- 
tion of the criminal in relation to society. In one sense the ofSce 
of the judge is only to sanction the criminal's conviction of him- 
self. It is the universal that he has outraged ; and, as has been 
shown, that universal is his own in a truer and a deeper sense 
than are the desires and appetites which he hoped to gratify by 
his crime. He has given his consent to the law which punishes 
him. It is his inner self that tries, convicts, and condemns his 
outer self. 

Considered in the light of these reflections, all punishment may 
be regarded as educational. Training is the counteracting of the 
passive force of nature by wise restraint and discipline. It is 
this that constitutes true education of the child. We have got 
"beyond the idea that education comprises only the instruction of 
the child in the " three K's." We have come to see that it is 
elaboration — the elaboration of nature (the chaos) into character 
(the cosmos). True education is the subjection of nature in man, 
the subordination of his senses and appetites. This is possible 
only through the negation of the mechanical necessities of nature 
and a super-position of the universal, from which, as we have seen, 
results freedom of the will. Thus, we find that all punishment is 
educational; the infliction of penalty is not, as some would have 
ns think, a wrong, but a right, which conduces to the true freedom 
of the individual, to the welfare of the community, and to the 
ultimate attainment of justice. 



The Development of the Soul and its Immortality. 21 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOUL AKD ITS IM- 

MOETALITY. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF CARL FRIEDRICH GOESCHEL BT SUSAN E. BLOW. 

(Chapter II — Concluded.) 

Personality, or the Immanent Development of the Soul and its 

Immortality. 

50. Such is the concrete content into which the soul develops 
itself, attaining, through personality, freedom of the Spirit, and 
with this freedom gaining not only immortality, but also the resur- 
rection and transfiguration of the body. We must, however, keep 
in mind that we reach this result only when recognizing the soul 
as a Self. We seek and find the ground and goal of selfhood in the 
Absolute Self. The soul from which the process of development 
immediately moves is itself immediately given. We took the 
soul as we found it, immediately in time, and the Spirit into 
which the soul developed itself was finite, just because it devel- 
oped itself from a given point. The whole course of development 
lacked ground and guarantee ; the individual was without soul — 
consciousness without a subject ; the personality of the finite 
spirit lacked origin and destiny — beginning and end — its Alpha 
and its Omega. We could find both only in a Being who should 
be the Absolute Realization of all the moments which we had dis- 
covered successively in finite and posited forms in the develop- 
ment of the Spirit. That which is given is explained only through 
a Giver who is in Himself and has developed out of Himself all 
that He gives : the given cannot be explained through emanation, 
for the unconscious activity presupposed in emanation cannot pro- 
duce what it has not in itself ; the given is, however, explained 
through Creation, and Creation presupposes the Creator. This 
Creator is the Absolute Spirit, who from eternity to eternity 
determines HimseK from Himself; this self-determination reveals 
itself as the Trinity, in which the Absolute Spirit, apprehended as 
Absolute Personality, mediates itself — in which also the idea of 
Creation finds its truth, and the Created Spirit its interpretation 
and transfiguration. 



22 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

In accordance with this view, the Trinity is the immanent con- 
dition of the absolute self-conditioned personality of God; the 
Absolute Personality of God is the condition of Creation, and 
hence, also, of the created personality of the Unite spirit ; the 
personality of the finite spirit (which herein proves itself the inde- 
pendent reflection of the Absolute) is the condition of the freedom 
of the finite spirit ; the freedom of the finite spirit in the Absolute 
Spirit is the condition of its personal imperishability. 

Notwithstanding this chain of connections and dependences, we 
are able to proceed immediately from the Soul : the Soul develops 
itself into Spirit and points of itself to God. This seeming para- 
dox is solved by the insight that the Soul in its immediacy has in 
itself as its dowry the witness of the Absolute Spirit — that it ex 
ists in communion with this Spirit, draws its nourishment /rom 
this Spirit, and manifests the richness and fulness of this Spirit 
just in proportion as it develops itself. This realization or medi- 
ation is, therefore, itself a proof of the Divine Creation — more 
definitely of the continuously progressive Creation, i. e., the pene- 
trative participation of the Absolute with the finite spirit. In so 
far as this participation has been interrupted on the human side, 
the act of progressive Creation manifests itself as deliverance and 
reconciliation throuo;h the condescension of God to the finite 
spirit which is thus recalled to life in Him after becoming, through 
its fall, subject unto death. Creation has not once been, but it is ; 
it is essentially continuous, progressive, personal, participative ; 
hence it implies preservation, renewal, and communion. 

The crucial insight of Philosophy is the identity of the imma- 
nent movement of the concept with experience. This is the stone 
of stumbling and rock of offence on which the tnany are wrecked, 
or before which they stand paralyzed. This identity grows clear 
only through apprehension of the Personality of Thought, i. e.^ 
through the insight that Thought in all of its moments partici- 
pates in the Absolute Spirit and in all Creation. Only through 
this insight can we explain how, from any given moment of 
Thought, there may develop the empty, accidental, arbitrary, 
intermediate phases of apostasy — for each moment, being pene- 
trative and participative, is in continuous relation with all the 
moments of Being and Thought. 

According to an old fancy — embodied most purely in the great 



The Development of the Soul and its Immortality. 23 

poem of Dante — what man does not yet know he shall learn in 
the vision and recognition of God. In the same sense it is true 
that all is determined in the concursus Dei^ and this conoursus 
Dei, in a fallen world, manifests itself in the Redemption. 

We are now at the end of that process of development which 
has led us from immediate existence to Actuality or Individual 
Totality ; from Being to Thought — from the Individual to the 
Person, and which, moving on from the Person, has borne us up- 
ward and backward to Absolute Personality. Everything, how- 
ever, depends upon seizing that focal point from which flashes at 
once the inmost comprehension, and upon attaining that specula- 
tive insight in which the truth is perfectly mirrored. Nothing, 
therefore, is so imperative as adequate apprehension of the rela- 
tionship between Being and Thought, and correct valuation and 
distinction of the categories which develop themselves in these dif- 
ferent spheres. The main obstacle to Knowledge of God and of 
the Soul lies in the fact that even in Thought we are hampered by 
Being and the categories of Being. Thence it is that we inquire 
so anxiously if Existence necessarily belongs to the Absolute 
Thought which we call God, and doubt whether the Existing 
Thought or Thinking Soul is secure of this existence in the fu- 
ture. On the one hand, Existence as extended in space and time 
is so mighty and overwhelming that, in its infinite dispersion, it 
seems to threaten all consciousness, and, in its infinite expansion, to 
attack all individuality. On the other hand, it is so reliable and 
BO real that, without it, it would seem Thought cannot be. This 
is the magic power wielded over us by Being as opposed to 
Thought. We are all like poor Lenette, who, after listening to 
the Astronomic discourses of her would-be philosophic husband, 
complained that he made the stars seem so large that she could 
not hold them in her little heart and head ; and, when he held 
forth on Pneumatology, declared in her distress that he made 
souls seem so small that she had to stretch them all out of joint 
to have anything left of them. Such witchcraft does Being 
exert over Thought that, though the latter includes and concen- 
trates within itself the whole expanse of Being, it is, nevertheless, 
on the one hand, startled and terrified by Being, and, on the other 
hand, feels itself dependent upon Being. Therefore, it is impera- 



2i The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

tive that we learn to know Thought as well as Being. We have 
already characterized it as the internality and truth of Being, 
and have recognized existence in its externality as only a single 
Moment of Thought, which, in its isolation, is negated in the 
totality of moments — i. e., in Thought itself. 

If only we were able to realize that Thought is the purest 
transfiguration and clearest self-explication of Being — that in it 
Being comes to itself by turning itself inside out, and reflecting 
itself in itself ; if we could become conscious of Thought in its 
height and depth and fulness, we could never question whether 
to this inmost Thought belonged the outwardness of Being. 
^Neither could we, after such a recognition, stumble over the criti- 
cal doubt whether Thought as subjective and Being as objective 
could really coincide. Nor, again, could we ever deny to human 
thought the power to recognize truth, for we should know that 
Thought is One. Consequently, human thought is not simply 
human, but of and from God. And, through Personality or the 
power of participation, mediated in the individual man. 

We have followed the Soul in its upward path ; we have noted 
its immediate origin in Being ; we hav^e seen it rise out of Being 
into Consciousness or subjective thought ; we have rejoiced in 
its culmination as Spirit in total Thought — how can we then still 
anxiously doubt and question whether Thought, in that future 
which it includes within itself, shall still have the existence out 
of whose externality it has ascended, and whose limits it has 
annulled ? How, indeed, unless we resemble the worthy country- 
man, who, gazing thoughtfully at the ascending' Pegasus, mourns 
the plough-horse now forever lost ? 

But not only is the objective validity of thought often made de- 
pendent upon its external existence instead of its immanent idea 
— but the withdrawal from thought of external existence is claimed 
to threaten its subjective validity, and to snatch awa}" the think- 
ing Subject. We reply, simply. He who has learned to think 
Thought as the coming to itself of Being (and what is thought if 
it be not this) can never doubt that the thinking subject belongs 
essentially to and is inseparable from Thought ; without the 
thinking subject. Thought cannot be. 

Yet, even with this insight, we frankly confess that the main 
difficulty is not overcome. This difficulty lies, as has been said, 

\ 



The Development of the Soul and its Immortality. 25 

not in Thought, but in the Crude Being which is blindly and in- 
voluntarily shoved under Thought. It is necessary that this diffi- 
culty, upon which really rests the whole doubt of personal immor- 
tality, be clearly set before the mind, in order that we may read 
its refutation in that progressive development of the Soul which 
has been already traced. 

Herein lies the doubt. Being is and shall forever be ; there 
will always be existence, and this existence will realize and repro- 
duce itself in individuals. It is always the same Being, but that 
which exists is not the same ; out of the infinite womb of Being 
are born forever fresh individuals ; the river of Being flows on 
forever, but never for a moment are its waters the same. So too 
is it with thought. Thought thinks, and shall think forevermore ; 
or, to put it in other words, just as Being develops itself ever 
explicitly in individuals, so does it ever return upon itself implicitly 
in Thought. With this Thought there shall be always a thinker ; 
as the process of Being demands objective individuals, so with 
Thought is bound up the thinking subject. But, as there is 
change in the individual objects which are the bearers of Being, 
so there is change in tlie Subjects which are the bearers of 
Thought. True, the thinking subject is the conditio sine qua non 
of Thought, just as Being demands the object in order to become 
Existence ; but these subjects which emerge from Thought just 
as objects emerge from Being are, no more than the latter, neces- 
sarily persistent. 

What answer can we make to this objection % In how far is 
this doubt which distinguishes between Being and Thought, and 
acknowledges the distinction, open to the charge of being still 
clouded and hampered by the Externality of Being % 

The whole doubt is based upon a supposed analogy between 
Being and Thought : its procedure appears reasonable and just. 
It will concede to Thought y?^^?! as much right as to Beiiig, hut not 
one whit more. 

Our first question, therefore, is whether this analogy is really 
carried out with the intended fairness and justice — whether as 
much has been conceded to Thought and the Thinker as to Being 
and the natural object. 

In the transmutation of material object there is preservation of 
the species, but not of the individual. But what matters this to 



26 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

an object whioli is an element merely and not a self; whicli in 
change changes ox\\j for the subject, and which itself is indifferent 
to change, as it belongs to and is dependent upon the externality 
which changes it. It becomes another for the subject ; for itself 
it is essentially the same as before ; it resembles its earlier form of 
being, as the body of the man resembles the body of the child. 

If, however, a thinking subject changes into another, it loses its 
all in losing its Self. The nature of the thinking subject is to be 
subject — to be self — to be one and the same. The nature of the 
objects of being is, on the contrary, only to be object. If the 
subject is changed, it is destroyed, whereas the change of the 
object is the realization of its nature. To be just, therefore, the 
assumed analogy between Being and Thought must concede to 
the subject that in such process of change as accords with its na- 
ture it sha\\ retnain itself , jast as the object in its own manner 
retains its essential identity under all changes of form. In every 
moditication to which the external object is subjected it remains 
" thing ; " before and after each change it is dependent upon ex- 
ternal conditions ; its nature is stamped upon it from without, and 
it is only a negative element in an inclusive totality. So, in 
every change experienced by the subject, the subject must remain 
itself I it may vary its manifestation, but its essence must be self- 
hood. 

But doubt is not yet silenced, and with renewed energy it now 
directs its attack against the complaining subject. Dare the rich 
man complain of death because it takes from him his wealth, while 
from the miserable wretch who has nothing it takes notliing ? 
The rich and happy man loses much in death which the man who 
is poor and miserable does not lose. Yet who would venture to 
arraign death for equalizing the inequalities of human life ? In 
the beginning men were equal — in the grave they are equal again ! 
The poor man loses less than the rich, but then during life the 
poor man had less than the rich. So death robs the subject of 
consciousness, but cannot take consciousness from the natural ob- 
ject which never had it. Its procedure is not, therefore, unjust, 
and Subject and Individual become equal as they sink back into 
universal Being. 

In vain we reply to Doubt that the rich and the poor, being 
both men, are in their essence alike, while the subject and the 



The Development of the Soul and its Immortality. 27 

natural individual are essentially unlike; consequently, that the 
equalizing process which is just in the one case is unjust in the- 
other. Boldly comes the startling answer that Being is the com- 
mon mother of life and thought — the common source of all indi- 
viduality and all subjectivity. As the rich and the poor, the happy 
and the wretched, are alike men, so nature and spirit, individuality 
and subjectivity, are alike the issue of Being. Being externalizes 
itself in Things which return again into Being as they proceeded 
from it ; Being concentrates and comes to a consciousness of itself 
in subjects, which in like manner emerge from and sink back into 
Being ! 

Making this declaration, scepticism pleads guilty to and is con- 
victed of the error of which we had accused it. Our accusation 
was that scepticism always implies Being as the infinite Substance 
and the ultimate source of all things ; that to the sceptic Being is 
the fountain whence and the bottomless gulf whither all things 
flow — the womb and the grave of life. Thought is, in his appre- 
hension, only a mode of universal Being; out of Being come both 
the natural individual and the conscious subject, and back into 
Being shall each return. This is the plague-spot of doubt — the 
cancer which eats away the life of thought. Its medicine and cure 
is Speculative Philosophy, which, as immanent Logic, recognizes, 
not in Being but in Thought, the ground of all natural objects 
and of all conscious subjects ; which sees that it is Thought from 
whose fulness Being is projected as an isolated radius or single 
moment, and that this single moment comes to its actuality only 
in connection with all the other moments of the inclusive Totality. 
Thus Logic proves to be the Monism of Thought, and culminates 
in concrete Theology, wherein Thought reveals itself as Absolute 
Personality, which, adequately apprehended, is the Trinity. 

Through this insight we strike at the very root of doubt ; we 
storm scepticism in its last intrenchment. But though the sud- 
den revolution by which Thought is posited as the ground of 
Being may paralyze the sceptic who has always instinctively pos- 
ited Being as the ground of thought, the paralysis is only for a 
moment, and thus accepting as a fact the reproach hurled upon 
it, doubt hurls it back upon Speculative Philosophy. The re- 
proach was that scepticism made of Being the Alpha and the 
Omega, or, to state it more concretely, that it deified nature as 



28 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

ultimate source and final goal — that it gave no honor to the Tri- 
une God, into whose Absolute Consciousness finite consciousness 
returns, not only without loss, but accentuated and glorified, while 
this same human consciousness is stifled and drowned by return 
into Being. This is the accusation now hurled back upon Specu- 
lative Philosophy, with the claim that she herself in her Logic 
derived everything from Being, in her Physics derived every- 
thing from Nature, and thus herself thinks Thought as a Mode 
of Being. Paragraphs and pages are pointed out to convince 
her that she derives from Being, becoming, existence, being for 
self, essence and phenomenon, manifestation and reality, and, 
finally, the Idea itself in its subjectivity, objectivity, and absolute 
ness. The Idea which has thus' slowly emerged from the depths 
of Universal Being she then salutes as Spirit, and claims for it 
eternal persistence. But if this Spirit has developed itself out of 
Nature, must it not return into Nature ? Does not Philosophy 
itself demand this circular course in which the end meets the be- 
ginning ? In the process of Philosophy does not everything rise 
out of and sink back into Being ? Have we not ourselves seen 
the soul awake out of an individual existence which was sunk in 
the material — has it not arisen before our eyes out of the state of 
unconscious identity with the all into the freedom and conscious 
unity of the Spirit ? Dare the soul, then, deny its origin % Is 
not this origin denied unless the soul returns into it as its goal ? 

Yainly we remind our antagonist that from our contingent 
■and immediate beginning in Being we were led back to the true, 
Self-Mediated Origin, out of whose Absolute Personality was 
wrested the personality of the finite Spirit in its identity with free- 
dom and immortality. Herein is the reply of scepticism ; you 
abandon and deny the very logic and philosophy which you claim 
thus to further and expand ; it is time that you should recognize 
that this difi'erence between your principle and your result, your 
beginning and your end, is the culmination of a progress devel- 
oped, not, as you assert, out of your principle, but in contradiction 
to it. This is the final word of doubt. It abandons its own prin- 
•ciple, that everything is developed from Being ; but it claims as 
result of the long conflict that it has also forced Speculative Phi- 
losophy to a surrender. 

What shall we say ? Has Speculative Philosophy done her 



The Development of the Soul and its Immortality. 39 

work in the world by bringing to ligbt the Supremacy of Thought, 
and shall she now, blushing and speechless, surrender her assaulted 
principle, and, giving glory to the truth, admit the newly found 
answer to the old enigma to be indeed the Solvent Word ? What 
concerns us all is that truth should prevail. Truth is saved when 
the Supremacy of Thought is vindicated ; why, then, should we 
not rejoice in the new discovery as though it were our own ? 
Why do we still cling to a form over which, in spite of variations. 
Being predominates in the beginning and at the end ? 

The question rises, Is this so ? May not the attack upon that 
Logic which develops itself from Being rest upon a misapprehen- 
sion ? 

The immediate starting-point and principle of Philosophy is 
Being. But, if Philosophy does not misunderstand herself, this 
means nothing else than that to Thought its own being is first, or 
Being is Thought in its first immediacy. Consequently, Thought 
is its ownprius and its own principle, for it is Thought which 
recognizes in Being its own first crude determination. Being is 
that which is first thought by Thought. Consequently, Thought 
as implicit is its own principle. Being is only the first chaotic 
abstract object of Thought, and belongs itself to Thought. From 
Being, or rather from itself through Being, Thought develops 
its richer and fuller determinations until in the concrete self-reali- 
zation of the Idea it concentrates in itself the determinations 
which it has successively developed. Thus Thought is the Identity 
and Totality of all its determinations, of which determinations 
the first and crudest is Being. Thought is not merely the Total- 
ity, but as such also the Identity of its determinations. Thought 
is consequently not the mechanical conglomeration of these sepa- 
rate moments, but it is the unity prismatically reflected in their 
various categories. 

It may, indeed, be urged that in this sense all methods — that of 
Spinoza equally with that of Descartes — have presupposed Thought, 
for, no matter what may be posited as a first principle, it is al- 
ways Thought which posits it. The emphatic difference between 
Philosophy of immanent thought and its predecessors lies in the 
fact that they were not conscious of their fundamental presuppo- 
sition, whereas the Philosophy of Implicit Thought knows itself 
as its own fundamental principle. That the Logic which moves 



30 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

from Being is conscious of Thought as its underlying pregnant 
principle, is proved by its culmination in the Monism of Thought, 
for Spirit is essentially this Being for the Spirit. The history of 
Philosophy is the external confirmation of the insight that all 
methods of philosophy — the crudest as well as the most complete — 
have the same ultimate ground. They fail, however, to recog- 
nize this ground, and therefore wreck themselves upon Being, 
which, as thus apprehended, is isolated in its own exclusiveness, 
whereas, seen in the light of the Idea, it reveals itself as a radius 
of the infinite circle of Thought. 

Scepticism thinks all things under the form of time, hence it 
thinks them as isolated and successive. But, as only Thought really 
^*«, Being cannot be apprehended as isolated and sundered from 
Thought, but only as included in Thought. In the form of Rep- 
resentation, therefore, it may be said that Being will perish but 
Thought shall abide, and with Thought the threefoldness that is 
in Thought, viz. : Body, Soul, and Spirit — Individuality, Subjec- 
tivity, and Personality. In other words. Being shall come to it- 
self; it shall not be simple externality, but shall prove itself to 
belong to the Internal. If, therefore, earlier in the process of de- 
velopment, we defined Thought as the coming to itself of Being, 
this did not imply, as the sceptic claims, that Being was the source 
of Thought, or that Thought originated in the withdrawal of Be- 
ing from externality into the Internal. This were impossible, for 
the outward has no inward ; on the contrary, it is the inward which 
has an outward. The process of development, therefore, demands 
that Thought as^rms shall externalize itself in Being, thus mak- 
ing itself its own^object, and, through this self-separation, returning 
into itself enriched. 

Thus, by an apparently different path, we have attained again 
the same result. The Alpha and Omega is not Being, but 
Thought, more definitely the Absolute, personal consciousness of 
God. From this divine consciousness, as it is revealed to the finite 
consciousness, all thought proceeds, and into this divine conscious- 
ness shall all thought return. The process of the finite conscious- 
ness is to know itself first in identity with being — then to sunder 
itself in soul and body, self and its other — and, finally, as person 
participating in and penetrated by God and creation, to be con- 
scious that it is saved and glorified in the divine life. 



The Development of the Soul and its Immortality. 31 

By the path which we have just traversed we have also attained 
to more adequate apprehension of Being — mere Being is only ex- 
ternal. Positing it as first principle, we learn its dangers ; search- 
ing for its hidden depths, we learn its emptiness. 

It is henceforth clear that this external Being, to which we 
cling so desperately, as though without it we were nothing, is, in 
its abstraction, exactly the negation of the Ego, that which would 
destroy the Ego were it not transcended by the Ego. In this 
transcendence Being vanishes in Thought — i. e., its particularity 
as such is cancelled in the Totality. Therefore, it is evident that 
all denial of immortality in its ultimate analysis is grounded in 
the assumption, consciously or unconsciously expressed or implied, 
that Being has the ascendency over Thought, Nature the suprema- 
cy over Spirit, In a word, all denial of personal immortality is 
denial of Spirit in its essential idea, whether it be in the crude 
form of the famous " System of Nature and of the Natural Laws 
of the Physical and Moral Worlds," or in the more subtile systems 
of thinkers who abhor Holbach, La Grange, and Mirabeau. Just 
as certain is it, on the contrary, that the guarantee of Immortality 
is the Supremacy of Thought, and that only from Thought could 
proceed the development of the Finite Spirit into its Essential 
Content. 

It should not be ignored that the pantheistic - materialistic 
struggle against the persistence of individuality (in its ancient 
as well as in its modern and fashionable forms) rests solely 
upon the presupposed superiority of Being. To set up the einpty 
Category of Being as the first principle of the world is necessarily 
to reduce consciousness to a vanishing mode of Being, to make it 
the transient expression of a blind activity into which it shall be 
reabsorbed. To follow step by step the pantheistic procedure is 
most instructive, as quite unconsciously it testifies to that very 
priority of Thought over Being which it assails. Its result is that 
in the very moment when the subject, in order to escape from the 
empty and evil Self, generously sinks itself in Abstract Being, it, 
nevertheless, thanks to its imperishable persistence, emerges again 
as the conditio sine qua non of the system.' For only Thought 
can be the object of Thought ; to think Being abstracted from 
Thought is as impossible as to think Nothing. 

' Cf. Schelling, Phil. Schrift., I., 168, 169. 



32 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Hence follows a second result. As we cannot think Being 
without implying Thought, so we cannot think Nothing without 
implying Being — for to think nothing is not to be and not to 
think. Thence it follows that those who hold to personal immor- 
tality, whether with prophetic feeling, realized faith, or conscious 
insight, hold on also to Being. Thought rules Being, but Being 
insists upon being included in Thought. This Being is not, how- 
ever, crude external Being, but that inward Being which belongs 
to Thought as the body belongs to the Soul, which finds in the 
Spirit its adequate form, and therein, glorified and transfigured, 
celebrates its realized unity with Thought. 

Here rises before us another cliff upon which the thought of 
immortality is often wrecked. The first rock of danger was 
Being — Abstract Being, presupposed as Origin and End of All. 
Being, thus apprehended, is Nature, Body, the material and finite. 
The other rock is Abstract Thought — Thought empty and non- 
existent; that false infinitude which lacks the finite; which ad- 
mits no Body and no Being, and herein, surrendering the con- 
sciousness which is bound up with the finite, destroys itself. Upon 
the first rock was wrecked Spinoza, though through the mighty 
working of the subject within him he was saved from entire de- 
struction. Upon the second rock Schelling was nearly stranded, 
but with a final effort he called up all his strength and steered 
away to safer shores. His moment of danger was when claiming 
that consciousness could not be thought save in relation to the 
body and to finite conditions generally, and therefore belonged 
to the passing time. He gave his verdict against individual per- 
sistence, which he denounced as prolonged mortality, and appre- 
hended eternity as pure timeless infinitude in God. True eter- 
nity is, however, the fulfilment and realization of the Infinite — 
the Unity of the Infinite and Finite, to which alone belongs Ac- 
tuality. Eternity is not timeless, but the Unity of all the mo- 
ments of time. This Eternity manifests itself in Thought: 
Thought includes and subordinates Being ; the Spirit is neither 
soul nor body, neither infinite nor finite, but the Unity or Actuali- 
ty of these in themselves false and untenable determinations. 

Recently Schelling has recognized anew that the ultimate truth 
is the " subject which, triumphing over all, maintains itself," and 
proposes an empirical development from what is. This is exactly 



The Development of the Soul and its Immortality. 33 

wliat lias been done by Philosophy, following the method of logi- 
cal development and organization. What ^.s, is Thought: this 
Thought begins with Being, and in its progressive development 
carries Beins; in and along with itself. As the categories unfold, 
Thought shines through them more and more clearly as " that all- 
encroaching subjectivity" which claims all that is external as its 
own, and therein conquers and cancels externality; its ultimate 
and adequate form is personality, which consciously includes Body 
and Soul in the Spirit, and realizes itself in a vital, transparent, 
participative Unity. 

Thus Beinar belono-s to Thought as the Body to the Soul. This 
is, however, not limited Being, but the full and complete Being 
which at once has been, is, and shall be. Being only is when it 
exists at once in all of its dimensions. Therefore even La Mettrie 
confesses : " In one sense I cease to be whenever I think that I 
shall not be." He should have added : " In one sense I cease to 
think whenever I think that I shall not think." For it is Thought 
which includes in itself the scattered dimensions of Being, and 
knows that each requires all the others. Hence thought contains 
within itself the witness of its imperishability ; in its essence 
Thought is nothing but imperishability. 

The Soul which thinks, ideally thinks, must also really he. The 
Actuality of Thought expressed in terms of Being is " the Totali- 
ty of all its Moments," but, as realized in the highest category or 
form of Thouo'ht itself, it is Personality. Self-consciousness is not 
extinguished, but accentuated and transfigured in the Conscious- 
ness of God and of Creation. Being ^^ersonal, the Soul is imper 

ishable. 

Pemaek. 

The soul develops itself out of itself into the finite Spirit, which 
only knows itself to be immortal as it realizes itself in Personality 
as this finite Personality is actual and immortal only through 
the Absolute Personality. The Absolute Personality of God is 
the Actuality of Absolute Thought ; it is therefore not only the 
goal in which the finite Spirit, as though having at last found its 
element, comes to itself, but it is also the ground which preceded 
the development that begins with the human soul. Herein the 
genetic principle of Philosophy is indicated as Logic, which Prin- 
ciple, being absolute, must be identical with its Result, As this 
XYin— 3 



34 The. Journal of Speculative Philosophij. 

principle is the focus of all (rue kuowledge, any little cloud which 
darkens or obscures it will project ionj^ and heavy shadows over 
all the developments of Philosophy. Such spots and shadows 
have their sole source in the position usurped by Being relatively 
to Thonn'ht, for it is Being which clouds and obscnres Thought 
until it is wholly penetrated by Thought. The philosophy of" the 
day is widely obscured by these threatening shadows. Therefore 
it were well for us to linger yet awhile by the fundamental prin- 
ciple of Logic : this will also tend to a more complete illumina- 
tion of the question with which we are immediately occupied. 

Thought is the genetic principle, the 2)rms temjyore et dignitate / 
it is not only the goal, but also the origin of all that is. Being, 
on the contrary, is the starting-point of the utideveloped finite; 
consequently, the first phase of the secondary process of develop- 
ment ; more definitely, the beginning of Creation, which itself is 
a result. Being, as such, includes its development which pre- 
ceded Being as absolute in Absolute Thought. Thus, Being, with 
its implicit content, is in creation just as Thought is in Creation ; 
but it has priority only relatively to the thought of the finite 
Spirit, which being its content unfolds from it ; relatively to the 
Absolute Thought, Being is secondary, conditioned, created. Prop- 
erly speaking, even in the first relationship Being, as posited by 
Thought, is itself Thought, though relatively to Realized Thought 
— ^. e.. Thought in its crudest, most immediate form. Thus, Abso- 
lute Thought is the original creative power; as Absolute it is 
realized, consequently precedes the absolute realization of the un 
developed finite which first develops in creation. And as this 
Thought is the ultimate origin, so is it the ultimate goal, hence 
the all in all ; therefore Creation, which, as externalization, begins 
with Being, develops itself in Man (who is the internality of 
Creation), into Thought, and therein unites and transfigures all 
its isolated moments. 

This is the all-leavening, all-generative truth ! Thought is the 
Principle — Being the beginning of the self-externalization of 
Thought, the ground that the Principle posits in Creation, and, 
conformably to its implicit content, develops into Thought. With- 
out this truth there can be no absolute knowledge and no Chris- 
tian consciousness. As absolute, Thought is also absolute in its 
development, or, from all Eternity, Realized Thought, In the 



The Development of the Soul and its Immortality. 35 

beginning, with Thought, was the "Word or Reahzed Thought.— 
John, i, 1. 

Foi' us the presupposition of Spirit is I^ature ; yet Spirit is also 
the reality and outcome of Nature — Spirit is the only truth — the 
one reality. Spirit is the Absolute Prius of Nature. Thought is 
the actuality of Being. 

Consequently, it is only in the sphere of time that Being-with- 
Self precedes Being- for-Self, and Beiiig-for-Self precedes Being- 
with-and-for-Self. As the different moments of Being-with-Self 
and Being-for-Self in truth belong to and penetrate each other, 
and their apparently hxed isolation is attributable only to Nature 
in its exclusiv^eness or space in its discreteness, so the precedence 
and succession of the three essential moments of Thought is only 
the tinite process in time. Tlhe prius of time is the Absolute in 
which the three already named categories do not follow each 
other, but interpenetrate each other. Each, in fact, belongs to the 
Other ; or, more definitely. Each is the Other. 

From this insight is developed the highest Idea as the Light of 
Absolute Personality in its realization, and this is the Trinity. 
According to this view, the Father is not merely Being-with-Self, 
but the Being-with-Self of God, or, in other words, the Being-with- 
Self of the Being-with-and-for-Self ; i. e., Absolute Being with Self. 
So the Son is not exclusively for himself the Being-for-Self, but 
Ahsolute Being-for-Self — the Being-for-Self of God ; hence, the 
Being-for-Self of Being-vvith-and-fcr-Self: finally, the Spirit is not 
simply the realized Being-with-and-for-Self, but inasmuch as Being- 
with-and-for-Self being absolute and conditioned only by itself is 
from Eternity in God, it necessarily from Eternity belongs to the 
Being-with-Self of God in the Father and the Being-for-Self of 
God in the Son, just as in the Spirit it proceeds from the two 
above-named determinations, and this not in time, but from Eter- 
nity. It may, indeed, be said that the first and second persons 
of the Godhead are realized through the Third, but this is onlv 
stating that the Trinity is essential to the Absolute Idea of God 
without therein implying aprius Rnd posterius tempore, or hinting 
of a privative separation. 

The Absolute is, according to its idea, essentially Thought, and, 
as such, personal, penetrating, and penetrated ; hence it is itself 
in each of its moments — i. e., in each of its moments it is abso- 



Ht) ' TJiC Journal of Speculative Philosophu. 

lute, personal, wholly itself, One ! This oneness is, however, when 
adequately ap])rehentled, oneness with its othei', and is therefore 
only explainal)le and realizable throus^h the Idea of Personality. 
On the other hand, the Self-immanence of Absolute Personality is 
only realized in the Trinity, and without this absolute personality 
the idea of Creation, despite all artificial props, sinks inevitably 
into the Conception of Emanation, or an active process, wherein 
forms arise only to vanish. Again, in the idea of Creati(»n, the 
Absolute Personality of God is revealed and contirmed, being 
grounded not in Creation, but in the presupposed Creator, From 
any other standpoint the idea of God is grounded in the created 
human Soul, and the human Soul is grounded in Natural Being. 
Complete this process with the insight that the attained indepen- 
dence of the human Soul can be perpetuated only in personality, 
and the connection is again restored, the circle again rounded to 
a whole. 

It must, of course, be admitted that the finite (hence the hu- 
man) is an essential moment in the immanent unity of the self- 
generation of God ; this immanent humanity of God is, however, 
to be distinguished from the created man ; it is, as eternally self- 
generated, distinguished from its own incarnation in time. 

Likewise the body is an essential moment in the Unity of the 
created finite Spirit; this essential body is, however, to be distin- 
guished from its external, visible, and tangible manifestation, of 
which it, like its own immanent soul, is independent. 

In the light of these results it grows ever clearer that all prog- 
ress in philosophy depends upon insight into the nature of the 
true first Principle. If philosophy sets up Being, as Thales set up 
Water, as the origin and end of all, it swallows up in this empty 
universal all personality, absolute and finite, eternal and immortal ; 
it rises into self-conscious Individuality, which, as a mode of Being, 
is submerged in Universal Bt^ing, and it finds in Water its death. If, 
on the contrary, philosophy finds its Alpha and Omega in Thought, 
which is at once that which posits and that which is posited, the 
active principle of Being whose passivity is within itself, then Being 
subsides into a Moment of Tliought, and Nature into a Moment 
of the Spirit. With Thought is set up as first Principle, instead 
of an Abstract Universal, the Individual m(»re definitely — Per- 
sonality, in which the Individual becomes Universal; hence Abso- 



TTie Development of the Soul and its Immortality. 37 

lute Personality posited by itself. As ultimate Origin and end, 
Thought is Absolute Personality — /. e., Thought thinks itself and 
posits itself in itself; it is, therefore, its own Subject and Sub- 
strate, its own image and object, and its own mirror ; and it is all 
these tliree in one. Beino; is an immanent integral moment of 
Thought and of all the personified forms of Thought — a moment 
whose isolation is neo-ated in the Totality wherein Beino; itself is 
organically preserved. Further, Thought proceeds out of tliis im- 
manence, and brings forth its single moments in succession. This 
is the Creation whose successive phases are described by Moses. 
These moments are externalized that they may develop themselves 
in time, and thus not fall back into Thought as into a gloomy 
grave, but, transfigured and glorified, move forward in Thought 
as their illuminating element ; Creation, which appears first as the 
Contradiction of God, beino; herein transformed into his imao;e — 
i. e., finite personality. 

So much by way of general explanation and indication. We 
have rejected not only the fatal results of pantheism, but also its 
apparently harmless principle. To set this principle clearly in 
the light and exhibit its radical defects has been our main object. 
To this end an open avowal of our own philosophic faith was 
necessary. We have made it frankly, knowing that the more ex- 
plicit the confession the more definite will be the expression of 
opposing views, and the more clearly ditferences are stated the 
sooner will the reconciling truth be found. Our antagonists can 
only gainsay our results by renouncing the principle of Thought, 
throwino; themselves in the arms of Beino; and resting on her 
bosom until, in the fulness of time, they are delivered by the 
truth. 



38 The Journal of SjyeGulative PhilosopJiy. 



THE MATHEMATICAL xVNTINOMIES AND TIIEIK 

SOLUTION. 

BY GEORGE S. FULLERTON. 

If we suppose two parallel strais^lit lines, unlimited in extent, 
and intei'seeted by perpendiculars drawn at equal distances from 
each other, since it is evident that each division upon tiie one line 
is equal to each division upon the other, and that any number of 
divisions upon the one will equal in extent a corresponding num- 
ber upon the other, the question naturally arises whether the 
equation will not hold good when all the divisions are considered. 
Whether the lines may not be regarded as equal in extent, and 
whether the sum of the divisions upon both lines will not be equal 
to twice the sum of the divisions upon either line alone ? That 
is, are we not forced to conclude that one infinite may be equal to, 
less, or greater than another? 

In the correct answer to this question lies the solution of the 
mathematical antinomies, which have their origin in a false con- 
ception of the infinite, and are in no sense contradictions into 
which the reason, legitimately used, must fall. The fallacy con- 
tained in the above reasoning is palpable. It is true that we must 
consider each division on the one line equal to each division on the 
other, and, taking any number of divisions on the one and adding 
them to an equal number on the other, we obtain a sum equal to 
twice the number of given divisions on either. But when we say 
" a?^ the divisions on the one are equal to all the divisions on the 
other," we speak of the lines as quantitative wholes, and intro- 
duce an error with the woi'd all. To conceive of a thing as a 
whole, we must assign to it limits, and in saying " the whole " of any 
object we refer to those limits beyond which there is none of that 
object. In regarding any object as a quantitative whole, we neces- 
sarily think it as finite. When we compare one line with another 
and say that its extent is greater or less than that of the other, we 
mean that, when the one is applied to the other, its limits extend 
beyond or fall within those of the other. In other words, we give 
the difference between the distances included between their re- 
spective limits. Measuring is merely giring the distance between 



The Mathematical Antinomies and their Solution. 39 

limits. To the case of the two infinite lines we have no point to 
measure from, and no point to measure to, and no measurement — 
therefore no comparison is possible. It is a palpable contradic- 
tion to compare (i. <?., give relations of measurement between the 
respective limits of) two infinites {i. e.. things which cannot be 
measured as having no limits). 

The terms longer, shorter, equal, can therefore have no mean- 
ing as applied to intinite lines, and are legitimately used only in 
speaking ot the finite. 

As a line can only be increased by adding to it at its extremi- 
ties, it is manifestly absurd to speak of the sum of the two lines 
mentioued above as greater than either line alone; but there are 
cases in which the error of a wronsi; conclusion is not so irame- 
diately palpable — as, for example, the case of a line limited at but 
one point. May we not here add to the line at its extremity, 
and thus increase its total length ? At first glance it would seem 
so, but when we recollect that the line is limited only at one 
point, and is not, therefore, as a line, defined (for two points are 
necessary to define a line), the impossibility of regarding it as a 
quantitative whole is evident, and the impossibility of increasing 
or diminishing its length as a whole necessarily follows. The 
word "all" cannot be applied to the line either in its original 
state or after it has been added to. The question, therefore, 
whether a line without any limits is not greater than one which is 
limited at one point, is rightly answered by saying that the very 
nature of the conceptions precludes the possibility of the words 
"greater" or "less" being applied to either; that neither of the 
lines can be regarded quantitatively, and that, consequently, the 
question is a meaningless one. 

The reasoning here a]3plied to lines will also apply to surfaces 
and solids. It is unnecessary to multiply instances, as the prin- 
ciple is in all cases the same. In general, wherever the liuiit is 
removed in any one direction, whether in the case of lines, sur- 
faces, or solids, the object can no longer be regarded as finite, and, 
consequently, not as a quantitative whole. 

If we use the word infinite in its strict etymological sense, as 
referring to a total absence of limits, that which has even one 
limit cannot, of course, be called infinite. We And such a use of 
the word in the writings of Sir William Hamilton, who asserts 



40 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

that past time, since it is bounded by the present, cannot be infi- 
nite — " a bounded infinite is a contradiction." ' But arguments 
(b'awn from the etjnio!oo;ical signification of a word are vahieless, 
unless tliat signification expresses the true and wliole content of 
the word. Tliat such is not the case liere is evident. A line 
limited at l)ut one point is certainly not finite, for it cannot be re- 
garded as a whole, cannot be increased, diminished, or compared 
with other lines ; in short, it is not subject to the conditions of the 
finite. If, then, for etymological reasons, we exclude it from the 
class of infinites, we have the infinite, the finite, and a teftium quid.^ 
which is between the two. There is, however, no difficulty in 
classing such a line with tlie infinite, for they are subject to the 
same conditions, and equally distinct from the finite. 

It remains to consider a class of cases of an apparently different 
nature from those we have examined. It is argued that an in- 
finite series of dollars will exceed in value an infinite series of 
cents — that, where the unit differs, the difference will extend 
to the series in its totality. The error of such an assumption 
may be easily shown by showing what the assertion necessarily 
involves. 

Suppose that, instead of counting one cent in the one series to 
each dollar in the other, we vary our mode of procedure by count- 
ing one hundred cents in the one to each dollar in the other. It 
is true that the one series will be exhausted one hundred times as 
rapidly as the other; but, since they are both infinite (will never 
end), we may continue thus forever (to infinity). We may then 
regard the two series as of equal value. And, by successively 
changing the unit, we may make the one series greater than, equal 
to, or less than the other, the value depending merely on the mode 
of reckonino;. If we have a right to make an estimate of the com- 
parative values of the series in the first instance, we have the same 
right in the second, as the error in the two is identical, and con- 
sists in regarding an infinite series as a whole, capable as a whole 
of increase or diminution. An infinite cannot be made one mem- 
ber of an equation, for, having abstracted the quantitative, we have 
abstracted the condition under whicii alone an equation is valid, 
and the form becomes meaningless. 



'Metaph.," Boston, 1859, pp. 527 et seq. 



The MathematiGal Antinomies and their Solution. 41 

The difficulties wbicli will arise from overlooking this important 
fact are well instanced in that agnostic theory which Sir William 
Hamilton developed under the name of the Philosophy of the 
Conditioned, the fundamental principle of which is that " all 
which is conceivable in thought lies between two extremes, which, 
as contradictory of each other, cannot both be true, but of which, 
as mutual contradictories, one must." ^ 

Let us examine his application of this law to our conception of 
space : 

'•We are altogether unable to conceive space as bounded — as 
finite; that is, as a whole, beyond which there is no further space- 
Every one is conscious that tliis is impossible. . . . The one con- 
tradictory is thus found inconceivable ; we cannot conceive space 
as absolutely limited. 

'• On the other hand, we are equally powerless to realize in 
thought the possibility of the opposite contradictory ; we cannot 
conceive space as infinite, as without limits. You may launch out 
in thought beyond the solar walk, you maj^ transcend in fancy 
even the universe of matter, and rise from sphere to sphere in the 
region of empty space, until imagination sinks exhausted ; with 
all this what have you done ? You have never gone beyond the 
finite, you have attained at best only to the indefinite, and the 
indefinite, however expanded, is still always the finite. ..." 

That the former of these contradictories is inconceivable we must 
admit ; but the argument used to prove the latter inconceivable 
is plainly faulty. We may, indeed, " rise from sphere to sphere 
in the region of empty space " without transcending the finite ; 
we cannot arrive at the unlimited while we carry our limits 
with us. Each successive stage simply places the limits farther 
ayjart, and in no respect tends to do away with them altogether. 
This attempt to arrive at the infinite forcibly reminds one of the 
tragical history .of the amusing person in Chamisso's poem, who 
supposed that, by turning quickly around, he could cause his cue 
to hang in front. 

" Er drelit sicli links, er dreht sich rechts, 
Es tbut niclits Gut's, es thut nichts Schlecht's — 
Der Zopf, der hangt ihm hinten." 



Metaph.," Boston, 1859, pp. 527 et seq. 



42 The Journal of SpeGidatlve Philosophy. 

And how aiialoi>:ous would be the condition of one who would 
still seek to reach the infinite by endlessly continuing this hope- 
less journey to that of" the hero as portrayed in the last verse ! 

** TJnd seht, or dreht sich immer noch, 
Und denkt : es hilft am Ende doch — 
Der Zopf, der hangt ihm hinten." 

It is not by adding space to space that we arrive at the idea of 
infinite space. Imagination may well "sink exhausted" in the at- 
tempt to find the end of the limitless. This is an attempt to real- 
ize infinite space as a quantitative whole, and, so considered, it is 
manifestly inconceivable, as containing a contradiction. The anti- 
nomies arising from the consideration of the minimum of space, 
and those which have to do with our idea of time, are equally 
capable of solution by the substitution of the true (qualitative) 
idea of the infinite for the quantitative idea; the error is in all 
cases identical, and the contradiction a gratuitous one. 

It is interesting to notice that that acutest of thinkers, Immanuel 
Kant, although he has based the proof of the thesis of his first anti- 
nomy on a false conception of the infinite, and although, after cor- 
rectly criticising the false conception, he himself lapses into it, 
yet perceived, and in so many words gave expression to the fact, 
that the conception of the infinite is not a quantitative one. 

The thesis of the first antinomy maintains that the world had a 
beginning in time, and is limited with regard to space^both of 
which are denied in the antithesis. The proofs offered in support 
of the antithesis may be passed over as extraneous to the subject; 
those in support of the thesis I will quote, not for the purpose of 
again pointing out their fallacious character, for they are identical 
with the arguments used by Sir William Hamilton, but in order 
that I may give the observations appended to them, which are 
significant in their contextual connection. The proof proceeds by 
assuming the truth of the antithesis, and then proving it to be 
impossible : 

" Granted, that the world has no beginning in time ; up to 
every given moment of time an eternity must have elapsed, and 
therewith passed away an infinite series of successive conditions 
or states of things in the world. Now, the infinity of a series con- 
sists in the fact that it never can be completed by means of a sue- 



The Mathematical AntinoTnies and their Solution. 43 

cessive synthesis. It follows that an infinite series already elapsed 
is impossible, and that, consequently, a beo^inninor of the world is a 
necessary condition of its existence. And this was the first thing 
to be proved. 

"As regards the second, let us take the opposite for granted. 
In this case the world must be an infinite given total of coexistent 
things. I^ow, we cannot cogitate the dimensions of a quantity, 
which is not given within certain limits of an intuition, in any 
other way than by means of a synthesis of its parts, and the total 
of such a quantity only by means of a completed syntliesis, or the 
repeated addition of unity to itself. Accordingly, to cogitate the 
world, which fills all spaces, as a whole, the successive synthesis 
of the parts of an infinite world must be looked upon as com- 
pleted — that is to say, an infinite time must be regarded as having 
elapsed in tlie enumeration of all coexisting things, which is im- 
possible. For this reason an infinite aggregate of actual things 
cannot be considered as a given whole, consequently not as a con- 
temporaneously given whole. The world is, consequently, as re- 
gards extension in space, not infinite, but enclosed in limits. And 
thi"? w^as the second thing to be proved." ' 

It will be noticed that the word completed (vollendet) is used in 
the first part of the proof in a manner to which we may object as 
misleading. When we speak of a series as " completed by means 
of a successive synthesis," we are apt to regard it as a whole, hav- 
ing a beginning as well as an end. The inconsequent nature of 
the reasoning in the latter j)art of the proof it is scarcely necessary 
to point out. The observations on the thesis are the following: 

" In bringing forward these conflicting arguments, I have not 
been on the search for sophisms, for the purpose of availing my. 
self of special pleading, which takes advantage of the carelessness 
of the opposite party, appeals to a misunderstood statute, and 
erects its unrighteous claims upon an unfair interpretation. Both 
proofs originate fairly from the nature of the case, and the advan- 
tage presented by the mistakes of the dogmatists of both parties 
has been completely set aside. 

" The thesis might also have been unfairly demonstrated by the 
introduction of an erroneous conception of the infinity of a given 
quantity. A quantity is infinite if a greater than itself cannot 

1 "Critique." Trans, by Meiklejohn. London, 1876, pp. 266 



44 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

possibly exist. The (juantitj is measured hy tlie number of o;iven 
units — which are taken as a standard — contained in it. Now, no 
nuinl)er can be the greatest, because one or more units can always 
be added. It follows that an infinite given quantity, consequently 
an infinite world (both as regards time and extension), is impos- 
sible. It is therefore limited i"n both respects. In this manner 
I might have conducted my proof; but the conception given in it 
does not agree with the true conception of an infinite whole. In 
this there is no representation of its quantity; it is not said how 
large it is ; consequently, its conception is not the conception of a 
maximuin. We cogitate in it merely its relation to an arbitrarily 
assumed unit, in relation to which it is greater than any number. 
Now, just as the unit which is taken is greater or smaller, the in- 
finite will be greater or smaller; but the infinity, which consists 
merely in the relation to this given unit, must remain always the 
same, although the absolute quantity of the whole is not thereby 
cognized. 

" The true (transcendental) conception of intinity is: that the 
successive synthesis of unity in the measurement of a given quan- 
tum can never be completed. Hence it follows, without possi- 
bility of mistake, that an eternity of actual successive states up to 
a given (the present) moment cannot have elapsed, and that the 
world must, therefore, have a beginning. 

" In regard t.) the second part of the thesis, the difficulty as to an 
infinite and yet elapsed series disappears ; for the manifold of a 
world infinite in extension is contemporaneous!}^ given. But, in 
order to cogitate the total of this manifold, as we cannot have the 
aid of limits constituting by themselves this total in intuition, we 
are obliged to give some account of our conception, whicli in this 
case cannot proceed from the v/hole to the determined quantity 
of the parts, but must demonstrate the possibility of a whole by 
means of a successive synthesis of the parts. But as this synthesis 
must constitute a series that cannot be completed, it is impossible 
for us to cogitate prior to it, and, consequently, not by means of 
it, a totality. For the conception of totality itself is, in the pres- 
ent case, the representation of a completed synthesis of the parts; 
and this completion, and, consequently, its conception, is impossi- 
ble." ' 



1 " Critique," pp. 268 ft". 



The Mathematical Antinomies and their Solution. 45 

We here find a conception of the infinite brought forward as 
false ; a declaration of wherein it differs from the true conception ; 
and a statement of what, according to Kant, the true conception 
really is, "A quantity is infinite if a greater than itself cannot 
possibly exist." We can readily see that such a conception gives 
us, not an infinite, but a finite. ISTot only is the word greater in- 
applicable to infinites, but the very expression '* ^i.- quantity is in- 
finite " is absurd, as involving a contradiction. Kant was too clear 
a thinker not to see that that whicb admits of an addition of 
units, and consequently of increase as a whole, cannot be infinite. 
He declares that this does not agree with the true conception of 
the infinite, in which ''there is no representation of its quantity, 
it is not said how large it is; consequently its conception is not 
the conception of a maximum.''^ This is a clear recognition of the 
fact that the conception cannot be quantitative. 

But it is evident that Kant did not see the full force and the 
logical consequences of this statement. In the sentence imme- 
diately preceding he uses the phrase " an infinite whole," and in 
the sentences immediately following he brings forward a concep- 
tion faulty in precisely the same respect as the one criticised. 
"We cogitate in it merely its relation to an arbitrarily assumed 
unit, in relation to which it is greater than any number. Now, just 
as the unit which is taken is greater or smaller, tlie infinite will 
be greater or smaller ; but the infinity, which consists merely in 
the relation to this given unit, must remain always the same, al- 
though the absolute quantity of the whole is not thereby cognized." 
That is, if we designate the infinite by a, the unit by J, and the in- 
finity (the relation of a to h) by x, we find that a varies as 5, 
but that X remains always the same (and this can only mean nu- 
merically the same). 

The infinity is, in this case, simply an indefinite number, and 
the quantity of the whole can certainly be cognized. The error 
is identical with that in the case just cited, and both parts of the 
proof given in support of the thesis of the first antinomy will fall 
to the ground when this error is rectified. 

It remains to consider a case which apparently militates against 
the theory that an infinite series can never be regarded as a whole. 
In the case of a point moving uniformly along a line, over the 
whole of which it will pass in a given time, we have a descending 



46 The Journal of SpeGulatim Philosophy. 

series which wc may assume to be represented by ^, i, i- . . . 0. 
The point will have moved over one half of the line in half a 
minute, over one foui'tli more in a quarter of a minute, etc., un- 
til, when the minute is completed, the point will have arrived at 
zero. We find here, under a slightly different guise, the old prob- 
lem of Achilles and the Tortoise. Must we not regard the whole 
series as contained between the two limits 1 and 0, and capable 
of completion by a successive synthesis? 

A moment's consideration will reveal the fallacy of such a mode 
of reasoning. The series is not completed at all, but is truly in- 
finite. It is limited at one point by the the highest member, f ; 
but is not limited at another by the zero, since this can only be 
assumed as a limit to the series by breaking the law of the series, 
which is that each term shall be half as great as the term preced- 
inir. We can never, by halvino- sometliins; arrive at nothino: : a 
division of Substance will never ^ive us that which is not sub- 
stance. The 0, since it does not make one in the series, cannot 
limit the series. The error lies in regarding the series as capable 
of completion by passing through all degi'ees of the composite to 
the simple, and from that to as a final term. AVhether we hold 
to the Kantian conception of space, or to the Bsrkeleyan, which 
would deny to any given portion of space an infinite divisibility, 
our conclusions will be the same as to the imposoibility of the 
completion of an infinite series. According to the former, space 
and time are composites. A space is made up of spaces, and never 
by subdividing it could we arrive at that which is not space. The 
point in question passes over the whole line, not by completing 
the descending series until it arrives at the simple, but by the suc- 
cessive addition of spaces, which are composites. A line is not 
made up of points, for a point is possible only as the limit of a 
line. If one point has no extension, a thousand will have no moi'e. 
We cannot, by multiplying points, create in them a property 
which no single point can possess in the slightest degree. " As 
space is not a composite of substances (and not even of real acci- 
dents), if I abstract all composition therein, nothing — not even a 
point — remains; for a point is possible only as the limit of a space 
— consequently, of a composite. Space and time, therefore, do 
not consist of simple parts." ' 



Critique," p. 274. 



Facts of Consciousness. 47 

We cannot, therefore, consider any member of the series nnder 
consideration as the smallest possible, but must regard the series 
as truly endless. We have, then, an infinite series, limited at but 
one point, which cannot be regarded as a sum total, a quantita- 
tive whole, equal as a whole to the given line ; and the apparent 
exception we iind to be not incompatible with the general posi- 
tion we have assumed. 

According to the Berkeleyan theory, which would hold that 
the subdivision of any given portion of space will result in the 
simple, we are compelled to assume that the point in question 
passes over the line by the successive addition of simple parts ; 
but we may still hold the mathematical series to be infinite. The 
negation of an infinite divisibility to space does not imply the 
negation of the infinity of a mathematical series, but simply im- 
plies that mathematical reasonings can be applied to the deter- 
mination of space only within certain limits — those of a possible 
perception. We find, then, that, on either tlieory, this antinomy, 
like all the others, depends upon a misconception, and is capable 
of an easv solution. 



FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF J. G. FICHTE BY A. E. KROEGER. 

Pakt Third. — Concerning the Higher Faculty. 
Chapter III. 

GENERAL REVIEW OF ALL THE PRECEDING. 

Life, as One, is simply because it is; and in this its Being it is 
altogether not an object of contemplation, but an object of think- 
ing ; and, moreover, of pure thinking, or intellectualizing. 

It cannot be contemplated, for contemplation is a being of 
immediate freedom. But life in its pure being is not free at all 
to tear itself loose from that being; it is absolutely tied down to 
that its formal being. It is, therefore, absolutely impossible that 
life should have an immediate contemplation of its being. 

Nevertheless, it is thinkable. It has freedom to manifest itself 



48 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

in its beino-, and in this manifestation it certainly contemplates 
itself; but in none of its manifestations is it altopjetlier absorbed. 
Hence its fundamental manifestation is a double one; it can rise 
above them and comi)rehend itself as that which remains unchange- 
able in the chanif;e. This comprehension of itself is a going beyond 
the contemplation, and hence, according to the above established 
cmu'cption, a thinking generally. But it is, furthermore, as dis- 
tin(;t from the thinking treated of hare, a pure thinking. For, 
although the going beyond a form of contemplation (as in the above- 
mentioned external perception there is a going beyond the inner 
form of contemplation) is a thinking, the entering into another 
form of contemplation (the external form, in the above case) is 
not a pure but a sensuous thinking. Here we are face to face 
with the original manifestation of life, and, therefore, at the 
source of all contemplation. We go beyond it, and hence be- 
yond all contemplation. This thinking is, therefore, a pure 
thinkino;, or an intellectualizing. 

The fundamental manifestation of life is, as I have said, a 
double one. This it is necessarily; for if it were merely simple, 
and if life were thus absorbed in it, the thinking of a something, 
which remained unchangeable in every change, would be impos- 
sible. Hence there must be, at least, a change of forms, a du- 
plicity of the form. The change itself is posited by that thiuka- 
bility, and is, in its fundamental element, nothing else than that 
thinkability. Hence duplicity suffices for it; and hence nothing 
more than duplicity is needed for it. 

It is of a double character. First, an absolute self-alienation, a 
general contemplation ; as yet, however, not contemplating that 
power as power, but merely contemplating its object, the sensuous 
world. Second, an absolute return into itself through concentra- 
tion into one point of that general contemplation, and a consequent 
assumption of individual form, and self-consciousness and free 
activity in that form. 

It is well known, but does not concern us here, that while the 
first fundamental form remains always unchangeably one, life 
can represent itself in this second fundamental form of individu- 
ality in an infinite repetition of that form. But it always remains 
the same one fundamental form ; and this formal unity alone is 
at present considered by us. 



Facts of Consciousness. 49 

In the first form life generally {vita) is viewed as a |)ermanent 
power; a view which certainly does not immediately follow from 
the contemplation, but which we comprehend here as following 
from the general connection. 

In the second view the same life is contemplated as a real living 
(taking the word as a verb, vivere), and hence as an immediate 
moving and being active. We therefore have in both views an 
immediate contemplation of the living of the life. The whole is 
a contemplation of life, and nothing else. 

Why this contemplation of life should dirempt into a duplicity 
of form we have already stated ; the reason given being, that it is 
thinkable, as it must be, only in this manner. But it cannot be 
thinkable without being contemplated, since it is thinkable only 
under the condition of being an object of contemplation, the tact 
of thinking being merely a going beyond contemplation, and 
being, therefore, conditioned by it. Adding thinking to contem- 
plation, the whole would be a revelation of life unto itself. 

It can also be shown why the contemplation of life must have 
separated into that duplicity of form in the exact manner in which 
it did so separate. In the universal form, life is contemplated only 
as a possible living. This is as yet no true living; and hence the 
second form, in which the contemplation of actual living and 
moving becomes possible, must supply the deficiency of content 
of tlie first. In this second form, again, life is never contemplated 
in its totality and in its completed being, but oidy in beginnings, 
which point to an infinite further development. Hence the first 
form must supply the deficiency of extent of this second contem- 
plation. Neither of the forms of contemplation by itself, but 
only both in their union, furnish an expressive contemplation of 
life. 

The whole system of facts of consciousness, therefore, which we 
have hitherto established, has really been deduced from one ground, 
and comprehended as a necessary in itself connected totality. If 
there is life, and if life reveals itself to itself, then there must be 
precisely such a consciousness as we have described ; for only in 
this form can life reveal itself to itself. 

It is well known to us that the first form results in a perma- 
nent sensuous world with all the determinations pointed out in it ; 
and also that the second form results in a system of individuals, 
XYIII— 4 



50 The Journal of Speculative PhiloHophy. 

witli necessary (letenninations ; but we know at the same time 
that the whole is nothing but the necessary form of tlie self-con- 
teniphition of life. We know that this contemplation necessary 
separates into such images, and that, indeed, it dirempts originally 
in order to bo able alone to think itself beyond all contempla- 
tion. Hence we are far from arresting our investis-ation at those 
images, as in themselves essences. 

But how did we arrive at that result? Positively in no other 
way than by following the purel}^ scientific principle to regard 
consciousness as a phenomenon existing for itself, and to explain 
it out of itself. What, then, is the hitherto described conscious- 
ness? It is an exhibition of free activity, and utterance of power, 
merely and solely for the purpose of making power manifest and 
cause freedom to be visible as freedom — an exhibition which has 
no other end than to make the freedom appearing in it to be really 
freedom. 

I should not be at all annoyed if any one were to consider such 
a consciousness a very empty and insignificant exhibition ; or if 
he were to suspect any description of it to be not very profound 
and thorough, and hence to be incorrect. 

But we have often before hinted already that such a view is 
not to be our final result. Hitherto we have regarded life merely 
as life, as absolute freedom and self-activity, and from this pre- 
supposition we have correctly enough arrived at all our previous 
conclusions. 

But supposing the presupposition of our immediately preced- 
ing paragraph should prove true, and that a new law should assign 
to absolute fre3dom a definite aim and end. Supposing that free- 
dom should no longer exist for its own sake, but as the means and 
instrument of this higher law, of the moral law, which is to be 
realized through freedom in the sphere of external contemplation, 
and which, therefore, must be contemplated itself! What would 
be the result then ? 

Precisely as the whole system of consciousness, hitherto deduced, 
was a contemplation of life, so life itself, in its just discovered spirit- 
ual unity, would become a contemplation of the moral law. It 
would, therefore, be contemplated no longer merely for the sake 
of being contemplated, and for the sake of giving rise to an exhi 
bition of freedom. The exhibition would obtain a unitv, a sig; 



Facts of Consciousness. 51 

nifieance, an end : morality. We should have to say that the 
one life of freedom is, in truth, nothing but the form of contem- 
plating morality. It might be that, in our investigation of this 
moral law, it would turn out that here also we should be driven to 
ask : What is it? for what purpose? and whence its origin ? and 
that then we should discover again that the moral law is also 
nothing but the form of contemplating a higher principle, arriv- 
ing at which, no further questions could be asked. In this way 
absolutely everything would change into contemplations and forms 
of contemplation and nothing would remain as a true Being but 
the One absolute principle. Everything within the region of con- 
templation would change into conditioned and conditioning forms 
of contemplation except the absolute contemplation of the One 
absolute principle, which alone would remain as the absolute con- 
templation, having its being for its own sake. 

Lite must be contemplated in order that the moral law may be 
contemplated ; and the moral law must be contemplated in order 
that the absolute may be contemplated : this will be the ascend- 
ing series of our meditations. 



o 



Chaptek IV. 

THE MOKAL LAW AS THE PEDSTCIPLE OF LIFE, AJSTD THE LATTER AS 
THE VISIBILITY OF THE FORMER. 

A. 

Life, it is true, is out of itself, of itself, and through itself in 
form — ^. <?., in its activity. Tliis is an immediate result of its con- 
ception, since otherwise it would not be life. But it is quite a 
different question whether its conceived existence, beyond all 
activity, is also based in itself and absolute. If this question is 
answered in the affirmative, then life and its manifestation, exist 
only for the purpose ot existing, and for no other purpose. 

We have already l^efore, in the course of our investigation, met 
some facts of consciousness according to which this question can 
not be answered in the affirmative. Indeed, the natural aversion 
of every uncorrupted man to consider formal freedom as its own 
end and aim is the most general and telling fact of this kind. 

We have gathered together these facts, and expressed them by 
the supposition that tliere exists some definite or final purpose, 



52 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

which is to bu attained by the activity of this lite ; and tliat, con- 
sequently, life is not merely for its own sake, or for the ?ake of 
maiiifestini:^ itself, but for tlie sake of that definite or final end ; 
in short, that it is merely a tool and means of realizing that end. 
Let ns now further analyze that supposition. 

If Life doe3 not exist for its own sake, then it also does not ex- 
ist through itself; that is, the ground of its existence is not in it- 
self, but in another, namely, in tliat final end. Life, indeed, is 
only thonyht^ as we have seen. Now, if this thinking of lite ex- 
amines itself in order to discover whether it has its ground in 
itself or not, it most certainly finds that it cannot constitute a 
fact the ground of the thouo-lit life, since life is thouo-ht as in 
itself the ground of all facts, and the only ground of facts. If, 
therefore, life cannot be thought as being its own ground, a final 
end can and must be thought as such ground. 

That final end, therefore, which also can only be thought, and 
which must l>e presupposed as existing — and for the present as, at 
least relatively, absolutely existing — is the ground of the formal 
existence of life as well as of its qualitative character. All this 
is involved in our presupposition. 

How this final end can be thought by us as existing — for the 
present such a thinking is absolutely demanded, and we know 
that it is possible. Should any one say that such a thinking were 
impossible for him, we should simply have to decline his participat- 
ing in our investigation ; and what an entirely different sphere of 
being it opens to ns we shall mention afterward, and by that very 
means ascend higher. But, factically, within the sphere of appear- 
ances, that final end has not actual existence, but is to, sliall, have 
actual existence through life. The final end is, where it is, only 
through life. Again : life itself, in its own existence, is only 
through the Being of the final end. It is evident that in tlnse 
two propositions the word is must have a different meaning, 
since otherwise they would contradict and cancel each other. 

The Being of life, therefore, is positively nothing absolute it- 
self. We have discovered its ground : it is the final end which 
creates and determines it. 

Why does the final end need to create a Life outside of itself? 
Since our investigation doubtless seeks the Absolute, and since 
we have now discovered a higher somewhat, which, in comparison 



Facts of Consciousness. 53 

witli life, at least, is absolute — why should we now ao^ain proceed 
from this new discovered Absolute toward life ? Does the con- 
ception of a final end itself, perhaps, involve such a going beyond 
itself again ? Undoubtedly. It needs a somewhat of which it is 
the final end. It wants to be realized, and needs a means for that 
purpose ; and this purpose it furnishes itself, so far as we can now 
perceive, in life. 

It wants to be realized ; but the real and actual can be contem- 
plated. It is to be contemplated ; and hence it needs life. Life, 
therefore, is, in its real essence, the contemplatability or the ap- 
pearance of the final end. 

B. 

Ilavino; obtained this new and higher view of life, it will now 
be our duty to further determine the hitherto final results of our 
investigation ; and this further determination will henceforth be 
our business. 

Firstly, the content of our previous absolute thinking was this : 
Life is. This content has now been changed into this expression : 
The visibility of an absolute final end is — which is the substantial 
part of the expression ; and this visibility is absolutely active, 
pure, and altogether creative — which is its formal part. Every 
one will here perceive a duplicity. The absolute final end is al- 
together and throughout determined by itself. It is what it is 
simply through itself, and this is a determined Somewhat. It is / 
it does not grow to be ; and nothing in it grows to be. Hence it 
is also bevond all life, and as the o-round of the beino- of that life. 
JSTow, this final end assumes here, moreover, the form of an abso- 
lute life and of a freedom, whicii is an absolute creating out of 
nothingness, as we have described it heretofore. 

]S^ow, what can this life create out of nothingness \ Its inner 
content and core, perhaps, and the inner content and core of its 
product? If we take up the former view, where we regarded it 
as purely formal life and freedom, unquestionably. But, accord- 
ing to the present view, which does not concede that it is an abso- 
lutely being and complete final end, in which there is no growth 
and becoming, we can no longer say so. Hence it could create 
only the form ; that is, it creates the final end, which was pre- 
viously merely in the spiritual and altogether invisible world, 
in the visible world, wherein that final end did not previously 



54 The Journal of Speculative Philosophij. 

have existence. It is, therefore, an absolute creator, but only of 
the form, and not of the content, of the linal end. It no more 
creates the latter than it is created by it. 

We furthermore came across the basis of all contemplation — 
namely : the utterance, or manifestation, of that life. And this we 
met in a double form : the universal form, which represents the 
one total life in its mere possibility ; and the individual form, 
which represents it as actually active, but only from out of spe- 
cifa'c points. The duplicity of that form was necessary in order 
to make life something more than merely thinkable. The contem- 
plation was contemplation of the life just as it is, as a mere free 
activity and nothing else. But at present we perceive that life 
is not to be contemplated merely for the sake of being contem- 
plated, but in order that the final end may be contemplated in 
life. Previously we deduced contemplation from the conception 
of the contemplatability of mere life. This, now, is no longer 
sufficient. Life is to be contemplated as at the same time the 
means and the tool of the final end. Thus the contemplatability 
of the final end itself must enter through life at the same time 
in our a priori determination of the general system of contempla- 
tion. By means of this fundamental law we must now further 
determine the determination of contemplation so far as we have 
discovered it at present ; and to do so will be our business now. 

C. 

The duplicity of the fundamental form was the condition of the 
thinkability of life ; but this thinking itself is again, as has ap- 
peared in the course of our investigation, a condition of the 
thinkability of the final end, and hence of its appearance in the 
form of thinking. Hence this disjunction remains, as" well in 
regard to the contemplatability of the final end as of that of life. 
Presupposing it to be valid, we have, therefore, to determine only 
its two single fundamental forms. 

I. The General Form, This is, firstly, contemplation of the 
Power of Life, which comprises an infinite manifold. Now, what 
must be, according to our previous view, the determining ground 
of this manifold — that is to say, as a manifold in its seeming in- 
ner content, in so far as this is a particular content '( The activity, 
in its pure unity, is not contemplatable, but only thinkable; if it 



Facts of Consciovsness. 55 

is to become contemplatable, it must dirempt itself ; and, since it is 
to be intiuitely contemplatable, it must dirempt itself infinitely. 
The ground of the seeming diversity of tlie particular is, there- 
fore, contained altogether in the absolute contemplatability ; and 
this is diverse, because otherwise it would not exist at all ; but the 
true basis is the mere empty freedom, wherein there is nothing dis- 
tinguishable. Thus, then, the manitoldness is a mere semblance; 
an apj)earance simply in order to be an appearance ; and it is 
nothing else. 

According to our present view, the Power exists not only in 
order to cause the appearance of activity, but also in order that it 
may appear as the tool of the final end. Through the command 
of this final end the free activity is limited, within general possi- 
bility, to a fixed sphere. Not all that is possible, but only a part 
of the possible, is to occur. Now let us ask : Does this part, which 
is to occur, occur merely for the sake of making freedom visible ? 
By no means ; but in order to make the final end visible. This 
final end, taken as real, would be this part of the power — ^of the 
real power, or of the power of the real. Now, how is that, which 
is not to occur, related to it ? Tliis opens to ^.is a double view : the 
final end is to be made visible throuo-h life, and hence throuo-h 
freedom. But freedom in the individual form, which alone admits 
of acting, comprises self-limitation. Hence, the visibility of a 
command of a final end involves expressly that there shall be a 
play-ground, as it were, or a more extended sphere, wherein some- 
thing prohibited can be found. So much, for the prer^ent, con- 
cerning the matter of the visibility of the command; its formal 
part we shall meet in proper time. 

Hence, the visibility of the final end most certainly involves 
that, besides the sphere of the acts commanded, there shall also be 
another s[>here of mere possibility; but the final end can involve 
no determination as to what are to be the contents of this other 
sphere, since it is fully exhausted by the sphere of the commanded. 
Thus that inner sphere of mere possibility falls under the rule of 
the above determining law — the law of the contemplatability of 
purely empty and nugatoi-y freedom. All this is no power to 
create the Real, but merely the power to create an Appearance. 

From this it follows, firstly, that it is possible to represent the 
final end through the means of life ; that freedom can absolutely 



56 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

do wliatcver it is bid to do, and that there is no possibility of a 
dispute about these matters. The ori<i;itial power of life is nothing 
else tliiui the ])o\vcr to achieve the final end; nothing else than 
the original self-manifestation of this final end in freedom. The 
totality of the power expresses the final end wholly and com- 
pletely ; nay, it comprises far more ; that is, also, the power not to 
obey ; and the other expression of the final end comprises only the 
narrower sphere. 

Let me add this : We know, from onr investigation, that the gen- 
eral contemplation must be described as a contemplation of power; 
in immediate contemplation, we behold only the object of that 
power — nature. Now, just as life has thus lost its independence 
and absoluteness, so nature, the mere image of that life, also, and 
to a still greater degree, loses its independence and absoluteness 
by that result. Just as the power is in all its determinations 
only the product of the linal end, so nature, the mere contemplata- 
bility of that power, is such a product to a still greater degree. 
Nature is the image of our real power, and hence absolutely con- 
formable to an end; we can achieve in and upon nature all that 
the final end commands us to achieve. The principle of nature is 
absolutely a moral principle, and by no means a natural principle ; 
for, if it were the latter, nature would be absolute. Nature is 
heteronymous, and by no means autonomous. Nature is to be 
explained, partly from its ends, and partly from the visibility of 
those ends ; from both, indeed, as we have shown in the case of 
the power, whose image nature is. If we forget the latter point, 
we shall fall into absurdities. 

Morality, therefore, appears here as the absolute determining 
principle of nature. Nor ought this to surprise us, since it has 
appeared as the principle of life, which again is the principle of 
nature. 

II. In the general unity form of life, as such, we discovered not 
only a contemplation, but also a real power — namely, the power 
to concentrate into a unity-point of the general power, and to cre- 
ate individual forms by that contraction. 

Now, since life, in its truly real acting, is, without exception, the 
expression of the final end, the same applies to those aotibus indi- 
mduationis. Our previous assumption, that life were herein ut- 
terly free and lawless, now drops entirely to the ground. Life, in 



Facts of Consciousness. 57 

this production of individual forms, is deteririined altogether by 
the final end. Each individual, therefoi-e, who comes into exist- 
ence does so come into existence throufrh the final end, and solely 
for the sake of the final end. N^evertheless, he comes into existence 
as an individual ; that is, just as individuation ai)peared formerly 
as the concentration into a unity-point of a possibility of acting;, 
and a connection of a fixed series of possibilities of acting from 
this unity-point, so now it appears as the concentration to a unity- 
point of the Shall, and as the connection of a series of Shalls from 
this unity-point. Just as above the general sphere of a power of 
doing separated into several individual faculties, so here the gen- 
eral problem given to the one life separates into several prob- 
lems ; into parts, through the realization of all of which, if it were 
at all possible in time, the universal final end would be realized, 
each individual having, through his mere existence within the 
sphere of universal lil'e, such a specific problem. Each one is to 
do that which he alone is called to do (or shall do), and which he 
alone can do — since the concentration upon the unity-point of the 
Shall is also a concentration upon the unity-point of the Can — 
which only he, and positively no one else, ie called to do and can 
do, and which, if he does not do it, will be done by no one else, 
at least of this community of individuals. Precisely as w^e dis- 
covered above, that in a physical aspect the individual comes into 
existence without any action or consciousness of his own, and can- 
not change this his Being — this concentration upon or into a unity- 
point — although having the power to determine himself from 
that point with aI)solute freedom, so now", in t)ie world of his 
moral destination, he is to find himself as he is, without any action 
or consciousness of his own, and without any power to change this 
his moral being. But neither must (shall) he, in this his moral 
world, even desire to change it, but must further voluntarily 
develop and determine himself in accordance with that found 
fundamental law of his moral determination. The individual does 
not assign to himself his moral task, for that is assigned to him 
simultaneously with his existence; but he does, at some time of 
his life, assign it to himself consciously. This, however, he can 
do only because it has been originally assigned to him, without his 
consciousness, through his mere existence. The coming into ex- 
istence of an individual is a particular and altogether determined 



58 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

decree of the moral law in general, which expresses itself in full 
only by its decrees to all individuals. 

The one and universal life, in its assumption of individual 
form, is altoo-ether determined throun-h the linal end. In what 
manner? It is true that life is activity, and, moreover, absohite, 
creative activity. But in this, its universal form, it is not con- 
scious of itself, and hence it is not free in the strict sense of the 
word. That is to say, there is no impulse in it which it may fol- 
low or not follow. Hence, it is not determined through the final 
end, as the individual is determined through the command of 
the iinal end, with a freedom to obey or disobey. The final end 
operates upon life in its universal form as a law of nature, and 
life in this form is only the appearance in nature of the final end. 
In and through it such and such iudividuals must result, and they 
do result. 

In this way, therefore, we have been led to a fixed and real na- 
ture, which, in so far as we ascribe reality to the final end alone, 
is not merely the visibility of another, but visibility for itself. 
What is this nature, firstly, in regard to its form ? Not a substrate, 
or anything of that kind, but pure and absolute life and power, 
which creates the merely possible into an actual, the immediate 
fundamental principle of all actuality. The ground of its being, 
as well as the ground which irresistibly and, like a law of nature, 
determines the manifestation of its power, is the final end itself. 
Here we find the al)Solute union and the true conuecting link of 
both worlds, the visible and the invisible. 

Now, which are those original determinations, and the absolute 
creatures of nature? The world of individuals. The individu- 
als, therefore, in consequence of their moral destinations, are the 
only true and actual in nature, and their creation completes nature 
in general. 

Whatsoever exists otherwise, or appears as existing, is product 
of the particular life, or of particular life in individual form ; as, 
for instance, contemplation of nature in the individual itself as 
also a part of nature, a further modification of nature, since in its 
unity-point it is a power of nature. 

This removes all difficulties — which beset other systems, that as- 
sume an in itself absolute, hence immoral, nature — of explaining 
freedom and consciousness in the individual. The individual is 



Facts of Consciousness. 59 

simply moral; and this morality posits absolutely consciousness 
and freedom, since morality is possible only on condition of their 
existence. 

"We add here the following : In the indi^^idual form, as such, the 
real power of life to create individuals is completed and exliausted. 
The individual, when once he exists, is absolutely an individual, and 
can neither annihilate himself nor change into other individuals, 
and thus create individuals outside of himself. If, therefore, uni- 
versal life were to come to an end in the production of one or a 
certain fixed number of individuals, this coming to an end would 
exhaust and annihilate the real power of the one life, and life in 
its universal creative power would become invisible. This can 
never occur, for life must absolutely appear in its totality, because 
the Hnal end must become visible in it. Hence, within the 
sphere of appearances, the world of individuals is never com- 
pleted ; new ones must always arise ; and it is not only necessary 
that there should be many individuals — which we had not proved 
before — but that there should be a continuous, increasing, and, in 
the appearance, never-to-be-completed series of individuals. 

We might say that, according to the above, the final end in its 
totality must be divided among the sum of individuals, and that 
hence, if the final end is a determined and complete Whole, the 
sum of individuals must also be a complete Whole ; and tiiis re- 
mark furnishes us opportunity for an additional statement, which 
opens a wide prospect. For, in so far as the final end is to become 
visible, it must be apportioned among a determined and fixed sum 
of individuals, since it is visible only in the form of individuals. 
And thus the just now demonstrated continuous creation of new 
moral individuals presupposes that a part of the final end is still 
invisible ; namely, the part which is to be made visible by the 
new creation. In this regard, therefore, the appearance of every 
new-world citizen — and there is no other world than the moral 
world — is a revelation of the moral final end from a new and pre- 
viously altogether invisible point of view. It is possible that this 
progressiveness of the manifestation of the final end may be con- 
ditioned by the fulfilment of the problem, which became visible 
previously ; and that, until such fulfilment takes place, time will 
pass on void and empty, merely repeating the unful rilled problem 
in other individuals. Thus, in the moral order of the final end, 



60 Tlie Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

one a2;e of the world would be conditioned by another ag-e, and 
the sequence of ages wouhl bs tlie gradual unfolding to greater 
clearness of the final end. 

D. 

Let us now jiroceed to delermine the second fundamental form 
of the manifestation of life — the individual form — by ^pply^"» 
the same principle. 

I. Tlie contemplation of the one and nniversal power exists in 
the individuals as such. The totality of the power, or nature, is 
contemplated through them as the focus of knowledge ; and by 
each of them, of course, in the same manner, for in regard to the 
contents of that contemplation thej are not individual, but are 
the one and universal life itself. 

In order to remove all occasion for misapprehension or confu- 
sion, I will here add the followino;: The one universal life — or 
nature — has already, on a previous occasion, been separated into 
two main views : firstly, as real life, in its creation of individuals ; 
and, secondly, as ideal life, in its self-contemplation. It can as- 
sume the latter form, as factical, only in the form of the individu- 
al, since it contemplates itself and becomes conscious of itself 
only in that form — though as one contemplation, and hence, as in 
all individual forms, the same one content. This contemplation 
must comprise all that is comprised in actuality. But actuality 
extends as far as individuation. Hence universal contemplation 
must comprise the contemplation of as many individuals as the 
one life has created ; and the hntnediate universal contemplation 
must extend just so far: namely, to the universal contemplation 
of all individuals from the standpoint of every single individual. 

And here let me make a remark, which I trust will remove 
many a misapprehension of previous propositions of the Science 
of Knowledge. No individual contemplates, or beholds, beings 
of his own kind m A«mS(?Z/' and in his self-contemplation, but in 
the immediate contemplation of the one life. Whatsoever else 
tiiere is in nature — physical force, etc., down to coarse matter — 
is contemplated, of course, by each individual in himself, in 
the immediate contemplation of his universal power. But }>re- 
cisely because this is its universal and not its particularly limited 
power, it is compelled to transfer this contemplation to other 



Facts of Consciousness. 61 

beings of its own kind, which have already appeared to it in the 
tirst contemplation. 

Now, the one life, as nature, is absolutely determined by the 
final end in the production of individuals. It can produce no in- 
dividuals, except with specific moral determinations. This, as an 
absolute determination of that life, must also appear in tlie uni- 
versal contemplation thereof, and, moreover, in its immediate con- 
templation, wherein the individuals appear according to their 
existence, altogether independent of the reflection of the contem- 
plating individual upon his own morality. It must appear in the 
same universality wliich it has in the one life. What is this uni- 
versality, and where is its limit? It is this: that all individuals, 
without an exception, have a special moral destination of their 
own ; and whatever this destination is for every particular indi- 
vidual, lies beyond the limit. The universal contemplation merely 
shows that all individuals have a moral destination, for the sake 
of which their being, and the products of their freedom, must not 
be treated like things of nature, but must be respected ; in short, 
this contemplation involves all that we have previously established 
factically as the source of the conception of the relation of free 
beings to each other — the conception of Law. These conceptions 
we have found — and this is an important matter — to be inde- 
pendent of the morality of the individual himself who entertains 
them ; nay, independent even of the fact of the reflection concern- 
ing his own morality. They are the real mediating and connect- 
ing link between the natural and the moral conceptions, as well 
as of their ground — the determination of the one life through the 
final end. The real central link is found between the two worlds. 

Tliis appears also in actual life. Even the man, wdio is himself 
unjust, and who cannot look upon his act in the form of that con- 
templation, being moved by passionate desire, will judge that act 
to be unjust when committed by another, because he is then calm 
and open to the impressions of his spiritual nature ; just as we 
often find tiie very men demand most of others who are least in- 
clined to help those others when necessary. In their lowest form 
we find these conceptions, not so much as things, which anybody 
is to <?o, as something, which ought to Tje. 

We here obtain, therefore, a new determination of universal 
contemplation, the basis of the Legal Conception, whereby free- 



62 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

dom is turned into nature, as it were, and called upon to oi)erate 
and produce a fixed and permanent Being like au irresistible and 
compulsory law of nature. 

II. The particular, moral determination of each individual, 
which is hh in consequence of his origination from out the uni- 
versal life, does not arise into consciousness in the described uni- 
versal contemplation, but only in the separate and altoo;ether in- 
ternal self-contemplation of the individual as such, since this 
determination is his exclusively own Being. The question is. How 
and in what manner? 

In oi'der to answer this question thoroughly and clearly, let us 
investigate more closely the condition of moral freedom and its 
conteraplatability. We saw above that the mere sensuous indi- 
viduality, even without any appearance of the moral law in con- 
sciousness, makes actual acting completely possible, and real free- 
dom, the possibility of determining one's self to do a specific act, 
in every M'ay perfectible. If the moral law is added, there arises 
a limitation of that determined possibility; at first, of course, 
merely in the conception. It is conceived that the possible free- 
dom of acting must be limited to a determined, limited sphere. 
IS^ow, in consequence of this conception, the free individual, con- 
fined to the described condition, is to limit himself by a free act, 
and this free act is to be visible as such, since the law, as deter- 
mining the life, is to be visible. But the free act, according to a 
previously demonstrated proposition, is visible only when a re- 
sistance occurs ; hence the visibility of the moral determination as 
such posits, first of all, a resistance. The resistance must, there- 
fore, be manifested — just as the visibility manifests itself — abso- 
lutely. And since it is the one life, as nature, which is determined 
by the formal visibility of the moral law, it must be that one life 
which produces such a resistance. 

But, again, where must this resistance appear? Evidently in 
physical freedom itself, for it is this feedom which is to be deter- 
mined, and, moreover, in its individual form, since here we speak 
only of this kind of form. This resistance is not itself an acting. 
For freedom is to be limited in advance of this acting. Hence, it 
must be necessarily a principle, which, without the moral limi- 
tation, would be an acting. In other words, it must be an im- 
pulse, for by that word we have characterized such a principle 
before. It must be, moreover, a positive impulse, and by no 



Facts of Consciousness. 63 

means a mere iiidiiFerence to act without any moral determi- 
nation ; an impulse wbieh, in resisting this determination, must 
be overcome by it, and in the very overcoming of which the moral 
free deed must become visible. It is a necessary consequence of 
individuation tliat such an impulse should appear in the indi- 
vidual ; for it belongs to the individual form, as a form wherein 
the actual causality of the moral law is to become visible. 

It is a positive impulse to act, for the present, without any moral 
law. But for that very reason it aspires to perfect its whole form, 
and til us to be absolute, even though it be against the moral law. 
It wants to abroo;ate the moral law altoo-ether. In our conscious- 
ness it will thus appear as a natural will, given to us through our 
mere sensuous existence. Hence the law, against which it rebels, 
and which, on its account, rebels against it, as a shall, as the nega- 
tion of the will in its function, as a ground of determination. 
Hence this peculiar form of the law, which for that very reason is 
valid also only for this opposition. In determining the one life, 
the final end has not at all the form of the shall, but only the 
form of the must. It rules as a law of nature. The impulse 
itself is its product in so far as it is a law of nature, and exists 
only for the sake of its visibility and in its mere form ; the same 
impulse which, through the same law, as a determining law of 
freedom, is to be annihilated, not so far as its being is concerned, 
which would be a contradiction, but as a determining ground of 

acting. 

Eemakk. 

This impulse is a natural impulse, and, if we follow it, it pro- 
duces an acting according to the law of nature. Hence, in follow- 
ing the impulse, the individual is not at all free, but subservient 
to an irrevocable law ; and in this region life, in its mere form as 
pure life, has no causality whatever. 

But what, then, is the content of this acting in general, and 
generally, of the manyfold in its seeming manifestation of free- 
dom ? We have seen it before : the mere conteniplatability of 
life as such, without any real core ; a mere picturing in order to 
be a picturing; a Nothing, forever to be fui'ther formed. The 
individual who acts in obedience to the impulse acts under the 
law of this further evolution of the Nothing. 

Again, if, on the other hand, the individual determines himself 



64 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

tlirono;li tlie moral law, he also is not free, and life again has no 
causality ; for this is what freedom means* Has he, then, no free- 
dom at all ? Yes, certainly : in the transition, in rising from the 
condition of nature to that of morality. 

This enables us to offer a ready reply to the question pro- 
pounded. Consciousness is the freedom of a Being; determined 
consciousness, freedom of a determined heino-. Whatsoever is to be 
the immediate consciousness of a subject must be immediately the 
actual being of that same subject. If the subject is absorbed l)y 
the natural impulse, his moral determinatedness still remains, of 
course; his being; but only in the background, as it were. His 
immediate, actual being, is that impulse. Hence the impulse 
alone is manifested in consciousness, and it is absolutely impos- 
sible that the moral determinedness should manifest itself in con- 
sciousness — at least so far as its contents are concerned; for, in 
regard to the form., and in so far as that torm is contained in the 
general conception of law, as a part of the universal contempla- 
tion, it may be otherwise. Now, what is the ground of this impos- 
sibility ? The absorption by the impulse. Hence the individual 
must, first of all, get rid of the impulse. Can he do this ? Or, 
in order to give another form to the question : Since such a self- 
ridding of the law of nature on the part of the individual, without 
having determined himself as yet by the moral law, would be the 
just described freedom, the causality of the life through itself, is 
the individual really and in point of fact free? 

Since such a freedom conditions the determinability through 
the moral law, and hence its absolute visibility, does not this 
actual and real freedom belono; to the absolute determinations of 
the individual, as such, which it receives immediately from nature 
under the detei'mination of the tinal end ? 

Three things, therefore, constitute the essence of the individual: 
1. The natural impulse; 2. The moral determination or destina- 
tion ; and 3. Absolute freedom as the mediatino; link between the 
two former. 

Hence the individual must annihilate the impulse, as its imme- 
diately actual being, through this freedom. Does any Being, then, 
still adhere to it? Of course; that is, its moral destination ; and 
this is now its immediate, actual Being. For the present, how- 



Facts of Consciousness. 65 

ever, it is still free in regard to it, since it has not yet determined 
itself in accordance with the laws of that destination. Hence it 
now enters the emptied consciousness necessarily, in consequence 
of the law of consciousness. 

Now, what sort of a consciousness is this? As the immediate 
expression of Being, it is necessarily an immediate contemplation, 
which forms itself under this condition precisely as it is, without 
any freedom on the part of the knowing — such as we meet in 
thinking, which is a going beyond contemplation — and accom- 
panied, as all contemplation is, by immediate evidence. Its con- 
tent has no external ground, and cannot be made a subject of ar- 
gument, like a series of thinking. It simply is, and is what it is; 
that is, it is a consciousness that I am called upon to do this very 
particular thing. 

Result. — The determinatedness of moral consciousness is not 
produced by the freedom of thinking, but absolutely creates itself. 
It is true that freedom co-operates in the process, but somewhat 
differently. By killing the impulse, it puts itself into the condition 
wherein it can realize itself that determined contemplation pro- 
pounds a problem, which the individual can freely make his own, 
and which he ought to and most certainly, according to the above, 
can solve. But the actins; of the individual is an infinite line, 
and, by virtue of that infinity, stands under the moral law. Hence, 
after accomplishing the first problem, a second problem will arise 
for the individual — conditioned by the first one — and so on ad 
infinitum. The moral destination of the individual, which is alto- 
gether completed by his going beyond universal life, as a Being, 
can thus arise to consciousness only in an infinite, never-to-be- 
finished series of separate, determined contemplations, which series 
is connected and remains the same through the law of conditioned- 
ness ; and the determined act, we are called upon and actually 
can do, is valid only for the determined time-moment. 

The impulse, as an essential component part of the individual, 
remains eternal ; hence freedom also remains eternal. If, there- 
fore, the individual had determined himself to realize his deter- 
mined moral problem, he nevertheless would be able to repeal, or 
cancel, this his moral task at any time ; or, even if he did under- 
take the next task, he still might refuse obedience to the following, 
etc., etc. In this condition his infinite life would therefore re- 
XYIII— 5 



6Q The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

main an everlasting selt-determination, a continuous creation of 
free resolves, wliicli, however, might just as well be moral as 
immoral. But in that case the moral law would also not be a 
determinedness of Being, of the fixed, unchangeable unit of indi- 
vidual life, as it proposes to be; but it would exist merely acci- 
dentally, and as a determining ground of some manifestations of 
life without any rule or law whatever. 

These accidental manifestations would be moral, to be sure, but 
the life itself, in its root and basis, would remain immoral. 

That accomplished problem was in contemplation ; hence life 
must be determined by contemplation. But it is to be determined 
by the absolutely invisible and eternal unity of the law. How 
can this determination, as the only true morality of the individual, 
manifest itself? 

Evidently only by the absolute annihilation and canceling of 
the impulse as well as of freedom, since the described opposite 
condition is founded on the latter. Now, neither of them can be 
annihilated as faculties. They must, therefore, be annihilated as 
facts. The individual must have the power to determine himself 
for all eternity never to admit any more as a fact the freedom 
which nevertheless continues as a possibility forever. 

Determination through freedom is called a free Willing — not 
the previously described natural Willing. That determination 
would, therefore, be a resolve henceforth and forever to obey — 
without flinching or considering, and without any separate resolve 
of freedom — the moral law, in whatever form it may present itself 
in our infinite contemplation. 

Of course, freedom would remain as a faculty — a possibility ; 
and hence such a will — for in its continuance we must call it will, 
and not, as in the moment of its origination, resolve — must uphold 
itself eternally through itself, which upholding is precisely the con- 
tinuous annihilation of the always possible real freedom, and will 
manifest itself as such an upholding. But continuous self-deter 
mination,to be moral, is now no longer possible, since this self-de- 
termination has been achieved for all eternity. Now let the moral 
law develop itself internally hereafter in the infinitely continued 
series of contemplations, and you may be sure that its eternal 
life will develop itself precisely in the same manner, since the 
Will, as the mediating agency, is always present. 



Facts of Consciousness. 67 

The act of the creation of an eternal and holy Will in itself is 
the act by which the individual creates itself into being, the im- 
mediate visibility of the final end, and by which it, therefore, 
completes its own peculiar internal life. Henceforth the indi- 
vidual no longer lives himself, but within him lives, as ought 
to live, the final end. The final end, I say, and not the command 
(Categorical Imperative), for only in relation to the impulse and 
freedom is the final end a Shall and a Command ; not for the 
Will, since the will wills nothing but the final end, and is, in 
truth, the Will of that final end. If we therefore still choose to 
look upon that final end as a law, it must be as actually through 
the mediating Will, a law of nature for real life, since a law of 
nature can now, that we have presupposed the existence of the 
Will, be nothing else than a manifestation of the final end. After 
the annihilation of freedom, even individual life changes into 
nature, i. e., the higher and supersensuous nature. 

E. 

Determination of the Universal and Individual Forms in their 
Union through the Final End. 

I. The determination through the final end involves imme- 
diately, not the universal operating power of life, or the sensuous 
world, but only the sum of free individuals. It involves that 
power of life only in form ; that is, in so far as there must be gen- 
erally a play-ground, or a larger sphere, wherein to make visible 
moral freedom in its distinction from natural freedom. 

But the final end itself marks out within that absolutely given 
sphere a narrower field — the field of the productions of morality — 
and this field is divided ofi" among the several individuals. Now, 
whatever we may think in regard to that general world as to its 
infinity or finity, this, at least, is immediately clear : the moral 
problem within it, describing, as it does, a narrower circle, must 
be a finite problem, which can be realized, and will be realized at 
some time by the totality of all the individuals to whom the prob- 
lem is allotted. But, whenever this problem is realized, the reason 
for the existence of the sensuous world, which reason alone keeps 
it in existence, disappears, and hence the sensuous world itself 
vanishes. 



68 The Journal of Speculative Plulosophy. 

II. But in so far as the final end itself is not, as here, an acci- 
dental manifestation, but determined in its absolute Being, it is 
necessarily iniinite, just as life itself is, in this respect, infinite. 
Hence, after the annihilation of this first world, it must produce 
throuo-li life itself as nature — i. e., as universal and eternal nature — 
a second world, altogether in the same form, in wliicli alone it can 
become visible ; that is, in individuals with natural impulses, free- 
dom, and moral determination. 

Of this second world we would have to say the same that we 
said of the first world ; namely : the problem assigned to it will be 
solved at some time ; and thus the second world also will perish. 
But, in order to represent the infinity of the final end, the same 
absolute and fundamental law will necessitate the creation of a 
third world, etc., etc., ad infinitum. The final end can make 
itself visible in life only as an infinite series of consecutive 
worlds. 

III. Nevertheless, there is in this infinite consecutiveness of 
worlds only one life and only one determining final end. But how 
does it remain a unity and connected, and how does it thus become 
visible as a unity? The product of the absolute immediate deter- 
mination of life through the final end we have in the individuals. 
It is only within the individuals, and through the self-contempla- 
tion of their power, that sensuous worlds arise. Those individuals 
are created through life as absolutely one and the same eternal 
nature, and the sensuous worlds are created only by the transit 
through the principle of the visibility of life. Hence, the indi- 
viduals, being produced by the final itself, and not by any special 
manifestation thereof, remain the same. Their individual unity 
extends beyond the infinite series of all worlds; of course, in so 
far as they have determined their existence in actuality by the 
final end, or in so far as they have engendered the will in them- 
selves. By means of this will, which is the immediate Being of 
the final end in them, and which creates worlds only for them and 
for their eternal end, they survive the destruction of all worlds. 
For the real and last appearance of the final end occurs only in 
the form of the individual, and the will alone is the proper medium 
of this appearance, the worlds being merely the spheres for the 
visibility of the individual wills. Those individuals who have not 
<engendered that will in themselves will discontinue to exist. 



Facts of Consciousness. 69 

They are mere appearances in this first world, according to the 
laws thereof, and perish along with that world. 

Hence, the unity of life reposes for all eternity in the unity of 
the self-consciousness of the individuals, which began in this world, 
and in the unity of its contemplations of all its worlds, which, 
on that account, must also remain connected. 

IV. This is the fundamental unity. But how does it connect 
the different worlds and make their series appear as one series ? 
The answer is ready at hand : In regard to its existence, every 
preceding series is the condition of the possibility of the following 
series. Life can progress only by means of its complete develop- 
ment from the first step to the second step, etc., etc. In regard 
to the internal connection, the ideal ground, the determination 
through the final end, each preceding step exists simply because 
the next step is to follow it. The second step, for instance, is the 
expression of the final end, determined in its particular way, be- 
cause the final end is determined in its particular way; but this 
second step cannot be taken until the first step, as the means and 
condition of that expression, has been taken. 

Now, what, then, is that world which is to exist absolutely, and 
which, therefore, is the absolute expression of the final end, and 
after the realization of which the final end will have been alto- 
gether achieved and made visible? Evidently that world wliich 
exists for its own sake, and not for the sake of another world. 
Hence the last or final world. But there is no such final world, 
seeing that the series is infinite. Hence the absolute final end 
itself never becomes visible-; only conditions of it become everlast- 
ingly visible. We can, therefore, never achieve the final end in 
its absolute contents, and must abandon our endeavor to reach in 
this series an absolute, which will become visible as such. 

Remarks and Deductions. 

1. The second world, and, to a still higher degree, the infinite 
series of subsequent worlds, give admittance only to those indi- 
viduals who have in the first world cut themselves ott* from im- 
moral nature and engendered a holy will within themselves. 
Whatsoever remains in this life a mere manifestation of nature, 
perishes with that nature. But as no individuals, even not the 
perishing ones, are without a moral destination, and as the moral 



*T0 The Journal of Speciolative PhUosophy. 

end of this worl(i iiuist be realized in its totality, nature, being 
governed by the determination of the iinal end, is bound to cre- 
ate other individuals in place of those who do not realize their 
destination, and to give to those new individuals the same task 
which tlie perished failed to achieve, 

2. Only those individuals, in whom the will has become a fixed 
and unchangeable Being, progress into future worlds. N^ow, al- 
though the will will have to exert and uphold itself forever also 
in those future worlds, since in those worlds also freedom and im- 
pulse must continue to exist as their absolutely formal conditions, 
it nevertheless may be assumed that individuals, once admitted 
into that series of future worlds, will be able to uphold their will. 
Hence no further perishing of individuals is possible in those 
worlds, though the worlds themselves will perish after the lapse of 
their time, and brino; forth new worlds. 

3. Hence in those future worlds we shall always have tasks and 
labors as we have here ; but we shall always have a holy and good 
will; never a sensuous will. 

Let me add the followins; o-eneral remarks : All individual life 
is, at its beginning, immoral, not in regard to its destination and 
what it ought to achieve, but in actuality. Morality is the prod- 
uct simply of absolute freedom. ISTo individual is engendered a 
moral being, but each must make himself a moral being. 

Again : The sphere for this self making itself moral on the part 
of life is the present world ; it is the place for the culture of the 
will for all future worlds. Hence our present world is absolutely 
the first of the whole series of worlds; and neither it, nor the in- 
dividuals appearing on it, have ever existed before. 

And, finally, in all the future worlds there will appear only old 
individuals, who have existed previously in this present world of 
ours, and in it have arisen to a holy will. Hence no future world 
will produce new individuals. (N^ot to mention that, being new 
individuals, they would necessarily be immoral.) 

It is true that we have previously established the proposition 
that the one life must become visible in its unity as life ; that is, 
as causality, and that thus we have proved that life must produce 
individuals, at least in its primary determination. Now, has this our 
proposition — deduced, as it is, from the eternal law of visibility — 
validity for all eternity ? And if it has, must not the one life in 



Roidand O. Hazard's Works. Tl 

its causality become visible as a Unit in all future worlds? Un- 
questionably. But in that case it has made itself visible as the 
factical principle of the production of a new world, and, accord- 
ingly, of infinite new future worlds, in which character it is not 
at all visible here. 



EOWLAND G. HAZAKD'S WORKS.' 

In previous numbers of this journal we have quoted largely from the 
latest work of Dr. Hazard. To the Anglo-Saxon mind the question of 
self-determination, so important to the philosopher, takes the form of the 
possibility of the freedom of the will. That the ordinary reflection — the 
second stage of knowing, as we have called it in another place ^ — will be 
sure to deny the possibility of freedom in a given instance, we may be 
certain. This is certain, because it does not acknowledge the existence 
of freedom as a possibility in any shape, and, of course, it will not recog- 
nize any special example of the same. Give it the idea of Cause, and, 
though it will admit that one object is modified through another, and that 
the modified object is effect, it will refuse to think the cause as a first 
cause of motion, but will hold : " A given cause is made active by some 
other cause." It thus avoids the issue of the problem, and declines to 



* 1. "Essay on Language, and other Papers." By Rowlaod G. Hazard. Edited by 
E. P. Peabody. Boston : Phillips, Sampson & Co. ISSV. 

2. " Our Resources." New York : Charles Scribner & Co. 1868. 

3. " Finance and Hours of Labor." New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1868. 

4. "Freedom of Mind in Willing; or, Every Being that wills, a Creative First 
Cause." New York : D. Appleton & Co. 1864. 

5. " Two Letters, on Causation, and Freedom in Willing, addressed to John Stuart 
Mill. With an Appendix on the Existence of Matter, and our Notions of Infinite 
Space." By Eowiand G. Hazard. Boston : Lee & Shepard. 1869. 

6. " Zwei Briefe ueber Verursachung und Freiheit im Willcn." Gerichtet an John 
Stuart Mill. Mit einem Anhange ueber die Existence des Stoffes und unsere Begriffe 
des Unendlichen Raumes. Von Rowland G. Hazard. New York : B. Westermann & 
Co. Leipzic: Bernhard Hermann. 

7. "Animals not Automata." By Rowland G. Hazard, Esq. (Reprint from "The 
Popular Science Monthly," vol. vi, p. 405.) 

8. " Man a Creative First Cause." Two Discourses delivered at Concord, Mass., 
July, 1882. By Rowland G. Hazard, LL. D. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 
1883. 

2 See October ('83) number "Jour. Spec. Phil." "Philosophy in Outline," Chapter 
ix, § 82. 



72 The Journal of Speculative PhilosopJiy. 

acknowledge the necessity of a true cause as the origin of the influence 
which is separated from the cause by the cause itself, and produces suc- 
cessive moditication on all the links until it reaches the object in question. 
The thought of self-activity as the necessary presupposition of any motion 
or activity is called " inconceivable " by a thinker of this grade. 

Dr. Hazard is gifted with such clear insight that he has never regarded 
the question of free-will as insoluble by reason of the " inconceivability " 
of self-activity. His glance has taken in at once the fact of causal action 
and the necessary presupposition of self-activity as the essence of causality. 
We can predict that it will almost surprise him that many sensible, capa- 
ble, " common-sense " persons will fail to be convinced by his argument 
because they do not consciously admit self-activity as a possible thought.^ 
A candid writer of this class recently reviews '^ the last work above cited, 
and dissents from Dr. Hazard's conclusions quite confidently. He even 
goes so far as to grant self-activity, but it does not seem to occur to him 
that self -activity means the origination of movement ; to him it is entirely 
reasonable to admit self-activity and assert that it is the " product of in- 
numei'able forces," etc. He says, for example : 



' Dr. Hazard's idea is that activity is always stimulated by a want, and he says 
("Letters to Mill," p. 126) : "I have already remarked that the ability of the mind to 
start from a fixed condition of universal passivity into action is, at least, doubtful, and 
that such condition being wholly foreign to our experience, the problerp is not practi- 
cally important." 

His idea, elsewhere stated, is that if the mind should ever itself become wholly pass- 
ive and oblivious, it could be still, through its sensations (which are not dependent on 
its own, but may be excited by extrinsic agencies), aroused, and wants be induced in 
it through the same agencies ; and that, in fact, in such case, such external agency would 
be required to save him from annihilation. In " Freedom of Mind in Willing," chap, 
xiii, p. 13Y, he says: "If we ever become quiescent, we cease to be cause, and this 
want must then become manifest by some change, effected by some active cause without 
us, the effect of which, from the constitution of our being, we may recognize without 
effort of our own ; and the fact is, we can not always prevent such cognition. If our 
mental activity ever entirely ceases, it must then be as if we had no mind, and we 
must be re-minded before we can again become an active cause ; and this, as before 
suggested, may be done by want in us, produced by causes to the action of which our 
own efforts are not essential." 

In another passage (p. 171) he treats of the bountiful provision which has been made 
for the production and recurrence of these wants — spiritual and physical — which are 
thus essential to intelligent activity. He holds that the question of our ability to 
change, of ourselves, from a purely passive to an active condition, is never put to the 
test of actual experience, and that it does not concern the question of man's freedom — 
i. e., the question of his being free — but only the question of hoio he became free, as 
he is with his actual environment. The true question is. Taking man as he is, does he 
will freely ? (See also " Letters to Mill," pp. 101-153.) 

2 In " The Index " for November 8, 1883, p. 221. 



Rowland G. Hazard's Works. Y3 

" The fact that a creature is self-active, that the impelling forces, called 
the will, are a part of its nature, and therefore internal^ does not carry 
with it the implication that the creature is detached from that cosmic 
order in which all things are bound together by the law of causation.' 
And, unless it be so detached, how can the words 'independent' and 
' free ' have, in this case, any logical or philosophical meaning ? It seems 
to us that the libertarian, to prove free agency, must show that a creature 
has the power of deciding and doing differently from what it does decide 
to do ; not simply that the proximate cause of its movements is internal, 
not external, but that this cause is not a related, dependent link in the 
chain of causation ; not simply that the creature can exercise choice and 
will and act in accordance therewith, but that its choice and will are not 
dependent upon and determined by the constitution of its being and the 
nature of its environment ; that, in short, being independent and free, it 
cannot only do as it chooses, but that it can choose to do one thing as 
easily as another." 

Self-determination, according to the fatalist, is not freedom. For it 
moves according to its nature, and is compelled by itself thus to move. 
True to his hampered mode of thinking, which always puts its object into 
the form of conditioned and conditioning, it conceives the self-active in 
the form of a conditioned-by-itself, but regards that as a form of fate. 
And if there is choice present, then it " must choose as it did choose, 
because it is clear that it could not both choose and not choose at the 
same tiine ! " Thus the reviewer suggests : 

" If an individual, under any given circumstances, could have done the 
opposite of what it did do, it foUows that from the same causes opposite 
effects could have resulted, which is an absurdity, or that events may 
occur independently of causation, which is no less ao absurdity.''' 

" ' The advocates of necessity,' says Mr. Hazard, often ask ' if a man 
could will contrary to what he does will. I would say that he could if 
he so decided ; but it would be a contradictory and absurd idea of free- 
dom which, for its realization, would require that one might try to do 
what he had determined not to do.' 

" He 'could will the contrary of what he does will, . . . if he so de- 
cided,' undoubtedly. But this is saying only that he could will contrary 
to what he does will, if he so willed. The question is, Could he so decide? 
The old advocates of free-will would have answered, unhesitatingly. Yes. 
But Mr. Hazard sees that this answer involves a conception that is ' con- 
tradictory and absurd,' and endeavors to avoid it. 



^ As to " that cosmic order in which all things are bound together by the law of 
causation," Dr. Hazard holds that this cosmic order is but the composite result of every 
intelligent will, and that every conative being has the power by his own acts of will to 
vary that order ; and that, in fact, every act of will is intended to change that order, and 
may do it — making the future different from what it would have been but for such act. 

^ As to our power to will or do the opposite, see " Letters to Mill," p. 131. 



74 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

" The question he raises is not whether ' one might try to do what he 
had determined not to try to do,' but wliether he could decide contrary 
to what he does decide, contrary to what his character, views, and circum- 
stances compel him to decide. If he could, according to our view, he is 
a free agent. If he could not, he is not a free agent. It is clear from 
Mr. Hazard's reply that he 'believes he could not, for he sees that the op- 
posite of this belief leads to contradiction and absurdity.'" 



' Dr. Hazard's definition of freedom as applicable to willing must be borne in mind. 
He says ("Freedom of Mind in Willing," p. 19): "The question may arise whether 
that which controls itself is free, or whether the fact of its being controlled, even 
though by itself, renders it not free. This question, in our present inquiry, concerns 
the action of the mind in willing; but we may say, generally, that everything, in mov- 
ing or in acting, in motion or in action, must be directed and controlled in its motion or 
in its action by itself, or by something other than itself ; and that, of these two con- 
ditions of everything moving or acting, or in motion or in action, the term freedom ap- 
plies to the former rather than to the latter ; and, if the term freedom does not apply 
to that condition, it can have no application to the acting, or the action, of anything 
whatever. And hence self-control is but another expression for the freedom of that 
which acts, or of the active agent ; and this is in conformity to the customary use and 
the popular idea of the term freedom." 

He holds that every being with feeling, knowledge, and volition is in its constitution 
self-active. "An act of will, a volition, is but an effort of the being that wills. Free- 
dom in willing or effort is self-control of the effort by the being that wills, as contra- 
distinguished from the idea of an act of will contributed by some extrinsic power. 
Every act of will, every effort of every such being, is incited by its own want (a feeling 
or emotion), and is directed to the gratification of this want by means of its own 
knowledge, including its preconceptions of the future effect of its effort. The object 
of an effort is always to make the future different from what it would otherwise be. 
This, as the being can not change the past, is the only conceivable motive, and the 
being thus acts, and acts as it does, not from any propulsion in the past, but from its 
own present feeling of a want to be gratified, which is its own knowledge of a reason 
for acting. It directs this effort by means of its own perceptions — more or less reliable 
— of the future effect of its effort ("Freedom of Mind in Willing," p. YO). 

" As a conception, poetic or logical, of the effects of any contemplated efforts upon 
the future, is thus essential to the effort, a being with only sensation and a knowledge 
of the past and present would not will. It is only by the God-like power of making 
the future present that intelligence, infinite or finite, in the exercise of its will, becomes 
creative. By means of this power of anticipating its effects, the mind, in willing, is 
influenced by the anticipated creations of its own action, while those creations are still 
in the future, making a very broad distinction between intelligent and any conceivable 
unintelligent cause. 

" It is this fact, that intelligent cause is influenced by its preconceptions of its own 
effects, that fits it for First Cause ; for that which is thus, as it were, drawn forward 
by the future, needs no propulsion from the past; that which is moved by inducements 
before it does not need a motive influence behind it ; that which acts from its own in- 
ternal perception of the effects of its own action upon its own internal, existing want, 
does not require to be first acted upon by extraneous external forces." 

This reduces all motives to one; with the further result reached (in " Letters to Mill," 



Rowland G. Hazm'(Ps Works. 75 

The reviewer elaborates his idea of the fate involved in organism in the 
following language : 

" A statement of two or three of Mr. Hazard's positions will give some 
idea of his views and reasonings. He claims that every being, having 
feeling, knowledge, and power, is ' a creative first cause, an independent 
poAver in the universe, commensurate with its knowledge, freely putting 
forth its efforts to change existing conditions.' Every such being, how- 
ever high or low in the scale of life, within the limits of its power and 
knowledge, is in its action ' as free as if it were omniscient and omnipres- 
ent.' This is as true of the oyster as of man. To those who would limit 
free agency to man, this statement will seem strange ; but it is consistent 
with the general theory of free agency, so far, at least, as free agency is 
consistent with itself. If the power of choosing and willing implies inde- 
pendence and freedom, then there is no escape from the conclusion that 
the worm, within the limits of its knowledge and power, is independent 
and free. With this view of the subject, the question of the evolutionist, 
Where, in the development of life and intelligence, does free agency be- 
gin ? is deprived of its force and rendered irrelevant by a surrender to the 
necessitarian of what hitherto has been defended, and is now generally 
regarded as a stronghold of the doctrine of man's free agency, involving 
a denial, too, of what is commonly believed to be an essential distinction 
between man and all other living creatures on the globe. 

" But when this concession is made, as it is by Mr. Hazard, another 
question immediately arises: If, in the evolutior of life, the condition of 
every period has grown out of pre-existent conditions, how is it possible 
that in this invariable continuity of phenomena creatures appeared en- 
dowed with powers enabling them to sever connection with the converg- 
ing forces and influences that produced them, and to escape reciprocal 
relationships with the environment in which they were formed, so that 



p. 25), that effort is always to move our muscles or increase our knowledge. In all this, 
intelligent being will, of course, conform its action to the existing conditions, the suc- 
cession of which he seeks by his effort to influence. His action will, under one set of 
circumstances, differ from what it would be under another ; but, in view of these condi- 
tions, be they what they may, he must still judge and decide what his action shall be 
to make the future what he wants it to be. This is self-control of his act of will, and 
hence freedom in willing. The change of the condition makes no difference to this 
freedom ; he acts as freely on one set of conditions as on any other, and change in the 
conditions affects him only as it changes the knowledge by which he determines and 
directs his efforts. If the power to move the being to action inhered in the conditions 
or circumstances extrinsic to it, there could be no need of their being known to the 
being that acts. That such power does not inhere in the circumstances, but in the 
mind's own view — its knowledge, its belief in regard to them — is evident from the fact 
that, when by mistake the belief differs from the actual facts, the action is conformed 
to the belief and not to the fact. That his action is so conformed to his own knowledge 
indicates that it is so conformed by himself, and hence is his free act. (For this influ- 
ence of circumstances, see "Freedom of Mind in Willing," p. 80; also p. 327 et seq.; 
and " Letters to Mill," §§ 8 and 9 of Letter I, and §§ 10, 16, 17, 18 of Letter IL) 



76 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

they could be 'independent' and 'free' ? Organisms appeared possess- 
ing sensation and the will and power to move themselves. But was not 
sensation a condition local and circumscribed in its character, determined 
in its nature, its tendencies, its requirements, its expressions, by intiuences 
so universal, so multitudinous, so complex, so subtle, and extending so far 
baclv in the abyss of time as to defy all finite powers of calculation ? The 
oyster wills to move its shell ; but is not its willing, in this case, depend- 
ent upon the possession of a shell, dependent upon an organized structure 
■within the shell with relations between its parts, dependent upon an en- 
vironment with relations between its parts, dependent, too, upon the con- 
nection between these inner and these outer relations, giving rise to cer- 
tain sensations and wants and the power of effort ? Since every creature 
is a product of innumerable forces that have established its medium and 
formed and fashioned it, giving it position and character, is connected by 
myriad threads with the entire universe, and its modes of life and thought, 
its appetites and passions, the air it breathes, the food it eats, the earth 
on which it lives, are determined by the constitution of nature, how can 
we say in truth that it is ' independent ' and ' free ' ? " 

And so when Dr. Hazard defines the holy man, " who has eradicated his 
conflicting wants, and annihilated th^ conditions requisite to his willing 
what is unholy," as being above sin and as incapable of willing what is 
impure and ignoble, the reviewer asks : 

" What is this but a statement of the doctrine of necessity ? The holy 
man must will what he believes right, because his character and disposi- 
tion constrain him so to do." 

If a self-made character, as in the case of holiness, is simply the fixed habit 
of willing only what is in harmony with free-will, it insures persistence 
in freedom. But the fatalist is convinced that this is an example of fate ! 

There are two kinds of necessity — the logical and the fatalistic. The 
necessity involved in a definition is a logical necessity : " A self-deter- 
mined must be free." A fatalistic necessity is involved where something 
is made to be what it is by the action of something else : " This thing is 
determined by the totality of conditions existing in its environment." 
By the fallacy known as quaternio terminorum^ or ambiguous middle, the 
following refutation of the possibility of freedom may be made : (1) A 
self-determined being must be free ; (2) but, if it must be free, it is neces- 
sitated, and (3) therefore is not free. (The refutation of this may be 
easily accomplished by continuing the argument thus :) (4) But, since it 
is not free, it is evident that it was not necessitated to be free, and, there- 
fore, (5) in spite of (2) and (3), it is free. The necessity in (1) is a logical 
one, and in (2) and (3) a fatalistic necessity. The reasoning assumes the 
identity of the two because of the use of an ambiguous word. So, in the 
case of a saint who has, by the energy of his will, formed the habit of 



Rowland G. Hazard's Worlds. 7Y 

choosing the pure and noble, or what conduces to self-determination, the 
incapability of sinning is a logical one, logically resulting from freedom. 

The most important characteristic of Dr. Hazard's writings is his 
clearness and simplicity. He expresses his insights in the language of a 
business man, avoiding almost entirely the conventional technique of the 
schools. The consequence of this is the popularity of his works among 
thoughtful persons who are not large readers in the province of meta- 
physical literature. Almost every notice that has appeared mentions the 
remarkable clearness and conciseness of the work on " Man a Creative 
First Cause," 

The critic that objects to Dr. Hazard's solution of the problem of free- 
will must do so, as we have suggested, on the ground of the general im- 
possibility of self-activity or self-movement. It seems strange that a 
thinker can admit derived movement or activity and yet deny self-move- 
ment and self-activity. He admits derivation, but denies the existence of 
a source of derivation. There is something which is moved, and a chain 
of moved bodies which receive and transmit motion, but no energy that 
originates motion. This is, in fact, the denial of causality. For the cause 
must be regarded as an energy that acts on something else as a modifying 
influence, and therefore must separate from itself, b}' its own activity, a 
portion of its influence or energy in the act of transmitting it to another. 

If the causal action is regarded as a series of links in which each link 
receives causal energy and again transmits it, then the modification which 
we call effect is a modification received by the entire series from beyond 
the series, and the movement of the entire series is efiect without a cause, 
unless the cause exists beyond the series. 

Or, if the series is a circular one, as in the case of correlation of 
forces, then each link may be regarded as the source of the modification 
which it transmits through the series of links round finally to itself, and 
producing a modification in itself as effect. Hence, each link is a self- 
activity, the originator and receiver of the modification transmitted 
through the other link of the series. 

It is clear that the denial of self-activity as the presupposition of causal 
action ends in setting up the theory of the indestructibility of force or 
motion, as well as the theory of the correlation of forces, or of particular 
movements. But the logical conclusion should be that each link in the 
circle of effects is an orig-inatinof cause of its own effect — each is causa sui. 

This implication of self-activity or the origination of motion in the idea 
of cause, and, consequently, its presupposition in the idea of effect, is an 
immediate one, and perfectly self-evident to every clear thinker. It is, 
therefore, perfectly legitimate for Dr. Hazard to presuppose it. But it is 



78 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

to be expected that those persons who have persuaded themselves that 
effects can be produced without the operation of self-active causes will 
refuse to admit such a thing as free will-power. 

It will be seen by the dates of the works referred to that Dr. Hazard 
has been before the public as an author for many years. His work on 
the " Freedom of Mind in Willing," published in 1864, is, if we mistake 
not, used as a reference book in many of the universities of Europe, as 
the work of a specialist and an authority on his theme. Few who read 
the clear and vigorous paragraphs of the most recent work would credit 
what is the fact : that they were written by a business man in his eighty- 
second year, and at intervals snatched from an active management of very 
important and complex affairs. 

" Of the earliest of his published writings, the ' Essay on Language,' 
Channing thus speaks in his lecture on Self-Culture : ' I have known a 
man of vigorous intellect, who had enjoyed few advantages of early edu- 
cation, and whose mind was almost engrossed by the details of an exten- 
sive business, who composed a book, of much original thought, in steam- 
boats and on horseback, while visiting distant customers.' His later 
writings, on topics of finance and philosophy, have elicited strong expres- 
sions of appreciation and respect from one of the most distinguished of 
living authors in the same departments of inquiry — John Stuart Mill." ' 

The relation of our author to the celebrated Dr. Channing is told in a 
recent work : ^ 

" His knowledge of Rowland G. Hazard dated from the anonymous 
publication of 'Language, by a Rhetorician,' which I read to him when it 
first appeared. He immediately recognized a rare metaphysical genius in 
its author, and said : ' I must find out this young man. He is evidently 
young and unpracticed in the literary art, but he thinks originally and 
profoundly ; and I believe that he is the one to answer Edwards " On the 
Will," which has never been answered yet on its own logical ground.' 
The next summer he wrote me from Newport that he had found ' Rhetori- 
cian in a manufacturing firm in Rhode Island ; quite occupied with prac- 
tical business at present, but to be, as I think, a star in the intellectual 
firmament by and by.' " 



1 Quoted from a review of Dr. Hazard's writings in the "North American Review " 
for 1874, by G. P. Fisher, D. D., who speaks of Dr. Hazard as " an American author 
who, without the advantage of a college training, and engaged from early life in an ex- 
tensive manufacturing and mercantile business, which has allowed but limited oppor- 
tunities for reading, has nevertheless written with extraordinary ability upon the grave 
and often perplexing problems of economical and metaphysical science." 

'^ "Reminiscences of William EUery Channing," by Elizabeth P. Peabody, p. 351. 



Rowland G. Hazard's Works. 79 

In a letter from Dr. Hazard in the appendix to Miss Peabody's " Remi- 
niscences of Channing," the story of the origin of the " Freedom of 
Mind in Willing " is told : 

" Once, and I believe only once during that visit, the subject usually 
spoken of as ' the freedom of the w^ill ' came up. Dr. Channing stated his 
own position in regard to it to be that, while upon the testimony of his 
own consciousness he fully believed in freedom — that is, in his own free 
agency — still, all the argument seemed to him to be in favor of necessity ; 
and he went on to state what he regarded as the strongest argument of 
the advocates for necessity ; namely, that, if the same circumstances should 
occur a thousand times over, and the conditions of the mind at each re- 
currence of them should be the same, then the action would be the same. 
And this, he said, seemed to him to argue necessity. I replied, at the 
moment, that this was a particular case of the general law that the same 
causes necessarily produce the same effects ; and I doubted the applica- 
bility of this law to the mind, which was itself a cause. Here, so far as I 
recollect, the discussion of that subject then ended. 

" I met him again, not very long after, at his summer residence near 
Newport, when he recurred to this conversation and the remark I had 
then made touching the like cases ; and I then said to him : ' Admit, for 
the purpose of the argument, that the same causes do of necessity produce 
the same effects, and that this law does apply to mind. Now suppose 
the one thousand cases with all the circumstances the same, and the con- 
ditions of the mind at each recurrence of them also the same, and that 
one of those conditions is that of necessity ; then, the same causes of ne- 
cessity producing the same effects, the same action follows. Again, sup- 
pose another one thousand cases all alike, but that one of these condi- 
tions, instead of that of necessity, is now that of freedom ; then, the same 
causes of necessity producing the same effects, the same action follows. 
Now, as we can change the element of necessity to that of freedom with- 
out changing the result, the result is no indication of which is in and 
which is out.' 

" Dr. Channing, after a short pause, said : ' It looks as if you had 
thrown that argument entirely out of the question ; but I would not like 
to decide it upon so short consideration.' 

" In one of my discussions with John Stuart Mill I narrated what I 
have just written ; and when I had stated Dr. Channing's view as to the 
strongest argument of the necessarians, Mill interrupted me to say : ' That 
is precisely what I rely upon.' When I repeated what I had said upon 
it, I thought he looked perplexed ; and, thinking I had not expressed my- 
self clearly, I began to explain, but he held up his finger and said : ' I see 



80 The Journal of Speculative Ph'dosopluj. 

the point ; I see it. But I will wait till I read tliat in your book.' I was 
struck with the similarity of the effect upon these two distinguished 
thinkers. 

" I cannot now fix the date, hut at one time, Avhen I was about to leave 
for the winter, Dr. Channing wrote to me that he wished to see me be- 
fore I left, but was not well enough to leave home. I, of course, went to 
see him, when he said to me in substance that he had recently re-read 
* Language,' with a higher appreciation of it than before ; that he very 
much desired that the argument of Edwards should be logically refuted, 
and that freedom should be logically established, and he wished I would 
undertake it. I was quite surprised, and expressed the doubt I felt as to 
my ability, and also mentioned the slight knowledge I had of the subject 
— not having even read the argument of Edwards, or given special 
thought to the question generally. But he replied that he thought I had 
advanced farther in it than any other one he knew. Thus encouraged, 
and at the same time very loath to refuse the request of one I so much 
revered, I consented to look farther into the subject and see what I 
could do. 

" My progress in it was slow ; perhaps the slower, because I soon con- 
cluded that all the advocates of freedom had virtually given up the philo- 
sophical argument and fallen back either on revelation or their own con- 
sciousness — which weighed nothing with those who questioned the su- 
preme authority of the Bible, or asserted their consciousness was not that 
they acted freely, but the reverse. Hence I resolved not to read, lest I 
should get into these ruts of thought, which evidently did not lead to the 
point I wished to reach, but would first try to work out the problem in 
my own way. From Edwards I learned what the questions were, and 
began to think about them in my usual desultory way as I was travelling 
about, or in such leisure moments as I could spare from my regular busi- 
ness, and became more and more interested in the pursuit." 

We conclude this notice by quoting what Dr. Fisher says of the second 
of the treatises named above, and by two extracts from the book ad- 
dressed to John Stuart Mill : 

" ' Our Resources ' is a collection of articles published by Mr. Hazard 
during our late war. Early in the struggle there was great apprehension 
that, with the destruction of our foreign credit, our resources would prove 
inadequate to the emergency. These essays were designed to establish 
the faith of the public, here and abroad, in the sufficiency of our means. 
They originally appeared in the newspapers, but were collected into a 
pamphlet, which passed through repeated editions in this country and 
England. Abbreviated translations of them were also circulated on the 



Rowland G. Hazard^'s Works. 81 

Continent. They showed that the spare income of the nation prior to the' 
war was $1,000,000,000 (gold value), and that from the stimulus imparted 
to labor by the war itself, and from the improvement in agricultural ma- 
chinery, there was no reason to fear a diminution of this surplus ; further, 
that from the standard of living prevalent among all classes in this coun- 
try $500,000,000 might be saved without stretching economy to a 
point involving any real hardship. They showed also that, while the 
great expenditures in the war, the prostration of the credit of individuals' 
and of banks, and the withdrawing of coin, required a considerable emis- 
sion of paper currency, yet any expansion beyond the limit of this require- 
ment would increase the cost of the war, and enhance the debt to be 
subsequently paid in gold, with no counterbalancing advantages, since the 
increase in the volume of paper money would add nothing to its aggregate 
value or purchasing-power. The warning which was given in these able 
papers it would have been well to heed. One of the essays, entitled 
' Compensation to Slaveholders,' undertakes to demonstrate that the 
value of land alone in a free State is equal to the combined value of land 
and of the slaves required to cultivate it in a slave State. This argument 
yields a picture full of encouragement to the South, since facts already 
indicate that it will be verified by the practical test. 

" The last article of this series appeared at a very critical epoch in the 
financial affairs of the country. The treasury was depleted ; gold was at 
280 ; money was scarce, and the bonds of the Government unsalable. The 
incoming Secretary of the Treasury was ad^'ised in advance by bankers 
and financiers that his only resource was to issue more currency, that 
there might be a plentiful supply of money whereAvith to buy the bonds. 
Mr. Hazard in this paper asserted — what in the light of subsequent expe- 
rience is now obvious — that the course recommended to the Secretary 
would lead directly and speedily to national bankruptcy, and that it 
would, if adopted, produce a depreciation of the currency which it would 
be impossible to arrest, and that our financial fate would be the same as 
that which befell the Southern Confederacy. This article of Mi\ Hazard 
was entitled ' Expansion and Contraction.' It explained how the effect 
of expansion must be to make money scarce and prevent the sale of the 
bonds ; while the policy of contraction, if avowed, and adhered to, Avould 
restore confidence, and release money from the uses of trade and the 
appliances of speculation, to be invested in Government securities, and at 
the same time increase its purchasing power. The proposition was gen- 
erally regarded as preposterous, but the arguments by which it was sup- 
ported were found, on examination, convincing, and the doctrines of this 
brief essay are now among the recognized truths of political economy 
XYIII— 6 



82 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

The Secretary of the Treasury was fortunately convinced that these posi- 
tions were well taken ; and, if the policy of contraction, which the author 
advised, was not pursued, no further expansion was attempted. The 
public are not generally aware how near we were, at that time, to meas- 
ures which would have inevitably brought upon us financial ruin." 

THE DEFINITION OF CAUSE} 

If the whole aggregate antecedents are the Cause of any effect, then, as 
at each instant, the whole antecedents are the same at every point of 
space, the effects should be everywhere the same. To this it may be 
plausibly replied that, the conditions acted upon being different at differ- 
ent places, different results may follow from the action of the same cause. 

In the first place, however, it must be borne in mind that, as these 
various conditions must exist before they can be acted upon, they must 
themselves, in the view we are now considering, be a part of the antece" 
dents which make up the Cause. You explicitly assert that all the con- 
ditions are included in the Cause. The whole past being thus combined 
in one Cause, acting upon a perfectly blank and void and therefore 
homogeneous future, the effect would be the same throughout the whole 
length and breadth of its action. Again, admitting that the same causes, 
acting upon different conditions, may produce different effects, it can 
hardly be asserted by the advocates of the rule that the same causes 
necessarily produce the same effects, that the action of the same cause can 
itself be different ; for, then, this different action upon the same conditions 
would produce different effects, thus disproving the rule. Now, the 
whole past, being embodied in one Cause, must have one certain specific 
action, and that action either (being sufficient) produces an effect, or 
(being insuflScient) produces no effect. If it produces an effect, then this 
effect is added to the aggregate events of the past, so far changing the 
aggregate Cause ; and a past Cause, which has once acted, never can 
again act as the same Cause, for this additional effect or event must ever 
remain a part of the whole past ; and hence there can be no practical 
application of the rule that the same causes of necessity produce the 
same effect; and, on the other hand, if the action of this one aggregate 
Cause (being insufficient) produces no effect, then, as there can be no 
change in the Cause (and none in the conditions upon which it acted), the 
Cause would, of course, remain the same Cause, and, its action being the 
same and upon the same conditions, the result must be the same — that is, 



1 From Dr. Rowland (x. Hazard's " Two Letters to Mill on Causation," p. 56. The 
criticism on the idea of a totality of antecedents shows clearly that eflScient cause 
must be an intelligent will. 



Rowland G. Hazards WorTcs. 83 

no effect, and there would be an end of all change, and everything would 
remain quiescent in the state in which this insufficiency of Cause found it. 

If it now be said that the failure of this cause to produce any effect 
by its action is such a new event or condition that it can, as a consequence 
of it, act in some other manner, then, there being no change external to 
it, and nothing to change itself except the negative fact of non-effect, 
which can have no influence upon anything not cognizant of it, it follows 
that the Cause must be intelligent, and, as such, capable of devising or 
selecting some new mode of action which will avoid the deficiency of that 
before tried, and found to be ineffective. The Cause already embracing 
the whole past, nothing could be added to it from what already existed : 
being ineffective, no new existence has been added to it ; and if, under 
these conditions, it changes its action, it must be self-directing, accommo- 
dating its action to circumstances which must be known to itself as a pre- 
requisite to such accommodation. It must be iatelligent Cause. 

The whole of the prior state never can occur again, for the present is 
already added to it ; and if, like a circulating series of decimals, the con- 
sequent of this whole past should be to reproduce and continually repeat 
the same series, and even though the observation of this uniformity, in 
the successive order of events, should enable us to predict the whole 
future, still it would not prove that the producing power was in the past 
circumstances. It would only prove the uniformity upon which the pre- 
diction was founded, and not the cause of that uniformity which still- 
might be the uniform action of some intelligent act've agent, who, per- 
ceiving some reason for adhering to this order, and having the present 
power, continually repeated it. Much less could it prove that power not 
free. The mere observed order of succession, uniform or otherwise, would 
not include a knowledge of the power that produced this uniformity, nor 
the manner of its doing it. To find this we should need to compare the 
effects with those of some known power in action, as those of intelligent 
effort or of matter in motion. Nor would this supposed dependence of 
the present on the past be a case of the same causes producing the same 
effects ; for at each repetition of the effect the whole prior state, which is 
assumed to be the Cause, is different, the effect of each " prior state " 
acting as Cause being continually added ; and, if there comes a time when 
there is no effect, then there can be no difference in this " prior state " or 
Cause, and, of course, no variation in the consequent — no effect. 

And if, as you say, " in the general uniformity . . . this collective 
order is made up of particular sequences obtaining invariably among the 
separate parts," then the foregoing positions apply to each of these sepa- 
rate parts or longitudinal sections of the whole. 



84: The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 



ON OUR NOTION OF INFINITE SPACE.' 

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in the article referred to in the preceding 
paper ("Mill vs. Hamilton: the Test of Truth"), says: "Here, then, is 
the flaw in Sir William Hamilton's proposition : that space must be in- 
finite or finite are alternatives of which we are not obliged to regard one 
as necessary, seeing that we have no state of consciousness answering to 
either of these words, as applied to the totality of space, and therefore no 
exclusion of two antagonistic states of consciousness by one another," 
But the obvious truth of the general proposition, that everything "must 
be infinite or finite," does not depend upon our having a state of con- 
sciousness answering to the particular thing to which it is applied. 

We assert that all the angles of every plane triangle are equal to two 
right angles ; but we have no state of consciousness corresponding to tri- 
angles in general, or to every plane triangle, and hence, if such conscious- 
ness of the thing to which the general proposition is applied is necessary, 
we could only assert this of the particular triangle in the mind's view at 
the time. But, in demonstrating this geometrical theorem, we perceive 
that we use no elements which do not pertain to every plane triangle, 
whatever its form or size, and hence assert its truth of every plane tri- 
angle. The only condition essential to the demonstration is, that the 
figure shall be bounded by three right lines. So, too, when we assert 
'that a thing is infinite or finite — is or is not bounded — Ave perceive 
that the truth of this proposition does not depend upon any peculiar 
property whatever of the thing to which it is applied, but is as true of a 
thing with one property, or one combination of properties, as of a thing 
with other property, or other combination of properties; and hence, 
whether we do or do not know or conceive of the properties of the par- 
ticular thing to which we apply the proposition, is not material to our 
faith in its universal application to all things whatever. The only ground 
upon which space could be excluded from its application would be to 
assert that space, in itself, is no thing — that it is but our conception of 
nothingness ; but it has the property of, or is in itself, extension — the 
very property or conception to which the idea of being bounded or not 
bounded most palpably applies. 

If I see only a portion of anything, I know that it either is or is not 
bounded. A telegraph wire, of which I cannot see any end, I know 
either has or has not an end in each direction. It may be infinite, and 
every portion of it present the same appearance as that which I now see 



' From the " Two Letters on Causation," etc., p. 274. 



Rowland G. Hazard's Works. 85 

It may mate au entire circle, and tlius, thougli finite, in a common sense 
of the word, liav no end. Even in tliis sense, to deny one of the posi- 
tions asserts the other, both in terms and in thought. 

In regard to space, it is asserted that, in its entirety, we can neither 
comprehend or conceive it as bounded, nor yet as not bounded. The 
first seems to me certain, but I am by no means sure that we cannot and 
do not conceive of space as boundless. That we know it must be either 
bounded or not bounded, taken in connection with our inability to con- 
ceive of it as bounded, seems to indicate that we do, in thought, regard 
and conceive it as boundless. 

The mental process by which we attempt to grasp the idea of infinite 
space is peculiar. We begin with the admitted fact that it can have no 
bound or limit, and yet the next thing we attempt is to find its bound or 
limit, and then, because we cannot find in it that which we know does 
not belong to it, and cannot possibly pertain to it, we conclude that we 
do not comprehend it. This is as if one who had never before seen any 
shot, except those made of lead, should, on looking at some made of sil- 
ver, say these are pure silver shot ; I cannot find any lead in them ; there- 
fore I do not comprehend them. That our conception of anything does 
not embrace in it a property or quality which does not, or cannot, pertain 
to it, is so far proof that our conception of it is not incorrect. As the 
fact that one does not and cannot find any lead in pure silver shot, is so 
far evidence that he has a correct conception of silver shot ; so, too, that 
we do not and cannot find any limit or bound to infinite space, so far in- 
dicates that in this respect we properly conceive it. 

The knowledge or conception of a thing in itself is impossible to us. 
We can only know it by its properties of producing change in ourselves, 
and, if an outward object, the only way in which this can be done is 
through our sensations. The same object may have the property of effect- 
ing a variety of sensations, and we have not a full conception of it till we 
know all these properties, or, rather, all the effects attributed to them, for 
the properties, as distinct from the effects, like the things in themselves, 
are unknowable, and are recognized only by their effects upon us. When 
we name these properties, we only name a cause, the existence of which 
is inferred from the effect. This object may also have the property 
of changing itself, or of changing other objects, and, maybe, of being 
changed by them. The knowledge of all these elements is necessary to 
that full comprehension which is possible. 

We comprehend a thing in itself when we know all its component pai'ts 
and properties, and all the relations of these parts and properties to each 
other. As an entirety, we comprehend a circle whose radius reaches to 



86 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

the remotest star. We know that all its properties are the same as those 
of any other circle. We cannot readily divide it into, and particularly 
notice, each of such magnitudes as we have been accustomed to move over, 
or even to clearly apprehend by the eye, for to fix the attention on each 
of such portions would require centuries. These cannot all be the objects 
of real or imaginary sensations. We cannot thus make it up or construct 
a conception of it by the addition of the minor perceptions which our 
senses have supplied. But this does not imply that mentally we do not 
comprehend this vast circle, Avith all its intrinsic properties and condi- 
tions. One must at least have a clear conception of those parts, proper- 
ties, and relations, which he can fully and accurately present, on a smaller 
scale, to the senses. Now, the idea or conception of inlinite space, in 
itself, is the simplest which is possible. Its only property by which it is 
related to or distinguished from anything else is its capacity to contain 
extension or admit other existences into itself ; and for these it is equally 
essential, whether we regard it, with these other existences, as distinct, 
self-subsisting entities, or as mere ideal creations, or imagery of the mind. 
Strictly speaking, perhaps, this capacity of space, to be a receptacle for 
things or for certain mental imagery, is rather a use than a property. Its 
component parts are perfectly homogeneous — nothing but space — and the 
relations of each portion to all the rest are the same, and there is nothing 
external to it to which different portions of it might have different rela- 
tions. 

The idea of a periphery of a circle, considered merely as an isolated 
line, has this same homogeneity : every portion of it is precisely like 
every other equal portion, and has the same geometrical relation to every 
other portion. So, too, of the surface of a sphere ; every portion is like 
every other portion of like dimensions, and each of such portions has the 
same relation to all the rest of the surface. But, in the cases of the circle's 
periphery and the sphere's surface, we always have a difference in the 
relations of the different parts to what is extrinsic to them, as that one 
part is farther from the earth than another, or one part is farther to our 
right than another, which cannot occur in regard to infinite space, to 
which there is nothing without to compare. 

Intelligent being, intrinsic to space, may regard one portion of it as 
to his right, and another as to his left ; but change in his position does 
not change his relation to all the rest of space in this respect. 

If, instead of periphery and surface, we consider the enclosed area of 
the circle, and the enclosed quantity or space in the sphere, then the por- 
tions in each vary in their intrinsic relations to each other ; some are 
nearer the periphery or the surface than others, or some are nearer to the 



Rowland G. Hazard's Works. 87 

centre than others ; but make this sphere infinite, and this variety in the 
intrinsic relations of its parts disappears, for there is then no circumfer- 
ence, consequently no centre, but every point in it is as much a centre 
and as much on or near the circumference as any other point. 

The homogeneity of the isolated periphery of the circle or of the sur- 
face of the sphere is again attained, and the conception is not embarrassed 
or complicated by any difference in the relations of its component parts, 
and has the additional exemption from such embarrassment and complica- 
tion that there is nothing without it with which it can have any relations 
whatever. 

The idea of infinite space is thus simpler than that of a finite homo- 
geneous sphere in which the different /parts stand in different relations to 
each other, and also to surrounding objects. No conception of anything 
can be simpler than of that which is perfectly homogeneous in all its 
parts, and in which every part has the same relation to every other part, 
and nothing outside with which to have varying relations, and in which, 
having only one property, this can, of course, have no relations whatever, 
and, therefore, no diversity of relation to any other of its properties. 

In regard to the surface of the finite sphere, we cannot, in our concep- 
tion of it, take in separately each point and observe its relations to every 
other point, for the number of these points is infinite ; but, knowing that 
each of these points has the same relation to every other point, we are 
justified, after ascertaining this fact, and having observed the relation of 
one point to the rest of the surface, which includes all other points, in 
saying that we comprehend this relation of every point to the whole 
surface. 

So, too, in the case of infinite space, though we cannot consider each 
of the infinity of like finite spaces, of which it is composed, yet, knowing 
that the relation of each one to the whole is the same as that of every 
other, we may in like manner assert that we conceive and know that every 
point or portion has the same relation to the whole which every other 
point or like portion has. It seems, then, that our conception of infinite 
space — which properly extrudes the element of limit or bound, which does 
not belong to it, and which embraces a knowledge of all its component 
parts, and of all the relations of those parts to each other, and of all its 
properties and their relations to each other, and of all its uses — is as full 
and perfect a conception as we have of anything whatever. 

The idea of what is thus homogeneous in all its parts, and in their rela- 
tions to each other, which has but one property or use, and nothing with- 
out it to which it can have varying relations, is the simplest possible con- 
ception of existence, having indeed so few elements of thought in it as, 



88 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

in the last analysis, to raise a doubt as to wlietlier the conception is that 
of existence or of its absence. 

Perhaps the principal difficulty in the case is that of believing that an 
idea, so simple and so limited in its conditions, really fits an object which, 
in its vastness, is illimitable. Hence we seek to add to our conception of 
it, and find tbat in so doing- we immediately come in contact with ideas 
that do not belong to it, showing that on all sides we have reached the 
limit of the conception we are exploring, and have already embraced in 
our survey all that pertains to it. If extension is regarded as its prop- 
erty, this does not generically distinguish it from other things ; for all 
have this property, and the consideration that this is the only real prop- 
erty of space, and that space is necessary to all material existences, 
strengthens my previous suggestion that extension is the nearest approach 
to our notion of a substratum. Mere extension is unoccupied space, and 
is that which always remains when all the other properties of that which 
occupied it are abstracted ; but the extension, in itself, is then reduced to 
a vacuum or nonentity. 

The reduction of our notion of tangible space to an idea of the sim- 
plest character, and eventually to a mere extended vacuum, is not wholly 
an isolated fact, without parallel in other objects of thought. As the 
tangible quantities of an algebraic formula may sometimes be reduced in 
the aggregate to zero, and more especially as the combination of such 
formulas in an equation, sometimes, when reduced to their lowest terms, 
results only in 0^=0, so, too, in subjecting some of our abstract ideas to 
that last analysis, in which they elude further reduction, analysis, or com- 
parison, we get glimpses of relations by which they seem to be neutraliz- 
ing each other, and, in the aggregate, resolving into nothingness, suggest- 
ing as a corollary the converse possibility that from nothingness they may 
have been evolved, and brought into existence by the creative plastic 
power of an Intelligence of a higher order than that which thus by its 
action resolves them again into their original nonentity. 

If, by a fuller kuowledge — a clearer perception — of this resolving 
process, or otherwise, we shall ever come to be able to reverse it, then, 
in connection with the ideal philosophy, the creative power of the finite, 
as of the Infinite Intelligence, will no longer be veiled in a mystery which 
has thus far been impenetrable to mortal vision, and the origin of all ex- 
istence, except that which creates, would be revealed to us. 

"We may, perhaps, even now anticipate, or venture the prediction, 
that the creative power of mind will be found to reside mainly in its 
poetic modes of thought, and its annihilative, mainly in its logical pro- 
saic modes. 



A Study of tJie Iliad. 89 

This would be in harmony with the suggestions I have heretofore 
made : that the representation of the thought and imagery of the mind of 
God in the creations of the material universe is the purest type we know 
of poetry ; that the province of the poet is to create, and to make his 
creations palpable and tangible to others, and that the appliance of the 
logical modes to his productions immediately reduces his creations to 
mere abstractions, with a cessation or revulsion of all the poetic vision 
and emotion which they were fitted to produce. We may thus, by a resort 
to the logical modes, annihilate the creations of the most gifted in our own 
sphere of intelligence, or, at least, reduce them to intangible abstractions. 
We may further note in this connection that mathematics, the purest type 
of the logical processes which thus dissolve or reduce the creations of the 
poet, is only the science of quantity, of simple extension, or mere space ; 
our idea of which, involving the fewest properties and relations, is the 
nearest approach to nothingness of which we have any conception. 

But this power of annihilating is by no means the only characteristic 
of the logical faculty. It is not creative, but it discovers and analyzes 
what already exists, and, in its ability to reduce, to disintegrate, and to 
abstract, it is an important agent in the advancement of our knowledge 
of what already is, often harmoniously co-operating with the poetic modes 
to this end. 



A STUDY OF THE ILIAD.* 

BY D. J. SNIDER. 
III. 

Book Second stands out among the books of the " Iliad " in 
possessing certain qualities of its own. It has, on the whole, the 
subtlest procedure, the most ehisive links of conjunction that can 
be found in the whole poem. The motives are so hard to catch, 
so fleet and riant in their evasiveness, that the drift of opinion 
has usually been to regard the book as patchwork or a caprice, 
with little outer or inner connection. But it has a plan, a pro- 
found plan, and it fits organically into what goes before and what 
comes after. It has, however, a spirit of sportfulness, of playful 
concealment, which must first be reached and sympathized with 
before its true harmony can be felt. 

Regarding it apart from the Catalogue of Ships, we see that 

* Articles I. and II. of this series appeared respectively in the April and the July 
numbers of this Journal for 1883. — Editor. 



90 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

it lias a fundamental comic strand ; it is, indeed, a sort of divine 
comedy, yet looking forward to a great and serious end. A double 
plot we observe in it, or rather a plot within a plot ; we behold 
the astute human stratagem enfolded and carried on in the uni- 
versal divine stratagem ; Zeus, the upper ruler, turns to a come- 
dian of the skies, and Agamemnon, the lower ruler, is to have his 
own Mn'ly, deceptive game played upon himself by the supreme 
God. Yet this play above and below and between is all in fur- 
therance of the deep providential plan of the poem. So it is a 
veritable piece out of real life. Providence cannot help being a 
humorist once in a while ; for has he not to deal with mortals, who, 
in their self-importance, sometimes get to thinking themselves 
a Providence ? It is a hint of the world's comedy, played by its 
two actors, the God above and the man below ; the Aristophanes 
of Olympus, that greatest comedian of all, reveals the mighty 
terrestrial scheme merely as a piece of his colossal divine humor. 

The first point to be noticed is the relation between this and the 
preceding book. Here the subtlety of the treatment must be felt 
and seen, else the connection is lost ; for this connection is not so 
much an external event as an internal, almost unexpressed state 
of feeling. The great fact lying back of this book and joining it 
with the First Book is the wrath and withdrawal of Achilles. 
But this fact is hardly spoken of, and then, as it were, with a 
quick rebound from the subject. Yet it is the matter in the 
minds of all the Greeks, it is the hidden, fearful thing lurking in 
their hearts and causing a deep suppressed anxiety. It is not a 
subject which can be talked about openly ; the deed is done, and 
the Leader is the guilty man. The situation is ; Our Hero has 
left us ; what are we to do now ? It is the masterly skill of the 
Poet in such an emergency to leave the main fact unspoken, yet 
to make it most deeply felt ; this self-suppression one may well 
consider as the most genuine flash of artistic instinct in the whole 
Book — a flash swift and penetrating to the heart of the army. 

That the chief men have the fateful word in their thoughts, but 
are unwilling to speak it out, will be seen by examining their 
utterances. Agamemnon says to the Council of Elders that he 
will try the Greeks and counsel flight; but how this could be a 
trial of them he does not tell, and we at first do not see ; still the 
Eiders seem to have understood him perfectly ; he touched the hid- 



A Study of the Iliad. 91 

den chord in his faint allusion. Again, Ulysses says in his speech 
to the people that the Leader intends to try them ; he explains no 
further, deeming the expression intelligible to all. There is an 
appeal to something underneath, which we must feel out ; it is the 
state of public opinion, as we should call it, like a subterranean 
river flowing dark and voiceless, yet a very decided reality, 
Agamemnon is therefore in doubt concerning this speechless 
monster, and there results the trial, which is to answer this ques- 
tion : Will the Greeks fight without their Hero ? Such is the 
main theme of the present Book, such is its subtle connection with 
the preceding Book ; the withdrawal of Achilles has roused and 
transmitted this dark burden of uncertainty and anxiety, which 
now lies on the hearts of the people, and makes the spoken word 
an intrusion, a crushed, ill-omened sound, altogether to be avoided. 

Still it is not wholly avoided. Twice allusions to the fatal quarrel 
break out, and we are to note both the circumstances and the 
speakers. The first allusion comes from the mouth of Thersites, 
the demagogue wlio tries to be the voice of public discontent ; he 
is the unbridled slanderer of public men, the coiner of calumny. 
Such a character naturally touches the sore spot of the situation 
in hope of popular favor, but he is suppressed by the applause of 
the people, who are in no mood to listen to abuse or to any discus- 
sion of the painful topic. 

The second allusion is made by Agamemnon in his last speech, 
where he confesses the wrong he has done to Achilles, and mani- 
fests repentance. This confession, it is plain, is spoken in defer- 
ence to the feeling which he knows to be in the people, and it puts 
him in harmony with them by coming over to their opinion. 
Doubtless he felt what he said ; but certainly he removed a great 
obstacle by his penitent words ; though they cannot restore the 
Hero, they do restore the Leader to their good-will. He has won 
his point ; the Greeks will fight for the cause without the Hero ; he 
can afford to be generous and confess his own mistake. Such are 
the two allusions in this Book to the quarrel between Hero and 
Leader, which we read in the previous Book ; both presuppose a 
deep though not loud spirit of dismay, if not of discontent, among 
the people, and form the strongest bond of connection between the 
two Books. 

It will be remembered that the First Book leaves us with the 



92 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

two supreme persons of autliority, the one in the Lower "World 
and the other in the Upper World, each of whom has his plan. In 
the Second Book we are to see each carrying out his plan, and to 
see how both plans — that of the man and that of the God — fit into 
and complement each other. Zeus, in sleepless anxiet}^, is turning 
over his scheme which will bring honor to the heroic Individual ; 
this is now the universal principle, the decree of the Highest Clod, 
and must prevail. Moreover, it is one with the Greek conscious- 
ness, not on the surface so much as down in the depths thereof; 
the Greeks, too, believe primarily in the honor of the Hero, and 
are in agreement with Zeus, or soon will be. This divine plan 
will henceforth hover, like a Providence, over the entire movement 
of the poem till the. reconciliation of the Hero with his people. 

On the other hand, Agamemnon, the earthly Leader, has his 
scheme, which is to take Troy in the absence of Achilles. He 
imagines that he can do without the Heroic Man, yet he has a 
lurking doubt ; this doubt is to be resolved by a second scheme, 
which seeks to find out whether the Greeks will fight without 
their Hero. He may well feel a secret questioning upon this mat- 
ter ; the purpose of this Second Book (apart from the Catalogue) 
is to give the answer of the Greeks, which answer is, We shall 
fight. 

These are the two plans above and below, the providential and 
the human ; they start in opposition, then they unite in bringing 
forth the same result, namely, to get the Greeks to fight without 
Achilles. But after this point of union they again separate ; that 
the Greeks will be defeated Zeus knows, that Troy may be taken 
Agamemnon imagines. It is the lesson of the Providence who is 
over all, and sportfully employs even the delusions of men to ful- 
fil its purpose. 

We may now touch upon the organism of the Book. It has two 
parts : first, the Testing of the Greeks, which is to find out whether 
they will fight without Achilles, and, secondlj^, the Calling of 
the Muster Roll when it is ascertained that they will fight. The 
last is usually called the Catalogue, and for us is rather a dreary 
list of names, though it is appropriate where it stands. 

I. We shall now take up the First Part, which is by all means 
the most significant, and is usually meant when the Second Book 
is spoken of. This Part has one essential sub-division which di- 



A /Study of the Iliad. OS 

vides it into two movements, the one toward disruption and aban- 
donment of the Trojan enterprise, the other is the reaction toward 
harmony and a valiant continuance of the struggle. On the track 
of these two movements, each of which is strongly marked by the 
introduction of a divine appearance, we shall follow out the course 
of the action. 

{a) Zeus, in pursuance of his plan of honoring Achilles, sends a 
false dream to Agamemnon, declaring that Troy is now to be 
taken. At once the question springs up. How can the supreme 
deity resort to a deception to accomplish his end? The moral 
feeling is shocked, and at once begins to exclaim about the low 
conception of God among the Greeks. The question is indeed 
fundamental, and must be seen in its true light to understand the 
poet and his age. We have already found the axiom of Homeric 
Theology to be that the Gods are in the man as well as outside of 
him, and we may apply our axiom to the present case. 

Indeed, we must feel that this dream is Agamemnon's own ; he 
dreams that he can take Troy himself, without the Hero. This 
touch has been already given in the First Book, in his character 
there portrayed ; turn back and mark his pride, his vanity, his 
contempt of others. The foundation of his conduct is, he imagines 
that he is self-sufficient alone ; he dreams that he can capture the 
city without the aid of Achilles. Thus we are justified in putting 
this dream inside of Agamemnon. 

But it is outside of him ; Zeus sends it ; this is the difiiculty. Yet 
we need but reflect that this self-delusion of the Leader is a part 
of the plan of Zeus ; the God turns the vain scheme of mortal 
man to his own purpose. It is the way of Providence, who over- 
rules the evil of the world to 'good, as the moralist declares. But 
the Homeric manner of expression is mythical ; that is, the Poet 
makes Zeus the cause, the sender of the delusion. The genuine 
mythical spirit always puts the deity at the centre of every action, 
and the world moves from him and around him. Zeus sends the 
dream, because this dream fits into and is a part of the providen- 
tial plan of Zeus. The divine impulse has now been given, which 
is to bring the Greeks to fight, and by defeat to show them how 
necessary is their Hero. Thus we must see this dream in its 
double significance, the human and the divine ; what it is in the 
man and what it is outside of him. 



94 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Having attended to the Olympian part, we may now look after 
the terrestrial. The dream is working delusively upon Agamem- 
non, yet there lurks in him the suspicion that it is a dream. He 
calls the Council of Elders and tells them his vision ; the wise 
Nestor faintly hints its unreality. Then the people assemble ; he 
advises them to abandon the war and go home, in a spirit contrary 
to the promise of the dream. This is his trial of the Greeks, to 
find out whether they will fight without Achilles. He employs 
the following stratagem : I shall make a discouraging speech, tell 
them to go back to home and country, and see what they will do. 
So as Zeus employ's a deception above, Agamemnon employs a 
deception below, unconsciously requiting the divine ruse by one 
of his own. Yet both have the same purpose — to bring the Greeks 
to battle. 

The Greeks at once respond in the most startling manner to 
those feigned words of the Leader. They clean ont the channels, 
they drag down the ships to the sea, and get ready to start for 
home. A comical yet affecting scene, it is the sudden strong im- 
pulse of Family, which has been suppressed for ten years in those 
enduring hearts, and which now, at the touch of a sympathetic 
word, breaks forth in a vast sea-swell of emotion. It is one deep 
throb of that voiceless popular heart longing to get home, yet 
speaking mute volumes of heroic endurance for their cause. It is 
but one throb, and then comes the reaction which is now to be 
outlined briefly. 

(b) This reaction is begun from above — must begin there, since 
it is a recall of the Greeks to the spiritual principle of the war. 
Juno mentions for the first time the name of Helen ; she is the 
very soul of the Greek cause. If the first divine impulse came 
from Zeus for the sake of Achilles, this second one comes from 
Juno and Minerva, the special guardians and partisans of the 
Greek side, for the sake of Helen. The plan of the Goddesses is 
not interfered with by Zeus, as it fits into his higher plan of hon- 
orino- the Hero and of brinffino; the Greeks to battle. Juno and 
Minerva are partisans ; Zeus is over them. . 

Again there is a divine interference, and again we must see 
this same divine purpose in the hearts of men. The Greeks can 
not go home till they have restored Helen. Such is their strong- 
est aspiration, their profoundest principle. That movement to go 



A /Study of the Iliad. 95 

home was but a transitory outburst of feeling — a noble one too — 
yet they will recover from it and fight again if they be recalled to 
themselves. It looked for a moment as if the ruse of Agamemnon 
would upset the whole enterprise, and therewith the plan of Zeus 
for Achilles ; but the frenzy could not last ; they would not be 
Greeks if they could go home without Helen. 

The resolution above having been shown, we can now look 
below and see its execution. The human instrument is Ulysses, 
altogether the wisest man of the Greeks, whom grief had already 
seized for the loss of the enterprise and prepared for the appear- 
ance of Pallas. When he is ready for her, the Goddess darts down 
in a flash and speaks to him. Why just to him ? He is the man 
to behold her, the 07ily man, just as Agamemnon was the man to 
see the delusive dream. She recalls to him the great object of the 
war, Argive Helen, and bids him restrain the present rush for 
home. It was, too, his own inner command, else he could hardly 
have heard the Goddess. 

In every sense Ulysses proves himself to be the proper man 
for the emergency. He takes from Agamemnon the staff, the 
wonderful staff of authority, always imperishable ; he restrains 
the multitude, employing argument upon the leaders and blows 
upon the populace. He touches the heart of the matter in. his 
famous utterance : Let there be one ruler, the Many cannot all 
be Kings. Obedience to authority is his golden word ; herein he 
shows himself the intellectual enemy of Achilles, who is insubor- 
dinate. 

Moreover, a new phase of opposition develops itself, very differ- 
ent from that of Achilles. Here he comes with his speech ; it is 
the fault-finder Thersites. He too is hostile to authority, not as 
beautiful Hero, but as ugly, cowardly calumniator. All the quali- 
ties of body and mind repugnant to the Homeric spirit are heaped 
upon him, till he is weighed down with diabolic adjectives. Yet 
he belongs to the Homeric world — is indeed a prophecy of the 
Athenian demagogue. His outer ugliness corresponds to his inner 
perversity, a truly Greek method of expression, which makes him 
a sort of plastic Greek devil. He is the man who picks flaws in 
all great deeds and enterprises, and vilifies the men of authority. 
The wise man suppresses him with violence ; the wise man too 
utters the statement : The rule of the Many is not a good thing ; a 



96 The Journal of Speculative Pldlosoplaj . 

voice from Heaven among those beautiful but ever-conflicting in- 
dividualities. 

Yet Tliersites told truths ; he gave in some respects a just criti- 
cism of the Greek leaders ; he v^'as the opposition newspaper in 
the Greek camp. Now comes the strange fact : the people in 
whose behalf he seems to be speaking applaud Ulysses for sup- 
pressing him. Is it a case of popular fickleness and ingratitude? 
No ; the people saw in Thersites the image of their own present 
attitude, their own ugliness, and they at once shrunk back, and 
the beginning was made toward the reaction. Not a loose epi- 
sode is this affair of Thersites, but the turning-point back to their 
rational purpose. 

This return to the grand object of the expedition is made com- 
plete by the three speeches of the three chief men which now fol- 
low. Homeric oratory before the people is here a glorious antici- 
pation of Attic eloquence ; in this instance, and in many others, we 
trace all the germs of later Greek life in tlie old poet. Each of 
these speeches has its own character. That of Ulysses dwells upon 
the national end against the domestic impulse so powerfully 
wrought upon by Agamemnon, and then he recalls the religious 
promise at the beginning of the war ; Nestor follows somewhat in 
the same vein, for the old man is the appreciative spirit, not the 
creative — a difference seized by Shakespeare in " Troilus and Cres. 
sida." Agamemnon, at first' in a tone of penitence, then in a tone 
of triumph, shows that he thinks the Greeks will fight without 
their Hero. The reaction is complete ; the people are arrayed for 
battle. Pallas with her aegis stalks among them ; the war spirit is 
rampant. The supreme end, which we may call national, has sup- 
pressed the feeling for home, and once more the combat is to be 
renewed, now without Achilles. 

The two supremacies, divine and human, Zeus and Agamemnon 
have each attained their purpose. Zeus has brought about war 
through the delusive dream, by which means he intends to honor 
Achilles ; Agamemnon has ascertained that the Greeks will fight, 
though the Hero be absent. In the mean time the chief object of 
the war has been stated — the restoration of Helen ; it was neces- 
sary to recall this purpose to the mind of the Greeks in their dis- 
couragement after the withdrawal of Achilles. It is also shown 
how a Providence hovers over the poem, who employs human 



A Study of the Iliad. 9Y 

agency, and even human delusion, for its end ; the will of Zeus is 
being accomplished. 

After all, the interest of this Book lies in the picture of the peo- 
ple, that uncertain, billowy Demus so famous in Greek history. 
Aristophanes caught the outlines of his portrait in Homer ; a 
comic element plays around this dark, susceptible human mass, 
laughable and laughing. Yet the image is not unfavorable, as is 
sometimes declared; it is true, and sympathetically drawn. The 
people are capable of strong emotions, especially for their distant 
families, assuredly not an ignoble trait ; still more, they are capa- 
ble of being recalled to their great national end when it is for a 
moment lost in an ebullition of feeling for wife and children. 
The deep, unswerving purpose, the strong, underlying will, which 
continued the war for ten years through every manner of hard- 
ship, is revealed. This is not fickleness ; it is the fundamental per- 
sistency through all fluctuations which the Poet brings out. Final- 
ly, though their Hero may abandon them, they will still fight for 
the principle of the war, at its call they will again take their place 
in the ranks — a true and sympathetic picture of the people, I 
think ; it shows forth the eternal and substantial element of their 
character, as well as the temporary and fluctuating, which is their 
comic side. Granite there is here underlying all these foamy 
and dashing waves, and holding them in their limits. In the First 
Book w^e had the Princes and their quarrels, in which selfish or 
personal ends were the chief matter. But in this Second Book 
we see the people and their sacrifice for the supreme object of the 
war, and their devotion to the cause. The contrast is certainly 
not unfavorable to the people. 

All of which is serious enough ; yet the free Homeric sport can- 
not be omitted, this double deception, on the part of both man and 
God. It is the deep look of the Poet into the reality, whereof the 
outward play is this comic capriciousness ; appearance takes on a 
thousand delusive shapes to reveal the eternal — such is the humor 
of existence. I do not find it to be a lie, or even degrading ; it is a 
means of expression, somewhat strange to us, though we have, too, 
in the novel, a fictitious utterance of life. 

One glance forward ought to be made in this connection. The 
stratagem of Agamemnon has succeeded ; he may now chuckle 
over his good luck. But could he behold his scheme, as it lies in 
XVIII— 7 



98 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

the supreme plan of Zeus, he would see that his very success is de- 
feat, that the wily deceiver is himself deceived in the deception 
which he has practiced. Tlius Zens plays with the most cunning 
of men in a sort of celestial comedy all to himself, and to the eye 
of the Poet, who must witness it too; he takes delight in turning 
earthly shrewdness back upon itself. Not out of hate, but out of 
love, the divine humorist must let cunning undo itself, mid the 
laughter of the Gods. 

II. The Second Part of the Book begins with the strong address 
to the Muses. It is well to follow the Poet into his own processes 
where we can. This address is not a formal matter, but a faith ; 
the impulse of song is to him a wonderful, a divine thing ; he ad- 
dresses that unreflective genius of his as some existence external 
to himself. He is not selt-conscious, we say ; he does not fully 
grasp his spiritual operations as his own ; he has to employ these 
outer shapes to give utterance to his inner im|)ulse. This process 
is epiJiGation — to deify the spiritual act of man; every mental 
movement, instead of falling into abstract prose as with us, in 
Homer seizes hold of a form and becomes a short poem. And 
with truth is it so; for the poetic process is a vision of the reality, 
and has the divine right to be placed out in the world, where the 
Muses are. 

In the First Part of this Book we saw the principle of the war 
brought out; in the Second Part we have the so-called Catalogue 
which is the muster-roll of both sides, Greeks and Trojans. We 
mark the political organization of these peoples; towns more or 
less independent send leaders quite as independent ; each town 
has its hero, and the culmination is the hero of heroes, Achilles. 
There is a lack of subordination, though a supreme commander be 
recognized ; we see the case of Achilles might become universal. 
And Zeus, the final authority above, does not support the final au- 
thority below, but the hero ; the stress is laid upon the individual 
even by the God, which fact reveals the essence of Greek con- 
sciousness. 

{a) The Greek muster-roll is given not only by countries, but 
by ships, as if the armament might be sailing out of Aulis for 
Troy at the beginning of the war, and not after nearly ten years. 
Whereby conjecture has been much stirred up among the learned, 
but it need not stop us here. We see how every part of western 



A Study of the Iliad. 99 

Greece was roused to share in the war; it was in the strongest 
sense a national enterprise, and brought about a national unity, 
such as was not seen afterward. Those jealous, discordant Greek 
towns all responded to the call for Helen's restoration ; what could 
that have meant to them ? Something deeper than their strifes, 
something stronger than even their ties of family ; what was it ? 

(J) The Trojan muster-roll is introduced by the message of Iris. 
She announces the approaching battle, for which Hector marshals 
the Trojan forces. They have no ships ; the marine element is left 
out. But they, too, will not restore the stolen women ; what do 
they mean, all these Asiatic peoples, by keeping her? 

The nations in conflict divide pretty nearly on a line between 
Europe and Asia, which fact suggests the spiritual struggle be- 
tween the Orient and the West. Yet these various nations seem 
in the main to belong to the one Hellenic race; evidently it is a 
conflict of tendency — the Trojans are Hellenes with face turned 
toward the East, the Greeks are Hellenes with face turned toward 
the West. Thus we may catch the first faint image of meaning 
in this struggle for the possession of Helen, who is to appear in 
the next Book. 

Book Third. 

This, above all other Books of the " Iliad," may be called Helen's 
Book. It contains the essence of her antecedent history ; it has a 
record of her situation and her sorrow ; it shows her beauty, and 
the conflict which always seems to be linked with beauty. Al- 
ready in the previous Book she had been mentioned as the grand 
object of the war; her restoration shone forth as the supreme 
purpose of the Greek expedition. The Greeks will fight without 
their Heroic Man for her sake ; not to honor Achilles, but to biing 
back Helen, they have proclaimed in deepest heart-thrills. Kow 
she is to be brought before us. 

The organism of this Book, quite difi'erent from either of the 
two previous Books, is woven together of two threads running 
parallel and intertwining at two separate times. These threads 
are, first, the external combat between the husbands of Helen ; 
secondly, the internal conflict in the soul of Helen. Mark the 
very intimate relation between these threads, though they be so 
distinct; that duel before the walls of Troy is for the possession 
of Helen, and is the image in real life of what is going on in her 



100 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

spirit. She has a desperate strnofgle between two conflicting 
emotions: Shall I yield to or put down Aphrodite? Her aspi- 
ration is to be restored, which the Greeks are lighting to fulfil ; 
still she seems not fully ready. In such manner she has her indi- 
vidual problem ; but that individual problem is also the problem 
of the Greek world, and it is just now being settled at Troy on 
the boundary of two grand divisions of our globe. Helen bears 
in her the principle of the war, she is its embodiment; in this 
Book we are to see the inner struggle of heart which gives mean- 
ing to the outer struggle of battle. 

I. Let us first consider the external thread, as it is the first one 
touched by the Poet. This is the course of the Duel, which has 
two phases, being dropped once and taken up again in the prog- 
ress of the Book. This external thread we must regard as the 
side of realitv, the real appearance in the world of a spiritual con- 
flict. It naturally comes first, then it deepens to the soul of the 
contendino; elements. 

(a) The muster-roll has been called on both sides ; each is ar- 
rayed for combat in presence of the other. AVho now leap forth ? 
Menelaus and Paris, the two individuals of the two armies most 
directly concerned ; they are the injured and injarer, who have 
their nations also drawn up on their respective sides. Kow the 
feeling runs, if this grievance lies between two individuals, let 
them fight it out by themselves and not spill innocent blood. 
Both armies so incline at present; it is a personal matter; let the 
two persons settle it by arms, and let both sides enforce the con- 
tract. A personal conflict for the personal possession of the wom- 
an and her chattels ; this is what both Trojans and Greeks seem 
just now to see in the war, so eager are they to have it brought to 
a close. They together ratify a contract which, the Poet hints, 
Zeus does not sanction, nor can we. 

This duel very properly opens the fighting of the "Iliad." 
There will follow many other duels ; indeed, the chief strategy of 
the poem consists in personal combat between two antagonists. 
But this first duel reveals the spirit of them all, it lies between 
the injured and the injurer; Helen stands in the background of 
all the individual prowess of the Heroes, and nerves their arms for 
the contest. 

{h) The outcome of the duel is that Paris is defeated by Mene- 



A Study of the Iliad. 101 

laiis, but saved by Aphrodite. She breaks the strap of his helmet 
to foil his enemy, and then carries him off in a cloud. Such is the 
intervention of the Goddess, whicli we must not consider as an 
allegory in which each little incident has its separate meaning, 
but as the broad general image of a spiritual occurrence. Let us 
conceive of Paris quitting the battle-field stealthily, under a cloud, 
If you will. It is Aphrodite who leads him ; his sensuous is far 
stronger than his warlike nature. She leads him out of the com- 
bat ; when there is danger to his dear body, the grand instrument 
of pleasure, she makes him a coward ; for this reason he, as the 
disciple of Aphrodite, receives such bitter reproaches from his 
warlike brother Hector. 

Thus we see what Paris means, what he stands for to the mind 
of the Poet. He is the favorite of Aphrodite, his leading trait is 
that of sensual indulgence, which destroys the heroic character of 
man, and debauches the domestic character of woman. More- 
over, we get a glimpse of what the Trojans think of him, and 
what his standing is in Troy, as in the entire Book we are intro- 
duced to the Trojan view of the world as distinct from the Gre- 
cian. One party, led by his own brother Hector, hates Paris, yet 
the latter has hitherto foiled their attempts to restore Helen. For 
in this Book we learn that she was demanded back by a Greek 
embassy before the war began, of which embassy Menelaus and 
Ulysses were members. Even the Graybeards of Troy, as they 
look at Helen, seem to be in doubt whether a woman so beautiful 
ought to be given up; they, the old men, say with unwillingness: 
Let her go for the sake of our Trojan land and families. It is clear 
that Paris has a strong party supporting him in the city ; it is 
furthermore clear that he cannot be forced to surrender Helen, 
and Troy participates in his guilt. Paris may be said to be a 
truer representative of Trojan spirit than Hector — much truer; 
though in the pinch of war the Trojans now assent to the com- 
pact, yet we nmy mark the word: if it leads to the surrender of 
Helen, they will break the treaty ; that deed is already fore- 
shadowed in their character. 

XL The second thread, that of Helen, may now be picked up 
and carried through the Book, of which it is the very essence and 
inner spirit. We liave already had her name mentioned as the 
object of the Duel, and indeed as the object of the whole war; we 



102 The Journal of Speculative Pliilosophy. 

are thus prepared for lier appearance — here she steps forth in her 
own person. She comes right out of the duel — is horn of it, we 
may say ; for the question of it is, Shall Helen be restored or con- 
tinue in alienation ? Shall the beautiful woman of the world be 
wife, or be lost to Family ? "VVe feel that the soul of the theme is 
ethical ; back of the question stand the Greek and the Trojan 
armies to decide it. Upon that decision much depends — the whole 
Westeruiworld ; this subject, too, is the beginning of Western Lit- 
erature. Let us scan Helen closely, then, as she appears here, for 
she is not only the object of the conflict, but bears it within her 
own bosom ; nay, she portrays it too. 

She is in Troy, apart from her true husband, in a state of 
estrangement. The Poet introduces her twice in the course of this 
thread of the Book, each time under a different aspect. First, she 
is shown us in her acts and relations in the city without Paris; 
this gives what may be called her artistic phases. Secondly, she is 
shown in her intense conflict with the Goddess Aphrodite and tlie 
mortal representative of the Goddess — namely, Paris. Both times, 
however, she reveals the one mighty struggle of her heart ; both 
times, too, she shows that she had repented, and was torn by per- 
petual self-reproach on account ot her deeds, past and present. 
Deep and sorrowful in every way is this mental anguish of Helen ; 
she is not happy in Troy, estranged from her true life ; she longs 
to be restored, and it is tiiis longing of her heart which corresponds 
to the outward attempt of the Greeks. 

{a) Iris, the messenger of the Gods, comes to Helen in the 
palace under the form of Laodice, fairest of Priam's daughters. 
The occurrence which is thereby brought about is not a mere 
whim, but is divinely sent ; Laodice, the mortal shape, simply tells 
what is going on, but in this mortal shape is hidden Iris, who 
comes from the Gods. This message is a part of the divine plan, 
and the event which takes place in consequence is linked into the 
providence which rules over the poem. Who does not delight in 
the old Poet's recognition of a divine control of the world, into 
which the individual is jointed through his de^d ? Moreover, Iris 
comes from the better Gods, not from Aphrodite, who will appear 
later ; this message tells her of the coming combat, and recalls the 
memory of her absent spouse and kind)'ed, to whom she would 
now fain return. This desire for restoration is the strong emotion 



A Study of the Iliad. 103 

al background of this first phase of Helen, and is the contrast ta 
the resistless command of Aphrodite in the second. 

But let Q8 note what is Helen's occupation in Troy. She is 
making a garment wherein are woven the conflicts of the Greeks 
and Trojans for her sake — a wonderful garment, which, when com- 
pleted, we may call the Iliad itself. For, if she truly represents 
this conflict in her marvellous web, we shall have to call her Poet, 
too, or at least Artist, who has experienced the mighty struggle, 
and then turns around and portrays it. It is a deep, perliaps the 
deepest, element of her character, this self-reflection of Helen in 
Art. In such manner she is busied inside of Troy, the weaver of 
the many woes which she has caused and endured, imaging beauti- 
fully the great conflict, and being herself at the same time the most 
beautiful image of it. In later ages Helen became the type of Art, 
or its Ideal; the suggestion thereof is found in old Homer, who 
makes Helen the self-imaging person, weaving a brilliant robe out 
of the combats for her own sake. The Artist has verily in him 
the struggle and the aspiration of his age, which he must weave 
out of himself into a beautiful garment, if he would make his 
Iliad, Greater or Lesser. 

The divine messensi-er bids her to witness the duel which is to 
decide what she is lo be in the future. What her desire is cannot 
be doubted for a moment ; there comes at once that heart-burst of 
hers aglow with painful recollections of what she has left. It is 
manifest that she longs to pass out of her period of alienation to 
that of return to family ; repentance is the word that cries from 
every line ; heart's sorrow is indeed her companion. Yet coupled 
with the deep distress is her beauty ; the old men of Troy confess 
the war for her possession to be worth the prize, and declare that 
her face is like an immortal Goddess to look upon. Assuredly a 
noble and true definition of beauty ; the Eternal shines through 
her face — that face touched by struggle and contrition, yet looking 
up to restoration. Sorrow and beauty are the twin sisters, insepa- 
rable; under beauty lurks the passionate trial of the soul, till 
it rise up to reconciliation. Such is the face of Helen : not merely 
an outward symmetrical visage, but a living mirror, reflecting all 
her life ; for a mask, though it have the Greek lines and be of 
human flesh, cannot be beautiful ; the soul must be uttered in the 
features. 



104 The Jounial of Sjjeculative Philosophy. 

"We mav now pass with Helen to the eitj wall, and take a look 
with her froiii it. Here ai^ain we behold the artistic phase of 
Helen in a new way. To Priam, who addresses her very kindly, 
she gives a description of the leading Greek Heroes as they 
appear down in the plain ; yet this is coupled with a strong de- 
scription of herself, of her own internal condition. It is another 
word of sorrow bursting up with the wish for deatli. But behold 
Agamemnon, Ulysses, Ajax, but not Achilles ; authority, wisdom, 
strength, but not heroism, are represented in that Greek host. 
Helen, we may well say, is in all this the Artist still, or the Poet ; 
she depicts the essence of the Greek army in the characters of its 
great chieftains as she looks down into them from her high posi- 
tion on the watch-tower. This is a picture of hers too, woven 
now of words ; it may be called the companion-piece to her gar- 
ment woven of threads. Thus has the Poet brought her forward 
in these two passages as the Artiot, at one time picturing the com- 
bats by means of visible farms, at another time showing the char- 
acters of Heroes by means of spoken words ; the one hints of 
scnlpture, the other of poetry, the two great Arts of Greece. Still 
more deeply she has pictured herself the imager and the imaged ; 
her heart is the heart of the whole war, and its portraiture too ; the 
scission in that heart is what we are next to witness when she 
comes before us. 

{h) The second part of Helen's thread — this Book of Homer, in 
its structure, being woven out of threads like Helen's garment — 
shows the actual struggle about which she has previously so bitter- 
ly reproached herself. It is the struggle with the Goddess Aphro- 
dite in person ; these are now the two combatants, and a duel 
takes place far more intense and far more significant than the duel 
which has just taken place before the gates of Troy ; in fact, this 
second duel is that which gives spirit and meaning to the first. 
Aphrodite has just come from Paris, who looks, she says to Helen's 
temptation, not like a returning warrior, but like a blooming dancer 
in the chorus. Helen recognizes the messenger, so diiferent from 
Iris ; indeed, she has become conscious of the presence of the God- 
dess in her own desire ; but she turns ferociously upon Aphro- 
dite and refuses to obey. "We see the desperate effort of the woman, 
smitten by shame and remorse, to free herself of the chains which 
still hold her captive. It is the conflict in her own breast between 



A Study of the Iliad. 105 

sensual love and self-control, one of the thousand inner conflicts 
which for many years Helen has watered with her tears, and then 
has given up again. It is the picture of them all ; the Goddess is 
a Goddess, and responds, M'ith wrath : Beware lest I shall hate thee 
and make Greek and Trojans hate thee, and thou slialt perish 
miserably ! The Goddess threatens to take away Helen's beauty ; 
then indeed will she be lost, being no longer the object of eager 
possession to both Greeks and Trojans — in fact, to the world. 
Helen without the gift of beauty is indeed not Helen ; in awe of 
the Goddess she turns awaj', wrapped in a shining robe, and goes 
into the presence of Paris. 

Here is her second struggle, not now with the Goddess, but with 
the man ; yet both struggles at bottom are of the same kind. She 
turns upon him who has brought her so much woe and who has 
just shown himself such a coward. She knows his unworthiness, 
she knows too her own guiltiness; she casts upon him reproaches, 
very bitter and very true, and then yields again. Paris has his 
excuse, very convenient in Greek polytheism ; he says that Pallas 
won the victory for Men elans, but asserts that there is a God on 
Lis side too, and at once demonstrates the fact. 

Such is Helen's double struo-o-le with the Goddess and her 
mortal counterpart; an intense, furious combat, but ending in 
defeat. Both Paris and Helen are the victims; to Aphrodite they 
have sacrificed both manhood and womanhood. TVe are led back 
to the original wrong ; the island Cranae is hinted ; the history of 
Helen's fall is re-enacted in Troy. This Third Book brings out in 
vivid dramatic interest the beginning, which is repeated before our 
eyes, and thus is a poetic review of the origin and meaning of the 
war. Still Helen is repentant ; Paris is not; he knows no con- 
trition for his act, and thus there is between them a vast differ- 
ence — the whole universe, we might say. He must perish ; she 
must be restored ; Paris, the city of Troy, all that comes between 
her and restoration, will be swept out of the way by the world- 
governing Powers. 

Helen in this Book is seen to be the cause of the war, as the 
statement usually runs. She is certainly the image of it in her- 
self; a deep reflection of it in its ethical purport. She has a great 
throe in her bosom, a massive heaving heart of sorrow and con- 
flict ; she longs for the return to home and country, but the Tro- 



106 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

jans stand in the waj. This is their guilt, their grand interrup- 
tion of the divine order; they must be wiped out ; those one hun- 
dred thousand Greeks are before their gates for that purpose. 
Thus her inner struggle is the outer struggle between Greek and 
Trojan ; she is the soul of the war, its very soul put into a human 
soul. We may call her the ideal, whose life is to be the reality of 
that which is fought for on the Trojan plain. Her cause has taken 
possession of her nation and race ; that cause arms tliem and drives 
them into the battle for her salvation, which is their own salvation 
too. She becomes a type which the Artist reveals, wherein he 
images the nation to itself in its strongest aspiration. 

But Helen in this Book is that Artist too, or is employed in 
artistic work. She is not only the bearer of the struggle, but its 
painter — the image making its own image. Such is the artistic 
nature which has to image what it endures ; the Eternal peers 
through the personal sorrow and transforms it into the expression 
of the Beautiful. In her fall she manifests the possibility of her 
rise, which will overcome her sensuous impulses and find restora- 
tion, even after many relapses. One such rise and relapse, the 
image of them all, we have seen in this Book ; but we feel assured 
that redemption is coming and with it a new world. Such a hint 
there is in this fervid account ; hope is here, and the future har- 
mony and reconciliation. The germ of her recovery we touch 
everywhere; this fact is the most vital one of the story. It is a 
deep glance into the time to come on the part of the old bard ; a 
genuine, prophetic glance which brings back the truest word of 
the ages — restoration of the fallen soul. A comparison with those 
old Greeks rises involuntarily : Would our social order restore 
Helen as readily as they did ? Would her modern sister ever 
acknowledge her as restored ? Would her cause call forth a thou- 
sand ships and a ten years' war? Hardly; but our excuse is at 
hand ; those old Greeks had to settle this question before all 
others; it was then the question of the World's History, which it 
is not now. Thus, however, we may catch a glimpse of the great- 
ness and reality of the theme of which this ancient poem treats. 



Notes and Discussions. lOT 



NOTES AKD DISCUSSIONS. 



'' THE platonist;' second volume. 

["The Platonist," it seems by the following circular, was only tem- 
porarily suspended. It appears again with the beginning of 1884, and 
will continue its work of making accessible rare and valuable Platonic 
writings, together with new and original commentary. We shall notice 
its contents from time to time. — Ed.] 

" THE PLATONIST," VOLUME II. AN EXPONENT OF THE PHILOSOPHIC TRUTH. ESOTERIC 

CHRISTIANITY IS IDENTICAL WITH TRUE PHILOSOPHY. 

The second volume of " The Platonist " is now offered to those who are desirous to be- 
come more familiar with philosophic literature. The favorable reception already accorded 
the work by scholars and thinkers indicates that it was wanted, and that there was no 
publication occupying the same field. The scope of the journal will be extended so as 
to include not only the wisdom-religion of the archaic period, Oriental as well as Occi- 
dental philosophy, but philological investigations, translations, and interpretations of 
the later writers, the various utterances of gifted and enlightened individuals, and, in 
short, every variety of inquiry and speculation relating to the interior life. The pur- 
pose is to discriminate wisely, receiving and welcoming the truth in every form of its 
manifestation. The harmony of the teachings of pure Christianity with the esoteric 
doctrines of the various ancient faiths will be duly expounded. Platonism in its essence 
is Universal Philosophy. Considered merely as a method, its value is inestimable. It 
winnows away the chaff and noxious seeds, in order that all may descry and possess 
only the genuine grain. It places an inferior estimate upon sensuous and lower scien- 
tific knowledge, but seeks to direct the mind to the nobler Theosophy, the evolving of 
a conception of genuine reality, the good and true — everything of essential benefit to 
mankind. It is immortal, because the principles which it unfolds are immortal in the 
human intellect. 

We have been promised the active co-operation of eminent thinkers and specialists, 
both in America and the Eastern continent. It is our belief that there are many pre- 
cious works of the sages of Antiquity still in existence, which have been regarded as 
lost, and that they will be brought to light. Many inedited texts and fragments exist, 
the publication and translation of which will be a rare boon to both the classic and 
philosophic student. We are confident that all such will liberally sustain a journal 
unique in its character, and devoted entirely to their interests. 

Let every friend of our enterprise become an active participant and fellow-laborer 
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paper, presenting an attractive appearance. Price Two Dollars per annum, payable. 



108 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

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INTELLECTUAL LIBER2Y AMONG THE GREEKS. 

Mr. F. M. Holland's " Rise of Intellectual Liberty," soon to be pub- 
lished by Henry Holt & Co., opens by relating how the Ionian philoso- 
phers and their pupils were persecuted by Athens, to her own destruction, 
and how Socrates, Plato, and their contemporaries awakened mental ac- 
tivity. Chapter II describes the conquest of Greek and Roman polythe- 
ism by the speculations of Pyrrho and Epicurus, aided by the science of 
Alexandria. The next two chapters are given to the reaction in favor of 
supernatural religion accomplished by unintentional co-operation of the 
Roman emperors and early Christians. A sketch may here be found of 
the process by which tyranny destroys itself. Western Europe is next 
seen, first in such subjection to the Church that persecution became almost 
unknown, and then in irrepressible agitation, produced partly by the Ca- 
tharists and other popular preachers against the luxury of the clergy, and 
partly by those early rationalists, the Nominalists. Putting down these 
heretics necessitated not only atrocious cruelties, but such reckless reliance 
on the superiority of intuition to reason as stimulated a mighty growth of 
independent mysticism. This was the inspiration of Dolcino, Dante, and 
Rienzi, among whose contemporaries in the fourteenth century were those 
sovereigns of France and Germany' who gave timely checks to papal arro- 
gance. The eighth chapter shows how the authority of the Bible was set 
up by Wycliffe and Huss against the popes, whose supremacy was at the 
same time endangered by the attempts of three great councils to make 
the Church a limited monarch}-. Tben follows a chapter on the " Revival 
of Letters," when classic learning, oceanic discovery, printing, art, and 



Notes and Discussions. 109 

commerce united in developing new habits of thought. Thus, as related 
in Chapter X, it became possible, not only for German mysticism to liber- 
ate the northern nations from the Roman yoke, but for Paracelsus, Franck, 
Gruet, Servetus, and Copernicus to begin still more extensive innovations. 
The concluding chapter urges that mystics, skeptics, liberal Christians, and 
scientists, have all had their places among the champions of freedom, that 
this great cause has been peculiarly indebted to the labors of scholars, and 
that the interests of high culture, biblical criticism, female emancipation, 
tolerance, political liberty, free inquiry, and pure morality, have all been 
found to be identical. 

TWO WAYS TO TEACH. 

There are two ways to teach : the one of man — 
By symbols nice that catch the ready ear. 
Woven with neatest logic, so one can 
Build up an argument of words, nor fear 
His house will fall — till some revealer clear, 
With insight sure, point to the hollow word, 
Which, seeming solid, shuns the glance severe. 
This way is man's, shifting and error-blurred. 
Wrought of the intellect, not living, spirit-btirred. 

The other is of God, a living way. 
Careless of symbol, with the truth made strong, 
Indifferent to the semblance of delay, 
All-utilizing ills and seeming wrong. 
Begetting martyrs ; in the issue long 
Accepting humble hearts to make them see 
Their parts made certain, hear the mighty song 
Sphere-sung, by ages helped and spirits free. 
And e'en unconscious lisped by frail humanity. 

B. R. BULKELEY. 

Concord, Mass. 

RALPE WALDO EMERSOK 

There have been other suns, and still shall be, 

Whose steady radiance draws 

A host obedient to its golden laws, 
Systems that shine and shade responsively. 

This man was hke the Earth, 
Which feeds her strengthening juices everywhere, 

And, dreading naught but dearth, 



110 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Lends to each life that asks of her at need 

That food which swells the seed 

To its especial dower. 
Careless to shape, careful to feed the flower, 
So broad souls drew their liberal life from thee, 
And high souls learned how pure a man could be 

Who worshipped Purity. 

When Death shall bare 
Our unaccustomed spirits of these hands, 

Answering their hourly prayer. 
These eyes and ears whose lordly influence 

Binds thought itself to sense, 
Shall we not walk awhile as in new lands 
With old needs reaching for lost utterance ? 
Thou, Seer, will not stand lonely on that shore 
Where free men wander — thou wast free before. 

The high transparent speech 

That floated out of reach 
Of our air-currents, though we felt its breath 

And knew it knew not death. 
Will find interpretation swift and fair 

In that serener air ; 
A brother's voice alike to old-time Sages, 
And to the child which One set in the midst 

To teach the ages. 

Thy large, wise phrase fell grandly from the Greek, 
And smoother singing has our ears beguiled ; 
What matter ? We shall hsten when you speak, 
Our Plato when you sang — our Poet when you smiled ! 

Fannie R. Robinson. 



Booh Notices. • 111 

EOOK NOTICES. 



Thoughts on Theism, with Suggestions toward a Public Religious Service in Harmony 
with Modern Sciences and Philosophy. London: Triibner. 1880. 

Deanthropomorphization is the fashion of the day with churchmen who are anxiously 
aware of the need of setting their house in order, and perhaps nowhere has such a clean 
sweep been attempted as in this little book, which is an earnest plea for the establish- 
ment of a " New Catholic Church, dedicated to the worship of God and the service of 
Man." This god bears a strong family resemblance to " The Unknowable" of Mr. Spen- 
cer, and, indeed, his (?) genealogy is not left uncertain or disowned, for many quotations 
from that doctor of the new divinity and his school are allowed to witness to it. God 
is "the Formless Infinite," "That which Is," "Pure Ens," "Whom we do not ^wow," 
and yet who is " an intuitional truth or immediate fact of consciousness ! " He " is 
never known -as possessing faculties or properties or qualities," and "This seems to be 
the groundwork of a true theology ! " The authors join hands with the Eev. Canon 
Curteis in allowing us "to accept — if charity so requires — as the common basis for 
theological reunion the agnostic formula, ' Something Is\'" Hitherto theology has 
been taken to be a kind of science, but now it is found to be nescience, and it would 
almost appear that Heine was more than half right when he jestingly claimed the last 
word of Theism to be Atheism. Between the finite and this Infinite, man and god, thus 
j9e>' impossibile conceived, " there is no ratio of likeness, no binding links can make 
them one ; there is nothing common to both except the fact of existence," if, indeed, 
even "existence" — pace Hegel — can be affirmed of Pure Being; and, nevertheless, it 
seems good to our authors to make this the basis of a true Cult! "Thy will be done," 
will be the cry of future saints, calling on the name of the Nameless and addressing 
the characterless Void. This reductio ad absurdum may be recommended to any who are 
tempted to rationalize the historical religions. Religion is concrete, poetic, imaginative ; 
the highest emotions, grouped and impersonated, are its ideals ; its gods are all instinct 
and permeate with humanity ; its nourishment and deUght are Aberglauhe of some kind 
or other, and such genial and naive " superstition " has always abounded in the ages and 
lands of Faith ; and wise reformers, like Comte, following the Catholic tradition, have 
known better than to prune these luxuriances to the quick. Religion refuses to live in 
an artificial vacuum, like the author's. To bring science and philosophy into her house 
is to introduce dynamite unawares to desecrate and destroy ; and that they have a dumb 
feeling of this fact is shown by their book having another side, where we find " Aber- 
glauhe reinvading," symbolical ascription allowed, and so forth. But, best of all, their Re- 
ligion is as thoroughly and literally anthropomorphic as their theology is without form and 
void ; and we find them brought in the end to endorse the truly humanitarian creed of 
Principal Caird, that Religion's paramount aim is "to seek with all our might the highest 
welfare of the world we live in, and the realization of its ideal greatness and nobleness 
and blessedness." It would be ungenerous to expose the rather crude philosophemes — 
on subject and object, fate and free-will, etc. — of a book that ends so nobly and well. 
By way of amen, may I quote one favorite sentence : " God is for man the common- 
place book where he registers his highest feelings and thoughts, the genealogical tree on 
which are entered the names that are dearest and most sacred to him." 

J. Burns-Gibson. 



112 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

BOOKS RECEIVED. 



Empirical and Rational Psychology. Embracing Cognitions, Feelings, and Volitions. 
By A. Schuyler, LL. D., President of Baldwin University, author of " Principles of 
Logic" and a series of mathematical works. Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co., Cincinnati 
and New York. 1883. 

Economic Tracts. No. VIII. (No. 4 of series of 1882.) Caucus System. By Fred- 
erick W. Whitridge. An essay prepared for Vol. I of the " Cycloptedia of Political Sci- 
ence, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States." Edited 
by John J. Lalor. (Issued by permission of the publishers, Messrs. Rand, McNally & 
Co., Chicago.) New York : The Society for Political Education, 4 Morton Street. 
1883. [Pamphlet of 27 pages.] 

A Russian Social-Panslavist Programme, drawn up in London. By C. Tondini de 
Quarenghi. (Reprint from the "Contemporary Review," August, 1881.) London: 
Strahan & Co. (Limited), 34 Paternoster Row. 1881. [Pamphlet of 28 pages.] 

Philosophy and Christianity. A Series of Lectures delivered in New York in 1883 
on the Ely Foundation of the Union Theological Seminary. By George S. Morris,. 
Ph. D., Professor of Ethics, History of Philosophy, and Logic in the University of 
Michigan, and Lecturer on Ethics and the History of Philosophy in the Johns Hopkins 
University, Baltimore. New York : Robert Carter & Brothers, 530 Broadway. 1883. 

Hegel. By Edward Caird, LL. D., Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of 
Glasgow. (A volume of " Philosophical Classics for English Readers," edited by Will- 
iam Knight, LL. D., Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of St. Andrews.) Edin- 
burgh: William Blackwood & Sons. 1883. 

Ueber das Richtige. Eine Eroerterung der ethischen Grundfragen von Dr. Julius 
Bergmann, ord. Prof, der Philosophie an der Universitaet zu Marburg. Berlin, 1883 : 
Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn. Koenigliche Hof Buchhandlung. 

An Examination of the Doctrine of the Natural Evolution of Mind ; or, the Distinc- 
tive Features of Scientific and Spiritual Knowledge. An Address delivered in Man- 
chester New College, London, at the Opening of its Ninety-eighth Session, on Tuesday, 
October 2, 1883. By Charles B. Upton, B. A., B. Sc, Professor of Mental and Moral 
Philosophy. Williams & Norgate, 14 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London, and 
20 South Frederick Street, Edinburgh. 1883. 

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Street. 1883. 

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ment Printing-office. 1883. ^ 



THE JOUKNAL 



OF 



SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 



YoL. XYIII.] Apkil, 1884. [No. 2. 



ON SPACE OF FOUR DIMENSIONS. 



BY GEORGE S. F0LLEKTON. 



In the "Qiiarterly Journal of Science'" for April, 1878, ap- 
peared an article, by J. C. Friedrich Zollner, Professor of Physical 
Astronomy in the University of Leipsic, " On Space of Four 
Dunensions." The facts which the author thinks prove the actual 
existence of such a space, or at least make its assumption a reason- 
able hypothesis, are given in the first volume of his " Scientific 
Treatises," ' and, after presenting in his article the general argu- 
ment to prove that the possihility of a four-dimensional space is 
not inconceivable, he cites one of these facts to prove it an ac- 
tuality. 

From the fact that Zollner's treatises have excited considera- 
ble interest and some discussion in Germany, and that a leaning 
to the belief in a space of four or more dimensions is by no means 
uncommon, and seems to present a special attraction to those ac- 
customed to mathematical reasonings ; and from the additional 



' Vierteljahrsschrift. 

2 " Wissenschaftliehe Abhandlungen," von Job. Carl Friedrich Zollner, Professor der 
Astrophysik an der Universitat zu Leipzig. Erster Band. Leipzig : L. Staackmann, 
1878. 

XYIII— 8 



114 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

fact that the peculiar misconception which underlies the argument 
presented by Zolluei- is specious and oft-recurring — an error into 
which many have fallen before hiin, and many more are likely to 
fall in the future — an analysis of his argument, and a notice of the 
misconceptions upon which it is based, will not be without interest. 
Omitting certain sections which are unnecessary to an understand- 
ing of the positions taken, his argument, as it stands in the " Quar- 
terly Journal," is as follows: 

" In accordance with Kant, Schopenhauer, and IJelmholtz, the 
author regards the application of the law of causality as a function 
of the human intellect given to man a priori — i. e.^ before all ex- 
perience. The totality of all empirical experience is communi- 
cated to the intellect by the senses — i.e., by organs which commu- 
nicate to the mind all the sensual impressions which are received 
at the surface of our bodies. These impressions are a reality to 
ns, and their sphere is two-dimensional, acting not in our body, 
but only on its surface. 

" We have only attained the conception of a world of objects 
with three dimensions by an intellectual process. What circum- 
stances, we may ask, have compelled our intellect to come to this 
result? If a child contemplates its hand, it is conscious of its 
existence in a double manner: in the first place by its tangibility, 
in the second by its image on the retina of the eye. By repeated 
groping about and touching, the child knows by experience that 
his hand retains the same form and extension throu2;h all the vari- 
ations of distance and positions under which it is observed, not- 
withstanding that the form and extension of the image on the 
retina constantly change with the different position and distance 
of the hand in respect to the eye. The problem is thus set to the 
child's understanding, How to reconcile to its comprehension the 
apparently contradictory facts of the invariahleness of the object, 
and the varidbleness of its appearance. This is only possible 
within space of three dimensions, in which, ow"nig to perspective 
distortions and changes, these variations of projection can be re- 
conciled with the constancy of the form of a body. 

"The moment we observe in three-dimensioned space contradic- 
tory focts — i.e., facts which would force us to ascribe to a body 
two attributes or qualities which hitherto we thought could not 
exist together — the moment, I say, in which we should observe 



On Sjpace of Four Dimensions. 115 

such contradictory facts in a three-dimensioned body, our reason 
would at once be forced to reconcile these contradictions. 

" I now proceed to apply the hiojlier conception of space to the 
theory of twisting a perfectly flexible cord. Let us consider such 
a cord to be represented by a h, showing us, when stretched, a 
development of space in one dimension — 

(«- ^)- 

If the cord is bent so that during this action its parts always 
remain in the same plane, a development of space in two dimen- 
sions will be required for this* operation. The following figure 
may be given to the cord : 

(« Q #) 

and all its parts, if conceived of infinite thinness, may be consid- 
ered as lying in the same plane — i. e., in a development of space 
in two dimensions. If the flexible cord, without being broken, 
has to be brought back into the former figure of a straight line in 
such a manner that during this operation all its parts remain in 
the same plane, this can only be effected by describing with one 
end of the cord a circle of 360°. 

" For beings with only ^i«o-dimensional perceptions these opera- 
tions with the cord would correspond to what we, with our three- 
dimensional perception, call a knot in the cord. ]^ow, if a being, 
limited, on account of its bodily organization, to the conception of 
only two dimensions of space, possessed, nevertheless, the ability 
of executing, by his will, operations with this cord which are only 
possible in the space of three dimensions, such a being would be 
able to undo this two-dimensional knot in a much simpler way. 
Merely the turning over of part of the cord would be required, so 
that after the operation, when all parts again lie in the same 
plane, the cord would have passed through the following posi- 
tions : 



S^ 



" If this consideration, by way of analogy, is transferred to a 
knot in space of three dimensions, it will easily be seen that the 
tying as well as the untying of such a knot can only be efl[ected 



lie The Journal of Speculative Philosojphy. 

bj operations, during wliicb the parts of the cord describe a line 
of double curvature, as shown by this figure : 




We three-dimensional beings can only tie or untie such a knot by 
moving one end of the cord through 360° in a plane which is 
inclined toward that other plane containing the two-dimensional 
part of the knot. But if there were beings among us who were 
able to produce by their will four-dimensional movements of ma- 
terial substances, they could tie and untie such knots in a much 
simpler manner by an operation analogous to that described in 
relation to a two-dimensional knot." 

It will be noticed that the argument here presented by Professor 
Zollner is purely analogical. From the supposed experience of a 
^?/;o-dimensional being, the objects of whose perception are acted 
upon by a ^Are^-dimensional being, he draws an inference to our 
experience should a being inhabiting space oifour dimensions act 
upon the objects which we perceive. Finding, as he thinks, such 
effects,' as one might expect to see under those circumstances, pro- 
duced in the presence of Dr. Henry Slade, a spiritualistic medium, 
he infers the existence of four-dimensional beino;s as agents in 
their production. 

Before taking up the fundamental error in his reasonings, we 
may take exception to his founding an analogical argument upon 
a single term. If we, by acting in space of three dimensions, can 
untie a knot of a certain kind in a manner impossible to one mov- 
ing but on a surface, it does not follow that a knot of a different 
kind may be untied in a manner impossible to us acting in space 
of three dimensions by allowing motion in still another — a fourth 
dimension. If one knot (a), which one man can only untie in one 
way, may be nntied in still another way by another man, it does 
not follow that another and a different knot (5), which the second 
man can untie in only one way, can also be solved in a new way 
by a third person. For all we know to the contrary, the second 
knot may admit of but one solution. 

If it be proved, however, that we, acting in ^A^'^e-dimensional 



' E. g.^ the production of true knots in an endless cord. 



On Space of Four Dimensions. 117 

space, can untie knots which are not to be untied in a space of 
two dimensions, and if it be also proved that in actual experience 
knots are tied or untied, which seem to us incapable of solution 
in a space of three dimensions, we may suppose that it was done 
bj action in the direction of a fourth dimension, thouiyh there 
also remains open to us as alternative the supposition that it was 
done by a hitherto undiscovered mode of manipulation in space 
of three dimensions, or by action in a space of five, six, or any 
other number of dimensions. 

The whole argument lapses, however, when it is shown that the 
supposed experience of two-dimensional beings — the only datum 
for inference to another term — is a supposition without basis, and 
arising out of a misconception. The manner in which we ac- 
quire our conception of space, according to Zollner, is this : " The 
totality of all empirical experience is communicated to the intel- 
lect by the senses, i. e., by organs which communicate to the mind 
all the sensual impressions which are received at the surface of 
our bodies. These impressions are a reality to us, and their sphere 
is two-dimensional, acting not in our body, but only on its sur- 
face.''^ This gives us the idea of a surface. In explaining how 
we arrive at the idea of the third dimension, or distance, Zollner 
follows a similar method to Berkeley, in his " !New Theory of 
Vision," and refers the idea to the experienced connection of the 
variable visual appearance with the constant tangible object. 

Although Zollner has followed Berkeley (to whose essays he re- 
fers in his article), it is evident that he has not understood the 
force of his reasonings. The statement that the impressions of 
sense " act at the surface of onr bodies," and that through them 
we gain the idea of a surface (two-dimensional space) before we 
know space in a third dimension, is a double misunderstanding. 
The impressions of sense, if by this phrase sensations are desig- 
nated, are not felt primarily at the surface of our bodies, and are 
only localized after a long visual and tactual experience of the 
organism — an experience which implies as its outcome a knowl- 
edge of space in its three dimensions. 

The sensations given us by contact with objects would not at 
first have position or coexistence in sjyace^ but only succession, or 
coexistence in time, until after the fixing of the relations of visual 
and tactual sensations — they could be localized. After that they 



118 The Journal of Speeulatwe Philosophy. 

would, of course, suggest the space-idea oi\ being themselves 
awakened — which would be a going back, however, from conclu- 
sion to premises. There is no necessary connection between any 
particular sensation and the part of the body to which we relegate 
it. It is not felt in the part, and all localization of sensation is 
a result of experience and observation. Before the idea of the 
organism, as extended, no sensation could be regarded as spa- 
tially out of another. 

Again. The idea that we know a surface before we know the 
third dimension is untenable. A surface, as we know it, im- 
plies tlie idea of distance — it presupposes the knowledge of a 
third dimension. In the latter part of his essay on " Vision " 
(§§ 155-158) Berkeley speaks of this. In the inquiry concern- 
ing what knowledge a spirit endowed with the power of vision, 
but witliout the sense of touch, would have of geometry, after 
denying that he would have any knowledge of a solid, or quantity 
of three dimensions, he continues: " and, perhaps, upon a nice 
inquiry, it will be found he cannot even have an idea of plane 
figures any more than he can of solids, since some idea of dis- 
tance is necessary to form the idea of a geometrical plane, as will 
appear to whoever shall reflect a little on it." " I must confess it 
seems to be the opinion of some very ingenious men that flat or 
plane figures are immediate objects of sight, though they acknowl- 
edge solids are not; and this opinion of theirs is grounded on 
what is observed in painting, wherein (say they) the ideas imme- 
diately imprinted in the mind are only of planes variously col- 
ored, which, by a sudden act of the judgment, are changed into 
solids; but, with a little attention, we shall find the planes here 
mentioned as the immediate objects of sight are not visible, but 
tangible planes. For when we say that pictures are planes, we 
mean thereby that they appear to the touch smooth and uniform. 
But then this smoothness and uniformity, or, in other words, this 
planeuess of the picture, is not perceived immediately by vision ; 
for it appeareth to the eye various and multiform." A similar 
error to Zollner's was that made bv Sir William Hamilton in his 
lecture on the relations of sio:ht and touch to extension. In in- 
quiring whether extension is the object of sight, he argues as fol- 
lows:^ " All parties are, of course, at one in regard to the fact 

1 " Metaphysics," New York, 1880, p. 385. 



On Space of Four Dimensions. 119 

that we see color. Those who hold that we see extension admit 
that we see it only as colored ; and those who deny us any vision 
of extension make color the exclusive object of sight. In regard 
to the first position, all are, therefore, agreed. Nor are they less 
harmonious in reference to the second — that the power of per- 
ceiving color involves the power of perceiving the differences 
of colors. Bj sight we, therefore, perceive color, and discrimi- 
nate one color — -that is, one colored body — one sensation of color 
from another. This is admitted. A third position will also be 
denied by none — that the colors discriminated in vision are, or 
may be, placed side by side in immediate juxtaposition; or, one 
may limit another by being superinduced partially over it. A 
fourth position is equally indisputable — that the contrasted col- 
ors, thus bounding each other, will form by their meeting a visi- 
ble line, and that, if the superinduced color be surrounded by the 
other, this line will return upon itself, and thus constitute the out- 
line of a visible figure." 

It is evident that, in saying that the colors discriminated in vis- 
ion may be "placed side by side in immediate juxtaposition," Sir 
William is using language which implies a knowledge of distance. 
The planes to which he refers are not purely visual. To vision 
alone we must allow some discrimination between the colors, that 
they may become representative of tactual differences, but what 
that discrimination would be to one who had never enjoyed the 
sense of touch we have no means of knowing. It certainly would 
not be like our present knowledge of the differently colored planes. 
In his "Eeview of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy," Mr. Mill has 
pointed out with clearness the misconceptions in this supposed 
argument of Sir William's, and has justly complained that the 
position, line, and figure of which it treats are not the objects of 
pure vision. 

Our idea of space is not derived from visual sensation alone, 
nor from tactual impressions alone, but is, so to speak, the nearly 
simultaneous representation, by a few visual symbols, of a multi- 
tude of successive tactual ia)pres3ions. The visual symbols, be- 
fore they are interpreted in tactual impressions, can give no true 
idea of space any more than a sight of the letters and words can 
give the ideas contained in a book to one who has not learned to 
read. But the sign and the thing signified may become so closely 



120 The Journal of Speculative Philosojyhy. 

connected by long experience that one may easily fall into error 
as to the share of the whole impression to be attributed to the one 
element and to the other, 

Onr knowledge of a surface, or space of two dimensions, there- 
fore, implies a knowledge of distance, which is necessary to the 
interpretation of the visual symbols, and without which they would 
be meaningless. And we have, consequently, no idea what would 
be the conception of space of a "two-dimensional" being, nor 
how^ he would be affected by a manipulation of the twisted cords. 
Reasoning from our experience of a surface, and the movements 
of cords on a surface, to that of such a being, is unwarrantable. 
We do not know what would be his idea of a line, a surface, or a 
knot — in short, any analogical argument based upon his expe- 
rience is based upon something to us totally unknown and incon- 
ceivable. 

If it be objected that all this relates to a visual knowledge of 
extension and not to a tactual, and that, though the idea of dis- 
tance, or extension in a third dimension, be necessary to the for- 
mer, it may not be to the latter ; I answer that our idea of space 
is a complex of the two, the intepretation by a general formula of 
many particulars, whereby, if we may accept the results of the 
observations of Platner on the blind,' the idea of simultaneity or 
coexistence is substituted for that of succession. 

The idea, therefore, of spatial extension must be very different 
in one who has never enjoyed the sense of sight from what it is 
in one who has, and we could not argue from the experience of 
such to our own. 

Moreover, it is evident that Zollner does not refer at least a 
knowledge of tri-dimensional space to tactual experience alone, 
but refers it to an attempt to reconcile our apparently contradic- 
tory visual and tactual experience, so that our knowledge of the 
third dimension at least would have reference to vision. And if 
it be denied that we can gain any idea of a surface from tactual 
impressions before a localization of sensations, it is incumbent 
upon Zollner to show how they would ever give rise, taken alone, 
to the idea of a surface. 

Bat, even granting that we consider a purely tactual knowledge 



Quoted by Hamilton, "Metaphysics," New York, 1S80, p. 389. 



Dante's '•'■Inferno^ 121 

of space, we have no reason to believe that there could be knovrl- 
edge of a surface prior to a solid, or independently of knowledge 
of extension in a third direction ; though here we are reasoning 
largely in the dark, as we cannot tell what may be the notion of 
direction in the mind of a blind person, or how it compares with 
our own, which has always reference to visual experience. We 
have no idea whatever what would be the conception of space in 
the mind of a blind " two-dimensional " being ; but we may at 
least assume that, whatever might be the nature of his conception, 
it would have little or nothing in common with our idea of a sur- 
face. 

Consequently, the argument from the twisted cords is wide of 
the mark, and the whole analogical argument from the experience 
to two-dimensional beings, the objects of whose perception are 
acted upon by us from the direction of a third dimension, to that 
of three-dimensional beings in their relation to four-dimensional, 
is an analogy drawn in fact from our knowledge of a surface, and 
our knowledge of a solid, to something inconceivable, and shows 
a misconception of the force of the reasoning contained in the 
"New Theorv of Vision." 



DANTE'S "INFERNO." 



BY SUSAN E. BLOW. 



To know how hard the wind is blowins: one must sail ag-ainst 
the wind. To measure the force of a stream one must swim 
against its current. That the tendencies of any given age may 
be comprehended, they must be surveyed from the standpoint of 
an age different in its habits of thought. Drifting with his gen- 
eration, the individual cannot gauge its strength, and sees neither 
the direction in which it moves nor the goal towards which it 
tends. 

We live in an age which is rapidly losing the consciousness of 
sin. Equally alien to our feeling are the physical self-scourgings 
of the mediaeval saint and the spiritual agony of the Puritan. 



122 The Journal of Speculative Philosophn. 

The burden which bore so heavily upon Christian sits very lightly 
upon us. We hear much of the soul of goodness in things evil, 
and, reversing the disguise of Satan as an angel of light, we are 
learning to look on sin as an angel veiled in darkness. The doc- 
trine of the fall of man is interpreted to mean ascent to a more 
conscious plane of existence. "Paradise is a park where only 
brutes, not men, can remain," and it is a rise and not a fall 
which is symbolized in the mythns of the woman, the serpent, 
and the tree. Out of the depth of Donatello's sin is born the con- 
science which converts the faun into the man. Faust fearlessly 
allies himself with the Devil, and makes him the instrument of 
his salvation. The poets with one voice teach that "by ministry 
of evil good is clear," that " evil will bless and ice will burn," 
and that we " rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher 
things." The scientist assures us that " men end by going right 
after trying every imaginable way of going wrong," and the his- 
tory of the world is shown to be a course of practical logic, through 
which man is gradually learning wisdom from his mistakes. Thus 
sin is no more sin, and, instead of groaning with the Apostle, 
" O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body 
of this death ? " we plume ourselves on the secrets wrested from 
conquered wrong, and cheerfully condone the wrong that is yet 
unconquered. 

The thought upon which this view of sin ultimately rests is, 
that man can only learn what he is by finding out what he is not, 
and that the violation of his ideal nature in its reaction reveals 
him to himself. So long as he acted in accord with his nature, 
there could be neither self-consciousness nor spiritual freedom. 
There must be contrast before there can be comprehension, and, 
as we know light through darkness, we can realize good only 
through the ministry of evil. 

Whatever else this theory may or may not be, it is distinctly 
anti-Christian. There can be no sympathy between a philosophy 
which sees in sin the condition of a realized self-consciousness and 
a relio'ion which heralds its founder as " the Lamb of God which 
taketh away the sin of the world." The Christian consciousness 
has always defined sin as rebellion against God, "the act of a 
traitor who aims at the death and overthrow of his sovereign." 
Sin, according to the Christian Church, is that which, had it power 



Dante's ''Inferno:'' 123 

so to do, would dras; God from his throne, and would rejoice could 
He cease to be. It brings forth no good but only evil, and evil 
continually, and, far from rising through it to the heights of vision 
and attainment, man sinks through it to a condition worse than 
that of the unconscious brute. 

To realize how totally the thought of to-day contradicts the 
Christian theory of sin, one needs but to study that theory as ex- 
pounded by the great poet of the Church in his "Divina Comme- 
dia." Nowhere shall we find such vital grappling with the uni- 
versal problem of man as in the utterances of this sternest and 
tenderest of poets. " Behold, therefore, the goodness and the 
severity of God," exclaims the inspired writer. "Behold the in- 
finite love and the infinite rigor of the man taught of God," our 
hearts exclaim as, following Dante, we penetrate to the ultimate 
depths of sin and misery, and learn at last the genesis, the devel- 
opment, and the outcome of evil. 

Dante has been called the voice of ten silent centuries, and cer- 
tain it is that the truths to which he gave immortal expression 
had, dnrino; these asre?, been slowlv crvstallizina; in the conscious- 
ness of the Christian world. His poem is nut individual but uni- 
versal ; he utters not his own thought, but the unformulated creed 
of Christendom. Nay, he reaches beyond Christianity and speaks 
to the universal conscience of humanity — that inward witness 
which is always calling upon man to rejoice in his freedom and 
tremble before the responsibility bound up with it. 

The "Divina Commodia " is the outcome of a profound and ex- 
haustive reflection upon the facts of the moral world. Reflection, 
in all of its forms, involves the reduction of the infinitude of par- 
ticular things to a finitude of classes, and culminates in that philo- 
sophic insight which reduces this flnitude of classes to the unity 
of an inclusive process. Adequate reflection upon the moral 
world should therefore result in the classification of its complicated 
phenomena, and in the ultimate discovery of the genesis and de- 
velopment both of good and evil. 

It is because Dante has traced this genetic development that 
the " Divina Commedia" is an organic whole vitalized tliroughout 
by one all-penetrating thought. This fundamental insight is that, 
as man is a derivative being, the condition of a true development 
must be an uninterrupted connection and communion with hia 



124 The Journal of Speculative Pliilosophy. 

source. As right relationship to tlie sun solves the secret of the 
planetary system, so right relationship to God solves the secrets of 
life and thought. As a stream cut off from its fountain-head must 
inevitahlj dry up, so the soul which separates itself from God 
destroys itself. It is a dying soul, which can be restored to life 
only by the renewal of its relationship to God. In the substitu- 
tion of self for God lies the germ of all sin. "Because thy heart 
is lifted up, and thou hast said I am God and I sit in the chair of 
God (whereas thou art a man and not God), and hast set thy 
heart as if it were the heart of God, therefore I will bring thee to 
nothinir, and thou slialt not be, and if thou be soui^ht for thou 
shalt not be found any more forever." 

Conformably to this theory, the "Divina Commedia," in its three 
main divisions, treats of the corruption of the will, the purification 
of the will, and the perfection of the will. Tlie "Inferno" traces 
the history of the soul, as, emptied of God, it becomes progres- 
sively filled with self; the "Purgatorio" shows us the gradual emp- 
tying of self, and the "Paradiso" the filling of the soul with God. 
The poem culminates with the rapture of the beatific vision — the 
steadfast, immiOvable, attentive gaze of the soul upon that Light, 
"in whose presence one such becomes 

" That to withdraw therefrom for other prospect 
It is impossible he e'er consent." 

It is a truth which is too generally ignored, that all duties arise 
out of relationships. It is because there are fathers, mothers, 
children, sisters and brothers, that there are paternal, filial, and 
fraternal duties ; it is because a man has a country that he should 
be a patriot ; it is through friends that we learn the sweet obliga- 
tions of friendship ; and it is because the world is full of the aged, 
the poor, the sinful, and the sorrowing, that we are called on to ex- 
ercise reverence, pity, charity, and sympathy. Finally, it is because 
our souls are bound up with a material frame that we struggle 
for the conquest of the flesh by the spirit, and it is because there 
is an infinite God that our souls yearn towards him with aspira- 
tion, and bow before him with awe. Particular relationships are 
the conditions of particular duties, and all particular relationships 
are grounded in the fundamental relationship which makes them 
possible. 



Danteh ^^InfernoP 12i> 

Keeping before us this central thought of the poem, let us now 
study in detail the problem of sin and punishment as dealt with 
by Dante in the "Inferno." Omitting the iirst two Cantos, which 
relate how the poet came to undertake his arduous pilgrimage, 
we find onrselves at the beginning of the Third Canto standing 
before the gate of Hell. Over the gate is this inscription : 

" Through me is the way into the doleful city ; through me 
the way into the eternal pain ; through me the way among the 
people lost. Justice moved my high Maker; Divine Power made 
me, Wisdom Supreme and Primal Love." 

The sense of this inscription is so alien to the sentiment of 
to-day, that it is hard for our minds to grasp. Its implicit argu- 
ment is this : If man is free he is responsible. If he is responsi- 
ble, justice requires tlie return of his deed upon him. To spare 
him the result of his own activity is to insult his ideal nature by 
denying his freedom. Hell is the Creator's final tribute of re- 
spect to the being he made in his own image ; and, as both 
Wisdom and Love imply recognition of the essential nature of 
their object, they concur with Justice in demanding the punish- 
ment of the sinner. 

It is easy to find fault with this view of man's nature and 
responsibilities, but it is hard to substitute for it one which is not 
open to more vital objection. The practical denial of human 
freedom would be the dissolution of organized society, for our 
whole intercourse with each other is based upon a recognition of 
that responsibility which current theories so lightly set aside. It 
is to me a most significant fact that the false philosophy which 
denies man's responsibility culminates in denial of his immortal- 
ity ; and, if it emancipates the sinner from the fear of Hell, it 
destroys for the struggling saint the hope of Heaven. In its out- 
come it is more cruel far than the faith it condemns, for that, at 
least, had eternal happiness as a set-off to everlasting pains, while 
this makes all our hopes a lie, and sinks the evil and the good in 
the same blank annihilation. 

What mainly interferes with our acceptance of the Dantean 
theory of punishment is the unconscious materialism of our 
thought. By the average mind penalty is conceived as some- 
thing external to, and distinct from, the spiritual result of sin. 
It is something done to the sinner, not something which he 



126 Tlie Journal of Speculative Ph'doaophy. 

tliroiigb liis sin does to himself. Dante's view (it would seem to 
me) is that through repeated sinful acts the soul attains a grade 
of pej'maiiencc in sin. Tlie long conflict between good and evil 
comes at last to an end, and the sin in which we have indulored is 
stamj->ed upon the soul as its eternal form. And, as sin is domi- 
nant within, it is universalized without us. The glutton is im- 
mersed in his gluttony, and surrounded by other gluttons; the 
carnal sinners are driven about in the total darkness of their souls 
by the fierce winds of their passions, and are cut off l)y their own 
limitation from compreliension of any other type of character 
than their own. By our own acts we determine ourselves, and 
only what we are can we recognize in others. Our punishment 
is what we ultimately become mirrored to consciousness through 
our surroundings. 

Throughout tlie "Inferno" the varying punishments are simply 
the external symbols of varying phases of sinful consciousness. 
The wrathful are immersed in boiling mud ; the violent in a river 
of blood. The hypocrites, "a painted people," wearing cloaks all 
gilt without, all lead within, are moving round with steps exceed- 
ing slow, and in their looks are " tired and overcome." The 
thieves, whose deed universalized would make it impossible to 
know " whose was whose or what was what," are seen in an eter- 
nal process of transformation into the serj^ents, who aptly symbol- 
ize their creeping stealth. Flatterers are immersed in filth, "for 
those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the 
heart, and they defile a man." Schismatics, who have made 
division where there should be unity, are eternally cleft by a 
sword-bearing devil, and the consuming flame of conscience 
swathes the evil counsellors who have employed God's great gift 
of wisdom to deceive their fellow-men. 

Man is free ! This is the first truth emphasized by our medi- 
eval poet. Pass now with him through the gate of hell, and learn 
how free man makes himself the slave of sin. "Our wills are 
ours to make them thine ; " rational freedom is the soul's voluntary 
choice of the good. We have said that we should trace through 
the " Inferr o *' the progressive filling of the soul with self, and 
lo! the first spirits we meet, as we step upon the starless plain, 
are those who illustrate selfishness in its emptiest and most ab- 
stract form. Dante's description of them is a most scathing one. 



Dante's ^''Inferno^'' 127 

" Thej lived without blame and without praise ; to God they 
were neither faithful nor rebellious. Heaven chased them forth, 
and the deep hell refused to receive them, Mercy and judgment 
disdain them, and report of them the world permits not to exist. 
They have no hope of death, and their blind life is so mean that 
they are envious of every other lot." The description concen- 
trates in the twofold statement that '" they were for self, and that 
they never were alive." They did not deny the truth, they sim- 
ply never thought about it ; they did not rebel against God, they 
only ignored Him ; they did not consciously assert themselves, 
they merely indulged each passing caprice. They are the repre- 
sentatives of that frivolous class who live only in the moment, 
and in the moment think only of themselves. Petty passions 
sting them like wasps and hornets, and, goaded by the capricious 
love of change, they forever chase a whirling ensign which scorns 
all pause. In the stage of immediate impulse they have substi- 
tuted self for God, and indulgence for obligation ; the house is 
empty, swept, and garnished, all too ready for the evil spirits who 
will soon rush in. Is it significant that of these souls there is 
such a long train that scarcely could the poet believe death had 
undone so many ? 

As the return of man's deed upon him is the Creator's recogni- 
tion of the creature's dignity, so the fruit of sin in the soul is the 
denial of personal accountability. The victim of caprice is 
always a fatalist ; he is the slave of his own unconscious self, and 
he projects this inward necessity as external limit. The souls 
who assemble on the joyless strand of Acheron " blaspheme God, 
and their progenitors, the human kind, the place, the time and 
origin of their seed and of their birth." Everything and every 
person in the universe is to blame for their condition except them- 
selves. 

Summing up this introductory Canto, we have, first, recogni- 
tion of the source of punishment in the divine justice; second, 
recognition of the first phase of sin in the blank form of selfish- 
ness ; third, recognition of the outcome of sin in the repudiation 
of personal freedom and responsibilit}'. In the remaining Cantos 
selfishness will realize itself in an infinitude of particular mani- 
festations, and culminate in the concrete unity of selfish form 
and content in the person of Lucifer. 



128 T1ie Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

We have seen that duties arise out of relationships, and that all 
Becondarj relationships are grounded in the fundamental relation- 
ship to God. Man draws from God the power to realize himself. 
It follows that the proi^ressive realization of his own ideal nature 
is a progressive approximation to the divine type, and that the 
complete indwelling of God is the perfection of man. Truth and 
goodness are not abstractions — they are the eternal thought and 
will of God. What God thinks is the true; what God wn lis is 
the good — or, rather, as in Him knowing and willing are one, 
truth and goodness are but distinctions in the unity of His Eter- 
nal Act. 

Some degree of insight into the natnre of God is therefore the 
necessary condition of any understanding of what is right or 
wrong, good or evil. If to be good is to be like God, and to be 
•wicked is to be unlike Him, it is of infinite importance tliat we 
know who and what He is. Parallel with the vanishing con- 
sciousness of sin has been the disappearance of all definiteness in 
the conception of the first principle of the world, and the theory 
that God is unknowable has kept even pace with the theory that 
man is irresponsible. The restoration of a divine ideal would be 
also the restoration of our guilty sense of alienation from it. "I 
have heard of Thee," exclaims Job, " by the hearing of the ear, 
but now mine eye seeth Thee, whereforel abhor myself and repent 
in dust and ashes." 

If we try to think the creative principle of the world, we come 
at once face to face with the idea of self-activity. By self-activity 
is meant an activity that acts upon itself : as a creative princi- 
ple logically antedates all creation, it must be self-active, for the 
obvious reason that there is nothing but itself for it to act upon. 
Its activity, therefore, begins from and comes back to itself. It is 
a circular process, and therefore necessarily an eternal process. 
It has been complete from all eternity, and yet repeats itself in 
every moment of time. 

R'ghtly appreliended, a process of self-activity is seen to be ne- 
cessarily a process of thought, for thought alone has the power of 
acting upon itself. All natural objects and forces are results of 
an activity external to themselves. But thought creates itself, 
embodies itself, realizes itself, and defines itself. There can be 
nothing higher, or wider, or deeper than thought, for " it is the 



Dantis ''InfernoP 129 

form of an infinite content " ; there can be nothing back of 
thonght, for, whatever we may set up as prior to thought, thoutjht 
gets back of it through thinking it. In a word, that which exists 
in thought cannot antedate or include thought. 

The reahzed form of thought is self-consciousness, and this in- 
volves the distinction of the self from the self, and the persistent 
identification with self of the self thus distinguished. The eternal 
distinction of the self is the begetting of an eternal object, the 
eternal identification of this object with self is eternal recognition, 
communion, or love. This is the truth revealed to faith in the 
doctrine of the Trinity, and which inspired the rapt utterance of 
Dante when he exclaimed : 

" Light eterne, sole in thyself that dwellest, 
Sole knowest thyself and known unto thyself, 
And knowing lovest and smilest on thyself." 

Self-activity and communion, or spiritual interpenetration, are 
therefore the marks of the divine nature. Hence man, made in 
the image of Grod, develops through active combination with his 
fellows. Throuo-h oro-anization the individual man avails himself 
of the strength, the experience, and the insight of total humanity. 
"Whatever nullifies activity, or strikes at participation, is evil, and 
the final outcome of evil must be stagnation absolute and isolation 
complete. 

This insight enables us to understand the grading of sins in the 
" Inferno." All sin strikes either indirectly or directly at organized 
society. The less heinous sins are those which attack society indi- 
rectly, by destroying in the individual man the qualities through 
which combination is possible. These are the sins punished in 
the circles of Incontinence ; the next degree of sin is that in which 
there is the attack of man upon individual men, as shown in the 
circle of A^iolence, and its final phase is that in which the sinner, 
first by fraud and then by treachery, attacks the social whole. 
That fraud made universal would cause a relapse into savagism is 
symbolized in the primeval giants who stand as sentinels over the 
region of the fraudulent, while the self-exclusion and self-destruc- 
tion brought about by treachery are strikingly imaged in Lucifer 
frozen in the bottom of the pit. 

Having defined sin, and indicated its increasing degrees, our 
xVlII— 9 



130 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

next object must be to seek its origin, and trace its gradual devel- 
opment and expansion within the soul. This can best be done by 
a careful analysis and comparison of the sins punished in the dif- 
ferent circles of the "Inferno." If we can discover in them a prin- 
ciple of evolution, and can show that in the process of sin man's 
essentia] nature is progressivelj^ destro3''ed, we shall have settled 
the question as to whether sin is the instrumentality through 
which man rises out of the condition of unconscious unity into that 
of spiritual fellowship with God. 

Limbo, the outermost circle of the " Inferno," is peopled by souls 
who have perished through defect. Yirgil, who is one of them, 
describes himself as " by not doing, not by doing, lost." Among 
these souls some have attained to heroic virtue and some to philo- 
sophic insight. They have realized the fullness of purely human 
thought, of human love, and of earthly fame. The great poets 
have pleasure in each other, and Aristotle, " father of those that 
know," sits amid a philosophic family, who all regard and do him 
honor. But no finite good can satisfy an infinite craving, and if 
even the highest purely human life be placed under " the form of 
et-ernity " its honors will show themselves empty and its joys de- 
clare themselves vain." " Naught but God can satisfy the soul 
He maketh great." Hence the great souls in Limbo, without tor- 
ment, suffer sadness, and without hope live on in desire. 

Following Limbo are four circles in which are punished the 
souls " who subjected reason to lust," the Gluttons, the Avaricious 
and Prodigal, and the Wrathful and Gloomy. The carnal sinners 
are borne ever onwards in the sweep of a hellish storm ; the glut- 
tons are lying prostrate on the ground ; Cerberus, " emblem of 
their blind voracity," eternally barks at them, and rends them, 
and down upon them pours unceasing a storm of hail, foul water, 
and snow. The avaricious and prodigal, " those who placed their 
happiness in gold, and those who placed their happiness in what 
gold could buy," roll heavy weights and smite them against each 
other. The prodigal cries to the avaricious : " Why boldest thou," 
and the avaricious retorts, " Why thro west thou away ? " Intrin- 
sically their sin is one. Make avarice universal and trade and 
commerce are impossible, the movement of practical life ceases, 
and the social order is destroyed. Universalize prodigality, and 
the result is the same. In the one case no man can get anything, 



Dante's ''InfernoP 131 

and in the other no man has anything. And as this two-fold 
crime is essentially against society, and society rests upon the 
principle of recognition, both miser and spendthrift are made un- 
recognizable. 

" Their undiscerning life which made them vile 
Now makes them unto all discernment dim." 

Sunk in the marshy Styx, naked and muddy, the souls of those 
whom anger overcame stand smiting each other, not with hands 
only, but with head and with chest and with feet, and beneath 
the water and fixed in the slime are the gloomv souls forever 
gurgling in their throats, " Sullen were we in the sweet air that 
is gladdened by the sun, carrying lazy smoke within our hearts : 
now lie we sullen here in the black mire." Profound insio;ht ot 
the poet, to mete one punishment to the wrath which makes man 
his neighbor's enemy, and the melancholy which makes him an 
enemy to himself; and subtle the analysis implied in the lazy 
smoke carried by the gloomy within their breasts, Grod is Self- 
Activity ; man is made in his image : hence, all that is active 
rejoices the soul, and all that is passive palls upon it. Sloth is 
man's denial of himself ; its next phase must be sullen gloom, and 
its final outcome suicide, corresponding to the final outcome ot 
anger, which is murder. 

In the Eleventh Canto of the " Inferno," the four classes of 
sins just described are grouped together under the general head 
of Incontinence, and this Incontinence is said to less ofltend God, 
and to receive less blame, than the malice and mad bestiality met 
with in the lower circles of the "Inferno." As contrasted with 
these deeper sins, the sins of Incontinence are less conscious and 
deliberate, and indicate a less extended corruption of man's moral 
nature. They are sins of feeling rather than sins of thought or 
. will. Their common root is that the man seeks self-gratification. 
Carnal sin, gluttony, and avarice arise from the excessive indul- 
gence of natural appetites, and anger manifests the exaggerated 
self-love of those 

'* Whom injury seems to chafe 
So that it makes them greedy for revenge." 

If it be true that duties arise out of relationships, each special 
duty may be defined as expression of the feeling which should be 



132 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

stimulated by the relationship. The only knowledge presupposed 
is knowledge of the relationship itself. Thus a young child un- 
derstands little of the distinctions between right and wrong, but 
from the very dawn of his conscious life has known himself as 
guarded by a mother's tireless care, and blessed by a mother's 
overflowing love. He should meet this love with love expressed 
in sympathetic obedience. Through obedience to wise commands 
he will himself become wise, for, as goodness is truth in act, doing 
the good must culminate in vision of the true. With compre- 
hension the child becomes self-directing, following the good of 
his own independent choice. Indeed, we may say there has been 
choice from the beginning, but, whereas he first chose the right 
through faith in his mother, he now chooses it because he has come 
to know it as the substantial truth of his own ideal nature. The 
final stage of development is attained when, through repeated 
activity, he has so determined himself in the image of the good 
that he rises above choice, and by a sweet necessity of nature is 
constrained to the right. 

Just as the child shapes himself into goodness through love for 
his mother, so man shapes himself into goodness through love for 
God. In tracing backward the history of n^an, we may arrive at 
a point when his mind is empty of all knowledge except the 
knowledge that he is and that God is. Consciousness of his own 
existence and consciousness of his primal relationship are the 
conditions of his normal development. And as love should be 
awakened in the heart of the child by the love of the mother, 
so love in the heart of man should respond to the love which 
called him into being. We love Him because He first loved us, 
says the Apostle, and no student of Christ's method of training 
can have failed to observe that he grounds all spiritual graces in a 
personal relationship to himself. 

I repeat, therefore, that goodness in man is progressively gener- 
ated from the love of God. In its first phase empty and abstract, 
but concreting and defining itself through particular acts of obedi- 
ence, this love creates in man the image of God. To know God 
we must be like God, for to comprehend a spiritual Being is to 
be in substantial identity with Him. Hence, Christ recognizes 
the attained fellowship of his disciples, by declaring that he will 
call them no more servants but friends, and the yearning soul of 



Daniels ''''InfernoP 133 

the Psalmist refuses to be satisfied until it shall awake in the like- 
ness of God. 

Generalizing our statement, we may say that the starting-point 
of human development lies in feeling. Feeling rushes into act and 
act defines man to himself. By making an external image of him- 
self, and looking at what he has made, man learns what he is. 
Thus through feeling he rises into thought, and finally expresses 
the concrete unity of thought and feeling in the acts of the con- 
scious wilL 

It follows that any interruption or perversion of the course of 
man's normal development must necessarily originate within the 
sphere of feeling. This perverted feeling, rushing into expression, 
makes for man a false iinao-e of himself. Thus his thoujjht is cor- 
rupted, and he sees what is not instead of what is, and this results 
in an activity of the will-, which is in supreme contradiction of his 
ideal nature, and in supreme violation of all his fundamental re- 
lationships. There can be no perversion of the intellect and will 
which does not imply a logically prior perversion of the feelings 
— no stage of conscious and deliberate sin without an ante- 
cedent stage in which the sympathies have become alienated 
from God. 

It is therefore with profound intention that Dante places in the 
outermost circles of the " Inferno " sinners in the unconscious 
stage of alienated love. This alienation of feeling is discerned by 
him as the logical condition of the deeper degrees of sin to be 
punished in the lower hell. Nor does the poet leave us to abstract 
his theory from the content of the poem, but, in the Seventeenth 
Canto of the " Puro-atorio," he himself traces all sin to " the ex- 
cess, defect, or perversion of love." Man has an infinite power of 
loving. Infinite love demands an infinite object. If man loves 
God supremely, he will love all other objects in right degree. It 
he is slack in his love of God, he will love unduly self and finite 
objects. The excessive love of finite objects giving birth to strug- 
gle for their possession, changes into hate the love man should 
bear to his fellow. Such is the genesis of the seven capital sins. 
Sloth is the slack love of God ; lust, gluttony, and covetousness, 
are the excessive love of finite objects; pride is the distorted love 
of self; and envy and anger are distortions of tiie love which 
should exist between man and man. Yiewed from the standpoint 



134 The Journal of l:ipeculative Philosophy. 

that duties arise out of relationships, lust is rebellion against the 
ideal of man in his relationship to the family ; gluttony is perver- 
sion of the relationship bet\Yeen soul and body ; covetousness, 
envy, and anger, are practical denials of the relationship of the 
individual to the social whole; and pride is the supreme negation 
of man's relationship to God. Conceived as a developing process,, 
sin begins in the slackening of love to God, and culminates in the 
supreme love of self. Hence, sloth is the first sin found within 
the "Inferno," and spiritual pride is punished in its lowest depth. 
Conversely, pride is the first sin expiated in Purgatory, because, 
nntil the self ceases to be supreme, there can be no return of the 
soul unto God. 

The first blessing of the Saviour of men is bestowed upon the 
poor in spirit. Humble receptivity is the condition of spiritual 
growth. The first mark of humility is, that it mourns its own de- 
fect ; the second is the meekness which bears lovingly defect in 
others. Out of the recognition of lack is born that hunger and 
thirst after righteousness which is the panting of the soul for its 
God, and mercy is the living sign of the indwelling life of God. 
To have God's life dwelling within us is to be like God, and hence 
able to see God ; and as God is Love, and Love is recognition and 
reconciliation, the vision of God makes the pure in heart the peace- 
makers of the world. 

The atmosphere in the circles of Licontinence is one of simple 
darkness, apt emblem of the soul whose light is darkened and at 
last extinguished by passion. The total darkening of the powers 
of the soul is the signal for the lighting of the flames of hell — 
symbols of a consciousness which through its own act has fixed 
itself in a state of permanent self-contradiction. 

Dante's description of the transition from the circle of the angry 
to the sixth circle, which is that of the heresiarchs, is most vivid. 
" In my ears a lamentation smote me, whereat I bent xn^ eyes in- 
tently forward. And the kind master said : ' ISTow, son, the city 
that is named of Dis draweth nigh, wath the heavy citizens, with 
the great company — ' 

" And I : ' Master, already I discern its mosques, distinctly there 
within the valley, red as if they had come out of a fire.' 

" And to me he said : ' The eternal fire that inward burns them 
shows them red as thou seest in this low hell.' 



Dante's '■'•InfernoP 135 

"And I: 'Master, what are those people who, buried within 
those chests, make themselves heard by their painful sighs? ' 

" And he to me : ' These are the arch-heretics with their follow- 
ers of every sect ; and much more than thou thinkest the tombs 
are laden. Like with like is buried here ; and the monuments 
are more and less hot.' " 

If the sins in the circles of Incontinence may be traced to the 
supremacy of self in the emotions, heresy may be defined as the 
manifestation of self-love in the intellect. Without an undue love 
of self a man cannot become a heretic. The perversion of thought 
is a direct outcome of a perverted state of feeling. It is the rec- 
ognition and assertion by the intellect of the distorted universe 
created out of sinful emotion. The man who persistently yields 
to his fleshly appetites must ultimately lose faith in his own higher 
powers. The man who lives only for the moment practically de- 
nies his immortality, and from the practical to the theoretic denial 
there is but a step. The man who acts as though God were not 
is travelling the high-road towards Atheism. 

The important point to be noticed in this connection is, that be- 
cause heresy is an outcome of sinful feeling it has in itself a sinful 
character. It is impossible to divorce what a man thinks from 
what he is, and it is because we have illogically asserted this sepa- 
ration that we have become as careless and inert in our own thought 
as we are lazily tolerant of the thought of others. Starting with 
the assumption that it makes no difference what we believe, we 
have come to believe in nothing. Ignoring our responsibilities, 
we have drifted into doubt of our power. The saddest sight in a 
sad world is this universal spectacle, of minds enslaved by their 
own ignorance and paralyzed by their own inactivity. The one 
thing in life which to the aroused soul seems worth doing is, to 
waken other souls from their death-like sleep ; and the wail of 
prophet and poet, of saint and Saviour is, that the eyes of mankind 
are blind, and their ears are waxed deaf. 

The circle of the heresiarchs is the transition from the sins of 
feeling to the sins of conscious will. To love self more than God 
is the sin of feeling. To see self instead of God is the sin of intel- 
lect. To create a world like the false self thus seen is the sin of the 
conscious will. Througliout all the spheres of sin, the common 
element is the abstraction of the individual from his relationships. 



136 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Lust is this abstraction in the rep^ion of feelins; ; Pride is this ab- 
straction in the sphere of intelligence. Theretbre the theologians 
teach that lust is the pride of the body, and pride is the lust of the 
soul; and Dante stigmatizes the rebellion of Lucifer as a " proud 
adultery." Finally, covetousness is abstract individualism in its 
relationship to material things ; man wanting all for himself re- 
fuses to recognize the equal claim of others to the good things of 
the earth. Li the very Urst canto of the " Inferno," Dante is con- 
fronted by these sins in the forms of the leopard, the lion, and the 
she-wolf ; and the other so-called cardinal sins, as well as the deeper 
wrongs which arise from their combination, are by him always 
traced directly to these fruitful germs. 

In the circle of the violent is shown man's conscious attempt to 
realize his abstract individualism as against his neighbor, against 
himself, and against his God. 

The violent against man are divided into two classes: those who 
attack life, and those who attack property ; and these two forms 
of violence are traced to their roots in anger and covetousness. 
" Fix thy eyes upon the valley,*' cries Virgil to his follower, " for 
the river of blood draweth nigh, in which boils every one who 
by violence injures others. O blind cupidity ! O foolish anger, 
which so incites us in the short life, and. then in the eternal, steeps 
us so bitterly." 

In tlie second division of the circle of the violent are found sin- 
ners who have done to themselves what those in the first division 
did to their neighbors, i. e., they have wasted their own substance 
and taken their own lives. That prodigality is covetousness 
turned against self has been already shown, and that suicide is the 
outcome of that pride whose first degree is spiritual sloth grows 
evident as we read the graphic recital of the fierce soul which, in 
its disdainful mood, thought to escape disdain by death. 

The sins punished in the third division of the circle of the vio- 
lent are even more obviously traceable to Pride, Lust, and Covet- 
ousnesj. Supine upon the burning sand, Capaneus shows us that 
his pride is still unquenehed ; while Jacopo Rusticucci and the 
unrecognizable usurers reveal to us, without need of comment, the 
genet 13 of their respective sins. 

In oi'der that we may rightly apprehend the nature of the sins 
of violence as well as those of treachery and fraud, we must have 



Dante^s "-Infernor 137 

a clear idea of the relationship of will to feeling and thought. 
"Will is that phase of the mind which objectities — it is the concrete 
unity of feeling and thought — that which at once creates and rec- 
ognizes its image. The corruption of the will is the corruption of 
man's total nature, and. its result must be negative to that activity 
and communion which we have throughout recognized as the 
marks of the divine. Relatively to society, it is the reduction of 
man to the abstract savagism of the Cyclops, " who neither planted 
nor ploughed, who had no laws and met in no councils, who 
dwelt alone in vaulted caves on mountain heights, and each man, 
holding no converse wdth others, devised apart his wicked deeds. 
Relatively to the individual, it is his reduction to the condition of 
Lucifer, a condition of ignorance, impotence, and absolute loneli- 
ness. He may flap his bat-like wings, but the only result of this 
vain activity is to fix him more firmly in his ice. 

In external correspondence to the total corruption of the souls 
in the circle of fraud, pestilence is added to darkness and flame. 
Here all the senses are assailed; the sight by murky air; the ear 
by lamentations " that have arrows shod with pity ; " the smell 
by- stench of putrid limbs ; the touch by hideous scurf ; and the 
taste by thirst that craves one little drop of water. And as we 
are repelled by these symbols of sin, so our souls are repelled from 
the panders and flatterers — the simonists, sorcerers, and peculators 
— the hypocrites, thieves, evil counsellors, schismatics, and falsifi- 
ers, who inhabit Malebolge. We find it hard to analyze their con- 
sciousness, for where corruption has become universal the distinc- 
tions of sin are lost. The root of theft, for instance, is certainly 
covetousness, but before covetousness issues in theft it has allied 
itself with all the other cardinal sins. The poison of sin has so 
spread within the soul that there can be left in it no power of 
normal action. Hence Yirgil blames Dante when he weeps over 
the sorcerers, exclaiming, " Art thou too like the other fools % — 
Who more impious than he that sorrows at God's judgment." 

The imagery of the last circle of the " Inferno " forciblj' suggests 
the selt-destruction which is the final outcome of selfishness. Lust 
has conceived and brought forth sin, and sin being finished brings 
forth death. Out of the sphere of darkness into the sphere of fire 
— out of the region of fire into a region of fire and blood — out of 
this into the loathsome pit of fraud, where pestilence is added to 



138 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 

tlie darkness and the flame, and finally down from the pit of fraud 
towards frozen Cocytus, wherein are fixed the spirits of those who 
have committed the supreme sin of treachery. 

Formed by the union of all the rivers of hell, Cocytns stap;nates 
because there is no lower depth towards which it can flow. Upon 
its frozen surface stand the giants. Nimrod, a dull and confused 
spirit, speaks a language no man can understand, and all other 
languages are incomprehensible to him, Ephialtes " has his right 
arm pinioned down behind and the other before, and a chain holds 
him clasped from the neck downwards." The sinners, immovable 
in the ice, have power only to weep, and as the tears gush from 
their lids they freeze, and this closes their eyes. The only other 
activities mentioned are butting, champing of the teeth, and the 
flapping of Lucifer's wings, which makes the winds that freeze 
Cocytus. 

Sin has done its work ! Made for combination with his fellows, 
each man through sin has isolated himself from all others. Made 
for activity, he has lost all power to act. The indulgence, the as- 
sertion, and the corruption of self, have issued in self-destruction. 
" Lo Dis, and lo the place where it behooves us arm ourselves with 
fortitude." 

It may be asked, if this view of sin be true, what hope can there 
be for sinful man ? If the logical movement of sin is not towards 
good but towards greater evil, how can the efiect of even a single 
sin be undone ? The answer to this question we shall find in the 
study of the " Purgatorio," Meanwhile let us carry from the " In- 
ferno " the assurance that not until the Ethiopian changes his skin 
and the leopard his spots can he do good that is accustomed to do- 
evil. 



THE MORAL CREATIYENESS OF MAK 



BY FRANCIS ELLINGWOOD ABBOT. 



It is a well-recognized principle, since Kant, that the human 
mind energizes in three fundamentally distinct ways : namely, 
thinking, feeling, and willing. No analysis has yet succeeded in 
reducing these three modes of consciousness to one, or in discov- 



The Moral Creativeness of Man. 139 

ering a more primitive mode of which they are derivatives in 
common. But it by no means follows that they can exist sepa- 
rately. On the contrary, it is more than probable that they can 
only exist in inseparable combination. A " state of conscious- 
ness," instead of being (as is sometimes strangely imagined) a 
simple or ultimate phenomenon, is complex to the last degree — a 
compound of psychical elements so numerous as to baffle all at- 
tempts at exhaustive specification, a resultant of forces so numer- 
ous and so subtile as to extinguish even the hope of exact or 
complete comprehension. It would take the whole past of the 
whole universe to explain fully the most insigniiicant fact of the 
present, even in the physical order of things — much more to ex- 
plain fully a fact of the psychical order, involving, as it must, a 
world of phenomena beyond the range of physical investigation. 
So far is a "state of consciousness " from being a simple fact, that 
the entirety of human knowledge, by the confession of every com- 
petent student, is insufficient to explain it. Only the dogmatic 
sciolist will for a moment imagine the contrary. 

Nevertheless, all the innumerable currents, counter-currents, 
and under-currents, which constitute at any given moment what is 
called the " stream of consciousness," are made up of three great 
classes of elements which, like the so-called elements of chemis- 
try, must be regarded as, at least provisionally, and for us, ulti- 
mate. Every " state of consciousness " is composed, in constantly 
varying proportions, of thoughts, feelings, and volitions ; thought 
may predominate, feeling may predominate, volition may pre- 
dominate, but each of the other two can always be detected by 
close observation and analysis as concurrently active. Each is a 
permanent and constitutive element of human consciousness, and 
the coexistence of the three elements is as essential to conscious- 
ness as the coexistence of three sides is essential to a triano-le. 

To a greater or less degree, therefore, volition enters into every 
conscious state ; and it is owing to this fact that man is, by the 
primal necessities of his nature, a moral being. The provinces of 
volition and of morality are identical, or, at least, coterminous. 
A being purely intelligent, or purely sentient, or intelligent and 
sentient without being also volitional, would be a non-moral be- 
ing; and if man could, at any moment or for any period, be 
purely intelligent, or purely sentient, or intelligent and sentient 



J 40 The Journal of Speoulative Philosophy. 

without being also volitional, he, too, would be, for that moment 
or period, a non-moral being. It is precisely because man's vo- 
litional or moral activity never absolutely ceases or slumbers, so 
long as his consciousness continues, that he can never escape from 
the domain of moral law — that his most secret thonghts and feel- 
ings are accompanied by a volitional activity which stamps upon 
them all a definite moral character. And it is precisely because 
the fact of morality is thus indissolnbly bound up with the fact of 
volition, as a permanent part of human nature, and a permanent 
factor of human consciousness, that philosophy has never escaped, 
and never will escape, the necessity of arriving at some solution of 
the ancient problem of "fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute.'' 

Deeply imbedded in this fact of the indissoluble connection of 
morality and volition lies the reason why mankind never have 
been, nor can be, long satisfied with a purely mechanical philoso- 
phy of human nature. It is the very essence of man to be a vo- 
litional and moral being ; it is the very essence of a machine to 
be non-volitional and non-moral. The two concepts are absolutely 
incompatible, and cannot possibly be united in a seeming syn- 
thesis without a lurking self-contradiction, which inevitably, and 
soon, develops a distinct protest in the philosophical consciousness. 
No amount of ingenuity, subtilty, or genius can long succeed in 
rendering such a synthesis plausible. Precisely in proportion to 
the depth and strength of the moral consciousness in any epoch, 
"and precisely in proportion to the degree in which the philosoph- 
ical consciousness is sutfused and permeated by it, will be the 
strength of the ultimate philosophical reaction against mechanical 
psychology in all its forms. It avails nothing to misrepresent 
this reaction as rooted in, or animated by, the spirit of an obsolete 
theology ; its real root is the fact that mechanical psychology is 
vitiated at the y^x^ core by this unscientific and irreconcilable 
contradiction in its fundamental concepts. It is a proof neither 
of bigotry, nor of superstition, nor of " animism," but rather of 
genuine philosophical acumen, to maintain the utter repugnance 
of two such notions as those of humanity and mechanism ; it is a 
proof of scientific incapacity and obtuseness not to discern the 
necessity of founding psychology on concepts which shall at least 
forbear to devour each other. 

True it is that the speculative tendency of which La Mettrie's 



The Moral Creativeness of Man. 141 

" L'llorame Machine " is perhaps the boldest exponent has as- 
serted itself in recent times with great energy, and may to many 
seem to be acquiring a permanent ascendancy. Such a view of 
the case, however, appears superticial to all who can distinguish 
between the spirit of the age and the spirit of the ages. The 
mechanical psychology is the natural product of a period of 
Avhich the most striking characteristic is the almost miraculous 
growth of the mechanical and physical sciences ; it marks the 
first attempts of scientific method, inevitably crude as they must 
be, to assert its rightful dominion in studies from Avhich it had 
been jealously and arbitrarily excluded by the spirit of ecclesiasti- 
cism, and in which these first crude attempts should be regarded 
as the somewhat noisy precursors of soberer and more valuable 
investigations in the future. Science, in any large or full mean- 
ing of the term, is still in its infancy. It is scarcely too severe to 
describe it, so far as psychology, sociology, and ethics are con- 
cerned, as still beins: in the immature or chaotic stag-e of its ca- 
reer. The corrective of the crudities which now make many 
otherwise able scientific men incline to a mechanical view of 
man's entire nature must and will come, not at all from external 
opposition on the part of theological or other non-scientific an- 
tagonists, but rather from the further development of science 
itself — from a thoroughly scientific discrimination between those 
facts of human nature that can be mechanically explained and 
those facts of human nature that do not admit of mechanical ex- 
planation. 

Darwin has permanently changed the whole course of human 
thought in these matters. That the theory of evolution has come 
to stay, and to constitute the foundation of all future theories of 
the universe, can be doubted by no one who knows the irresistible 
strength of the facts and arguments by which it is established. 
But whether evolution itself is to receive finally a mechanical or 
teleological interpretation is an issue not yet decided. Herbert 
Spencer, and Ernst Haeckel, with a boldness, cogency, and consist- 
ency far superior to Spencer's, advocate the mechanical view of 
evolution ; but multitudes of keen and thoughtful minds are com- 
ing to see that this view overlooks numerous facts of the highest 
importance that refuse to be ignored or crowded out of sight. Un- 
questionably the ancient teleology, as represented by Paley, is 



142 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

outgrown by the modern naind, largely for the very reason that 
it exhibits so fragmentary, artiiicial, and mechanical a character, 
and rests wholly on the old dualism of natural and supernatural ; 
while the monistic teleology, latent in the very concept of evolu- 
tion itself, has not as yet been anywhere adequately developed. 
Meanwhile the necessity of a deeper philosophical reading of the 
facts which pertain to man's moral nature is slowly but surely be- 
coming felt more profoundly every year. The spirit of the age 
may possibly, as is claimed, be satisfied with mechanical psychol- 
ogy ; but the spirit of the ages, which is both older and younger, 
is certain to assert its supremacy once more in the elFort to bring 
all human experience into order, correlation, and harmony with 
this boundless cosmos. The ethical interest survives, undestroyed 
and indestructible ; and every attempt to construct a science of 
■ethics out of mechanical — that is, essentially non-ethical — ^elements 
is from its very inception foredoomed to failure. 

It is a noteworthy fact that the only two Americans who have 
thus far greatly distinguished themselves by a powerful original- 
ity in the field of speculative philosophy — Jonathan Edwards and 
Rowland G. Hazard — have both busied themselves in the main 
with the same great problem of necessity or freedom in volition.^ 
It is another fact, less patent but equally noteworthy, that this 
problem is the speculative side of the great practical struggle 
which has giveu to America its special significance in the history 
of mankind — the struggle to realize the ideal of constitutional lib- 
erty in political institutions, to reconcile individual freedom with 
national unity in a great political society founded on the legal 
recognition of equal individual rights. This is essentially an ethi- 
cal conception, and one of the highest order, Edwards defended 
the doctrine of necessity in ethics, out of devotion to the theologi- 
cal doctrine of the unlimited Divine sovereignty, which from time 
immemorial has been the foundation of political absolutism " by 
the grace of God " ; Dr. Hazard defends the doctrine of freedom 

' Ralph Waldo Emerson, confessedly the greatest name in American literature, is 
not here included, because, though he is often popularly and loosely styled a " philoso- 
pher," that is exactly what he was not. He was litterateur, essayist, moralist, seen 
preacher, poet, prophet — anything but " philosopher," to whom logical concatenation 
systematic construction, and comprehensive unity of form, are the very law of his being 
Unsurpassed as Emerson's writings are in other respects, those are the very qualities 
which are most conspicuously absent in them. 



The Moral Creativeness of Man. 143 

in ethics, out of devotion to the modern doctrine of the limited 
self-sovereigntj of man, which is the only possible foundation of 
instituted political freedom. Freedom in ethics is the thought- 
side of freedom in politics ; the latter logically presupposes the 
former. It is apparent, then, that Dr. Hazard's philosophy is 
rooted in the soil, and interprets his country to the world ; while 
that of Edwards was rooted in Calvinism, and, if politically real- 
ized, would have made his country an impossibility. 

The connection ot ethics and politics, so curiously illustrated in 
this instance, is no fanciful analogy, but a truth abundantly rec- 
ognized in philosophy and exemplified in history. Ethics may be 
defined as the science of self-government by man as an individual, 
and politics as the science of self-government by man as a society 
of individuals ; they are but two subdivisions of one and the 
same future science of human self-government, or anthro'ponoTny^ 
founded throughout on the same principle of individual moral 
freedom under universal moral law. The popular conception and 
practice of politics as the empirical administration of states in the 
interest of partisan or even personal self-aggrandizement reveal 
clearly the small progress yet made in the moral education of the 
race. In the present state of opinion, ethical law and political 
action have little, if anything, to do with each other ; but, if the 
evolution of human society is to continue in the future as it has 
done in the past, the time must yet come when man, as a free 
moral being, will govern himself both individually and politically 
by the ethical idea, and recognize the binding force of justice 
in the action of nations no less than in that of persons. In fact, 
the moral creativeness of man, which Dr. Hazard has so ably 
vindicated with reference to the formation of personal character, 
is just as forcibly illustrated in the institutions, laws, and customs 
of communities as in the characters of individuals. No treatment 
of ethics can be thorough or complete which omits to consider the 
action of the individual as a member of the politico-moral commu- 
nity, or which fails to emphasize the oneness of the law that should 
govern man's conduct both as an individnal and as a social being, 
or which is so narrowed in scope by the spirit of individualism as 
not to teach that customs, laws, and institutions incorporate the 
aggregate conscience of the community, just as indisputably as 
words and deeds incorporate the personal conscience of the indi- 



144: The Journal of Sj)eGulatlve Pliilosophy. 

vidiial. In brief, man is by nature a social being, and politics 
ou<»'lit to mean the ethics of society.^ 

It is from this consideration of the profound identity of ethics 
and politics, and from tlie entire confluence of his ethical specula- 
tions with the deepest currents of American thought, feeling, and 
life, that we regard Dr. Hazard, notvvirhstanding the eminence of 
his great Puritan predecessor, as having laid the ilrst foundations 
of a distinctively American philosophy. The venerable octogena- 
rian thinker himself makes no such pretension and entertains no 
such ambition ; but the " extraordinary ability " and " philosophical 
talents of a very high order " which were recognized in his works 
by the " Korth American Review " of October, 1869, in an elabo- 
rate review of them b}' no less competent a critic than Professor 
George P. Fisher, have not escaped the admiring recognition of 
others, and can scarcely fail to command in time the attention, the 
wide-spread study, and the ultimate inflnence they deserve. Dr. 
Channing, in his lecture on " Self-Culture," thus alludes to Dr. Haz- 
ard's earliest published paper, the " Essay on Language," published 
in 1835, and republished and edited with other papers in 1857, by 
Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody : " I have known a man of vigorous 
intellect, who had enjoyed few advantages of early education, and 
whose mind was almost engrossed by the details of an extensive 
business, who composed a book of much original thought, in steam- 
boats and on horseback, while visiting distant customers." It was, 
in fact, in large measure owing to the urgency of Dr. Channing, 
who greatly desired to see an adequate reply to Edwards's argu- 
ments against freedom, that Dr. Hazard undertook the composi- 
tion of his "Freedom of Mind in Willing," though the completed 
work (D. Appleton & Co., 1864) was not published till many years 
after Dr. Channing's death. The speculations of John Stuart 
Mill, who, though dissenting from his metaphysical views, ex- 
pressed great respect for Dr. Hazard's financial and metaphysical 
writings, occasioned the publication of a later book (Lee & Shep- 
ard, 1869), entitled '' Two Letters on Causation and Freedom in 
Willing, addressed to John Stuart Mill." These two books con- 
tain the fullest and most elaborate statement of Dr. Hazard's 



' How profoundly Dr. Hazard has always recognized this great truth appears con- 
spicuously in his noble lecture on the " Causes of the Decline of Political Morality," as 
contained in his " Essay on Language, and other Papers." Boston, 1857. 



The Moral Creativeness of Man. 145 

system. But he has just published a new book entitled, "Man a 
Creative First Cause" (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1883), which 
contains two lectures recently delivered, and presents a general 
summary of his thought in a beautiful, interesting, and winning 
manner. 

It is not our present object either to epitomize, analyze, or criti- 
cise these various writings, but simply to call attention to them, 
in the hope that thoughtful readers may procure and study them 
for themselves, as the most original and remarkable contribution 
to philosophy yet made in this country. Dr. Hazard's want of 
familiarity with the history of philosophy is in many respects a 
disadvantage; yet it is a great advantage, also, in so far as it has 
protected him from the danger of allowing his rare genius to be 
suffocated under a mass of mere erudition, or to be diverted into 
the channel of mere criticism or reproduction. Too much study 
of what other men have written, no less than too little study of it, 
has its own peculiar peril ; excess of discipleship and defect of 
that self-reliance which is the inexorable condition of profound 
original insight have thus far made America a follower, not a 
leader, in philosophy. Equally removed fi-om servile imitation 
and conceited self-assertion, the shining merit of Dr. Hazard's 
thinking is, that he has serenely trusted his own soul — wrestled 
indomitably at first hand with one of the most difficult problems 
of philosophy — meditated, pondered, and mused, with eye lixed 
steadily on his subject rather than on what men have written 
about it ; and finally wrought out results which only flippant in- 
capacity will despise. It is not necessary to accept all these re- 
sults in order to appreciate their value ; we certainly do not accept 
them all : it is enough to recognize the freshness of his point of 
view, the delicacy and subtilty of his analysis, the force and acute- 
ness of his reasoning, the general purity and beauty of his style, 
and, above all, the moral dignity and elevation of his spirit. The 
one central purpose of his thought is the vindication oi freedom^ 
as the essential condition and necessary logical presupposition of 
all morality, whether in theory or in practice ; and it is safe to say 
that mechanical psychology will never permanently establish itself 
as scientifically true until it has first reckoned with Dr. Hazard — ■ 
first understood, and then on the same high plane satisfactorily 
offset, the weighty moral considerations adduced in support of his 
XYIII— I'o 



146 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

position. It is in our opinion ]iii2;lily probable that even his quali- 
fied BerJceleianism Mall fail to receive the sanction of the philoso- 
phy of the future; but this is unnecessary to his main argument, 
as he himself explicitly admits, and wo cannot regard it as other- 
wise than an excrescence upon the ethical theory with which it is 
associated. Waiving this point, however, as unsuitable for dis- 
cussion at present, we quote the following terse summary of his 
doctrine from " Man a Creative First Cause " (pp. 92 et sqq.) : 

" We have now endeavored to show that the only efficient cause, of 
which we have any real knowledge, is mind in action, and that there can- 
not he any unintelligent cause whatever. 

"That every being endowed with knowledge, feeling, and volition is, 
in virtue of these attributes, a self-active, independent power, and, in a 
sphere which is commensurate with its knowledge, a creative tirst cause 
therein, freely exerting its powers to modify the future, and make it differ- 
ent from what it would otherwise be ; and that the future is always the 
composite result of the action of all such intelligent creative beings. 

"That in this process of creating the future, every such conative being, 
from the highest to the lowest, acts with equal and perfect freedom, 
though each one, by its power to change the conditions to be acted upon, 
or rather, by such change of the conditions or otherwise, to change the 
knowledge of all others, may influence the free action of any or all of 
them, and thus cause such free action of others to be different from what, 
but for his own action, it would have been. 

" That every such being has innately the ability to will, i. e., make 
effort, which is self-acting ; and also the knowledge that by effort it can 
put in action the powers by which it produces change within or without 
itself 

" That the only conceivable inducement or motive of such being to 
■effort is, a desire — a want — to modify the future ; for the gratification of 
which it directs its effort by means of its knowledge. 

" That when such being so directs its effort by means of its innate 
knowledge, it is what is called an instinctive effort, but is still a self- 
directed and consequently ?ifree effort. 

" That when the mode or plan of action is devised by itself, by its own 
preliminary effort, it is a rational action. 

" That when, instead of devising a plan for the occasion, we through 
memory adopt one which we have previously formed, we have the distin- 
guishing characteristic of habitual action. 

" In the instinctive and habitual we act promptly from a plan ready- 



TJie Moral Greativeness of Man. 147 

formed in the mind, requiring no premeditation as to the mode or plan of 
action. But in all cases our effort is incited by our want, and directed by- 
means of our knowledge, to the desired end, which, whatever the particu- 
lar exciting want, is always in some way to affect the future. In oar 
efforts to do this in the sphere external to us, which is the common arena 
of all intelligent activity, we are liable to be more or less counteracted or 
frustrated by the efforts of others. In it man is a coworker with God 
and with all other conative beings, and in it can influence the actual flow 
of events only in a degree somewhat proportioned to his limited power 
and knowledge. 

" But that in the sphere of man's own moral nature the effort is itself 
the consummation of his creative conceptions, and hence in this sphere 
man is a supreme creative first cause, limited in the effects he may there 
produce only by that limit of his knowledge by which his creative pre- 
conceptions are circumscribed. 

" And further that, as a man directs his act by means of his knowledge, 
and can morally err only by knowingly willing what is wrong, his knowl- 
edge as to this is infallible ; and, as his willing is his own free act, an act 
which no other being or power can do for him, he is in the sphere of his 
moral nature a sole creative cause, solely responsible for his action in it. 

" His only possible wrong is in his freely willing counter to his knowl- 
edge of right. He must have known the wrong at the time he willed, or 
it would not be a moral wrong. Hence the knowledge by which he di- 
rects his acts of will is here as infallible as that of omniscience ; and, his 
power to will within the limits of his knowledge being unlimited, he can- 
not excuse himself on the ground of his own fallible nature, but is fully 
and solely responsible for all the wrong he intended, or which he foresaw 
and might by right action have prevented. Conversely, a rightful action 
indicates no virtue beyond the knowledge and intent of the actor. The 
failure to make an effort demanded by his convictions of right is in itself 
a wronof. That, in the domain of his own moral nature, man is thus su- 
preme, indicates it as his especial sphere of activity. Ages of successful 
effort in the material has been the preparation for its successful occupa- 
tion, and we may reasonably expect that the advance into the more ethe- 
real realm of the spiritual will be marked by the sublimest efforts of jxire 
and lofty thoughts, and that the results of it will be the crowning glory 
of all utility." 

Dr. Hazard's central position is thus : that freedom is the essen- 
tial prerequisite of man's moral creativeness. "Whatever opinion 
may be held on subordinate points, this central position must re- 
main impregnable so long as man's moral consciousness survives ; 



148 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

that is, so \ox\^ as lie is conscious of being in any degree tlie 
C7'eator of bis own moral character and action, 'i'lie tbeorv of 
evolution cannot possibly expunge this fact from his conscious- 
ness, or destroy the indestructible connection between morality 
and freedom. Neither mechanical philosophy, nor mechanical 
psychology, can ever become scientifically established, as true to 
all the facts of Nature, until it has succeeded in reconciling the 
two irreconcilable concepts of morality and mechanism. Be the 
prevalent opinion of the day what it may, far-seeing philosophers 
will continue to regard it as a mere ephemeral fashion of the time, 
until it shall have effected a genuine rational synthesis of all 
known facts, moral no less than mechanical; and there is no fact 
more certain than the fact that man is, in no merely mechanical 
sense, the real author of his own action. That man's whole being 
has been derived, in an orderly and natural manner, from the uni- 
verse as a whole, it is the great achievement of the evolution 
theory to have established beyond a reasonable doubt; but that, 
in the course of this orderly and natural evolution, he has at last 
attained to a genuine moral freedom, and won the high dignity 
and pi-erogative of a genuine moral creativeness — this is the older 
insight whicli Dr. Hazard has vindicated afresh in an age that 
was in danger of forgetting it. 

In the last analysis, every denial of moral freedom is found to 
rest on a misstatement of the law of cause and effect. Necessa- 
rianism plays many variations, but the theme is ever the same. 
"Every event has a cause; every volition is an event: therefore 
every volition has a cause." Admitted ; but does it follow that 
volition is also not free? There are events and events: the ques- 
tion is whether a volition is an event of the same order as the mo- 
tion of a billiard-ball, and has a cause of the same order. The 
unwarranted assumption that volition and motion are events of the 
same order, and must have causes of the same order, has led to the 
invention of that "question-begging epithet" motive. The meta- 
phor confounds fundamentally unlike and incongruous things. 
Instead of saying, "Every event has a cause," it should rather be 
said, "Every motion has an efficient cause, and every volition has 
a final cause."* To assume that volition has an etficient cause is 



* This idea tliat volition has only a final cause, though expressed in different terms, 
pervades all Dr. Hazard's works upon the subject. It is implied in the title of his first 



The Moral Creativeness of Man. 149 

at once to put it into the category of motion, and to solve the 
gravest problem of anthropology, after the Gordian-knot fashion, 
by begging the question. It is not science that makes this assump- 
tion. Every competent physiologist admits that, be the correla- 
tion of physical and psychical events never so close and constant, 
the real relation of physical motion and psychical chatige has not 
yet been discovered, and that it is mere dogmatism to treat one as the 
efficient cause of the other. Against such a procedure there is 
one objection, grounded on the very correlation of physical forces, 
which has never yet been satisfactorily answered. In every event 
of the physical order, the entirety of antecedent motion is con- 
verted into subsecpient motion ; none of it is lost as motion ; it 
must all be accounted for physically as motion ; no intinitesimal 
fraction of it can be shown to have been converted into psychical 
change. The chain of molar or molecular motions is complete in 
itself and infrangible; no conversion of motion into volition is 
even conceivable, much less demonstrable ; and it cannot be as- 
sumed, without also assuming that that part of the motion which 
has been converted into volition, being subtracted from the total 
antecedent motion, and therefore not appearing in the total subse- 
quent motion, has altogether vanished out of the physical order in 
transitu, and destroyed that quantitative equation of the two mo- 
tions which the theory itself requires. Such an assumption as 
this, therefore, can only be made by violating the principle on 
which it professes to rest. The term motive has, in fact, no prop- 
er place in the discussion of freedom, being irremediably a " ques- 
tion-begging epithet " ; it does not denote a true cause of volition 
in any other sense than that of final cause, purpose, or end ; and 



work, " Freadom of Mind iu Willing, or Every Bsing that Wills a Creative First Cause,' 
and also in his last, " Man a Creative First Cause " — " First Cause " being used by him as 
" a cause which can act without being previously acted upon." 

He holds that intelligence in action is the only efficient cause ; that the mind is not 
moved to action by any propulsion in the past, but by its own perception of a reason for 
making an effort to gratify a recognized existing want. And that it directs its effort to 
this end by means of its own knowledge, including as an essential element its perception 
of the future effect of its effort ; and as we cannot change the past nor make the present 
different from what it already is, the only conceivable object of effort — the only motive 
— is to make the future different from what it otherwise would be. (" Freedom of Will- 
ing," pp. 69, 239, 246, 256, 357 ; " Letters to John Stuart Mill on Causation," etc., pp. 
22, 56, fl, p. 99, 122; "Man a Creative First Cause," gg5 and 6.) 



150 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

the law of causation sliould be so construed as to correspond with 
the facts. 

Since, tlien, motion and volition constitute two mutually irre- 
ducible phenomena, two phenomena wliieli are fundamentally 
iinlilvc in kind, it is plainly the worst possible reasoning to con- 
found them under a common term, event, and by the use of it, as 
an "undistributed middle," to infer that volition, no less than 
motion, must have an efficient cause. So put, the law of causa- 
tion is a mere bugbear, a scientific blunder, a half-truth that is 
the vrorst of falsities. " But must not every event have a cause ? " 
Assui'edly ; but not in the same sense. Every motion has an effi- 
cient cause, and every volition has a final cause — that is the law 
of causation so stated as not to lose sight of an ineradicable dis- 
tinction between things that differ, and not to deny a fact as cer- 
tain as the revolution of the earth round the sun — namelv, that 
fact in the world of human experience which Emerson aptly 
named the " sovereignty of ethics." Yolition, to be volition, 
must be free from efficient causation ; it can have no cause but a 
final cause. Such freedom as that is the foundation of all ethical 
distinctions. A volition is the act, or effort to act, of the being 
that wills — an original activity M'ithout which he would cease to 
be a moral being and become a thing. If it is conceived as the 
necessary effect of a chain of antecedent causes stretching back- 
wards into an illimitable past (and it must be so conceived if it is 
efficiently caused), it is then conceived, not as an act of the l»eing 
that wills, but as an act of the universe itself in all its infinitude. 
Under such a conception of volition, there is no place for that of 
personality as given in human experience, above all, in social ex- 
perience. A person is a being that, within certain limits, freely 
governs its own activity by tinal causes, purposes, or ends, and 
that is not governed by efficient causes ; the free formation and 
free execution of purposes is the essential characteristic of per- 
sonality. Society is but a community of persons, whose aggre- 
gate activity is but the resultant of their mutually co-operative or 
mutually neutralizing individual activities. Ethics, politics, polit- 
ical economy, jurisprudence, sociology — these all rtre sciences^ 
every whit as genuine as, though relatively less developed than^ 
the various physical sciences ; yet they all depend unconditionally 
on the existence of persons, as volitional or moral beings. And 



The Moral Creativeness of Man. 151 

the condition of all moral personality is freedom from efficient 
causation. 

!N"otice that it is in the name of science, not in the name of any 
actual or ideal religious system, that the postulate of moral free- 
dom is here treated as established by human experience itself. In 
all its forms, v/hether permanent, obsolescent, or nascent, religion 
is here left out of the account ; the claim now made is that natu- 
ral science, in its higher (though relatively immature) depart- 
ments, is impossible without that postulate. Every science neces- 
sarily starts with certain necessary presuppositions ; and, just as 
geometry starts with the given existence of points, lines, surfaces, 
and solids, ethics must start witli the given existence of persons 
with free volitions. No appeal is here made to the alleged direct 
testimony of individual consciousness to the existence of freedom ; 
the whole case is now I'ested on the moral creativeness of indi- 
vidual and generic man, as an observed objective fact of which 
no scientific explanation can be given unless the fact of free voli- 
tion is conceded. That is no scientific explanation which begins 
by denying the fact to be explained ; and no ethical system has 
any claim to be considered scientific, if it begins by denying or 
ignoring the only ethical quality in human action. It is precisely 
here that the future battle-field between the mechanical and eth- 
ical theories of evolution is unmistakably discernible. Freedom, 
personality, personal responsibility, moral creativeness — these are 
not only the fundamental concepts of ethics, but also the most 
incontestable facts of human life, whether in its individual or so- 
cial aspect. The problem of the evolution philosophy is to show 
how, out of elements which apparently comprised only the imper- 
sonal, the non-moral, the unfree, personality and morality and 
freedom have gradually arisen. The mechanical theory of evolu- 
tion virtually argues that this evolution has not taken place at all, 
and that, since the original elements manifest only mechanical or 
efficient causes, the ultimate product also must be mechanical only ; 
while the ethical theory of evolution argues that, since person- 
ality and morality and freedom are patent in the ultimate product, 
they must have been latent in the original elements, as immanent 
cosmical purpose, end, or final cause. This is the issue yet to be 
decided, now that evolution in some form has become a foregone 
conclusion among all who have followed the course of modern 



152 The Journal of Speculative PliVoKophy. 

tlion.o;lit. Of course, if tlie niecluinical theory is true, it will over- 
ride all opposition in the end ; but among the loijical and nlti- 
matelj historical results of its victory will b^^ the <2;radual extinc- 
tion of all moral ideals based on belief in hiiinan freedom, the 
gradual cessation of all efforts to realize them, the gradual decay 
of all sentiments which they have created, and the gradual for- 
mation of a habit of mind which will contemplate all human 
actions as intrinsically equal in point of ethical quality, since they 
are all alike inevitable effects of irresistible causes. Such a result 
would be the reversal, not the continuation, of the process of 
moral evolution exhibited l»y history; and for that reasiui it 
throws suspicion, to say the least, on the mechanical theory itself. 
Only that theory of evolution can finally prevail which shall faith- 
fully follow out the lin.e of evolution already marked out in the 
history of the past; and this, we be'ieve, will be the theory which 
fully recognizes and explains the supreme fact of all history — the 
moral creativeness of man. 



FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS.^ 

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OP J. G. FICIITE BY A. E. KROEGER. 

Chapter V. 

THE CONTEMPLATION OF GOD AS THE PRINCIPLE OF THE MORAL LAW, 

OR OF THE FINAL END. 

"We have seen that life, in its form, as a mere inner self-deter- 
mination and self-activity, is by no means absolute, but exists 
for the sake of something else, namely, in order tliat the Hnal 
end may be contemplated. In its essence it is not life in this its 
mere form, but visibility of the final end. As such it appears in 



' This article completes the translation of Fichte's "Facts of Consciousness," long 
since begun in this Journal. It includes tlie lectures given by Fichte at the University 
of Berlin during the winter semester of 1810-11. The entire work is now to be found 
in the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy": Vol. Y, pp. 53, 130, 226, 338 ; Vol. VI, 
pp. 42, 120, 332 ; Vol. VII, January, p. 36 ; Vol. XVII, pp. 130, 263 ; Vol. XVIII, p. 



Facts of Consciousness. 153 

two simultaneously existing and mutually each-otber-conditioning 
forms: in the general form as a nature determined by the linal 
end, which as an eternal nature creates by virtue of that same de- 
termination an infinite series of worlds; and second, in the indi- 
vidual form as absolute freedom determined by the same linal end. 
Hence we find in each individual natural impulses, moral deter- 
ininateness, and — floating between both — absolute freedom, which 
can arise by its own actual annihilation into a Holy Will, through 
means of which Will the individual form in its determinateness — 
that is, the sum of all individuals — survives the destruction of all 
possible worlds. 

Now, we have above expressed a doubt which very readily as- 
sails any attentive thinking, that this final end itself, which we 
have constituted our supreme principle for the present, may also 
not be absolute. Should this suspicion be confirmed, we should 
have to consider factical Being also — in analogy with the previous 
-■ — as being itself only the visibility of another and higher Being, 
of which Being formal life would now also become the visibility, 
namely, mediately and through it as the connecting link. 

Let us, therefore, proceed to investigate whether the final end 
is absolute, or, if it is not absolute, wdiat may be its ground, and 
what may become visible through it. I am inclined to think that 
it will be found to be the Being of formal life itself, and shall first 
explain here the conception of Being as taken here for the first 
time in all its strictness. I call beins: that which never becomes 
and never has become, and of which one can absolutely say nothing 
else than. It is. 

^NTow, I speak here of the Being of Life, that is, of an absolute 
Becoming, a Being which in its formal essence is only a Becoming, 
and never real Being. To connect real Being with such an abso- 
lute Becoming signifies : this Being itself is in all this infinite Be- 
coming. It is, and does not become ; it takes no part at all in the 
change. It is, therefore, that which remains one and the same 
throughout all the change. This unity and immovable perma- 
nence is not its characteristic, in point of fact, as Being, but only 
as the opposite of Change. 

Let it be well noted : I do not say that as Being it carries 
within itself non-permanence and Change, which would be non- 
sense, but simply that without this opposite of a Change the predi- 



154 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

catcs of permanent being and non-cliange would not at all be pos- 
sible — an infinite and on no account a negative proposition. It is 
not Being M'liich follows from the unitv, but the unitv fullows, in 
opposition to the Becoming as a Change, from Being. 

Let us examine this rehition of contemplation quite closely. 
Formal life, we have said, is an absolute Becoming. Now, if you 
try to think such an absolute Becoming, you must give to this Be- 
coming a certain time of duration, however short, in order to irive 
to contemplation its absolutely necessary fixity ; for otherwise the 
Becoming will dissolve before you into nothingness, and you will 
have thouo>ht nothino;. 

But this is already against our agreement and a contradiction; 
for you were called upon to think an absolute Becoming. But 
duration is a stopping of the Becoming, and hence its negation. 
Let us, however, release you from this task, since otherwise the 
thought required would never be reached. 

Now, this Becoming, to which you, in violation of our agree- 
ment, have allowed a moment's duration, is pushed aside and an- 
nihilated by a new absolute Becoming, emer«;ino; altogether out 
of nothingness, and hence having no connection with the former 
Becoming. Under these conditions, however, there is no internal 
unity at all in the presupposed life, and we do not think the Life, 
but infinitely different lives. That which alone brings unity and 
duration into Being is its life; audit appears clearly how, with- 
out this presupposition, life cannot be contemplated at all, either 
in general or as the Life. 

Result; The presupposition of an absolute Being in Life, as we 
have ju?t now described this Being, is condition of the contempla- 
tability of life. 

Now, this just described Being is the same which we have 
heretofore called the final end. 

All Becoming, all manifestation of life, has the duration neces- 
Bary for its mere contemplatability only in so far as it is a Becoming 
of the Being, whether immediately, or throngli mediation, and 
hence, whether in the moral or in the mere sensuous form, makes 
no difference here. This Being is, therefore, the real sulistance of 
ths Becoming, or of the deed in the Acting. But now life is in 
its form an absolute Becoming. Ilence this Being in its manifes- 
tation exists for all eternitv only in the Becomino; and never in 



Facts of Consciousness. 155 

factical Beino;. In factical Beinoj it could appear only at the end 
of all life. But life desires to manifest its Being in every one of 
its manifestations. The fact that this becomes no actual Being is 
explained by the infinitely continuing Becoming, which is required 
by the form of actuality. Being, therefore, as a real being, is the 
purpose and intention of the appearance, and the only, uncondi- 
tioned, and infinite purpo?e : hence the final end. 

Result : The Being of Life, which must be posited as its ground, 
becomes the final end only in its synthesis with the Becoming, as 
the form of life. Outside of this synthesis and beyond that form, 
we cannot even speak of a final end, but only of a Being. The 
final end is, therefore, the manifestation of Being in the Becoming 
■ — in order to make that Being visible ; hence it is mediately visi- 
bility of the Being of Life — precisely what we supposed it to be. 

ItEisrARK : Being of Freedom and Morality are altogether one 
and the same. (We may also say : Being of Life, provided we 
take the word in its most pregnant sense, as signifying absolute 
Being, beyond all Becoming, and provided we do not make it sig- 
nify the mere factical being of the appearance.) 

But the further question is : What is this Being of life, and can 
it be further determined ? I say : Yes ! and in the following man- 
ner: The formal part of life is the mere self-determination to 
he a Becoming. This self-deternnnation, therefore, adds nothing 
more to Being than that which follows from this form: the per- 
ishability of the particular, and the infinite progress. But that 
which really is permanent in the manifestation, and remains per- 
manent throughout the wliole infinite series, is based not on it, 
but on Being itself. Now, it is the faculty of contemplation which 
remains permanent in every manifestation, makes it enduring and 
actually endures throughout the whole inrinite series. Hence this 
contemplation, in its absolute form, does not become, but is; and 
by its form it keeps up the infinite becoming. The fundamental 
Being of life, therefore, is, in its form, a contemplation, which has 
not become, but which is, eternally and unchangeably, the same. 
All activity, which belongs after all only to formal life, is to be 
eliminated from it in thought. Tlie word contemplation se^ms to 
involve this activity in itself. Let us, therefore, substitute for 
it the other expression: tiie Being of Life is a permanent, fixed 
image, or appearance, an in itself completed Being, which, on that 



15G The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

acciiunt, is not again immediately contemplated. This, I say, is 
the absolute Beins; of Life ; hence Life is completed by that Being, 
and is nothing but that Being. 

Absolutely united with this contemplation we discover formal 
life ; or, the contemplation has formal life, is formal life, etc. 
Throuo-h this formal life it manifests itself, when it manifests 
itself in the eternal form of the Becoming. 

That which we have hitherto regarded as Life is, in its absolute 
Being, Contemplation, Image, Appearance. But, Contemplation 
is freedom in regard to a Being; is related to a Being, which is 
contemplated in contemplation; Imaged in the Image, and which 
appears in the Appearance. 

What sort of a Being is this? Not the Being of Life itself, for 
life is merely an image, and ends with being an image ; and, more- 
over, it is the image of another, of an opposite. Evidently it is, 
therefore, a being beyond all Becoming as the image itself is. Bat 
Et)w the contemi)lation is its contemplation, and is therefore 
dependent upon it as well in regard to its Being as in regard to 
its confents. Hence that Being must be the ground as well of 
the formal as of the qualitative existence of the contemplation. 
Hence, although the contemplation is absolutely and does not 
iecome, it is not of itself, out of itself, and through itself, but is 
through that being. It is, therefore, absolute only as a fact, a fact 
of that Being. But that Being is absolutely out of itself, of itself, 
and through itself. It is God. 

Now, nothing else can be said of this Being in this its mere can- 
ceprion — this God — than that it is the absolute, and that it is not 
contemplation, or an_ything else involved in contemplation. But 
this is the mere form of its Being, and merely in opposition to the 
Being ot the Appearance. That which God is really and in Him- 
self appears in the contemplation. That contemplation expi-esses 
Him wholly, and Ha is in it the same as He is internally in Himself. 
But this contemplation is not again contemplated; but manifests 
itself only by the freedom connected with it. Hence, this essence, 
as it is in Himself, manifests itself throughout all eternity primarily 
and immediately in the contemplation of the eternal final end. 
Hence Lite in its real Being is the image of God, as He is abso- 
lutely in Him-elf. But as formal life, as really living and active, 
it is the infinite desire actually to become this image of God ; a 



Facts of Consciousness. 15T 

desire, however, which for the very reason of its bein<>; infinite it 
can never achieve. In real activity, if it is at all ti-ue and does 
not merely seem to be, tliis formal life is always the primary con- 
dition of the Becomini^ of this ima£i:e at a certain time moment. 

And thus we have obtained the final and complete solution of 
the problem of our investigation : Life or Knowledge. (We shall 
see directly how perfectly synonymous those two expressions are.) 
Knowledge is most certainly not a knowledge of itself — in which 
case it would dissolve into nothingness, having no stay or support 
— but it is a knowledge of a Being • that is, of the only true Be- 
ing, God. On no account, however, of a Being outside of God— 
the like of which, apart from the Being of Knowledge itself or of 
the contemplation of God, is not at all possible, and the assump- 
tion of which is sheer nonsense. But that only possible object of 
knowledge does never arise in actual knowledge in its purity ; 
it is always broken by the necessary forms of knowledge, which 
can be shown to be thus necessary. It is the showing up ot these 
forms of knowledge which constitutes philosophy, or the Science 
of Knowledge. 

Chapter YI. 

conclusion. 

Resume. — I. "Whatsoever is outside of God dissolves itself into 
mere contemplation, image or knowledge — as, indeed, being out- 
side of God signifies contemplating God and can signity nothing 
else. There is in this contemplation not a trace or spark of the 
real formal Being, which remains altogether in God. Hence tiie 
theory of the Comprehensible — God being inconjprehensible — can 
be only the theory of Knowledge, or the Science of Knowledge; 
for outside of God nothing exists but knowledge. 

II. It is true that this Knowledge (this appearance) is not a 
dead bnt an absolutely in itself living Knowledge. As such a Life 
it again has no Being, no Materiality, no Quality, bnt is simply a 
Principle, A Principle not of the contemplation (ivnowledge) or 
of its ol)ject, God, for that contemplation is originally, but simply 
of a further determination of that contemplation, and thereby of 
its entrance into the form of Becoming. 

III, Now, this life or principle of the contemplation is an ahso- 



158 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

lute faculty to image or scliematize everytliing that constitutes its 
essence. Originally it is the image of God. Place the principle 
first on this stand-point. Evidently two cases are possible, which 
exclude each other. Either the principle, in being such principle, 
remains what it i^, the image, and then its i)roduct becomes aii in- 
finite series of contemplation. I say, contemplation. Contem- 
plation is everywhere, where the principle, in being a principle, 
involves a Being, that is, a Being which has not been dissolved 
into a scheme by freedom, an unconscious Baing, 

Or, take the second case. The principle remains not this Being 
a principle, but changes it also into a conception, which here is a 
conception of God ; a conception which, if the principle has pro- 
ceeded systematically, as we do here, becomes the conception of 
God as the absolute object of contemplation. This is the gene- 
alogy of all conceptions, and here, especially, of the conception 
of God : Religion, which completes the life of knowledge and is 
its highest summit. 

IV. Let us now return to the contemplation, in which the prin- 
ciple is unconsciously the image of God. Here again there are 
two possible cases. Either freedom is presupposed in the contem- 
plation, and the product of contemplation is viewed in its transit 
through it as the second Unconscious element of tlie principle; 
and then there arises the infinite contemplation of the final end. 
This is the view of the moral world. 

Or, freedom is not presupposed in the contemplation, and hence 
the product of contemplation is not determined by a transit 
through that contemplation ; and then there arises the contempla- 
tion of infinite nature, which nature here itself dissolves into con- 
templation and appears as a form thereof. 

Y. Finally, freedom itself, the principle as such, which in the 
former fundamental contemplation remained concealed — may be 
schematized throuo;h freedom itself and elevated into conscious- 
ness; and then there arises the contemplation of the Ego, as free, 
and free, moreover, in regard to the final end which now becomes 
its law. This results in a double view of the Ego : first, as the 
principle of a moral world ; and, second, as the principle in a 
not moral and hence purely sensuous world. 

YI. These five fundamental forms exhaust all possible forms of 
consciousness for all eternity. The Science of Knowledge treats 



Facts of Consciousness. 159 

of the necessary forms of consciousness, and hence what we have 
just now said is the fundamental sclieme of that science, as the 
necessary conclusion of a complete representation of the Facts of 
Consciousness. 

Final Remarks. — It would be beneficial to every scientific rep- 
resentation, if it were once in a while compelled to strip otf the 
terminology wherein it wraps itself — perhaps necessarily — and 
were requested to speak for once in the words of common lan- 
guage and of common sense, whatever new things it has to say. 
We now propose to extend this service to our own representation. 

Speaking in the ordinary language of life we maintain, and 
have maintained in all soberness, tlie following : 

1. A knowledge exists actually, in fact, and independent ; for 
this knowledge is a free and independent life. 

This must be conceded to us and accepted by all who desire to 
occupy the same stand-point with us of a philosophy which pro- 
ceeds from knowledge as a phenomenon in itself. At the same 
time it is necessary that they must have developed already that 
thinking, and their own faculty of thinking, sufficiently to b3 able 
to think that knowledge, were it only problematically. Thus, no 
one thinks at all our problem if he thinks, for instance, that 
knowledge is a quality, say, of a presupposed substantial human 
being. We never have said, man possesses knowledge; and who- 
ever cannot bring himself to think something else than this in 
listening to our words loses altogether their sense and meaning, 
and excludes himself from the sphere wherein alone they have a 
meaning. We need no bearer of knowledge. Knowledge must 
be considered, at least for the present, as bearing itself. How we 
are going to dispose of man, who certainly does not on any ac- 
count possess knowledge, but whom, with the help of God, knowl- 
edge is going to possess, will appear in due time. For the pres- 
ent, the abstraction of our science requires us to forget him, just as 
the geometrician requires us to foi'get matter. 

2. This life begins in a certain confinedness of its freedom. 

3. Its progress or course of life consists in this, that it must 
liberate itself from this confinedness, probably thereby dropping 
into another, but minor, confinedness, from which again it must 
liberate itself, etc. In short, its course of life is a perpetual eleva- 
tion of its life into a higher freedom. 



1C}0 The Journal of Speculative Philosopliy , 

4. This contiiuious development of life is likely enough gov- 
erned by fixed and determined laws. An exposition of the Fact 
of Consciousness M-oiild therefore be, as it were, a natural history 
of the development of life. 

5. Such a history, being a history of the development of life, 
must begin from the lowest point; from that point wherein life 
is given to itself without any previous development. This point, 
the terminKs a quo of that history, is external perception. 

1 have said, Knowledge is simply because it is ; it has an inde- 
pendent existence, and the only independent existence known to 
us. But that knowledge, in its essence being freedom, it must 
really be freedom, which is independent. I have said further, 
that you must think, at any rate, this, just as I think, and have 
expressed it — though you think it is so merely problematically for 
the present — since such a thinking is the stand-point of philosophy ; 
and tiiat any one, who cannot by any means think knowledge 
otherwise than as a mere accidence of the substrate, man, is quite 
as incapable of ^forming a philosophical thought as a man would 
be to form a geometrical thought Avho could not arise above the 
notion of matter. 

But it is furthermore clear that such a presupposition of a bear- 
er, or substrate, of knowledge, is in itself an absolute contradic- 
tion. We are investigating here the totality of consciousness. 
Now, such a bearer of consciousness can surely not be brought 
near to us except through some consciousness, and his credentials 
will be received only upon the aflSrmation of that consciousness. 
Hence, if we presuppose him simply, we exclude the consciousness 
which introduces him from our investigation, which thus remains 
imperfect, lacking one of the most essential elements. 

Indeed, it has been already sufficiently established how phi- 
losophy is absolutely annihilated by this impotency of thinking. 
Kant, it is true, has not expressed this truth so concisely and 
unconditionally as we have expressed it ; but without a presup- 
position of this truth he has, in fact, said nothing at all, and his 
writings remain a mass of contradictions. The philosophizing 
public generally has not made this presupposition, and hence has 
really found nothing, or else only a mass of contradictions in his 
writiui^s. 

(How, nevertheless, some of them — with their thinking faculty 



Facts of Consciousness. 161 

in such a condition — can find wisdom in that doctrine, and make 
themselves its expounders and apostles, is, of course, a riddle.) 

It is true that the printed Science of Knowledge has told it to 
them, but thej never believed that it was meant seriously ; and 
this is the sole reason why that science has remained a closed book 
to them. In attempting now to lead you to an understanding of 
the Science of Knowledge, I must pray you above all, and as the 
condition of all my other prayers, that you will believe me when 
I say that I am quite serious iu making that assertion in the very 
words in which it is couched; and that you will dare to think that 
thought along with me, though it be only problematically. Surely 
the attempt can do no harm. If in the course of our investigation 
you are not convinced by the grounds adduced of the truth of that 
presupposition, why, you can continue to think just as you have 
been accustomed to think before. And without that presupposi- 
tion you cannot, indeed, understand what I have said to you in 
the course of these lectures, and would give it an utterly false 
meaning. 

I have asserted that that life of knowledge changes itself. In 
my view it, being itself thoroughly in earnest, produces a Beings 
which is also actual and remains in fact, and which, after beings 
cannot be cancelled again ; a Being in itself, since Life is in itself. 
Now this Being expresses itself immediately in a knowledge, since 
such a Being is itself knowledge. How can any one, who enter- 
tains such a view seriously, have a doubt as to the reality of such 
a knowledge, which is, after all, nothing but that Being itself? 
True, if, whenever the word knowledge is spoken, we can think of 
nothing but our idle dreams, and if we can think no other reality 
but that which we can grasp with our hands, then such a doubt 
might be in place. Those who misunderstood the Science of 
Knowledge fell into this error. 

[the end.] 

XVIII— 11 



163 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 



KANT AND PHILOSOPHIC METHOD. 

BY JOHN DEWEY. 

On its subjective side, so far as individuals are concerned, phi- 
losophy comes into existence when men are confronted with prob- 
lems and contradictions which common^ sense and the special 
sciences are able neither to solve nor resolve. There is felt the 
need of going deeper into things, of not being content with hap- 
hazard views or opinions derived from this or that science, but of 
having some principle which, true on its account, may also serve 
to judge the truth of all besides. It is no matter of accident that 
modern philosophy begins, in Descartes, with a method which 
doubts all, that it may find that wherewith to judge all ; nor is it 
meaningless that Kant, the founder of modernest philosophy, com- 
mences his first great work with a similar demand, and " calls upon 
Reason to undertake the most difficult of tasks, self-knowledge, 
and establish a tribunal to decide all questions according to its 
own eternal and unchangeable laws." ' This self-knowledge of 
Reason, then, is the Method and criterion which Kant offers. 

Before we may see what is involved in this, it is necessary 
to see what in gist the previous methods had been, and why they 
had failed. The method of " intellectualism " begun by Descartes 
and presented to Kant through Wolff was (in one word) : Analy- 
sis of conceptions, with the law of identity or non-contradiction for 
criterion. To discover truth is to analyze tlie problem down to 
those simple elements which cannot be thought away, and reach a 
judgment whose predicate may be clearly and distinctly seen to 
be identical with its subject. Analytic thought, proceeding by the 
law of identity, gives the method for philosophic procedure. Now, 
Kant in his pre-critical period ^ had become convinced that analy- 
sis does not explain such a conception as that which we have of 
causation : " How one thing should arise out of another, when it 
is not connected with it, according to the law of identity, this is a 



' See Kant's Werke, Rosenkranz's ed., vol. ii, p. 7. 

^ See especially his essay on attempt to introduce the idea of negative quantity into 
philosophy. Werke, vol. i. 



Kant and Philosophic Method. 163 

thing which I should much like to have explained." ' !Nor again, 
while it may be, and undoubtedly is, the method for pure thought, 
does it give any means for passing from thought to existence. 
This, he would say, is no predicate of anything ; it is part of no 
conception, andean be got by no analysis. Reality is added to our 
notions from without, not evolved from them. But, if logical 
thought is not adequate to such notions as cause, nor able to reach 
existence, it can be no method for discovering Absolute truth. 

So Kant finds himself thrown into the arms of the Empiricists. 
It is experience which shows us the origin of an effect in a cause, 
and experience which adds reality or existence to our thoughts. 
What, then, is the method of "Empiricism"? Beginning with 
Bacon, at first it merely asserted that the mind must be freed 
from all subjective elements, and become a mirror, to reflect the 
world of reality. But this, as criterion, is purely negative, and 
required the positive complement of Locke. This method in a 
word is. Analysis of percejptio?is with agreement as criterion. In 
contrast with the intellectual school, which began with concep- 
tions supposed to be found ready-made in the human mind, it 
begins with the perceptions impressed upon that blank tablet, the 
Mind, by external objects, and finds " knowledge to consist in the 
perception of the connection or agreement or disagreement of 
these ideas." But two questions arise : If truth or knowledge 
consists in perceptions, how, any more than from conceptions, 
shall we get to an external world ? This question was answered 
by Berkeley in showing that, if knowledge were what this theory 
made it to be, the external world was just that whose esse is per- 
cipi. The second question is : What is agreement of perception ? 
Agreement certainly means, as Locke said, "connexion," that is, 
mutual reference, or Synthesis. But how can this synthesis occur ? 
The mind is a blank, a wax tablet, a tahula rasa, whose sole na- 
ture is receptivity, and certainly it can furnish no synthesis. 
Locke had avoided the difficulty by assuming that ideas come to 
us or are "given " more or less conjoined — that one has naturally 
some bond of union with another. But this, of course, cannot be. 
Simple impressions or perceptions are, as Hume stated, such as 
admit of no distinction or separation, and these are the ultimate 



1 Ibid., p. 157. 



164 The Journal of Bpeculatwe Pldlosopliy. 

sensation?. Tliese have no connection with each other, except 
perhaps the accidental one of following or occurring together in 
time, and so it is that " every distinct perception is a separate ex- 
istence." Necessary connection among tliem, therefore, there can 
be none. Sensations are purely contingent, accidental, and exter- 
nal in their relations to each other, with no bonds of union. Any 
agreement is the result of chance or blind custom. Knowledge as 
the necessary connection of perceptions does not exist. 

Kant consequently discovers, by a more thorough study of em- 
piricism, that it too betrays him. It, no more than his former 
guides, can furnish him witli a way of getting to an external world 
nor to knowledge at all. Nay, even self, some ghost of which was 
left him by the other method, has disappeared too. 

What has been the difficulty ? Descartes did not come to a 
stand-still at once, for he had tacitly presupposed the synthetic 
power of thought in itself — had even laid the ground for a theory 
of it in his reference to the Ego, or self-consciousness. But his 
successors, neglecting this, and developing only the analytic aspect 
of thought, had produced a vacuum, where no step to existence or 
actual relations, being synthetic, could be taken. " Conceptions are 
empty." Nor had Locke been estopped immediately, for he pre- 
supposed some synthesis in the objective world ; but it turns out 
that he had no right to it, and world, self, and all actual relations, 
beiTig synthetic, have gone. " Perceptions are blind." The problem, 
then, is clearly before Kant, as is the key to its solution. Synthe- 
sis is the sine qua non. Knowledge is synthesis, and the explana- 
tion of knowledge or truth must be found in the explanation of 
synthesis. Hence the question of Method is now the question : 
How are synthetic judgments a jpriori possible % A priori means 
simply belonging to Reason in its own nature, so the question is, 
How and to what extent is Reason the source of synthesis? 

The case stands thus : Pure thought is purely analytic; experi- 
ence per se gives only a blind rhapsody of particulars, without 
meaning or connection — actual experience, or knowledge involves, 
is synthesis. How shall it be got ? One path remains open. We 
may suppose that while thought in itself h analytic, it is synthetic 
when applied to a material given it, and that from this material, 
by its functions, it forms the objects which it knows. And such, 
in its lowest terms, is the contribution Kant makes. The material, 



Kant and Philosophic Method. 165 

the manifold, the particulars, are furnished by Sense in percep- 
tion ; the conceptions, the synthetic functions from Reason itself, 
and the union of these two elements are required, as well for the 
formation of the object known, as for its knowing. 

To characterize Kant's contribution to Method, it remains to 
briefly examine these two sides of his theory : First, for the part 
played by the synthetic functions or tlie categories. These, in 
first intention, are so many conceptions of the understanding, and, 
as such, subject to analysis according to the law of identity, and 
thus furnish the subject-matter of Logic. But they also have rela- 
tion to objects, and, as such, are synthetic and furnish the subject- 
matter of Transcendental Logic, whose work is to demonstrate and 
explain their objective validity. This is done by showing that 
" the categories make experience and its objects for the first time 
possible." That is to say, Kant, after showing that the principles 
of identity and contradiction, though the highest criteria of logic- 
al thought, can give no aid in determining the truths of actual ex- 
perience, inquires what is the criterion of truth for the latter, or 
what comes to the same thing, of the synthetic use of the catego- 
ries as Transcendental Logic — and the answer he finds to be " pos- 
sible experience" itself. In other words, the categories have ob- 
jective validity or synthetic use because without them no experi- 
ence would be possible. If Hume, for example, asks how we can 
have assurance that the notion of causality has any worth when 
applied to objects, he is answered by showing that without this 
notion experience as an intelligible connected system would not 
exist. By the categories the objects of experience are constituted, 
and hence their objective validity. 

It follows, accordingly, that the system of experience may be 
determined, as to its form, by a completely made out system of 
categories. In thera, as synthetic functions, constituting experi- 
ence, we find the criterion of truth. But they themselves have a 
higher condition. As synthetic functions, they must all be func- 
tions of a higher unity which is subject to none of them. And 
this Kant calls the synthetic unity of Apperception or, in brief, self- 
consciousness. This is the highest condition of experience, and in 
the developed notion of self-consciousness we find the criterion of 
truth. The theory of self -consciousness is Method. 

But this abstract statement must be farther developed. It 



166 The Journal of Speculative Pliilosophy. 

comes to sayino;, on the one hand, that the criterion of the 
categories is possible experience, and on the other, that tlie cri- 
terion of possible experience is the categories and their supreme 
condition. This is evidently a circle, yet a circle which, Kant 
would say, exists in the case itself, which expresses the very nature 
of knowledije. It but states that in knowledge there is nanglit 
but knowledge which knows or is known — the only judge of 
knowledge, of experience, is experience itself. And experience is 
a system, a real whole made up of real parts. It as a whole is 
necessarily implied in every fact of experience, while it is consti- 
tuted in and throuirh these facts. In other terms, the relation of 
categories to experience is the relation of members of an organism 
to a whole. The criterion of knowledsre is neither anything out- 
side of knowledge, nor a particular conception within the sphere 
of knowledge which is not subject to the system as a whole ; it is 
just this system which is constituted, so far as its form is concerned, 
by the categories. 

Philosophic Method, or the discovering of the criterion of truth, 
will consist, then, in no setting up of a transcendent object as 
the empiricists did, or of an abstract principle after the manner 
of the intellectual school. Since the categories, in and through 
self-consciousness, constitute experience. Method will consist in 
making out a complete table of these categories in all their mutual 
relations, giving each its proper placing, with the full contidence 
that when so placed each will have its proper place in experience, 
i. e., its capacity for expressing reality determined. 

But we have now strayed far from Kant. While having said 
nothing which is not deducible from his Transcendental Logic, we 
have abstracted from the fact that this holds only of the /br/jz of 
our knowledge ; that there is also an (Esthetic, and that thought 
is synthetic, not in itself, but only upon a material supplied to it 
from without. Turning to this, we find the aspect of affairs 
changed. Though the categories make experience, they make it 
out of a foreign material to which they bear a purely external 
relation. They constitute objects, but these objects are not such 
in universal reference, but only to beings of like capacities of 
receptivity as ourselves. They respect not existence in itself, but 
ourselves as affected by that existence. The system of categories 
furnishes the criterion for all the knowledge we have, but this 



Kant and PMlosopTiic Metliod. 167 

turns out to be no real knowledge. It is, Hegel says, as if one 
ascribed correct insight to a person, and then added that he could 
see only into the untruth, not the truth. Nor does the deficiency 
of our method end here. We had previously assumed that the 
categories as a system, or in their organic relation to self-con- 
sciousness, could be known. But it now turns out that nothing 
can be known except that to which this feeling of external matter 
through sensibility is given. To know this subject, or self-con- 
sciousness, is to make an object of it, and every object is sensible, 
that is, has a feeling which tells us how we are affected. But such 
a knowledge is evidently no knowledge of self-consciousness in its 
own nature. Thus, so far as knowledge is concerned, it must re- 
main a bare form of self-identity, of " I = I," into definite organic 
relations with which the categories can never be brought. Hence, 
it appears that our picture of a method was doubly false — false in 
that after all it could not reach truth ; false in that after all no 
such method was in itself possible. Our organic system of cate- 
gories cannot constitute absolute truth — and no such organic sys- 
tem is itself knowable. Criterion and method we are still with- 
out. The golden prize, which seemed just within our hands as 
long as we confined ourselves to the Transcendental Logic, turns 
out to be a tinsel superfluity. 

Yet, none the less, there was the suggestion of a method there, 
which is exactly what we wish. The only question is : Is its ref- 
erence to the Esthetic necessary ? Is the latter a necessary part 
of Kant's theory, or, so far as it concerns the reception of exter- 
nal matter, an excrescence? The question is just here: Previous 
methods failed because they made no allowance for synthesis — 
Kant's because the synthesis can occur only upon matter foreign 
to it. Thought in the previous theories was purely analytic ; in 
Kant's it is purely synthetic, in that it is synthesis of foreign ma- 
terial. "Were thought at once synthetic and analytic, difieren- 
tiating and integrating in its own nature, both affirmative and 
negative, relating to self at the same time that it related to other 
— indeed, through this relation to other — the difficulty would not 
have arisen. 

Is the state of the case as Kant supposes ? Must we say that 
Reason is synthetic only upon condition that material be given it 
to act upon, or, may it be, that while we must say that for the in- 



1<.>S The Journal of Speculative Philosophi/. 

dividual tlie material, nay, the form a^ iiidissolubly connected with, 
tlie material, is i2:iveii, yet, to Eeason itself, nothing is given in 
the sense of beins: forei<>'n to it? 

A slight examination will show us that, at least as far as Kant 
is concerned, the former supposition is but an arbitrary limitation 
or assumption, which Kant imposed upon himself, or received 
without question from previous philosoj)hy. On one side, he had 
learned that ])ure thought is analytic; on tlie other, that the indi- 
vidual is alfected with sensations impressed upon it by external ob- 
jects. x\.t the same time that he corrects both of these doctrines with 
his own deduction of the categories, he formally retains both errors. 

So we have him asking at the very outset, as a matter of course : 
" In what other way is it to be conceived that the knowing power 
can be excited to activity, except by objects which affect our 
senses?" That is to say, he assumes at the outset that there is 
something external to Reason by which it must be excited. He 
perceives, what all admit, that an individual organized in a certain 
specific way with certain senses, and external tilings acting upon 
these senses, are conditions to our knowledge, and then proceeds 
to identify respectively this individual with the subject, and these 
things with the object, in the process of knowledge. But here it 
is that we ask with what right does he make this identification. 
If it is made, then surely the case stands with Reason as he says 
it does — it acts only upon a material foreign to it. Yet this indi- 
vidual and these things are but knowm objects already constituted 
by the categories, and existing only for the synthetic unity of ap- 
perception or self-consciousness. This, then, is the real subject, 
and the so called subject and object are but the forms in which it 
expresses its own activity. In short, the relation of subject and 
object is not a "transcendent" one, but an "immanent," and is 
but the first form in which Reason manifests that it is both syn- 
thetic and analytic ; that it separates itself from itself, that it may 
thereby reach higher unity with itself It is the highest type of 
the law which Reason follows everywhere. The material w^hich 
was supposed to confront Reason as foreign to it is but the mani- 
festation of Reason itself. Such, at least, are the results which 
we reach in tlie Transcendental Deduction, and such are the re- 
sults we consider ourselves justified to keep in opposition to Kant's 
pure assumptions. 



Kant and Philosoj)hio Method. 109 

\ We see the same thing in Kant's theory of phenomenon. Just 
as, concerning the process of knowledge, he assumes that subject 
and object are in external i"elation to each other, and hence Rea- 
son in contact with a foreign material, so here he assumes that 
the character of phenomenality consists in relation to an unknow- 
able noiiraenon. The phenomenon is referred to something outside 
of experience, instead of being defined by its relation within ex- 
perience — in which case it would be seen to be a phenomenon in 
its own nature, in that the categories which constitute it as such 
are not adequate to truth. 

We have but to turn to Kant's derivation of the cateo-ories, to 
be again assured that Kant's theory of Reason as synthetic only 
in reference to foreign material is one purely assumed. As is 
notorious, these he took from the Logic of the School, which he 
held to give a complete table of all the forms of pure thought. 
When we turn to this table we find the highest point reached in 
it to be reciprocity. Now, reciprocity is precisely that external 
relation of two things to each other that we have already found 
existing, in Kant's theory, between subject and object in Knowl- 
edge — the relations of things that are independent of each other 
but mutually act upon each other. So, too, it is but another way 
of stating that Thought, analytic in itself, is synthetic when ap- 
plied to an external material, or that this material, blind and hap- 
hazard in itself, is formed by something acting upon it. When 
Kant tells us, therefore, that the categories are not limited in their 
own nature, but become so when applied, as they must be, to 
determine space and time, we have in our hands the means of 
correcting him. They are limited, and express just the limitation 
of Kant himself. And Kant confesses their insufficiency as soon 
as he takes up the questions of moral and aesthetic experience and 
of life itself. Here we find the categories of freedom determined 
by ends, free production, organism to be everywhere present, 
while all through his "Critiques" is woven in the notion of an 
intuitive understanding w^iich is the ultimate criterion of all 
truth, and this understanding is just what we have already met 
as the organic system of experience or self-consciousness. 

Whether we consider the relations of subject and object, or the 
nature of the categories, we find ourselves forced into the presence 
of the notion of organic relation. The relation between subject 



170 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

ami object is not an external one ; it is one in a lii<^lier unity 
which is itself constituted b}" this relation. The only conception 
adequate to experience as a whole is organism. What is involved 
in the notion of organism ? Wh}', precisely the Idea which we 
had formerly reached of a Reason which is both analytic and syn- 
thetic, a Reason which differentiates itself that it may integrate 
itself into fuller riches, a Reason that denies itself that it mav be- 
come itself. Snch a Reason, and neither an analytic Thought, 
nor an analytic Experience, nor a Reason which is analytic in 
itself, and synthetic for something else, is the ultimate critei'ion 
of truth, and the theory of this Reason is the Philosophic Method. 

The two defects which we found before in Kant's theory now 
vanish. The method is no longer one which can reach untruth 
only, nor is it a method which cannot be made out. The track 
which we were upon in following the course of the Transcendental 
Deduction was the right one. The criterion of experience is the 
system of categories in their organic unity in self-consciousness, 
and the method consists in determining this system and the part 
each plays in constituting it. The method takes the totality of 
experience to pieces, and brings before us its conditions in their 
entirety. The relations of its content, through which alone this 
content has character and meaning, whereby it becomes an intelli- 
gible, connected whole, must be made to appear. 

It was the suggestion of this method, it was the suggestion of 
so many means for its execution, it was the actual carrying of it out 
in so many points that makes Kant's " Philosophy " the critical 
philosophy, and his work the crisis^ the separating, dividing, turn- 
ing-point of modern philosophy, and this hurried sketch would not 
be complete if we did not briefly point out what steps have been 
taken toward the fulfilling of the Ideal. This is found chiefly in 
Hegel and his " Logic." We can only discuss in the light of what 
has already been said why Hegel begins with Logic ; why the 
negative plays so important a part in his philosophy, and what is 
the meaning of Dialectic. (1.) Logic. One of Hegel's repeated 
charo;es asfainst Kant is, that he examines the categories with refer- 
ence to their ohjective character, and not to determine their own 
meaning and worth. At first it might seem as if this were the 
best way to determine their worth, but it ought now to be evident 
that such a procedure is both to presuppose that they are subject- 



Kant and Philosophic Method. 171 

ive in themselves, and that we have a ready-made conception of 
object by which to judge them — in short, it amounts to saying 
that these conceptions are pnrely analytic, and have meaning only 
in relation to an external material. Hence the method must ex- 
amine the categories without any reference to subjective or object- 
ive existences; or, to speak properly, since we now see that there 
are no purely subjective or objective existences, without any rela- 
tion to things and thoughts as two distinct spheres. The antithe- 
sis between them is not to be blinked out of sight, but it must be 
treated as one which exists within Reason, and not one with one 
term in and the other out. The categories which, for the individ- 
ual, determine the nature of the object, and those which state how 
the object is brought into the subjective form of cognition, must 
be deduced from Reason alone. A theory performing this task is 
what Heo;el calls Loo-ic, and is needed not onlv to overcome Kant's 
defects, but is immediately suggested by his positive accomplish- 
ments. In our account of the Transcendental Deduction we saw 
that selt-consciousness was the supreme condition of all the catego- 
ries, and hence can be subject in itself to none of them. When it 
is made subject we have no longer the absolute self-consciousness, 
but the empirical ego, the object of the inner sense. In short, the 
categories constitute the individuals as an object of experience, just 
as much as they do the material known. Hence they are no more 
subjective than objective. We may call them indifferently neither 
or both. The truth is, they belong to a sphere where the antithe- 
sis between subject and object is still potentialj or an sich. It is 
evident, therefore, that logic, in the Hegelian use, is just that cri- 
terion of truth which we thought at first to find in Kant's trans- 
cendental Logic — it is an account of the conceptions or categories 
of Reason which constitute experience, internal and external, sub- 
jective and objective, and an account of them as a system, an 
organic unity in which each has its own place fixed. It is the 
completed Method of Philosophy. 

(2.) The Negative in Hegel. It ought now to be evident that 
any Philosophy which can pretend to be a Method of Truth 
must show Reason as both Analytic aiid Synthetic. If History 
can demonstrate anything, it has demonstrated this, both by its 
successes and its failures. Reason must be that which separates 
itself, which differentiates, goes forth into differences, that it 



172 The Journal of Speculative Philosojyht/. 

nuiv then c-rasi) these difterences into a niiitv of its own. It 
cannot unite unless tliere be ditference; there can be no syn- 
thesis where there is not analysis. On the other hand, the dilt'er- 
enees must remain forever foreioju to Reason unless it brings 
them together; there can be no analysis where there is uot syn- 
thesis, or a unity to be dirempted. If there be uo synthesis in 
Reason, Ave end in the impotence of the former school of intellect- 
nalism, or in the helpless scepticism of Hume; if Reason be syn- 
thetic only upon a foreign material, we end in the contradictions 
of Kant. If there is to be knowledge, Reason must include both 
elements within herself. It is Heo-el's thorono-h recomiition of this 
fact that causes him to lay such emphasis on the negative. Pure 
atiirmation or identity reaches its summit in Spinoza, where all is 
lost in the infinite substance of infinite attributes, as waves in the 
sea. Yet even Spinoza was obliged to introduce the negative, the 
determinations, the modes, though he never could succeed in get- 
ting them by any means from his pure affirmation. In Hume we 
find pure difference or negation, the manifold particularization of 
sensations, but even he is obliged to introduce synthetic piinciples 
in the laws of association, though he never succeeds in legitimately 
deriving them from sensations, for a " consistent sensationalism is 
speechless." Kant had tried a compromise of the principle, syn- 
thesis from within, difference from without. That, too, failed to 
give us knowledge or a criterion of Truth. Hegel comprehends 
the problem, and offers us Reason affirmative and negative, and 
aflirmative only in and through its own negations, as the solution. 
(3.) Dialectic. We have now the notion of Dialectic before us 
in its essential features. We have seen that the desired object is 
a theory of the Conceptions of Reason in an organic system, and 
that Reason is itself both integrating and differentiating. Dia- 
lectic is the constrnction by Reason, tlirough its successive differen- 
tiations and resumptions of these differences into higher unities, 
of just this system. If we take any single category of Reason — 
that is to say, some conception which we find involved in the sys- 
tem of experience — this is one specific form into which Reason has 
unified or " synthesized" itself. Reason itself is immanent in this 
category; but, since Reason is also differentiating or analytic, 
Reason must reveal itself as such in this category, which accord- 
ingly passes, or is reflected, or develops into its opposite, while the 



Kant and Philosophio Method. 1Y3 

two conceptions are then resumed into the higher unity of a more 
concrete conception. 

Since the system of knowledge is implicit in each of its mem- 
bers, each category must judge itself, or ratlier. Reason, in its suc- 
cessive forms, passes judgment on its own inadequacy until the 
adequate is reached — and tliis can be nothing but Reason no longer 
implicit, but developed into its completed system. Reason must 
everywhere, and in all its forms, propose itself as what it is, viz., 
absolute or adequate to the entire truth of experience ; but, since 
at first \isform is still inadequate, it must show what is absolutely 
implicit in it, viz., the entire system. That at first it does, by 
doing what it is the nature of the Reason which it manifests to do^ 
by differencing itself, or passing into its opposite, its other ; but, 
since Reason is also synthetic, grasping together, these differences 
must resolve themselves into a higher unity. Thus, Reason con- 
tinues until it has developed itself into the conception which is in 
form equal to what itself is in content, or, until it has manifested 
all that it is implicitly. A twofold process has occurred. On the 
one hand, each special form of Reason or Category has been placed ; 
that is, its degree of ability to state absolute truth fixed by its place 
in the whole organic system. On the other, the system itself has 
been developed ; that is to say, as Reason goes on manifesting its 
own nature through successive differences and unities, each lower 
category is not destroyed, but retained — but retained at its proper 
value. Each, since it is Reason, has its relative truth ^ but each, 
since Reason is not yet adequately manifested, has only a relative 
truth. The Idea is the completed category, and this has for its 
meaning or content Reason made explicit or manifested ; that is, 
all the stages or types of Reason employed in reaching it. " The 
categories are not errors, which one goes through on the way to 
the truth, but phases of truth. Their completed system in its 
organic wholeness is the Truth." And such a system is at once 
philosophic Method and Criterion ; method, because it shows us 
not only the way to reach truth, but truth itself in construction ; 
criterion, because it gives us the form of experience to which all 
the facts of experience as organic members must conform. 

It will be seen, I hope, that we have not left our subject, " Kant's 
Relation to Philosophic Method ;" for a crisis is nothing in itself. 
It is a crisis only as it is the turning point ; and a turning point is 



174 Tlie Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

the old passiiii^: into the new, and can be understood only as the 
ohl and the new are understood. The criterion of Kant is just this 
turning point; it is the transition of the old abstract thought, the 
old meaningless conception of experience, into the new concrete 
thought, the ever growing, ever rich experience. 



INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 

TRANSLATED FBOM HEGEL's " PHIL080PHIE DEK BELIGIOK," [BT F. LOUIS SOLDAN. 

I have deemed it necessary to make religion in itself the object 
of philosophical contemplation, and to contribute this inquiry as 
a special part to the system of philosophy. In order to introduce 
the subject I shall precede it by an exposition of (A) the diremp- 
tion of [or antithesis in] consciousness, which awakens that desire 
whose satisfaction is the task of our science [of religion] ; and I 
shall describe the relation in which this science stands to phi- 
losophy and religion in general, and also to the principles of reli- 
gious consciousness in our own time. Then, after touching upon 
(B) some preliminary questions which result from these relations 
of the science, I shall, finally, give (C) a classification of the latter. 

We must make clear to ourselves, in the first place, what the 
object is which presents itself to us in the philosophy of religion, 
and what our conception of religion is. We know that religion 
removes us from the limits of time, and that it forms for our con- 
sciousness a realm where all the enigmatical problems of the world 
appear solved, where all contradictions found by musing, ponder- 
ing thought appear cleared, and all pangs of feeling stilled ; it 
it is the realm of eternal truth, rest, and peace. Generally speak- 
ing, man is man on account of thought, of concrete thought, or, 
more particularly, on account of being spirit; from man as spirit 
proceed the manifold forms of the sciences and arts, the interests 
of his political life, the relations connected with his Freedom and 
Will. But all these manifold forms, the whole warp and M^oof of 
human relations, activities, joys, everything that man values and 
esteems, and wherein he seeks his happiness, his glory, and his 
pride, — all find in the end their centre in religion, in the thought, 



Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 175 

consciousness, and feeling of God. God is therefore the begin- 
ning of everything, and the end of everything. From this point 
whatever exists emanates, and it returns into it. He is the cen- 
tre which animates and inspires everything, and wliich, while 
sustaining all these forms in their existence fills them with life. 
By means of religion man places himself in relation to this centre, 
in which all his other relations converge, and he elevates himself 
thereby to the highest level of consciousness, namely, to the realm 
which is free from relation to [and dependence on] other things, 
which is absolutely self-sufficient, unconditioned, free, and which 
is its own end and aim. 

Keligion, being the occupation with this final end and aim, is 
therefore absolutely free, and has its aim in itself. To this final 
aim all other aims lead back, and, although otherwise independ- 
ent, they vanish before it. Ko other aims can maintain them- 
selves in contrast to this final aim ; in it alone they find their 
realization. When the spirit has attained the realm [of religious 
thought] where it occupies itself with this aim and end, it becomes 
treed and unburdened from all that is finite, and obtains its final 
satisfaction and liberation. For here spirit is no longer related 
to something other than itself, to something limited, but to the 
unlimited and infinite, whicli is an infinite relation, a relation of 
Freedom, and no longer one of dependence. Here the spirit's 
consciousness is absolutely free, and is true consciousness indeed, 
for it is consciousness of absolute truth. This relation of freedom, 
on the side of feeling, is the joy which we call beatitude ; on the 
side of activity its sole office is to manifest the honor and to reveal 
the glory of God, so that man in this relation is no longer chiefly 
concerned in himself, in his interests, his vanity, but rather in the 
absolute end and aim. All the nations know that it is in their 
religious consciousness that they possess truth, and they have al- 
ways looked upon religion as their pride and worth, and as the 
" Sunday " [or Sabbath] of their lives. Whatever causes us doubt 
and anxiety, all our sorrows and cares, all the narrow interests of 
finite existence, we leave behind us upon the sands of time, and 
as, when we are standing upon the highest point of a mountain, 
removed from the narrowness of terrestrial sights, we may view 
quietly all the limits of the landscape, and the world, so man, 
lifted above this rigid reality, looks upon it as a semblance, an 



176 Tlic Journal of Speculative Philosophij. 

image only, which this region of purity mirrors, and its shades, 
contrasts, and liglits are softened into eternal rest by the ray of the 
spiritual sun. In these regions flow the streams of oblivion, out of 
which Psyche drinks, into which she sinks all pain. Here the 
dark shades of life are softened into the image of a dream, and are 
transfigured into the darker outline within which the splendor of 
the eternal appears. 

This image of the absolute may oft'er to religious devotion either 
a more or less present animation, assurance, and enjoyment, or it 
may be represented as something to be longed and hoped for, as 
something appertaining to the distant and to the beyond; but it 
remains a certainty in every case, and, since it is a divine object, 
it illumines the times with its rays and engenders the consciousness 
that truth is strong and will prevail, although sorrows may tor- 
ment the soul in the realm of time. Faith recognizes the divine 
as the truth and substance of existing things, and this content of 
devotion is the animating principle of the present world ; it makes 
its activity felt in the life of the individual and rules him in his 
will and deeds. This is the general view of religion, religious 
sentiment, consciousness, or whatever we may call it. It is the ob- 
ject of these lectures to contemplate, examine, and understand its 
nature. 

As regards our aim, we must understand distinctly that it is not 
the task of philosophy to plant religion in a person's mind, for it 
is supposed that it is found in everybody [to whom these lectures 
are addressed]. It is not proposed to put something substan- 
tially new into man ; this would be just as foolish as to attempt 
to put mind into a dog by making him chew a book. He whose 
heart has not outo;:rown the world of the finite, he who in the 
longing for the eternal and in feeling anticipation of it has not at- 
tained his own elevation, he who has never looked into the pure 
ether of the soul, does not possess within himself the material 
whose contemplation and cognition is our present task. 

It may, nevertheless, happen to be the case that religion is en- 
gendered in the mind by philosophical cognition, but such is not 
a necessary consequence ; it is not the intention of philosophy to 
edify, nor is it required from it as a test that it should engender 
religion in this or that person. It is undoubtedly the purpose of 
philosophy to [demonstrate and] develop the necessity of religion in 



Introduction to the Philosophy of Eeligion. 177 

and for itself, and to conceive that the spirit must proceed from all 
other modes of its own volition, conception, and feeling to this 
absolute mode ; but therein philosophy completes the same pro- 
cess which is the universal fate of spirit ; but this is quite different 
from elevating an individual being to that height. The caprice, 
perversity and indifference of the individuals may interfere with 
the necessity of universal spiritual nature, may depart from it and 
attempt to establish a peculiar stand-point of their own and to 
maintain themselves upon it. This possibility of stepping indo- 
lently upon the stand-point of untruth, or, of remaining upon it 
knowingly and willingly, arises from the freedom of the individ- 
ual, while planets, plants, animals, by the necessities of their na- 
tures, cannot deviate from their truth, and they hecome what they 
shall be and must be. But in human liberty is and shall he are 
different things ; it contains the element of caprice ; it has the 
power of separating itself from its necessity, from its own law, and 
of working against its own destination. Therefore, even if cogni- 
tion should see the necessity of the religious stand-point, even if 
volition should learn from reality the futility of its separation from 
it, all this might not prevent a person from persisting in his obsti- 
nacy, and he might still turn away from his necessity and truth. 

The saying that " such or such a person possesses a cognition of 
God and yet keeps away from religion, and has not become reli- 
gious," has been used in the customary shallow manner as an argu- 
ment against [philosophical] cognition. It has never been asserted 
that cognition will lead or ought to lead to religion, but rather 
that it should cognize that religion which is already in the mind; 
it is not the task of [philosophical] cognition to dispense religion 
to this or that person, or to bring about a religious reform in the 
single, empirical individual, if he does not possess any religion in 
himself already, or does not want to possess an3^ 

But in reality there is no man so corrupt, so lost, so bad — and 
we cannot look upon anybody as being so miserable — that he has 
absolutely nothing pertaining to religion in his soul ; he will be 
found to have at least some fear of it, some longing for or hatred 
of it ; even if the latter should be true, his soul has been engaged 
with religion and is entangled in its threads. Since he is a human 
beine, relio-ion is essential to him, and not an alien sensation. But 
much depends here on the relation in which religion stands to a 
XVIII— 12 



178 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

man's general views of the woi-kl and of life ; to them philosophic 
cognition and its inflneiice principally relate. In this relation 
lies the source of the diremption and separation from the original 
impulse of spirit in the direction of religion ; out of this relation 
have grown the most manifold forms of consciousness : the most 
various relations between these forms and the interest of religion 
have sprung from it. Before the philosophy of religion can gather 
itself into its own concept, it is compelled to work its way through 
the whole labyrinth of those interests of the times which have at 
present concentrated themselves in the wide sphere of religion. 
At first the movement of the principles of the time proceeds out- 
side of philosophical cognition ; but their own movement brings 
them into contact and conflict with and antithesis to philosophy, 
and this antithesis and its solution we shall have to consider after 
having examined the first antithesis which as yet lies outside of 
philosophy, and after tracing the confirmation of its development 
to the point where it draws toward itself philosophical cognition. 



Philosophy of Religion as belated to its Presuppositions 
AND to the Principles of the Times. 

1. The Separation {Entzweiung) of Religion from Free, World- 
ly Consciousness. 

a. The relation which religion has in itself, in its immediate- 
ness to the other consciousness of man, contains the germs of di- 
remption, since both sides are in the process of separation. Even 
in their naive relation they constitute two different occupations, 
two realms of consciousness, between which transitions take place 
alternately. Thus man in his actual, w^orldly pursuits has the 
days of the w^eek to busy himself with his worldly atiairs, and with 
providing the necessities of life ; and then he has his Sunday when 
he lays all these aside, when he concentrates his thoughts on him- 
self, and, freed from the absorbing infiuence of finite pursuits, lives 
for himself and the higher elements which he has within, and 
which is his true being. In this separation of the two sides there 
enters, however, at once a double modification. 

a. Let us first look at the religion of a pious man, that is to say, 



Inti'oduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 179 

of one who truly deserves this name. Belief or faith is here as yet 
artless and naive., it is not mingled with reflection, and is without 
antithesis. Belief in God in its simplest form is one thing, but it 
is quite a different matter when, as the result of reflection, and 
with the consciousness that there is something opposed to this be- 
lief, we say, I believe in God ; in the latter there appears already 
the need of justiflcation, of argument, of polemics. The other re- 
ligion, that of the unsophisticated, pious man, is not treated by him 
as a special matter, distinct by itself, which has nothing in com- 
mon with his general life and existence, but it penetrates with its 
breath and flavor all his feelings and actions ; his consciousness 
relates every aim and object of his worldly life to God, as its 
infinite and last source. Every phase of his finite existence and 
course, his sorrows and joys, he raises above his narrow sphere, 
and produces in this elevation the idea and feeling of his eternal 
essence. All the rest of his life forms modes of confidence, of 
ethical conduct, of obedience, of habit ; he is what circumstances 
and nature have made him, and he takes his life, his conditions, 
and his rights, as he has received everything, as an uncompre- 
hended fate : " Such is it ! " Or, in relation to God, he may take 
gratefully, as a gift of free grace, what is his, and in turn is ready 
to offer it to Him as a free sacrifice. His other consciousness is 
thus freely and naturally subjected to this higher realm. 

/3. On the side of the world, the difference appearing in this re- 
lation develops into a contrast. It might seem as if the develop- 
ment of this side involved no detriment to religion, and as if en- 
croachment were avoided, since, according to the expressed profes- 
sion, religion is acknowledged to be supreme. 

In fact, however, it is otherwise, and from the side of the world 
vitiation and diremption creep into religion. The development of 
this difference may be designated in general as the rise of the Un- 
derstanding and of human interests. As the Understanding 
awakens in the life of mankind, and in science, and as reflection 
becomes independent, the human Will sets up absolute aims, as^ 
for instance, legal institutions and the state, both of which are to 
have existence in and for themselves. The inquiring mind cog- 
nizes the laws, the qualities, the order and characteristics of nat- 
ural things and of the activities and creations of spirit. This ex- 
perience and knowledge, as well as the willing of these aims and 



180 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

their realization, are the work of man, of his understaiidini!; and 
volition. In all of them he sees his property his own. Although 
his starting-point is that which is^ that which he finds in exist- 
ence already, he is no longer one who merely possesses the at- 
tribute of knowing, one who enjoys i-ights which he has not 
created himself. What he has wrought through his intellisence 
and will out of the materials found, is his own, his work, and he 
has the consciousness that he has produced it. These productions 
therefore, constitute his honor and his pride, and they constitute a 
vast and infinite wealth; his world of knowledge, of judgment, of 
external possessions, of rights and deeds. 

Thus spirit forms within itself this contrast — as yet naively, 
without knowing it at the beginning. But it soon becomes a con- 
scious one ; for spirit now moves between its two sides, whose con- 
trasts have developed into reality. One side is that wherein it 
knows itself as its own, wherein it is in the midst of its own aims 
and interests, and where it determines itself free and independent- 
ly from within. The other side is that in which spirit recognizes 
a higher power and absolute duties — duties without corresponding 
rights — and where whatever he receives for the fulfillment of his 
duties remains a gift of grace. In the former, the self-dependence 
of spirit is the basis. In the latter it possesses the attributes of 
humility and dependence, and its religion differs from the religion 
of independence in the circumstance that spirit confines cognition 
or science to the worldly side, and assigns the sphere of religion to 
feeling and faith. 

7. But conditionality is involved even in the side of self-depend- 
ence, and Cognition and Will must experience it. Man will at any 
rate demand his right ; whether it will be conceded, does not depend 
on him, and in this respect therefore he depends on something else. 
In matters of cognition he proceeds from the conditions and the 
order of nature as a starting-point ; these data are given to him. 
The content of his science and knowledge is matter extraneous to 
him. Thus the two sides, that of self-dependence and of condi 
tionality, enter into a relationship to each other, and this relation 
leads man to the confession that everything is made by God, 
not only the things which constitute the content of his knowl- 
edge, of which he takes possession, which he uses as a means 
for his ends, but also he himself and the spirit and the intel- 



Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 181 

lectual faculties, which, as he says, he employs to attain to that 
coojnition. 

But this concession is dead and cold, because in it that concep- 
tion and knowledge are wanting which constitute the life of con- 
sciousness, and in which the latter is bv itself and is self-con- 
sciousness. Whatever is limited \alles hestimmte'] belongs to the 
sphere of cognition and of human, self-created aims and inter- 
ests, and in these there is nothing but the activity of self-con- 
sciousness. This concession is therefore void, because it stops 
with what is abstractly universal, namely, [with the assertion] that 
everything is a work of God ; with the most diverse things (the 
course of the stars and its laws, ant, man) this relation does not 
advance beyond one and the same thing, namely, that God has 
made it. Since this religious relation of the several objects is 
always expressed in the same monotonous statement, it would be- 
come wearisome if it were to be repeated in every individual case. 
The whole matter is therefore considered settled with the one ad- 
mission that God has made all things ; the religious side is thus 
satisfied once for all, and in the development of cognition, and the 
pursuit of interest and aims, no further thought is given to it. It 
looks almost as if that admission were only made to get rid of the 
matter, or, as it were to be safe from attacks from without as 
far as this point is concerned ; in short, one may be in earnest or 
not in earnest with this assertion. 

Piety, whatever it may undertake or experience, never tires of 
lifting its glance to God, although it does this every hour of the 
day in the same way. And yet, as long as piety means [simply] 
pious feeling, it is still in [the phase of] singularity. It is in every 
moment that which it is [without reserve, undivided], entire, be- 
cause it is without reflection and comparing [relation-seeing] con- 
sciousness. Here [on the other stand-point], however, where cog- 
nition and self-determination are the rule, this comparison and 
the consciousness of this uniform sameness are essential, and a uni- 
versal proposition is here asserted once for all. On one side the 
understand in o; holds swav, and on the other it has the relisrious 
feeling of dependence. 

b. Nor does piety escape the fate of diremption. Diremption ex- 
ists in it potentially in the fact already that its real content is but 
a manifold and contingent one. The two relations, that of piety 



182 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

and of the comparing understanding, no matter how much they 
seem to differ, have this in common, that God's relation to the 
other side of consciousness is indefinite and ficeneral. Tlie second 
of these rehxtions finds direct expression in the quoted saying : 
" God has created all things." 

a. The mode of contemplation which is peculiar to piety and 
througli which it lends greater explicitness to its reflection, is that 
it looks upon circumstances and institutions [as if they were to 
subserve some aim or end, that is to say] in the light of a teleologi- 
cal relation, and that it considers all the events of the individual 
life, as well as the great events of history, as proceeding from di- 
vine purposes, or as tending and turning towards them. This 
view no longer confines itself to an acknowledgment of a general 
divine relation, but it makes the latter become a definite relation. 
[Through this] a more explicit content appears, the most diverse 
matters are placed in relation to each other, and God is then 
looked upon as the efficient cause of these relations. The animals 
and their surroundings are thus or thus constituted in order to 
find their food, to nourish their offspring, to be protected against 
injury, to resist the winter, to be able to defend themselves against 
their enemies. It is discovered how in human life, through what 
appears accident or chance — such as some misfortune — man is led 
to happiness either in a worldly or an eternal sense. In short, the 
doing and the will of God are here contemplated in particular 
actions, natural phenomena, events and the like. 

But this content itself, these aims, this finite content, are con- 
tingent, are projected for the moment, and lose themselves in 
inconsistency at once. If, for instance, God's wisdom in regard 
to nature is admired in the weapons which the animals have, 
either to o;ain their food or to defend themselves against their 
enemies, experience will show at once that these weapons are 
of no avail, and that the creatures, considered as aims in them- 
selves [as existing for their own sake], are used by others as 
means. 

It is owing to progressive knowledge that this external teleo- 
logical view has been reduced and superseded. For higher knowl 
edge demands, in the first place, consistency at least, and dis- 
covers that those aims and ends which were considered divine 
purposes are subordinate and finite ends ; they are things which 



Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 183 

prove themselves to the same experience and observation to be 
void and erroneous, and not objects of the divine will. 

Were this view adopted, and its inconsistency ignored, this in 
itself would prove it to be indefinite and superficial, because any 
and every content — no matter what its nature — might be put 
into it. For nothing could be found, no portion of the order 
of nature, no event, of which a useful trait in some direction or 
other could not be pointed out. Piety, if this view be taken, 
exists no longer as a naive feeling, but is based on the general 
idea of an aim and end, on the idea of the good ; and it argues by 
subsuming the existing things under this general thought. But 
this argument places piety in the embarrassing position of having 
pointed out to it, in this immediate appearance of natural things 
— no matter how much of purpose and use it has previously 
shown to exist in them — just as many indications of absence of 
purpose and defects. What is beneficial to one is harmful to 
another, and consequently lacks purpose. If the protection of life 
and of the interests connected with existence is furthered in one 
case, it is just as much endangered or destroyed in the other. 
Thus there is a diremption in itself implied in elevating, contrary 
to God's eternal mode of activity, finite things to the dignity of 
essential ends and aims. Tliis inconsistency contradicts the idea 
which we have of God, namely, that He and His mode of action 
are universal and necessary. 

Since piety thus considers the external end and aim, or the ex- 
ternality of the thing, by which the latter is useful for something 
else, the natural determination of the object which has formed the 
starting-point seems to be, that it exists for something else. But 
upon closer examination this appears the object's own relation, its 
nature the immanent nature and necessity of that which is related. 
Thus arises for piety the real transition to the other side, which 
has been designated before as the phase of Selfhood [das Moment 
des Selbstischen]. 

/3. Piety is therefore thrown out of its argument, and, after a 
beginning has once been made with thinking and with the rela- 
tions of thought, thinking must seek and demand above all things 
that which is peculiarly its own [characteristic], namely, consist- 
ency and necessity, and oppose them to that stand-point of con- 
tingency. With this step, the principle of selfhood develops com- 



184 The Journal of Speculative -Philosophy. 

pletclj. Since tlie Ego as Thought is simple and universal, it is 
relation in general ; and since I exist for myself, as self-conscious- 
ness, the relations also should exist for myself To the thoughts 
and ideas which I make my own, I lend the determination which 
I am myself. I am this simple point, and that which exists for 
myself I will cognize in this unity. 

In this respect cognition deals with that which is, and with its 
necessity ; it conceives this necessity in the relations of cause and 
effect, reason and inference, force and manifestation, the universal, 
the genus and the individuals, which belong to the sphere of the 
contingent. Cognition and science thus place the most diverse 
matter in reciprocal relationshij) ; they deprive it of the contin- 
gency which it owes to its immediateness ; and, considering the 
relations which the exuberance of finite phenomena possesses, they 
grasp the world of finitude within themselves, and comprehend it 
in a system of the universe. Cognition, therefore, needs for this 
system no presupposition which is extraneous to the same. For 
the knowledge of what an object is, what its essential determina- 
tions are, results from inspection and observation of it. After 
the qualities of objects have been observed, one proceeds to the 
relations in which they stand to other objects, not the contingent, 
but the determinate [and necessary] relations, which point to- 
wards the original thing from which they take their origin. In 
this manner we inquire into the ground and cause of a thing, and 
this inquiry has here the meaning that the special causes are 
sought. It is no longer sufficient to designate God as the cause 
of the lightning, or the downfall of the republican constitution of 
Rome, or of the French Republic ; for it is soon discovered that 
such an explanation is altogether general, and does not give the de- 
sired explanation. When we want to know the cause of a natural 
phenomenon, or of some law as effect or consequence, we want to 
know the cause of just this phenomenon; we do not ask for the 
cause which would apply to everything, but for the one which 
fits this special case and no other. And, therefore, it must be the 
cause of such special phenomena, and must be an immediate one ; 
it must be sought in the finite, and must be finite itself. This 
mode of cognition can, therefore, not progress beyond what is 
finite, and does not want to go beyond it, because it knows every- 
thing, and can do justice to everything in its finite sphere. [Such 



Introduction to the Philosoj)hy of Religion. 185 

a] Science forms a universe of cognition, which for itself does not 
require God, [since] it lies outside of religion, and has no connec- 
tion with it. Cognition enlarges within these limits upon its re- 
lations and connections, and in this it has all the determinate 
material and content on its side, while there is nothing left for the 
other side — the side of the infinite and eternal. 

7, Thus the two sides have completely unfolded themselves in 
their contrast. The feeling mind is, on the side of religion, filled 
with the divine, but it is without freedom, self-consciousness, and 
without consistency in regard to its determinations which have the 
form of contingency. The consistent connection of the determi- 
nations is peculiar to the side of cognition, which, while it is at 
home in what is finite, and moves freely in the logical determina- 
tion of the most diverse connections, is unable to construct any- 
thing better than a system without absolute trustworthiness, with- 
out God. The absolute content, purpose or aim belongs to the 
side of religion, but is found there as something abstractly posi- 
tive only. Cognition has taken possession of all the finite content 
and drawn it within its sphere ; the entire determinate content 
has become its share. Yet, even if it should give to the same a 
necessary connection, it cannot lend absolute connection to it. 
Since science has taken possession of cognition, and is the con- 
sciousness of the necessity of the finite, religion has been deprived 
of cognition, and has shrunk into the simple feeling, into a content- 
lacking elevation of the spiritual to the eternal, but it knows noth- 
ing that it could predicate of the eternal ; for whatever would in- 
volve cognition would be a lowering of the eternal to the level 
and connection of the finite. 

When the two sides have thus developed and enter into a recip- 
rocal relationship they are mutually distrustful. Religious feeling 
distrusts the fiuitude which cognition involves, and charges science 
with vanity and conceit, because in science the subject is self-related 
and self-contained, and because in it the Ego, as the cognizing prin- 
ciple, in its relation to the external, remains for itself. On the other 
side Cognition is distrustful of the Totality to which the Feeling 
confines itself, and in whose unity it sinks all explication and devel- 
opment. Cognition is afraid of losing its freedom if it should yield 
to the demands of the Feeling by acknowledging a truth which it 
does not see clearly and distinctly. And when the religious feel- 



186 Tlie Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

ing steps forth from its universality, and projects aims and ends for 
itself, and thus makes a transition to determination. Cognition 
can see in this undertaking nought but arbitrary caprice, and it 
would become the play of chance, if it too were to pass into deter- 
minateness in the same way. When developed reflection, there- 
fore, is obliged to betake itself to religion, it finds it unendurable 
there and becomes impatient of all those determinations. 

c. When the development has reached this stage, in which each 
side, at the approach of the other, repels it as its enemy, there arises 
the need of a harmonization through which the infinite may ap- 
pear in the finite, and the finite in the infinite, so that neither shall 
form henceforth a realm by itself. This would result in a concilia- 
tion of the religious, pure feeling with cognition and intelligence. 
In such a conciliation, full satisfaction must be given to the 
highest demands of cognition and of the idea, for these can make 
no concession which would sacrifice aught of their dignity and 
worth. But neither can the absolute content be allowed to suf- 
fer detraction and to be dragged down into finitude ; wdien op- 
posed to it, the finite form of cognition must yield. 

In the Christian religion the need of this conciliation must ne- 
cessaril}^ become more apparent than in the other religions, for the 
reason that — 

a. It itself arises out of absolute diremption and begins with the 
pain, in which it severs the natural unity of the spirit and destroys 
the inner peace. In it man appears naturally bad, and therefore 
bears in his deepest soul a negative relation to himself ; the spirit 
being forced back upon itself, finds itself severed from the infinite 
and absolute being. 

/S. Conciliation, the need of which here reaches its culmination, 
becomes apparent to faith in the first place, but not in such a way 
that the latter can remain in its naive state. For spirit which 
turns within towards its immediate naturalness is sinful, and there- 
fore alienated, removed and estranged from truth. When my Ego 
is placed in this state of separation, I am no longer Truth ; the 
latter is in this case given to conception as an independent content, 
and truth is conceived on the basis of authority. 

7. But although I am put thereby into a world of intelligence, 
in which the nature of God, the determinations and modes of His 
actions, are placed within the reach of cognition, and the question 



Introduction to the Philosojyhy of Religion. 187 

of the truth of all this rests on the observation and testimony ot 
others, I am nevertheless thrown back upon myself at the same 
time, because thinking, cognition, reason, are processes within my 
own self, and because my freedom is placed before my eyes in the 
existence of sin, and in my reflections, in regard to the same. Cog- 
nition is, therefore, an inherent element of the Christian religion 
itself. 

The Christian religion secures to me the maintenance of my 
freedom, or rather its achievement. In the Christian religion, not 
merely the genus, but the individual, the welfare of the soul, the 
salvation of the individual as such, are the essential ends and aims. 
This subjectivity, this selfhood (not selfishness) is in itself the 
principle of cognition. 

Since the Christian religion stands on the principle of cogni- 
tion, it gives development to its content; for the ideas about the 
general subject are either immediately or in themselves thoughts, 
and as such they must unfold themselves. But since the content 
is on the other side essential to the idea, it is separated from im- 
mediate opinion and perception, and passes through such separa- 
tion. In short, subjectivity looks upon it as an absolute, self-exist- 
ent content. The Christian relio-ion itself arrives at the contrast 
of feeling, of immediate perception and of reflection and cognition. 
It contains within it cognition as an essential element, and has 
caused it to develop itself in its whole consistency, as form, and as 
a world of form, and to present thus a contrast to that [other] form 
which contains that content as a given truth. On this rest the 
discords of our time. 

So far we have considered the growth of the contrasts in that 
form in which they have not yet developed into philosophy in the 
proper sense, or where they are still removed from it. The next 
question is : 1. What is the relation of philosophy to religion in 
general ? 2. In what relation does the philosophy of religion 
stand to philosophy ? and, 3. What is the relation of the philo- 
sophical inquiry into religion to positive religion itself ? 

{To he continued.) 



188 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL.' 

BY A. d'ORELLI. 

At a time when evil grows luxuriantly, it may be interesting to 
become acquainted with an investigation from the pen of a well- 
known scientific man, particularly if in the end it should appear 
that strict science is capable of calming the religious-moral con- 
sciousness even in regard to the fact of evil. The author, however, 
departs from the traditional necessity of evil, long since taught by 
the philosophy of Hegel. 

The problem of evil, the author rightly declares, is not unim- 
portant, and is of such a character that it leads us into the centre 
of the system, and can only be made clear from the fundamental 
principles of the same. 

The treatise begins with the question as to the origin of evil, its 
universality and, as it seems, its necessity, as well as its position 
towards God. The greatest difficulty of the problem is in the an- 
swer to the two last questions. As regards the origin of evil, it 
lies in a perverted disposition and volition, not in sensibility, nor 
in the understanding, nor in imperfection, nor in limitation. Not 
in sensibility : the desires, it is true, can influence the direction of 
the ideas, and by that means become determining motives, but the 
human soul, being free, decides independently. 

The individuality, augmented in the passions, being restrained 
and conquered by the moral law, becomes the most powerful organ 
of this latter, and produces first good with its utmost energy. The 
body itself exists in order that the human soul may exercise and 
verify its moral power over its appetites. 

The source of evil does not lie in the understanding either. It 
is true that in evil reflection co-operates ; evil increases in intensity 
in proportion to the education of the intelligence which is at its 
command. 

Nevertheless its root lies in disposition. We do not sin with 
our understanding, which at most produces error, but with our dis- 



^ A metaphysical investigation by A. L. Kym, Professor of Philosophy at the University 
of Ziirich. (Munich, Th. Ackermann, 1878). 



The Problem of Evil. 189 

position. We must, therefore, avoid evil more with our heart 
than with our head. As regards limitation, from which Leibnitz 
derived evil, Kym justly maintains that it lies below the line of 
morality, because the finite was given at the same time as nature. 
Out of limitation, as such, one could understand that weakness 
arose, but by no means evil. 

Evil in the moral world runs parallel with pain in nature. The 
latter comes in contact with the former, in so far as in the latter 
too an idea can be violated or stunted in its execution. There- 
fore, in all cases where an idea reigns, a moral imperative meets 
ns ; already in nature, by no means first in the moral world, al- 
though it certainly attains in this latter its perfection and receives 
its specific stamp. 

Therefore the systems which reject the final causes, e. g., that of 
Spinoza, recognize neither pain nor evil. Spinoza, therefore, true 
to his stand-point, changes the ethical into the physical, throughout. 

All moral conduct presupposes a knowledge of the moral law. 
But — this is the real question — in what relation does it stand to 
this latter ? How do we acquire it ? Does it arise entirely from 
experience, oris it a priori inherent in the mind? Can sensualism 
or rationalism conclusively decide here, and decide for itself alone ? 
Has not rather the insight into the origin of the mOral rule to 
adapt itself at the same time to both ? We consider, savs the au- 
thor, this third possibility the only true one. An accommodation 
between the a priori and the a posteriori must produce also in 
the province of ethics true knowledge. 

The moral law enters the consciousness of the actor directly by 
the action, but the soul creates and completes the idea of the uni- 
versal moral rule out of its own nature. External circumstances 
can, it is true, contribute to the development of the moral law, but 
the root thereof lies nevertheless in the soul itself. 

Here in ethics therefore the limitation of pure empiricism or 
pure induction appears clearly. According to pure empiricism 
alone, ethic knowledge also would have to be obtained through the 
senses. But the moral idea never originates from the senses, and 
is as little to be obtained by simple induction as the idea of the 
absolute. It can only be explained by the nature of the human 
soul itself. 

If, now, the moral rule is to manifest itself, this appears only 



190 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

possible by its excrtiug itself sjnchrononsly in the contrast be- 
tween good and evil, so that one of these antitheses may be as 
necessary and justifiable, and therefore as good, as the other. Is, 
then, evil a necessary factor in moral-human development? 

The author rejects this supposition, which has been made b}^ the 
pantheistic school, e. g., by Hegel. 

The view that evil is necessary is opposed to the healthy moral- 
religious consciousness. It is quite contrary to the nature of 
morality that the moral rule should thus arise, and that man 
should become conscious that he stands towards it in a perverted 
relation. 

It can also be revealed to him by a circumstance in harmony 
with itself, therefore by a good action. 

Only error is unavoidable. Being finite I shall err, but being 
free I can preserve a pure disposition. At the same time evil 
must be sharply defined, and be strictly kept in its specific differ- 
ence, it must be separated from everything crude and undeveloped 
if it is to become clear to us that it is not necessary. 

The further difficult question is, then, this : In wliat relation 
does God stand to evil, and how can the fact of evil be reconciled 
with the goodness and almightiness of God ? 

In answering this question the author directs our attention to 
the different systems of philosophy, to theism and its relation to 
pantheism. Considered as a principle, the ethical interests only 
find their inner possibility and explanation in " monistic theism," 
under which the author understands essentially the organic-theistic 
system. 

For only in this case has man an individual existence, without 
which freedom is impossible. The supposition of independent 
and free beings is not at all in opposition to the absolute. On the 
contrary this latter, fundamentally considered, i. e., from the ethi- 
cal point of view, demands beings relatively independent of itself. 
In the idea of the absolute lies, not the destruction, but the preser- 
vation of the individual. Only in monistic theism does the al- 
mightiness of God not exclude the independence of the creature, 
but the absolute perfection of God reveals itself precisely in the 
fact of his having created beings who are capable of moral good. 

His revelation can have no other meaning than to be known as 
the absolute good. In human freedom is included, it is true, the 



The Problem of Evil. 191 

possibility of an unmoral exercise of the same, but in no case is 
evil executed by God, but by the free decision of men. 

Freedom is in itself good ; its wrong exercise is man's affair. 

Thus evil as regards God is utterly excluded and is by no means 
consonant with His beino-. 

Only in the organic-theistic system, therefore, is evil possible and 
a reality, without any joint origin of the absolute being connected 
with it. Only in it can God be kept apart from every contact 
with evil, and, because this arises from the free creature, only thus 
can it be justified in regard to Him. 

Evil itself draws its power from good ; it reverses the principles 
of the moral process and makes out of the means an end. For 
this reason it is not original but only secondary, i. e., all positivism 
which it has in its power it only received from its relation to good 
and out of this latter. Good, therefore, is in the abstract first and 
before evil, because the latter can only arise in opposition to it by 
the assistance of the power which it has taken from good. As it 
borrows the strength by which it acts from good, though it em- 
ploys it in a perverted manner, it possesses, when considered from 
this point of view, in spite of all the roality and fearful power 
with which it at times appears, no existence of its own. Hence 
its ephemeral duration in some cases is explained. 

For on the one hand evil is continually at war with other evil, 
while on the other hand it has a constant enemy in good. One 
would, then, imagine that the absolute, with its power of conform- 
ing to the end in view, would forthwith create perfection in the 
world. This is so far impossible as in this case we should have a 
completely tranquil existence without any development or genesis. 
All moral good must be self-gained, not given and passively re- 
ceived. Without development, therefore, not only would the finite 
be altogether abolished, but the moral also would be fettered in its 
inmost energy. 

Where there is development there is also imperfection ; it is 
bestowed with the former, and is unavoidable in the sphere of the 
finite. Nor can conformity to the end in view gain the upper 
hand at once, but only by degrees ; for the design (final cause) 
and the idea are much checked by the matter which they have to 
master. Thus misery and imperfection in nature are explained. 
Nevertheless, neither imperfection nor misery annuls final cause 



192 The Journal of Speculative Philosoplnj. 

in the world. And from the existence of deformity we must not 
infer tlmt the world is without design ; for even deformity is rela- 
tively conformable to the end in view, otherwise it could not 
appear at all. For what is entirely without design is not capable 
of existing. 

Since, then, the nature of development is inseparable from imper- 
fection, which consists in the non-realization of design, it is evi- 
dent that God could not have arranged the world better than He 
has done. For the sake of development and gradual progress, im- 
perfection, as well as pain in the physical world, had to be admitted 
as a factor in the conformity of the absolute to the end in view, 
as it is carried out in the world. The welfare of the individual 
must be considered in relation to the whole. 

The design or final cause lies more in the whole than in the in- 
dividual creature. In consideration of the design inherent in the 
whole, the individual creature must relatively sacrifice his welfare. 
Welfare, therefore, is not the exclusive object of the creature. 

We must, therefore, not designate the struggle, which the creat- 
nres carry on among themselves, as an evil, for then we should 
have to blame the Creator for having, e. g., created carnivora. But 
this would be as mnch as blaming the order of gradation in 
nature, and would lead to the suppression and rejection of all 
individuality. 

In what relation, then, does that struggle, which is carried on in 
nature and in human life, stand to the moral system of the world ? 
It is compatible with it and does not by any means exclude it. 

One could, it is true, say with reference to man, that witli his 
liberty the possibility is given that the ethical design in the world 
might not be realized, and it seems, indeed, as if the moral system 
of the world were placed entirely in the hands of man. 

For God cannot extort morality from man, as that would violate 
its inmost essence and annul it. Nevertheless God could place 
such laws in the organism of nature and the ethical world that 
human liberty might be allowed a certain latitude. He even had 
to do this from the organic and ethical point of view. Both prov- 
inces involve this latitude. Thus the laws of nature which can 
never be broken necessitate the exercise of human liberty. Man 
is only free in decision. If this decision has passed into action^ 
and become connected with the laws of the phenomenal world, it 



The Problem of Evil. 193 

can only produce what these laws permit. So far human liberty 
is limited, and no action, however bad, can annul the design of the 
whole, which itself is good. 

Evil breaks itself against the order of the whole, and it cannot 
conquer necessity, which exists in the whole because it is good. 
Evil, therefore, can never obtain universal existence. 

Will evil ever be completely conquered in the ethical evolution 
through which mankind passes ? 

It is not impossible that mankind might reach a state from 
which evil would be entirely excluded, but this is only conceivable 
in some remote period of time ; namely, when not merely the 
individual but the whole race would have fought its way up to 
perfect morality. This would, then, prove that evil existed neither 
at the beginning nor at the end, but only in the middle, of the 
historic-ethical process of mankind. 

The final cause of the world's development as it pervades the 
province of morality is, it is true, the abolition of evil. By the 
moral act above all, the world's development, in its culmination^ 
mankind, returns to God. 

The ethical is, namely, in all entity by far the highest. It stands 
above the theoretic and the aesthetic because in it the specific 
nature of man is the most included. Gradually, even if amid 
manifold error, mankind will, by its moral union with God, expel 
evil. The annihilation of evil by the victory of good is the ideal 
which the history of humanity strives for and seeks to realize. 

This work, whose contents we have here summarized, is certainly 
one of the most able treatises ever composed on this difiicult sub- 
ject. It is, besides, most intimately connected with the " Metaphys- 
ical iTivestigations " ^ published by Professor Kym in the year 1875 
(Munich, Th. Ackermann). In this latter work our author has 
especiall}' produced a very exhaustive dissertation on God and His 
relation to the world (pages 320-383). Pantheism and theism, the 
immanence and transcendence of God, are subjected to a searching 
examination. At the same time the author endeavors in each of 
these stand-points to preserve the authorized balance — momentum 
— and thus to obtain a philosophical system which may reconcile 
the two opposite views. This reconciliation between pantheism and 



^ See our notice of this work, Jour. Spec. Phil, vol. xi., p. 219 (April, IS'/V). — Ed. 

XVIII— 13 



li>4 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

theism is, above all, eftected in such a manner that the religious- 
moral interests are secured in their full sig-nificance, and herein 
precisely we see the principal advantage of this work. It con- 
tains, besides, other careful investigations on space and time, mo- 
tion and matter, and especially on human liberty (pages 282-320), 
The treatise on evil is so far connected with the investigations on 
the absolute and on human liberty, as without liberty the ethical 
estimation of the act disappears ; with the investigation on the ab- 
solute as the theology of the author is intended to be examined 
anew in the light of the problem of evil and to be confirmed in its 
accurac}'. 

According to the author's view, only monistic theism (i. e., the 
organic stand-point) explains on the one hand evil as a positive 
power, and yet on the other hand protects God from every contact 
with it. 

Successful as this investigation of the position of God in i-egard 
to evil appears to us, we yet should like to begin our criticism just 
at this point. The author, namely, undertakes almost too boldly 
to fix in an abstract manner what after all belongs to the frontier 
territories of human knowledge. 

In these, according to our view, is included evil. 

Certain it is that evil has its chief source in human liberty. But 
is this its only source? We doubt it. Evil appears to us rather a 
general power, which pervades the whole universe and culminates 
in man alone. At the same time we do not at all conceal from 
ourselves that this view also presents great difficulties ; for it easily 
leads to dualism, as is to be seen in Schelling. 

The author has endeavored to avoid this dualism. Whether he 
has entirely succeeded we do not venture to decide. But, what- 
ever position one may take up with regard to the origin of evil, so 
much is certain, that in the treatise in question, on the problem of 
evil, the difiiculties have not been avoided, but disclosed and for 
the most part solved. 

Being, therefore, perfectly convinced of its excellence, we recom- 
mend all deeper thinkers to study it. 



The Dialectic Unity in Emei'son^s Prose. 195 



THE DIALECTIC UNITY IN EMERSON'S PROSE. 

BT W. T. HARRIS. 

It has often been said that there is no unity in Emerson's prose 
essays, and, that they consist of a vast number of brilliant state- 
ments, loosely connected and bound into paragraphs, with only 
such unity as is given by the lids of the volume. AVe hear it said 
that the experiment has been tried of reading an entire essay, sen- 
tence by sentence, backward from the end, without injury to the 
sense. This lack of order and connection has even been praised 
as giving variety of form and freshness of style. 

While it is true that there is no parading of syllogistic reason- 
ing in Emerson's essays, and no ratiocination, there is quite suffi- 
cient unity of a higher kind if one will but once comprehend the 
thoughts with any degree of clearness. 

In a work of literary art, such as a drama or a novel, we expect 
organic unity as well as logical unity. There must be a beginning, 
in which we form our acquaintance with the persons, their sur- 
roundings, and the peculiarities of character and situation ; then a 
middle, in which character and situation develop into collisions as 
a natural result ; then a solution of the collision by one mode or 
another, restoring the equilibrium in the social whole. 

In the prose essay we caimot expect organic unity, but we may 
expect rhetorical unity and logical unity. 

There need be no formal syllogisms ; the closest unit}' of the 
logical kind is the dialectic unity that begins with the simplest and 
most obvious phase of the subject, and discovers by investigation 
the next phase that naturally follow^s. It is an unfolding of the 
subject according to its natural growth in experience. Starting 
with this view, we shall discover this and that defect, this and 
that necessary correction, and in the end we shall reach a better 
insight, which, of course, will be the second step in our treatise, 
and must be followed out in the same way as before. Such devel- 
opment of a theme exhibits and expounds the genesis of convic- 
tion, and is the farthest removed from mere dogmatism. We pass 
through all shades of opinion, adopting and rejecting them in suc- 
cession, on our way to the true final conclusion. 



196 The Journal of Speculative Philomphy. 

There is no lop^ical method equal to this dialectic one that ex- 
pounds the genesis of the subject. When we have reached the 
conclusion we have exhausted the subject, and seen the necessity 
of our result. Such is the method that Plato describes and in- 
dorses in the seventh book of his "Republic." To be sure, the 
untrained intellect will often get confused amid the labyrinth of 
eontiicting opinions, just as the callow young men did when Soc- 
rates applied his n^iethod to their theories. The reader is apt to 
expect a consistency of opinion from the beginning to the end. 
Difference of views bewilders him. 

Emerson has furnished us many very wonderful examples of 
dialectic treatment of his subject. But he has been very careful 
to avoid the show of ratiocination and the parade of proof-making. 
The object of his writing was to present truth, and to produce in- 
sight, and not to make proselytes. 

The student of literature who wishes to learn the dialectic art, 
and, at the same time, to become acquainted with the genesis of 
Emerson's view of the world, should study the essay on "Expe- 
rience" in the second series of essays. In this wonderful piece of 
writing we have a compend of his insights into life and nature 
arranged in dialectic order. Master his treatment of the topics, 
and you will discover what constitute real steps of progress in ex- 
perience, and at the same time you will learn how the tirst grows 
into the second and that into the next, and so on to the highest 
view of the world that he has attained, or to the final view reached 
by men of deepest insight, called seers. He names these steps or 
stadia in experience, (1) illusion, (2) temperament, (3) succession, 
(4) surface, (5) surprise, (6) reality, and (7) subjectiveness. 

(1) The first phase of experience, according to him, brings us to 
the consciousness of illusion. This is a great step. The naive man 
without culture of any sort has not reflected enough to reach this 
point. He rests in the conviction that all about him is really just 
what he sees it. He does not perceive the relativity of things. 
But at the first start in culture, long since begun even among the 
lowest savages, there appears the conviction that there is more in 
things than appears at first sight. Things are fragments of larger 
things ; facts are fragments of larger facts. Change of the total- 
ity of conditions changes the thing or fact that is before us. Things 
escape us, and thus " dream delivers us to dream, and there is no 



The Dialectic Unity in Emerson'' s Prose. 197 

end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, 
and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many- colored 
lenses whicli paint the world their own hue, and each shows only 
what lies in its focus." 

What experience comes next after this one of illusion? Evi- 
dently the perception of conditioning circumstance, the perception 
of fate or external influence, which may be called temperament. 
(2) Structure or temperament " prevails over everything of time, 
place, and condition, and is inconsumable in the flames of relig- 
ion." When exj)erience has exhausted the view of temperament 
it finds that it has learned the necessity of succession in objects. 
For there is a process underlying things, and we see that what 
made us explain illusion by temperament was the discover^' that 
thinoi;s chans-ed through external influences. ]^ow we see a little 
better, and understand that there is succession — one phase giving 
way to another, and thus exhibiting a series of influences instead 
of one final result. Temperament therefore, is no finality, for it 
produces no ultimate state or condition, but succeeds only in mak- 
ing a transitory impression. 

(3) We pass out of this stadium of experience and enter on the 
theorv of the world that sees chano-e and succession accordino- to 
some law or other. We look now for that law. When we see the 
law we shall understand the order of sequence, and can map out 
the orbit of life and of things. We shall see the true order of 
genesis. 

This view of the necessary order of sequence is no longer a view 
of mere change, but a view of the whole, and hence a view of the 
fixed and stable. The orbit remains though the planet wanders 
perpetually. 

(4) Emerson calls the view of the law of change " surface," as if 
the seeing of a line as a whole were the seeing of a surface. Various 
tadia of opinion there might be on this plane of experience. As 
very narrow orbit or a very wide one might be computed for the 
cycle of succession. The progress of experience will correct the 
narrow view. We think to-day that we have taken in all the 
metamorphoses of the object of investigation, but to-morrow we 
discover new ones and have to enlarge our description. " Sur- 
face " expands and we make new theories of the law. We are, 
however, dealing with the law of cause and effect, and cannot for- 



198 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

mulate the whole under it, for the whole cannot be cause of some- 
thing- eke or the etfect of some other being. 

(5) Emerson calls the next form of experience "surprise," be- 
cause it begins with the insight made in some high moment of life, 
when for the tirst time one gets a glimpse of the form of the whole. 
What must be the form of the whole, you ask 1 The whole does 
not admit of such predicates as we apply to the part or fragment. 
The dependent has one law, and the independent has another. 
The dependent presupposes something, it is a relative existence 
and its being is in another. The independent is self-contained, 
self active, self-determined, causa sui. The first insight is a "sur- 
prise," and so is the second insight ; all of the high moments of 
experience admit us to " surprises," for we see the fountain of pure 
energy and self-determination, in place of the limitations of things, 
and the derivative quality of objects which receive only their al- 
lotted measures of being. The soul opens into the sea of creative 
energy, inexhaustible and ever-imparting. 

By these moments of " surprise," therefore, we ascend to a new 
place of experience, no longer haunted by these dismal spectres 
of illusion, temperament, change, and surface or mechanic fixed 
laws. Things are not fragments of a vast machine, nor are men 
links in a cosmic process that first develops and then crushes 
them. Things do not exist in succession, as it before seemed to 
us, but tlie true, real existence that we liave found is always the 
same. 

(6) We enter through the moments of surprise into the realm 
of insight into reality, hence reality is Emerson's sixth category 
of experience. " By persisting to read or think, this region gives 
further sign of itself, as it were, in flashes of light, in sudden dis- 
coveries of its profound beauty and repose, as if the clouds that 
covered it parted at intervals and showed the approaching trav- 
eller the inland mountains, with the tranquil eternal meadows 
spread at their base, whereon flocks graze and shepherds pipe and 
dance." 

(7) One more step experience takes — it identifies the deepest 
reality as of one nature with itself. The absolute is mind. Em- 
erson names this step of insight subjectiveness, because in it we 
arrive at the conviction that the absolute is subject and not merely 
unconscious law or power. At this highest point of experience 



The Dialectic Unity in Emerson'' s Prose. 199 

we reach the station of the seer, the cuhnination of human expe- 
rience. The seer as philosopher sees tlie highest principle to be 
reason ; tlie poet sees the world to be the expression of reason ; 
the prophet and law-giver sees reason as the authoritative, regula- 
tive principle of life; the hero sees reason as a concrete guiding 
force in society. 

In a certain sense all of Emerson's writings are expansions and 
confirmations of some one of these phases of experience. The 
essay on the " Over-Soul " treats of surprise and reality ; that on 
Circles treats of succession, surface, and reality, under other names ; 
that on Spiritual Laws on reality and subjectiveness ; that on Fate 
treats of temperament and succession ; tliose on Worship, History, 
Gifts, Heroism, Love and such titles, treat of subjectiveness. His 
treatises on concrete themes use these insights perpetually as solv- 
ent principles — but always with fresh statement and new resources 
of poetic expression. 

There is nowhere in all literature such sustained flight toward 
the sun — " a flight," as Plotinus calls it, " of the alone to the 
alone" — as that in the essay on Over-Soul, w^heroin Emerson, 
at great length, unfolds the insights, briefly but inadequately ex- 
plained under the topic of "surprise" in the essay on experi- 
ence. It would seem as if each paragraph stated the idea of 
the whole, and then again that each sentence in each paragraph 
reflected entire the same idea. 

Where there is no genesis there can be no dialectic unity. The 
absolute is not a becoming but a self-identical activity. In those 
essays in which Emerson has celebrated this doctrine of the highest 
reality, and its subjectivity or rational nature, and its revelation to 
us, he writes in a style elevated above dialectic unity. These 
essays do not have dialectic unity only because they have a higher 
form of unity — that of absolute identity. Each is in all and all is 
in each. 

To give one specimen of this I ofler a very short analysis of 
the contents of the essay on " The Over-Soul." He says in sub- 
stance that man has some moments in his life when he sees deeply 
into reality ; what he sees then has authority over the other parts 
of his life. He sees principles of justice, love, freedom, and 
power — attributes of God. This seeing is the common element 
in all minds, and transcendent of the limitations of particular in- 



200 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

dividuals. Just as events flow down from a hidden source, so 
these ideas and insig-hts descend into the mind. He calls this 
the " over-soul," '' a unitv within which everv man's beins; is con- 
tained and made one with overy other. Although we live in 
division and succession, and see the world piece by piece, yet the 
soul is the whole, and this is the highest law." These glimpses of 
the eternal verity come on occasions of conversation, reverie, re- 
morse, dreams, and times of passion. We learn that the soul is 
not an organ, but that which animates all organs; not a faculty, 
but a light, and the master of the intellect and will. Individual 
man is only the organ of the soul. These deeps of the spiritual 
nature are accessible to all men at some time. The sovereignty 
of the over-soul is shown by its independence of all limitation. 
Time, space, and circumstance do not change its attributes. Its 
presence does not make a progress measurable by time, but it 
produces metamorphoses causing us to ascend from one plane of 
experience to the next — as great a change as from egg to worm, 
or from worm to fly. Society and institutions reveal this com- 
mon nature or the higher j^erson, or impersonal one — for, in order 
to prevent the confusion of attributing to the over-soul the pas- 
sions and imperfections of human personality, Emerson sometimes 
speaks of Him as impersonal (using Cousin's expression). Tliis 
revelation of the divine is a disclosure of what is universal, and 
not the telling of fortunes. There is no concealment when in the 
presence of its light ; the reality appears through all its disguises. 
The growth of the intellect as well as of the character obeys the 
same law. The emotion of the sublime accompanies the influx of 
its light. Its presence distinguishes genius and talent. Faith, 
worthy of the name, is faith in these transcendent affirmations of 
the soul. Thus revering the soul, man " will calmly front the 
morrow in the negligency of that trust which carries God with it, 
and so hath already the whole future in the bottom of the heart." 
In his book on "IS^ature," his first published work, Emerson 
developed substantially the same views, with a system of classifi- 
cation much like that in the essay on experience, and showing a 
genesis in the same dialectic form. (1) Nature for use or " com- 
modity," as he calls it, is the first aspect recognized. After food, 
clothing, and shelter comes next nature's service to man in satis- 
fying the spiritual want of the (2) beautiful. Then through this 



The Dialectic Unity in Emerson^ s Prose. 201 

comes the symbolic expression of human nature through its corre- 
spondence with material nature, and thus arises (3) language. 
Fourthly, nature is a (4) discipline, educating understanding and 
the reason, and also the will and conscience. Then the transition to 
(5) idealism is easy. Nature is for the education of man, and this 
lesson is taught us in five distinct ways. Sixthly, we arrive at the 
knowledge of the (6) one spirit that originates both nature and man, 
and reveals its nature in the ethical and intellectual constitution 
of the mind and its correspondences in nature. Thus from nature 
we come to the over-soul, or what was called reality and subject- 
ivity in the essay on experience. The eighth and final chapter 
of J^ature draws practical conclusions, making application of the 
doctrine to life : "The problem of restoring to the world original 
and eternal beauty is solved by the redemption of the soul. The 
ruin or blank that we see when we look at nature is in our own 
eye. The axis of vision is not coincident with the axis of things, 
and so they appear not transparent, but opaque. Build, then, 
your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure 
idea in your mind, the world will unfold its great proportions." 

Emerson looks on the world of nature and man as the revela- 
tion that the over-soul makes to him, and accordingly looks rever- 
ently toward it, and through it, to the great soul of souls, and 
always sees, under whatever guise, some good. He finds help in 
everything. He helps every one, too, most by teaching to them 
the significance of the world as he has found it. 

This thouo;ht of the revelation of the soul in man and nature 
is the idea that forms the unity of all that he has written, whether 
it be in essays like the " Over-Soul," or in historical and critical 
studies like " Enghsh Traits and Representative Men," or in 
poems of nature like "Monadnoc." One will find everywhere, 
though under slightly differing names, the elements of experience 
described in this sublime poem prefixed to the essay on Experi- 
ence: 

" The lords of life, the lords of life, 

I saw them pass 

In their own guise, 

Like and unlike, 

Portly and grim, 

Use and surprise, 



W'l The Journal of Speculative Philosophij . 

Surface and dream, 
Succession swift and spectral wrong 
Temperament without a tongue, 
And the inventor of the game, 
Omnipresent without name ; 
Some to see, some to be guessed, 
The}' marched from east to west : 
Little man, least of all, 
Among the legs of his guardians tall. 
Walked about with puzzled look. 
Him by the hand dear nature took, 
Dearest nature, strong and kind. 
Whispered ' Darling, never mind ! 
To-morrow they will wear another face. 
The founder thou ; these are thy race ! ' 



XOTES ATs^D DISCUSSIONS. 



SELECTIONS IN PROSE AND VERSE. 



BY WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 



[From the Gulshan I Raz, the Mystic Rose-Garden of Sa'd iid din Mahmud Shabistari, 
born, in the year 1250, near Tabriz, — a resume of Mr. Whinfield's rendering.] 

(Concluded from October Number, 1883.) 

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. 

In the name of liim who taught the soul to think. 
And kindled the heart's lamp with the light of soul. 
By Whose light the two worlds were illumined, 
By Whose grace the dust of Adam bloomed with roses, 
That Almighty one who, in the twinkling of an eye. 
From Raf and Nan brought forth the two worlds.' 
What time the Raf of his power breathed on the pen,' 
It cast thousands of pictures on the page of Not-being, 
From that breath proceeded the soul of Adam ; 



' Raf, the material, and Nan, the spiritual, or "world of command." 
' Raf, power, force ; pen, universal reason. 



Notes and Discussions. 20S 

When he beheld him a specific person, 
He thought within himself " What am I ? " 

The world of command and creatures proceeded from one breath, 
And the moment they come forth, they go away again. 
Albeit, here there is no real going and coming, — 
Going, when you consider it, is nought but coming ! 
One becomes many and many few. 
It is but one circular line from first to last, 
Whereon the creatures of the world are journeying. 

From proper arrangement of known conceptions. 
The unknown proposition becomes unfolded. 
The major premise is a father, the minor a mother, 
And the conclusion a son or brother. 
But to learn of what kind this arrangement is, 
Reference must be made to books of logic ; 
Moreover, unless divine guidance aids it, 
Verily, logic is mere bondage to forms. 
He that knows "the Truth," and to whom Unity is revealed. 
Sees at the first glance the light of very Being ; 
He sees God first, in every thing that he sees. 
To him, whom God guides not into the road, 
It will not be disclosed by use of logic. 
All things are manifested thro' their likes. 
But " the Truth " has neither rival nor like. 
How can any man know it, tell me how ? 
Fool that he is ! for he seeks the blazing sun 
By the dim light of a torch in the desert ! 
Know, that the whole world is a beam of light of " the Truth." 
From blindness arose the doctrine of " Assimilation," 
From one-eyeedness that of God's remoteness. 
From the same cause arose false ancj vain Metempsychosis. 
Since it had its origin from defective sight. 
He is like one born blind, cut off from perfection. 
The man who follows the pathway of schism ! 
The theologian who has no perception of Unitarianism, ' 
Is in utter darkness, in clouds and bondage of dogmas. 
Whatever each says about Unity, more or less. 
Affords a specimen of his owu power of insight. 
When the object seen is very near the eye. 
The eye is darkened so that it cannot see it. 
This blackness, if you knew it, is the light of very Being, 
In that land of darkness is the well-spring of life. 
Blackness, in both worlds, is poverty ; 
Blackness is most precious, neither more nor less. 
You are asleep, and this vision of yours is a dream. 
All that you see hereby is an illusion. 



' Unitarianism, tauhid, to be one with the One, to see all things in God. 



20i The Journal of SjyeGulative Philosophy. 

AVhoii this illusion of seeing double is removed, 

Earth and heaven will become transfigured. 

When the true Sun displays his face to you, 

There remains not the light of Venus, moon, or sun. 

Falls one beam of his on the hard rock, 

It is torn to pieces like wool of divers colors. 

The world is yours and yet you remain indigent. 

Look up ! and see how the vault of highest heaven 

Is stretched round about both worlds. 

Wherefore do they name it " throne of the Merciful " ? 

What connection has it with the heart of man '? 

Wherefore are these two continually in motion ? 

Peradventure, the heart is the centre of that heaven : 

Heart the central point, and heaven the circumference ; 

Moved by this, the other heavenly spheres are circling. 

Each day and night this highest sphere 

Makes a complete revolution round the world. 

If there were no mount of " youness " where were the road ? ' 

Come fortli from the dwelling of Umhani, 

Say only, " UVio.so hath seen me has seen the truth.'''' 

Consider the structure of the heavens, 

Mark well how they move in one direction, 

From east to west, like a water-wheel, — 

They are ever hastening without food or sleep. 

It is disclosed in man's own self. 

Each creature that goes before you has a soul. 

And from that soul is bound a cord to you ; 

Therefore are they all subject to your dominion ; 

For that the soul of each is hidden in you. 

Know yourself that you are the world's soul. 

The north quarter of the world is your dwelling-place, 

Because the heart is on the left side of your body. 

The world of reason and mind is your stock in trade, 

Earth and heavens are your vesture. 

Power and Knowledge and Will are shown forth 

In you, slave of the Lord of bliss. 

You are the Hearing, Seeking, Living, Speaking, 

Yet you endure not of yourself, but of Him ! 

first ! who art also the essence of the last, — 

inward ! who art also the essence of the Outward. 

" I " and " you " are the accidents of Very Being, 
The lattices of the niches of the lamp of Necessary Being. 
Of whom shall I say that he is the perfect man ? 
It is he who is acquainted with his own origin. 
He is a traveller who passes on with haste. 
And becomes pure from self, as fire from smoke. 



' You-ness, phenomenal existence. Italics denote renderings from the Arabic. 



Notes and Discussions. 205 

He makes the law his upper garment, 

He makes the mystic path his inner garment, 

The very truth is the station of his nature. 

That man attains to the secret of unity 

Who is not detained at the stages on the road. 

In addition to reason, man has a certain faculty 

Whereby he perceives hidden mysteries. 

Every man whose heart is pure from doubt 

Knows for a surety that there is no being but One. 

In that glory is no " I," or " We," or " Thou," 

For in Unity is no distinction of persons. 

The soul becomes child, youth, adult, and aged man ; 

It acquires wisdom, knowledge, reason, counsel ; 

Then comes his appointed time, from the pure presence. 

All the parts of the world are like plants. 

Every one of them tends towards its Centre, 

Its nature forsakes not its centripetal character. 

He is " near " on whom light is shed, 

" Far" is that not-being which is distant from Being. 

Fear remains not when you have started on your journey, 

The Arab racer needs not the whip. 

Let pure gold be burnt in the fire, 

If it contains no alloy, — what is there to burn ? 

The phenomena of the world overpower you, 

Thence, like Satan, you cry, "Who is lik? unto me V " 

Thence you say, " I, myself, have free will." 

In " the All," you will obtain deUverance from self, 

In " the Truth," you will become rich, Dervish. 

Go, Soul of your father, yield yourself to God's will, 

Resign yourself to the Divine foreordinance. 

If knower and known are both the One pure essence. 

What are the aspirations in this handful of dust. 

Call to mind the state and circumstance of your creation. 

From thence you will fathom the root of your thought. 

To whom said God, '■'■Am not I your Lord? " 

On that hour when he " Kneaded the day" 

He wrote by grace the faith on the heart. 

If you will read forthwith that writing. 

You will understand whatever you desire. 

In this place, behold his attributes to-day, 

That you may behold his attributes to-morrow. 

Reason cannot see the state of the world to come. 

As a man born blind cannot see things in this world. 

I have heard that, in the month Nysan, 
The pearl-oysters rise to the surface of the sea of Uman,. 
And rest on the mirror with opened mouths. 
The mist is lifted up from the sea. 
And each drop of rain becomes a pearl. 



^06 The Journal of Speculative Philonophi/. 

The diver goes down to the depth of the sea, 

The shore is your body, the sea is Being, 

The mist, Grace ; the ruin, Knowledge of the Name ; 

The diver of this mighty sea is human reason. 

Mark ! what a difference there runs between body and soul, 

You may take one as the east, the other as the west. 

Knowledge is not that wliich loves the world. 

Which has the form but is void of reality. 

Knowledge of faith springs from angelic virtues. 

Goodness is made manifest in equity. 

Equipoise in a body is its climax of perfection. 

Tho' the sun abides in the fourth heaven. 
Yet his rays are the light which rule the earth. 
The elementary temperaments exist not in the sun, 
The stars are neither hot nor cold, dry nor moist. 
The world is the dowry given to man by the Universal Soul, 
Of this marriage the issue is eloquence. 
Knowledge, language, virtue, earthly beauty. 
Set not foot beyond your own limits ! 
Every actual being is manifested thro' plurality. 
Tho' this whole is to the outward aspect many. 
It is smaller in quantity than its own part.' 
This whole has not real, absolute being ; 
Its existence is both plural and single. 

The world is this whole, and in every " twinkling of an eye " 
It becomes non-existent, and endures not " two moments." 
Every moment a new heaven and a new earth, 
Every moment it is a youth and an old man. 
Continually is creation born again in a new creation. 
On this side the world is renewed and perfected. 
On that side it is every instant annihilated. 
But, while the fashion of this world passeth away. 
All will be everlasting in the world to come. 
Just as in this world, from the potentialities of the elements, 
The three kingdoms of nature are evolved. 
So, all your dispositions in the world of spirits 
Will be made manifest, now as lights, now as fires. 
The death of the body will abide not in " the house of life." 
Duality by the side of unity is pure illusion. 
Not-being is single like being. 
All plurality proceeds from attribution. 
The manifestation of differences and plurality 'mid things 
Proceeds from the chameleon-like contingent. 

Altho' perfect analogies are unattainable, 
Continue steadfast in searching them. 
As the " twinkling of an eye " comes the last day. 



' Because Absolute Being is the summum genus holding all actual being beneath it. 



Notes and Discussions. 207 

By a breath the spirit of Adam was created. 

Tho' the mirror of the heart be polished, 

What profit is it when only self is seen on its face ? 

I have sought and found the origins of all things, 

And the wise man finds no trustworthy information 

As to anything, save from its original environment. 

For this duty did God create you man. 

Albeit, he created many beings besides yourself. 

Cast away vain talks and mystic states and visions, 

Dreams of lights and marvels of miracles. 

If you strive to be a faithful servant abandon form. 

Form accords not with perfect obedience. 

If you hope to take wing as a bird, 

Cast this carrion world amid vultures. 

What matters relationship, seek your true friend. 
Then, what ai'e your paternal or maternal uncles ? 
What proceeds from them save pains and wrinkles ? 
All relations are like some fairy-tale — a spell, a bond. 
I know not, verily, the religious hope you enjoy, — 
Cast out your adversary, the flesh, that you may escape. 
Purge yourself of affirmations and negations. 
Give your mind wholly to the Young Christian. 

By cursed Iblis, who witnesses not verity. 
Are wrought thousands of miracles. 
Now, he appears from the wall, now from the roof; 
Now he dwells in your heart, now in your body ; 
Iblis is the Imam, and ye his followers. 
All men have fallen upon evil days. 
See the one-eyed Dajjal, in what way 
He is sent into the world as an ensample. 
Know him for the ass whose name is Jassis, ' 
See all these asses in the toils of that one ass ! 
When our lord told the story of the latter days, 
In several places he signified this matter. 
He said to me, " Pharisee and hypocrite, 
Thy life has been spent in seeking name and fame, 
Behold this knowledge, devotion, self-seeking, illusion, 
From what have they kept thee back, laggard ? " 
The face of my soul was blackened with shame, 
To think of my life lost and my wasted days. 
He filled a goblet and gave it me to sip,-^ 
"Drink," said he, "with this wine, tasteless and odorless. 
Wash from thee the writing on the tablets of Being." 
Neither now do I exist in myself, nor do not exist, 
I am not sober, not sick, not drunken, 
Sometime like his eye I am joyful. 



' Antichrist, or the spy — a mighty beast ! 



208 The Journal of Speculative Phllosophij. 

Sometime like liis eurls I am fluttered, 

Sometime, by force of nature, I am lying on ashes. 

Sometime, at a look from him, I am in the rose-n^ardcn. 

What know you of form, or of substance? 
What is the next world, and what is this world ? 
What heaven and hell, and Hades is what ? 
Have yon not heard the text, " What ye see not ? " 
Come ! show me what is Jabulca, 
What that city, whose name is Jabulsa, ' 
Come, and hear the meaning of " like unto them." 
Hear it from Ibn Abbas, and then know yourself ; 
What profit is there in knowing, when you are powerless ? 
How shall I tell the tale of " states of heart," 
To you, man ! with head downcast and foot in the mire? 
You -sit like women in the street of ill-fortune ; 
You take no shame to yourself for your ignorance. 
Whereas " women " are wanting in intelligence and faith. 
Why should men choose their fellowship ? 
Tarry not day or night at the halting-places, 
Linger not behind your fellow-travellers and the camels. 
Like Moses, son of Amram, press onward in this path, 
'Till you hst the words, " Verily, I am God ! " 

To him whose soul attains the beatific vision. 
The universe is the book of the " Truth most High." 
Accidents are its vowels, and substance its consonants. 
And grades of creatures its verses and pauses. 
Of this book, the first verse is, "Universal Reason," 
Second, comes " Universal Soul," the verse of light, — 
The third verse thereof is " Highest heaven." 
Look up and see the vault of " highest heaven," 
Wherefore do they name it the " throne of the Merciful ? " 
What connection has it with the heart of man ? 
Wherefore are these twain continually iii motion ? 
The fixed stars are one thousand and twenty-four. 
Who have their stations round about the " throne." 
You may say these heavens are revolving, 
In the rotation of day and night, like a potter's wheel. 
And thereby every moment the wisdom of the Master 
Fashions a new vessel out of water and clay. 
The elements, — water, air, fire, and earth, — 
Have taken their stations below the heavens. 
Inimical are they to each other in essence and in form, 
Yet united into single bodies, at first of necessity. 
Ponder well once for all on your own origin ; 
Your first mother had a father, who was also her mother.* 



' The world of ideals. 

■2 Universal reason evolved Universal Soul, like Eve out of Adam's rib. 



Notes and Discussions. 209 

Behold the world entirely comprised in yourself, 

That which was made last was the first of thought. 

There is no other final cause beyond man ; 

It is disclosed in man's own self. 

When the back of the mirror is blackened, 

It must reflect a man's face from its face ; 

And the rays of the sun in the fourth heaven 

Are not reflected till they strike upon the dust of earth. 

Behold this Not-being which is the evidence of Being, 

See this height, how it is the very essence of depth ! 

Your natural powers are as ten thousand. 

His limit and portions are appointed to each by " the Truth," 

Each arises from, and returns to, one Name, 

In thut name each creature has its being, 

To that name it is ever giving praise, — 

By the door whereat each enters it departs, 

Tho' in its lifetime each wanders from door to door. 

Thus you learn all the names of God, 

For that you are an image reflected from "the Named." 

It is most meet that you should think no more on self, 

The word " I " is not limited to man. 

Necessary Being is as Heaven, and Hell as contingent ; 

" I " and " you " are the Hades' veil between them.' 

When this veil is lifted up from before you. 

There remains not the bond of creeds or sects. 

Phenomenal being is as the dot on ayn,"^ 

When ayn is clear, ghayn becomes 'am. 

One step is the passing out from the " H " of " He." 

Hail, Light of God ! shadow of Divinity ! 

The existence of creatures and plurality is but a semblance, 

And not everything that seems to be really is. 

Set a mirror over against yourself, 

Look on it, and mark that other person, — 

It is not this nor that, what, then, is the reflection ? 

Separate imaginary appearances from " True Being," 

Make not yourself a stranger but a friend. 

What profit to you is there in this non-existent existence ? 

Knowledge is not that which loves the world. 

Which has the form but is void of the reality. 

Heavenly being descends from the unseen world, 
Descends like some licentious reveller. 
Sets up its flag in the strong city of earthly beauty, 
Throivs into confusion all the world's array. 
Now riding royally on the steed of comeliness. 
Now brandishing the keen sword-blade of eloquence, — 
When beheld in a person, it is called loveliness. 



' Good and evil in the personal, or a medium for their reflection. 
2 Ayn, eye or essence ; ghayn, cloud or darkness. 

XVIII— u 



210 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Death occurs to a man in three sorts, — 
The one every iiioincnt, is tliat due to his nature, 
Of the other two, Icnow one is the death of his will, 
The third death is that conipulsoi'v on him. 
The world has not this death of the Will, 
For you alone of all creatures have this death. 
But every moment the world is changed. 
And its last state becomes like unto its first. 
On the day of your death your body, with contrition, 
Will tremble like the earth on the day of doom. 
Brahi will be confounded and soul darkened, 
Your pores will run with sweat like rivers. 
In your death-agony, wretched man ! 
Your bones will become ".s-o/'< as dyed wuol^^ 
Leg will be twisted with leg. 
Every friend will be separated from his fellow, 
Your land will be a level plain, — without hills or valleys. 
When you are stript of the garment of this body, 
All your virtues and vices will at once be shown. 
A body you will have, but free from stain. 
In it will be reflected forms as in pure water. 
Phenomenal limitations will be removed from Being, 
Nor height nor depth will remain to view. 
Your head and foot and eye will become as a heart, 
Pure of the stains of earthy form. 
Consider what wines "their Lord gives them to drink." 
'Whatsoever is seen in this visible world 
Is as a reflection from the sun of that world. 
The world is as curl, down, mole and brow, 
For everything in its own place is beautiful. 
As objects of sense are as shadows of that world. 
Annihilation, intoxication, and the fever of love. 
These mystic " states " are not mere illusions, 
To know these states recjuires either revelation or^faith. 
You are an infant, and your Father is the Father on high, 
For this cause said Jesus, at the time of his Ascension, 
"I go unto my Father who is on high." 

One who is accursed and bann3d and hated 
Is now Shaikh of the ages because his father was Lord. 
ass ! now have you chosen for your Shaikh 
An ass who is more ass-like than yourselves. 
If the son be of good judgment and fortune 
He is as fruit, the cream and perfectness of the tree. 
Discipleship is learning the knowledge of the faith, 
Kindling with light the lamp of the heart. 
Again an inspiration came to me from " the Truth," 
" Cavil not at wisdom, because of a fool," — 
If there were no sweeper in the world. 



Note& and Discvssions^ 211 

The world would be buried in dust. 

So goes the world, Allah k all-wise. 

Begin to till your field for the next world's harvest. 

The courageous man is pure from abjectness as from boasting, 

His nature is exempt from cowardice and rashness, 

Equity is as the garment of his nature. 

Actual existence is the vassal of Necessary Being, 

This whole has not real absolute being, 

For it is a contingent accident of Reality, 

But this is not the great resurrection day ; — 

This is the day of works, — that, the day of faith. 

The blessed portal of Unity is the sanctuary of the soul, 
Which is the rest of the Everlasting, the Simurg. 
His entrancing state is the union of union, 
His heart-ravishing beauty the hght of light ; 
He went before and all souls follow after. 
Grasping the skirts of his garment. 
I say not what your father and mother are, 
For it behooves you to regard them with reverence. 
The deficient in sense is called a sister. 
The envious is named brother. 
Your own enemy is called your son, 
And a stranger your kinsman. 
In childhood opens out perception of the world. 
And the temptations of the world act upon him. 
When all the particular parts are ordered in him. 
He makes his way from these sources to general notions. 
Of actions there is an endless plurality, 
Evil dispositions come into operation. 

When the hght of the sun is divided from the night, 
You see its dawn and up-rising and full ascension ; 
Again, from the circling of the revolvmg heavens. 
Declension, and afternoon, and sunset are seen. 
The light of the prophet is a mighty sun. 
Now shining in Moses, now in Adam, — 
From this sun every moment is cast a shadow. 
Which is one degree in the ascension of faith ; 
The time of our lord is the meridian line, 
For he is purified from all shadow of darkness. 
Since he stands on the narrow way of " the Truth." 
The kernel of an almond is utterly spoiled 
If you pluck it from its husk while it is unripe. 
But when it grows ripe in its husk it is good. 
If you pluck out its kernel, you break the husk ; 
The law is the husk, and the truth is the kernel, 
The mystic path lies between this and that, — 
When the kernel is ripe, it is good without the husk. 



212 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Union witli "tlie Truth " is separation from the creature state, 

For with " Him " is estrangement from self. 

The sun's rays are shed down from the fourth heaven, 

And are mingled with the water, 

Then the heat strives to ascend on high. 

And the water of the sea clings to it. 

And when with these are joined earth and air. 

Then comes forth the green and pleasant plant. 

This becomes the food of man and is transmuted into animals, 

Who are eaten by and transmuted into man. 

It becomes seed and passes thro' divers states. 

And then there is born of it another man. 

Unity is like a sea, albeit a sea of blood, 

Whereout rise thousands of mad waves. 

Thence you say, " I myself have free will, 

My body is like the horse and my soul the rider ; 

The reins of the body are in the hands of the soul ; 

The entire direction thereof is given to me." 

Know you not that all this is the road of the magians ? 

All these lies and deceptions come from illusive existence. 

Dignities are permitted, but men of dignity 

Are subject to the sway of "the Truth." Allah is over all! 

Recognize the working of the Truth in every place. 

Set not foot beyond your own proper limits. 

Ask of your own state what this free will is, 

Like as the Guebei-s speak of Yezdan and Aherman, 

So these ignorant fools say, I, and He. 

You existed not when your actions were originated. 

You were appointed to fulfil a certain purpose. 

Godship consists entirely in sovereignty, 

Causation is inapplicable to the acts of God. 

He has imposed upon you the law for this cause, 

That he has imparted to you of his essence. 

The head is to knowledge as a vessel. 

The shells of the knowledge of the heart are voice and letter ; 

The soul is darting as a lightning flash. 

It liears these letters to the listening ear. — 

Then, break open the shell, take out the royal pearl. 

Cast away the husk, carry off the rich kernel. 

Without a husk the kernel ripens not, — 

From outward knowledge grows the sweet vintage of faith. 



CHORUS FROM THE HERAKLES OF EURIPIDES. 

(An experiment at translation according to the plan of Dr. J. H. Hein- 
ricli Schmidt in his work on Rhythm.) 

Strophe I. 

Ever^is Youth dear to me ! Old Age, our foe, will alway. 
More heavy than crags ^tna uprears, 



Notes and Discussions. 213 

Our heads emburden, 
Our eyelids down weigh, 
Shutting out fair sunlight. 
Ne'er let Asian wealth of broad dominion be my heart's choice, 
Nor golden palaces well-stored, 
When set 'gainst youth in its prime, 
Mid wealth most beauteous treasure, 
Most beauteous treasure mid want. 
Thou drear murderous Age, I hate thee ; may billows engulf thee deep ! 
Boon bestow nevermore on man, come to palace or town no more, 
Far away into aether alway may pinions waft thee ! 

Antistrophe I. 

Ah ! were there wisdom, were there right shown by the Gods to mortals ! 
To some were allowed a twofold youth 
For a shining sign-mark 
Unto them of virtue ; 
Having reached their life's goal. 
Backward turned, they may run their double course in the rays of sunshine, 
While souls ignoble were granted 
One only measure of life, 
So all could clearly the bad know. 
Could clearly honor the good 
As they shine forth from the clouds in number as stars for the sailors' night. 
Now no way by the Gods established all evil and good makes plain 
Round our circle of years may roll, riches only have increase. 

Strophe II. 

Though youth depart, ne'er will I cease 

Graces mingling with Muses, 
That union loveliest known. 
Ne'er live I 'moug the Muse-bereft_! 
Find me ever amid the garlands ! 
I'll chant, an aged minstrel. 
Unto thee, Mnemosyne, 
Herakles, thee will I sing 
Gloriously triumphant ! 
Follow with Bromius, Giver of wine. 
Follow with dance, and the seven-toned shell 

Blent with Libyan reed-notes — 

Let end not the Muses' work 

Who called me forth to the chorus ! 

Antistrophe II. 

They paeans sing, Delian girls. 

Weaving beautiful dances 
Around the fires of the God, 
Sing Latona's son well born. 
Paeans I, though an aged minstrel, 
O'er domes aloft will swan-like 



214r The Journal of Speoulative Philosophij. 

Pour I'ortli, lioavv of check, 
Sinking praise unto my king. 
Strikes up well in my music, 
" Cliild of tlic Go 1 ! " Yet sooth liis fame 
Soareth beyond that glorious birth ! 

He, endurer of labors. 

Made calm-flowing life for man. 

Slew the terrible monsters ! 

C. E. S. 

N. B., January 6, 1883. 



CREATOR AKD CREATURE. 

There is a marked effort, in philosopliic thouglit, to discriminate and 
state tLe proper distinction between Creator and Creature. Both are 
manifestly requisite terms in any valid conception of Creation; and it is 
thought the following statement may present useful hints regarding this 
quest. 

God is the Universal, Uncreated Life ; Man is a specializhig or instru- 
mental form of that Life, in which form the Life is not a full, subjectively 
conscious reality until man becomes wholly fashioned and actuated by 
the power of the Life. Man is thus the creaturely instrument, form, meas- 
ure, and expression of the Creative Life, which, in itself, is immeasurable 
and exhaustless. Man, made consciously full and free by the indwelling 
Life of Grod, is still man and not God ; for he is a specializing expression 
of a Universal — a limitary or particular realization of the Unlimited. 
He is a human continent of a Life that, in itself^ is uncontained and im- 
measurable ; as to human sense, bounded space is a continent of the im- 
measurable space ; or, as a master in musical art and science, personally 
realizes, in his own genius and power, the glories of the immeasurable or 
exhaustless fountain of tonal and harmonial power, and yet is only a 
subject fitted to express or give ever-varying forms to the issues of that 
fountain. The human form, as the creaturely subject of the Creator, is 
designed to become perfectly fashioned to receive and express the im- 
measurable glories of the Creative Fountain without power to abate or 
exhaust the treasures thence tiowino;, any more than the musician or 
other master in special science has power to exhaust, by use, the provi- 
dences of such science — the exhaustless potentialities of such science. 

As a fitted receptacle and instrument of Creative Life (a " perfect man 
in Christ Jesus "), the creature must feel all the fulness and glory of that 
Life ; must feel it as if it were his own, when the truth is, it is only God's 
Life in him and not his own. The musician, duly empowered and in- 
spired by the entrancing powers of tonal rhythm and harmony, feels their 



Notes and Discussions. 215 

inspirations in him as Ms own veriest self; yet lie is not music, in esse, 
but only a human form qualified to receive from the exhaustless fountain, 
and manifest its glories outwardly. He is a spiritual form, fashioned to 
experience and reveal the glories of music without being it. So man, 
truly created or fashioned to the Divine purpose, is fitted to experience 
aad reveal God in his human activities — fitted to feel and act divinely — 
and yet is not God. God is in the immeasurable Providence of all power 
of being, knowing, and doing. All the providences real to thought and 
outward experience have their sole root in eternal Being. They come into 
outward form and activity by the power of the Living Word or Wisdom 
from that Being ; and finally into proper subjectivity — into human appre- 
iation and use — through man, the creature, become divinely fashioned 
to God's ultimate designs — become consciously one with his Source, and 
one with all his surroundings. 

Creatureship is a form of human consciousness. And this form is 
experienced by degrees. It is first indefinitely conscious in a common 
human nature — a nature that buries all human kind in communal indiffer- 
ence. It is next definitely or distinctly conscious in a special nature — a 
nature that differentiates or separates man from man, and apparently man 
from God. It is finally associately or unitarily conscious in a composite 
nature that reconciles and divinely orders all relations, both human and 
Divine. As to consciousness, the creature is naturally man in the first 
estate; he is spiritually man in the second; and divinely man in the 
third, this third embracing and reconciling all previous contrarieties. 

W'lLLiAM H. Kimball. 

Concord, N. H. 



MAGIC OR MIRACLE, WHICH J 

It is the plausible claim of a recent French critic, that the breadth of 
the scepticism of a given period, certainly as applied to the scepticism 
within the Church itself, and especially in so far as that scepticism is both 
humble and reverent, is in itself an indication of the extent of the new 
additions which are about to be made to the faith of the Church, when 
that scepticism has been overcome, and the new questions have received a 
satisfactory, if only approximate, solution. 

If I were, in a single word, to attempt to indicate that defect in the 
conceptions of God's relation to the universe which has been the real 
cause of most of the scepticism in regard to the supernatural which has 
accompanied them, and the true method by which they has been and are 
being overcome, I should say that it all culminates in this : the substitu- 



216 The Journal of Speculative Philosojjhy. 

tion in the place of Magic (which was a violation and defiance, not only 
of law and of reason, but of all other divine qualities, such as love of 
beauty) of such a conception of the divine relations to nature, and con- 
trol over nature, as is harmonious with them all. 

I fear that at least the popular conception of God, in his wonder- 
working in the world, has made of Him simply a great Magician, and the 
miracles mainly feats of magic ; and I am equally convinced that the only 
safety on the part of the Church is in abandoning this whole ground — 
this whole class of impossible and unthinkable conceptions, which have 
come to cluster about the miracles, and to put in their place ideas which 
are consonant with all that we know, through science, of the nature of the 
universe, of the nature of man, and at one and the same time ideas far 
more consonant with the highest moral conceptions of the infinite char- 
acter of God. I cannot indicate better the nature of the intent of what 
is here to be accomplished, than by saying that what has already been so 
largely accompUshed in Christian thought, as applied to the first chapter 
of Genesis, must now be applied not only to the miracles of the Old 
Testament and of the New Testament, but to that whole field which is 
embraced by prayer, by conversion, and the facts of the spiritual life or 
of the dependence of the human soul upon the life of God. How vast 
is the revolution in popular thought here involved will best be realized for 
many of us by simply recalling what carries us back, not more than a 
single generation, to a time when the creation of a world was described as 
being as easy i:> God as the creating an atom, and in which the present 
earth, with all its marks and results of geological eras, and its natural his- 
tory of millions of years, Avas conceived as a trick of legerdemain, to 
which even a period of a few hours or a few days was conceded, rather 
out of deference to what might be considered the exigencies of the his- 
torical narrative, but which might as readily have been compressed into a 
moment of time. 

But, if thus created, then equally might it thus be destroyed, with a 
word, and so it was said that He who had called the innumerable worlds, 
filling the infinite spaces of the universe, forth from nothing, might in like 
manner thus dismiss them back to nothing again. 

It is unquestionable that the changes which have been wrought in all our 
methods of thinking are immense ; equally certain that they necessitate a 
new way of looking at such ultimate ideas as those of creation and of 
Providence — fields into which it can hardly be said that Christian thought 
or Christian philosophy has yet entered with any definite conceptions 
capable of being used in a system ; but I think it is equally certain that 
Christian thinking, as a whole, has already been immeasurably uplifted in 



Notes and Discussions. 217 

character, dignity, and every attribute of the highest power. From this 
point of view, the presence of magical elements in Biblical records is so 
far from being a matter of surprise that their entire absence, on the other 
hand, would be in itself a miracle. To the opening eyes and imagination 
of the race, as of the child, there is no criterion of the difficult or the easy, 
of the possible or the impossible. It is this latest generalization of reason, 
guided by experience, that finds everywhere reason and law, love and beau- 
ty, where, to the primitive exercise of the faculties, all is fairy-land, or a 
realm of magic. What is thus the central idea of magic, if idea can be 
predicated of that whose essence is unreasonable ? It is that anything of 
which the thought or the conception in the imagination is possible is also 
possible in reality. But, while the tendency toward the acceptance of the 
magical is thus universal to the human mind in the earlier stages of its 
development, it is the distinguishing characteristic of the Biblical records 
that this language, alone of all human documents, is not necessarily con- 
fined by the conceptions of the age in which it found its first utterance, 
but that thus far it has, for the most part, yielded a higher meaning to each 
stage of the intellectual development of the race, and, by a kind of natural 
or prophetic transfiguration, risen with it as an ever attendant, ever in- 
creasingly commensurate expression of its increasing knowledge. 

Notably is this the case with the first chapter of Genesis, in which, 
"with no greater accommodation of language than would be natural and 
almost inevitable in such a case, the narrative might very well be em- 
ployed by a disciple of Tyndall or Huxley in describing to his own chil- 
dren the progress of these wonderful world events. It is possible that, 
as was believed by Swedenborg, this wonderful adaptation has been 
secured in the description of the Creation by a guiding and controlling 
inspiration which does not belong in a like degree to all of the subsequent 
history. 

What most concerns us, however, is this : Do the gospels present us 
with accounts of magic which we must reject and the accompanying 
facts, or do they give us proper miracles, and therefore events, which are 
consonant with, as well as expressions of, the highest measure of benevo- 
lence and excellence or glory of God ? 

For here, we repeat again, is the real antagonism of thought, which has 
precipitated the conflict in the thought of the be.st minds of the present 
century. It is not at all the antagonism between miracle and law. This 
is capable of resolution, and greatly to the dignity and elevation of both 
of its terms. The real antagonism is between magic and miracle, or be- 
tween childish and impossible conceptions of the universe, and things 
which are required both by the necessities of thought and by the infinite 



218 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy/. 

perfections wo aie also compelled or led to attribute to the author of that 
universe. 

To that naive faith or ignorant apprehension, for which the annihilation 
of such a planet as ours, with all its contents of life, and calling it again 
into complete being and activity as it exists to-day, is as thinkable as the 
appearance or disappearance of an atom, the New Testament miracles 
may seem at first sight to wear also some of the features of the magical, 
and yet, with the single exception of the multiplication of the loaves or 
perhaps the finding of the piece of silver, there is not one of them which 
presents any necessary contradiction to our thought. 

So again of another class or type of manifestations truly and rightly 
termed miraculous ; in lifting again into functional activity human bodies, 
from which the warmth and glow of what we call vitality have to all human 
tests apparently forever fled, we have a fact which also, to outward human 
appearance, has in other connections and in other circumstances occurred 
hundreds of times, and the frequency of whose possible recurrence has 
often been made the object of precautioning care even of legislation. 
What becomes of the living soul while the body lies stark and cold and 
breathless; who can tell? How easy or how difficult the summons which 
is followed by its resumption of control over vital functions we cannot 
tell, but in either case, in that restoration there is no contradiction of any 
ascertained law, either of the mind or of science, which should prevent us 
from admitting, so far as credibly attested, the facts. 

Now, last of all, in approaching the scene of the ascension, a third type 
of miraculous accounts, I do so at once with more diffidence and with 
more reverence as well ; but if we can show that even this one transcen- 
dent fact of the planet may be so conceived of as to free it from any con- 
siderable part of the magical features which encumber it, as usually repre- 
sented to our imagination, we shall have taken one step at least toward 
that reconciliation with the thought of our age, which is the indispensable 
condition of the restoration of religious and with it of spiritual faith. 

The difficulties which will necessarily still remain will be great enough, 
and I confess too great, to compel intellectual acceptance at this one point, 
and the faith of the Christian will still be left to rest upon the personal 
acceptance by a penitent loving soul of a fact which it cannot under- 
stand, on authority which it dare not dispute. 

But such as it is, that partial relief of our difficulties must be found, I 
think, in the conception that the body of our Lord, during the forty days 
which elapsed subsequent to the crucifixion, had already passed through 
some of the stages of that complete transformation, from the natural to 
the spiritual — from the terrestrial to the celestial — from the earthly to 



Notes and Discussions. 219 

the lieavcnly — which, in the faith of the Christian, is one day to be part of 
the experience of every redeemed soul. 

According to this hypothesis, it is at least not the body of flesh -and 
blood, as it appeared during the earthly life of our Lord, which now rose, 
overcoming the ordinary working of the law of gravitation witli all the 
difficulties which its subsequent disappearance must involve. 

But, while thus considering, even with this varying degree of satisfac- 
tion, these three, which I will call the major miracles, we may, I am sure, 
now proceed to claim joyfully all the rest as no longer obstacles in the 
way of the gospel first to be overcome, but as manifesting in their form 
and intellectual adaptation, as well as in their inmost ethical nature and 
significance, the most exalted features of the gospel which they all illus- 
trate. 

They are, indeed, glimpses and foretastes of a higher spiritual order of 
things, in which the soul is to rule the body, and in which, by a divine 
process of recuperation, the new life in Christ is itself to possess a crea- 
tive power, by which its stains and rents and imperfections are even in 
this earthly life in a large measure to be removed. These once consid- 
ered in their true light, and the great body of the miracles, with both an 
inner and an outer force, become parts of the very highest wisdom of 

Christianity. 

H. LooMis. 
PouGHKEEPSiE, N. Y., February 13, 1S83. 

R. W. E. 

[sonnet read at the funeral of R. W. EMERSON.] 

His harp is silent : shall successors rise. 

Touching with venturous hand the trembling string, 

Kindle glad raptures, visions of surprise. 

And wake to ecstacy each slumbering thing ? 

Shall life and thought flash new in wondering eyes 

As when the Seer transcendent, sweet and wise, 

World-wide his native melodies did sing, 

Flushed with fair hopes and ancient memories ? 

Ah, no ! That matchless harp shall silent lie ; 

None hath the vanished minstrel's wondrous skill 

To touch that instrument with art and will : 

With him winged Poesy doth droop and die ; — 

While our dull age, left voiceless, must lament 

The bard high Heaven had for its service sent. 

A. Bronson Alcott. 
Concord, Mass, April S7, 1882. 



220 The Journal of Speculativ'e Pinlosopliy. 



BOOK NOTICES. 



La Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger. Paraissant tous les mois ; 
dirigee par Th. Ribot. 

[The contents of the numbers of Vols. XIII and XIV were noticed in our July num- 
ber, 1383. The contents of Vols. I to A^II will be found in Jour. Spec. Fhil., x, p. lO'J, 
and xiii, p. 44. — Ed.] 

"La Revue riiilosophique," for July, ISYG (Vol. VIII), contains "The Philosophy 
of Idea-Forces " (idees-forces) by A. Fouillce, Part I. A somewhat satirical view is 
taken of philosophers, and their methods are discussed in a lively manner, in the above 
article, which aims to be logical, and is certainly spirited and full of illustration. 

" The Critical History of Jules Cesar Vanini," by A. Baudouin. A personal history, 
sketched in an artless, entertaining style, precedes this critique. As a philosopher, we 
are told Vanini had strange opinions, hardly to be called theories, and did not pretend to 
be an original genius. He closely studied nature, and an eventful life did not disturb the 
simplicity of his order of thought. 

" Error and Selection," Part I, by F. Paulhan. " The importance of the role per- 
formed by the unconscious operations of the brain is the great obstacle which is opposed 
to the complete separation of psychology and physiology." The article defines the ex- 
actness of impressions received under various conditions, and how to measure what is 
positive and true, and absolute consciousness. 

" Whewell's Theory of Science and Induction," by L. Liard, is treated with evident 
scientific knowledge. 

The books examined are : " Observations and Reflections on the Development of In- 
telligence and Language with Children," by E. Egger (Fr.); "Education as a Science," 
Bain (Eng.); "History of Philosophy," Fr. Harms; "Consciousness considered as a 
Limit of Natural Knowledge," Hermann Siebeck; "Musical Pleasure," H. Berg; "Study 
on Cerebral Operations and on the Isolated Role of each Hemisphere in the Phenomena 
of Mental Pathology," by Dr. J. Luys. 

"La Revue Philosophique" for August, 18Y9, contains: 

L " The Masters of Kant — II. Newton," by D. Xolen. The article opens with a sketch 
of Kant from the time he left Konigsberg, in the vicinity of which he was a preceptor 
for ten years, consecrating his efforts almost wholly upon the problems of mechanical 
physics. Kant felt the necessity of a philosophic revolution, and made a vow to wholly 
devote himself to it, and the earnestness with which he insisted on following a good 
method proves that of Newton, his master. He began by being the interpreter and 
advocate of Newton's physics, against the opposition of the Cartesians and the disciples 
of Leibnitz. M. X'olen here explains the principles of N^ewton, their effect upon Kant, and 
the opposition of other behevers whose beliefs he examines. From the method of N^ew- 
ton Kant created one truer and more comprehensive, outlined by M. Nolen, who asserts 
that it was not enough for Kant to maintain his master's principles, but he also wished 
to strengthen and extend them by new applications ; he also states that, of all the works 
of Kant, that entitled " The General History of Nature and the Theory of the Heavens, or 
an Essay on the Structure and Mechanical Origin of the System of the Universe, after the 



Book Notices. 221 

Principles of Newton, 1*755," best shows the power and originality of his mathematical 
genius, and the inspiration of Newton. Newton explained the actual state and preserva- 
tion of our planetary system ; he did not dare scrutinize the origin of our world or extend 
his theory to the universe. The system of Newton is not fully explained in this article, 
other than to compare him with Kant, or to show the development of the latter through 
a study of Newton. 

2. " The Dualism of Stuart Mill," by L. Carrau. If it were necessary to prove that 
the human mind cannot wholly lose its interest in problems relative to the existence of 
a first cause or creative principle, it would suffice to invoke the example of Stuart Mill. 
No one adhered more than he to the experimental method ; he was a strict positivist, re- 
fusing to follow August Comte in his chimerical mysticism, and yet the question of God 
was his last thought ; he was not on account of this an unbeUever, but he believed that 
the religious problem could be put scientifically. In analyzing Stuart Mill's dualism, M. 
Carrau undertakes to question if some of the proofs rejected by the English thinker 
have not more value than he attributes to them, and if, without disregarding the condi- 
tions of scientific induction, we cannot learn more about divinity than he affirms about it. 
He refers to the influence of Bentham, and states that the effort of Stuart Mill to estab- 
lish his dualism bears on the argument called cosmologic, which shows that every phe- 
nomenon has a cause, since it is a change determined by an antecedent. In M. Carrau's 
discussion on the existence of God as a cause of the universe, he brings up the atomistic 
theory of Thomson, and questions the existence of ether as eternal and uncreated, be- 
lieving that Mill's dualism would gain nothing by proving this, since the fluidity of ether 
could not resist an all-powerful finger in tracing the harmonious plan of the Cosmos. 
After analyzing the various points of Stuart Mill's theories, and comparing them with 
other arguments on the same subjects, M. Carrau concludes that Stuart Mill's criticisms 
do not seriously compromise the cosmologic argument, and that they have not shaken 
the philosophic foundation of the belief in a sovereign thought, the first cause of the 
world, and the human mind. 

" The Conclusion of the Critical History of Jules Cesar Vanini," by A. Baudouin, 
sketches Vanini after his arrival in Paris. " Error and Selection," by F. Paulhan, is 
continued. 

The books examined are : " Studies in Theology and Philosophy," by J. F. Astie (Fr.). 
The analysis of the works of Professor Hausrath, of Heidelberg, on " The Century of 
Jesus Christ," is especially commended among these studies. M. Astie best deserves 
the title of " Independent " of all this class of theologians, says his critic Maurice Vernes. 
" History of Modern Philosophy," Windelband (Ger.). The first volume treats of the 
Renaissance to the time of Kant. " On the Theory of Judgment," by Goetz Martins, a 
possible disciple of Herbert Spencer, according to the critic A. Burdeau. " The Antithe- 
ses between the Middle and Modern Ages in the History of Philosophy," by Sebastiano 
Turbiglio (Ital.), a work reviewed in a critical spirit by A. Espinas. 

" La Revue Philosophique " for September, 1879, contains : 

1. " Religious Philosophy and Neo-Hegelianism," by E. de Hartmann. A treatise chiefly 
on Liberal Protestantism, which, if it wishes to seek a more positive basis, says the author, 
must sacrifice a part of its critical radicalism, or seek to approach orthodoxy at the ex- 
pense of its own principles, or it should remain faithful to these, and try to give a more 
solid basis to the religious doctrine, while obeying the exigencies of the critical conscience. 
The author pursues a very interesting discussion on the various forms of religion, and 
speaks of the doctrines of Pfleiderer in particular. " Speculative Protestantism," says 



222 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Hartmann, " as a Cliristiau soot now belongs to a dead past ; as a religious speculative 
philosopliv, on the oontrarv, it is the germ of a new pantheistic religion of the future, 
utilizing the results of speculative philosophy to satisfy, as far as possible, the religious 
want." " The Critical History of Vanini," by A. Baudouin, is continued, and " Error and 
Selection," by F. Taulhan, concluded. 

Books examined are : " Metaphysics considered as a Science," by Alaux ; " The Gene- 
sis of Bayle's ' Erudit ' Scepticism," by A. Deschamps ; " Studies on the Theory of Evo- 
lution," by L. Carrau. 

The October number of "La Revue Philosophique," 1879, contains: "Sleep and 
Dreams," by J. Delboeuf. This article is a critique on several works on the above sub- 
ject. The author prefaces his criticism by specifying the various kinds of dreams, and 
remarks that the moral nature often lies dormant in the dreamer, the most refined per- 
son often being a subject to the basest passions in his dream-existeuce. He studies the 
subject from a medical, philosophical, and psychological standpoint, and, besides numer- 
ous Interesting examples of the peculiarity of dreams, makes a very interesting study 
and points out its usefulness. 

2. " On the Role and Legitimacy of Geometric Intuition," by Boussinesq. The author 
treats this subject under the following heads : L The defiance which geometric intuition 
inspires among some partisans of the non-Euclid doctrines. IL This defiance is not 
justified, for the evidence or geometric intuition cannot, as they suppose, be a product 
of external observation. III. Whatever opinion one may have about its origin, geometric 
intuition none the less remains the most perfect of our intellectual faculties, and the 
best defined in its object. lY. Without intuition all reasoning would become impossible 
in geometry, and probably even in the other branches of mathematics. V. Retiections 
on the idea of space. YI. Of the distinction of absolute and relative movements. 

3. " Movements and their Psychological Importance," by Th. Ribot. The author, after 
stating that not until within twenty years has the role of movements in the formation of 
states of consciousness begun to seriously attract attention, describes the psychical life 
as the ensemble of nervous phenomena with which it is united, and forming a circuit 
which parts from the exterior world to return to it. This circuit comprises, in the whole, 
three periods : one of transmission from the outside to the center, one of elaboration in 
the centers, and one of transmission from the center to the outside. This last phase, 
that of reaction, has been ignored by ancient psychologists. In the organism, they 
have considered only the sensitive side and have neglected that of motion. According to 
them, the body, in motion, is to the soul a stranger or servant. An inadmissible thesis : 
facts prove, on the contrary, that it is an indispensable co-operator. The subject is 
treated in a practical, interesting manner, and with great breadth. 

The critique on Yanini, by Baudouin, is concluded. 

The books examined are : 

" Contemporary English Morals," by Guyau ; " Philosophical Works," by Sophie Ger- 
main ; " J. J. Rousseau judged by the Genevese of To-day " (Fr.) ; " Psychical Motion 
and Consciousness," by Herzen (Ital.). 

"Mind," a quarterly review, July, 1879, and " The Journal of Speculative Philosophy," 
January, April, Jul}', receive full and favorable notices of an able list of articles. 

" La Revue Philosophique " for November, 1879, contains " The Pretended Scepticism 
of Hume," by G. Compayre. According to this author, the philosophic influence of 
Hume is increasing ; it is beginning to be recognized that his philosophy is not made of 
negations only, but contains a particular and original dogmatism which must not be con- 



Book Notices. 223 

founded with vulgar scepticism ; it is not only an accident and a curiosity in the history 
of thought, but an essential element. This author specifies the various works of Hume, 
and regards his " Treatise on Human Nature " as the most dogmatic ; while Hume him- 
self thought " An Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals " his best work, which 
opinion neither posterity nor his contemporaries held ; and, with all its good sense and 
wisdom, his work on morals too closely resembles that of Professor Hutchesson and 
Bishop Butler to possess genuine originality, says M. Compayre, whose critique is con- 
cise as it is comprehensive, and written in a spirit of fairness. 

2. " A Theory of Mathematical Knowledge," by M. 0. Schmitz-Dumont, reviewed 
by P. Tannery, is concluded, with further demonstrations of a sound, clear character. 

3. " Sleep and Dreams — II. Their Relations with the Theory of Certainty " — by J. 
Delboeuf, gives many interesting facts, and the author's theories are convincing. He 
has also treated this popular subject in a manner comprehensible to all. 

Books examined are : 

" Greek and Contemporary Sophists," by Funck Brentano ; " The Revolutions of Jus- 
tice," by H. Brocher de la Flechere ; "Lessons of Positive Politics," by Lastarria (Fr.); 
"History of Philosophical Terminolog}'," Eucken (Germ.) ; " The Morals of Positivists," 
Ardigo (Ital.), Melusine, Gaidoz and Rolland. 

The contents of "La Revue Philosophique " for December, 18Y9, are: "The Origin 
of Religions," by Guyau ; a discussion of a work by Max Miiller, whose doctrine differs 
from that of Herbert Spencer. The subject of Max Miiller's work is the development of 
religious thought with the Hindoos. His pages are filled with beautiful passages, and 
show the spirit of Matthew Arnold, Strauss, and Reuan. 

2. " On the Education of the Esthetic Sense in the Little Child," by B. Perez. Children 
very early show an eye for the beautiful equal to the musical sense ; the taste for play 
and the dramatic sense manifesting itself later. The author states the various ages in 
which certain objects attract the attention of children, and explains the causes of their 
preference ; in his belief, the esthetic taste of the child can also receive a happy influ- 
ence if his attempts at imitation or artistic creation are wisely guided. The extent of 
the poetic faculties in a child are sufficiently great to regard him as a precocious artist, 
provided he is early taught by imitation, when he is already capable of following a course 
in painting and architecture. The musical instinct, he believes, is innate in the young ; 
a child is born a musician, or will become one if he hears music at an impressionable 
age. No one, he says, is unmusical for lack of ear, but lack of practice. In the spoken 
voice there is a true or false timbre, a harmony of sounds with the thoughts and senti- 
ments, a music of the soul, which is one of the great secrets of eloquence. This very 
interesting article analyzes the love of play, the dramatic instinct, and love of the marvel- 
lous, and, through a keen knowledge of a child's capacity, inherited tendencies, and dis- 
position, affords the best instruction as to the education of children. 

3. " On the Influence and Elements of Ideas," by Dr. Ch. Richet. " All is not said," 
observes this author, " when the influence of the nerves and nervous centres upon move- 
ment has been explained, for the muscles have sensitive nerves, so that each contrac- 
tion provokes a nervous excitement which reaches the centres and produces either a 
reflex movement, a conscious or unconscious sensation." He further discusses volun- 
tary and involuntary movement, and how the course of our ideas and sentiments is af- 
fected by them. 

4. " Double Personality in Dreams," by J. DelbcEuf, describes the consciousness of 
self in dreams, witnessing as it were the part which imagination makes self play. 



224 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

5. The Manuscripts of Sophie Germain — New Documents — by C. Henry, A collec- 
tion interesting to geometricians, containing a number of letters. 

Books examined are : 

" The Study of Psychology," by G. II. Lewes ; " Spiritualism," by Wundt ; " So- 
called Spiritualism," Ulrici ; " History of Materialism," by Lange, vol. ii. 

Virginia Ciiamplin. 

Library of Aboriginal American Literature. In 1882 Dr. Brinton, editor of the 
" Medical and Surgical Reporter " of Philadelpliia, and for a long time well known 
here and abroad for his valuable contributions to the ethnology of the aborigines of 
America, and especially for his books, "The Myths of the New World" and "The 
Religious Sentiment," issued a circular announcing the publication of a series of 
works under the general title here given. We quote from the circular : 
" Each of these works will be printed in the original tongue, with an English trans- 
lation and notes. Every work admitted to the series will be the production of a native, 
and each will have some intrinsic importance, either historical or etlmological, in addi- 
tion to its value as a linguistic monument. Most of them will be from unpublished 
manuscripts, and every effort will be made to secure purity of text and competent 
editorship. 

"The works contemplated in the series are such as will be indispensable to the 
future student of American archajology, ethnology, or linguistics. A provisional list is 
added to this circular. They will be printed from type, in medium octavo, on heavy 
paper, and but very few copies will be struck off beyond the number subscribed for." 

The following are some of the works which it was proposed to issue in this series. 
Four, including the first and fourth with two others, have already appeared (1884): 

No. I. "The Chronicles of the Mayas," edited by D. G. Brinton, M. D. This volume 
will contain five brief chronicles in the Maya language of Yucatan, written shortly after 
the conquest, and carrying the history of that people back many centuries. Four of 
these have never been published, nor even translated into any European tongue. Each 
will be given in the original, with a literal translation and grammatical and historical 
notes. To these will be added a history of the conquest, written in his native tongue by 
a Maya chief, in 1562. This also is from an unpublished manuscript. The texts will 
be preceded by an introduction on the history of the Mayas ; their language, calendar, 
numeral system, etc. ; and a vocabulary will be added at the close. 

No. II. " Central American Calendars." A number of native calendars and "wheels," 
used by the Mayas, Kiches, Cakchiquels, and neighboring tribes, in reckoning time and 
forecasting the future, will be published for the first time, with explanations. From 
lack of sufficient material, this important point in American archajology has remained 
extremely obscure. The collection which it is intended to embrace in this volume is 
unquestionably unique of its kind. 

No. III. "The Annals of Quauhtitlan." The original Aztec text, with a new trans- 
lation. This is also known as the " Codex Chimalpopoca." It is one of the most curious 
and valuable documents in Mexican archaeology. 

No. IV. " The National Legend of the Creeks," edited bv Albert S. Gatschet. Mr. 
Gatschet will present: (1) The original German account, written in 1'735, l\v which this 
legend has been transmitted ; (2) Its English translation ; (3) Its retranslation into the 
Creek language, in which it was originally delivered, by an educated native ; (4) Its trans- 
lation into the Hitchiti, a dialect cognate to the Creek ; (5) Glossaries and ethnographic 
notes. 

No. V. " The Chronicles of the Cakchiquels." These chronicles are the celebrated 
" Memorial de Tecpan Atitlan " so often quoted by the late Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg. 
They are invaluable for the ancient history and myiihology of Guatemalan nations, and 
are of undoubted authenticity and antiquity. 

Other works of equal interest will be added, if the series proves acceptable to scholars. 
The above order of issue is uncertain. 



THE JOURNAL 



OF 



SPECULATIYE PHILOSOPHY 



YoL. XVIII.] July, 1884. [No. 3. 



A YIEW OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESCARTES. 

BY E. H. RHODES. - 

It needs no deep acquaintance with the history of philosophy to 
discern that the philosophic temper is distinguished by an ardent 
desire not merely to know, in their isolation, as many facts or theo- 
ries as idle curiosity or other motives raia:ht prompt men to accu- 
mulate, but to discover principles that shall give harmony and 
unity to knowledge. Some germs of this philosophic spirit are 
probably implanted in the breasts of all men who are capable of 
allowing their thoughts to rise above the level of mere animal 
needs, and, as mental culture spreads and deepens, the movements 
of this spirit are, of course, more widely and deeply felt. It is, 
however, to Philosophers and Men of Science that we must look 
for the most eminent examples of it. Though in speaking of Phi- 
losophers and Men of Science as if they were distinct classes, it 
must be borne in mind that, until quite modern times, the phi- 
losopher and man of science was almost always found combined 
in the same person ; and if, owing to the vast extension of the do- 
main of science in recent times, it has become necessary for the 
Bcientific man to devote himself to some special department, and 
that, consequently, a distinction is now drawn between him and 
XYHI— 15 



226 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

the philosopher, it is not the temper of mind, bat only the extent 
of the sphere within which that temper seeks its satisfaction, that 
justifies tlie distinction. The scientific man takes some circum- 
scribed portion of tlie great Universe of Mind and Matter wherein 
to philosophize, of which to discover the unifying principles — the 
principles which bind his facts together and give them their high- 
est interest and character of intellectual grandeur; the philosopher 
is content with nothing less than the Universe itself. Its unifying 
principles, '/if.s rationale, is the great object of his aims and desires. 
Eminent as was Descartes, the illustrious subject for our consid- 
eration on this occasion, as a man of science, it is because he aimed 
at nothing less than a Rationale of the Universe that he has justly 
earned the title of Philosopher. He was fortunate in the epoch 
in which it was his lot to publish his philosophical system. The 
hundred years that preceded its appearance had been distinguished 
by some of the most remarkable scientific discoveries ever made — 
discoveries which could not but largely modify the cosmological 
conceptions that had been handed down by the Greek and scho- 
lastic philosophers. The labors of Copernicus had established the 
heliocentric theory of our planetary system ; Galileo's invention of 
the telescope had revealed the inequalities of the moon's surface, 
the phases of Venus, the satellites of Jupiter, and the ring of Sat- 
urn ; the same philosopher, by his experiments on falling bodies, 
had taken the first steps toward the construction of a sound science 
of dynamics. The investigation of the laws of the reflection and re- 
fraction of light by Maurolycus, Descartes himself, and others, left 
but little for their successors to discover in an important department 
of the science of optics. The researches of the professors of the 
great Paduan school in Italy and Harvey's discovery of the circu- 
lation of the blood had revolutionized men's ideas of physiology 
and anatomy. Queen Elizabeth's physician. Dr. Gilbert, may be 
said to have constituted a new science by the publication of his 
great work on the magnet, in which almost all the fundamental 
facts of magnetism were first made known. The profound im- 
pression which these and other marvellous discoveries must have 
made upon the thoughtful and philosophic minds of the time it 
"would be difficult for us, familiar as we have grown with them, to 
estimate or even to imagine, had we not witnessed in our own day 
the depth of the impression and the stimulus to thought produced 



A View of the Philosophy of Descartes, 227 

by Mr. Darwin's speculations on the origin of species. These vast 
and important additions to knowledge had rendered needful, if 
not the construction of an entirely new system of philosophy, 
at least such an extensive modification of the old as would render 
it consistent with the new discoveries of science. To this neces- 
sary task Descartes devoted the chief efforts of his life — a task 
w^hich his rare intellectual endowments and the variety and extent 
of his acquirements in philosophy and science rendered him emi- 
nently fitted to discharge. The depth and penetration of a pro- 
found philosopher were in him united with the keen logical un- 
derstanding, the lucid style and method, which have distinguished 
so many of his countrymen. He was familiar with Greek and 
scholastic philosophy, was one of the most eminent mathemati- 
cians of his time, to which science he contributed one of the most 
valuable, because one of the most fertile and universal, of its meth- 
ods. He was a scientific investigator himself, besides knowing all 
the science of his time, the leading facts and principles of which, 
with a remarkable exception, which will be noticed later on, are 
to be found embodied in his philosophical writings. Such were 
the natural gifts and such the acquirements of the philosopher 
whose system was destined to supersede the old Greek and scho- 
lastic systems and form the point of departure for subsequent 
philosophic speculations. 

Let us, then, now inquire what were the new features in Des- 
cartes' system of philosophy which distinguish it from the systems 
of his predecessors, and which enabled his successors to take it as 
the starting-point of their own speculations. ISTow, if any one im- 
agines that Descartes made some new and important contribution 
to the positive solution of the great problems of metaphysics, a 
careful study of his works, combined with a knowledge of the His- 
tory of Philosophy, will convince him of his error. By the great 
problems of metaphysics are meant such problems as, for example, 
are implied when the questions are asked. Does the soul or mind 
exist? What is its nature? What its relation to thought and 
feelino; ? What is the nature of the material universe, and what 
its relation to thought ? Does God exist ? How do we know of 
His existence, and what is His relation to us? What is reality? 
What is truth ? What the criterion for distinguishing between it 
and falsehood ? On these and the like great questions did Des- 



228 Th^ Journal of ISjyeculative Philosophy. 

cartes' powerful intellect exercise itself to the end of liis life ; and 
the answers he gave to them, the conclnsions he reached, had al- 
ready been i^iven, had already been arrived at by one or other of 
the philosophers that had preceded him. What, then, did Descartes 
do to earn the position he holds in philosophy? He did three 
things. He taught men how to doubt in a rigorous and syste- 
matic manner. He brought into clear and distinct view the sub- 
jective method in philosophy, made it the foundation of his system? 
and professed to deduce his theory of the Universe from a self-evi- 
dent proposition furnished by that method. And, thirdly, taking 
the widest view of Philosophy, and considering its object to be 
to furnish a Rationale of the genesis and nature of the Universe, 
he brought within the circle of his own system almost all the great 
scientitic discoveries of his epoch, whether in the realm of organic 
or of inorganic nature. In the first place, then, Descartes taught 
mankind that, ere they can hope to arrive at certainty, they must 
first learn how to doubt. By precept and exami)le he enforced 
this dithcult, but necessary, lesson upon them. Before his time 
men had at most merely played at doubting, when they doubted 
or pretended to doul)t at all. He first fet them the example of 
rigorous and systematic doubt, first imj)ressed upon them the ne- 
cessity of searching out from the inmost recesses of the mind, and 
submitting to a cautious and vigilant criticism, every belief they 
had inibibed, whether, almost nnconsciously, througli the impres. 
sions of their senses as they grew up from infancy to manhood — • 
the ^'■jjrcejudicia ineimtis oetatis " he so often warns us against — 
or from the teachinojs of authority and from the vast mass of un- 
sifted materials stored up in the writings of all ages. It is diffi- 
cult for us, who have so long and so thoroughly learned this les- 
son, who are accustomed to submit every proposition in history, 
philosophy, or science to the rigorous tests suggested by the accu- 
mulated experience of the last two centuries of scientific activity — 
it is difficult for us to realize how little men understood, or rather 
how entirely they failed to conceive, what thorough and systematic 
doubt was. Some idea of the depth of their dogmatic slumbers we 
may form by inspecting the philosophical writings of Descartes' 
great predecessor, Bacon, one of the most unprejudiced and open- 
minded of men. What a mass of nnexamined dogmatic beliefs 
does the " Novum Organon " reveal in its writer ! what a host of 



A View of the Philosophy of Descartes. 229 

pre-snppositions as to mind, body, the world, forms, essences, and 
the like, derived from all kinds of sources Greek and scholastic 
concerning which the writer seems quite unconscious that all nesd 
a rigorous re-ex:imination ! 

Descartes would, however, have considered that he had con- 
ferred on philosophy a boon of little value if the result of his 
lesson in systematic <loubting were to be a barren skepticism. He 
was himself no skeptic ; he believed that there was such a thing as 
truth ; he doubted not the reality of mind and matter; so far was 
he removed from doubt that, comparing himself to Archimedes, 
he needed but to find as a fulcrum one fundamental, one indubi- 
table truth, and he would raise into our view the whole system of 
the Universe. This fulcrum, this irrefragable truth, he believed 
he had found in his celebrated axiom " cogito, ei^go sum " — " I 
think, therefore 1 am." However doubtful might be the exist- 
ence, as real objects, of what he saw and felt and heard, he could 
not doubt their existence as mere sensations : whether his thouo-hts 
were true or false, he could not doubt that he had thoughts, and 
so long as his thoughts, sensations, emotions, volitions, feelings 
continued their course, so long as the stream of consciousness con- 
tinued its flow, he could not doubt the continuance of his own 
existence. Of the existence of his feelings, taken as mere feeling, 
it was impossible for him to doubt, and, so long as his feelings 
existed, it was equally impossible to doubt his own existence. 
" Cogito, ergo sum " was, then, the fundamental self-evident propo- 
sition furnished by his subjective method. The thought involved 
in this sentence, implicit in previous philosophical systems, he 
rendered explicit, he disentangled it from other ideas, clearly and 
forcibly explained his method of arriving at it and wherein lay its 
certainty, and his labors in this matter constitute his second title 
to the position lie holds in the history of philosophy. Now, this 
truth, cogito, ergo siim, not only served as an irrefragable fii-st prin- 
ciple from which his system of philosophy was to start, but, from 
the exceeding clearness and distinctness with which he appre- 
hended it, it guided him to the discovery of what was equally 
indispensable with itsolf — of a criterion or test for distinguishing 
between truth and falsehood. Tiiis criterion is, that whatever is 
apprehended with the same clearness and distinctness as this 
primary truth is true likewise. Thus with the] discovery of this 



230 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

first truth lie had found not only his fulcrum, but his lever too. 
But, thought Descartes, though my fulcrum needs no guarantee — 
guarantees itself, in fact — 'mj lever possesses not this perfection ; 
its excellence must be guaranteed by another. Reflecting, there- 
fore, once more on his fundamental truth, cogito, ergo sum., and 
observing that he inferred the existence of himself as a thinking 
substance from the existence of his thoughts, he saw involved in 
this first principle the further principle, ex nihilo nihil Jit, or, 
everything has a cause. The first use he made of this new prin- 
ciple was to prove the existence of God. Among the ideas exist- 
ing in his mind, he found the idea of a Being infinite, indepen- 
dent, supremely intelligent and supremely powerful — the idea of 
an all-perfect God. Now, such an idea must have an adequate 
cause. His own im})erfect nature could not possibly be the ade- 
quate cause. The only adequate cause could be the actually ex- 
isting Deity. Moreover, in the idea of God alone was contained 
necessary and eternal existence; hence there could be no doubt 
of the existence of this all-perfect Being. God, then, the Creator 
and Upholder of all things, having been proved to exist, it is from 
Him we derive our faculty of knowledge; and, as he is a God of 
perfect truth, it is impossil)le that he could have given us a faculty 
that should lead us astray. Whatever, therefore, we perceive clear- 
ly and distinctly, must be true. If our ideas are false, it is only 
when there are obscurity and confusion in them, and then they pro- 
ceed not from God, but a nihilo. In our own breasts, then, we 
have a criterion for distinguishing between the true and the false — 
a criterion whose validity is guaranteed by God himself. But 
though every man possesses this criterion in himself, it depends 
entirelv on his own Will, which Descartes held to be free, Avhether 
he make use of this criterion or not. Belief or assent is an act of 
the Will ; it is, therefore, entirely our own fault if we fall into 
error, since we can always avoid doing so by being careful to give 
our assent to nothing except to what we clearly and distinctly 
perceive, and to what can be deduced therefrom by clear and dis- 
tinct principles of reasoning. So strict is Descartes on this point 
that he will not allow men to plead the greater imperfection of 
their intellects as an excuse for falling into greater errors than 
their fellows. He will not allow of greater or less imperfection 
of mind. Indeed, he begins his celebrated treatise, " De Methodo,"' 



A Vieto of the Philosophy of Descartes, 231 

with the words "Nulla res sequabilius inter homines est distributa 
qnam bona mens." Clearness and distinctness of perception, then, 
are essential to truth, and the difference between clearness and 
distinctness he explains when he says : " A clear perception I call 
that which is present and open to the attentive mind, just as we 
are said to see those objects clearly which are present to the ob- 
servant eye and move it with sufficient strength and openness. 
But that perception is distinct which, at the same time that it is 
clear, is so separated and marked off from everything else that it 
contains within itself absolutely nothing but what is clear." Ac- 
cording to Descartes, the Universe, as created by God, is com- 
posed of two substances. Mind and Body. By substance he means 
anything whose existence is absolute and independent, or at any 
rate only dependent on the concurrence of God. Bodies and 
Minds exist, therefore, whether they are present to our conscious- 
ness or not, whether they or their properties are perceived by us 
or not. Each of the two substances has an especial property 
which constitutes its nature and essence. Extension in length, 
breadth, and depth constitutes the essence of bodily substance, and 
it is from our perception of this property that we infer the exist- 
ence of the substance body. Thought constitutes the nature of 
the thinkino; substance or mind, and it is from the existence of his 
own thoughts that a man infers the existence of his own mind or 
thinking substance. The other properties of bodies — as figure, mo- 
tion, position, divisibilitj^ — are but modes of the essential property, 
extension. The other properties of mind — as imagination, sensa- 
tion, will — are but modes of its essential property, thought. In the 
case of Man, mind and body are found intimately united ; and it 
is their intimate union that gives rise to many of the feelings we 
experience : the various appetites, as hunger, tliirst, etc. ; the pas- 
sions, as anger, joy, sadness, love, etc. ; sensations, as light, color, 
sounds, smells, tastes, heat, hardness, and other tactile qualities. 

To explain how this intimate union of Mind and Body gives 
rise to these various mental affections was the aim of what justly 
deserves to be considered his greatest work, his " Passiones sive 
Affectus Animse." 

He begins this Treatise with a statement of the distinction 
Philosophers have drawn between Action and Passion. Every 
occurrence, every fresh event, is called Passion in respect of the 



232 The Journal of Speculative Pldlosopliy . 

subject to which it liappens, and Action in respect of the subject 
which is the cause of its happeuing. So that, although Agent 
and Patient are very frequently quite different things, Action 
and Passion remain one and the same thing, which has these two 
names on account of the two different subjects to which it can be 
referred. Now, no subject acts more immediately on the soul 
than does the body to which it is joined ; and, consequently, what 
is Passion in the soul is commonly Action in the body. There 
is, then, no safer way of arriving at a knowledge of the Passions 
than by first carefully considering what is the difference between 
body and soul, to the end that we may know to which of the two 
ought to be assigned each one of the various functions that exist 
in us. For this purpose he lays down the rule that whatever 
affections and properties are common to ourselves and inanimate 
bodies ought to be attributed to the body only, as, for instance, 
figure, motion, heat; all species of thoughts, on the other hand, 
pertain to the soul. The functions of the body, then — its move- 
ments, its heat, the action of its muscles, nerves, brain, and 
organs of sense — are quite independent of the soul ; and it is a 
vulgar error to suppose that the activities of the body are due to 
the soul's presence, and that they cease, in other words, that the 
body dies, because and in consequence of the soul's quitting the 
body. On the contrary, the soul leaves the body, which is just as 
much an automatic piece of machinery as a clock, because the 
bodily machinery gets out of order, gets spoilt, as do the works of 
a clock. The nature of this machinery he illustrates by an ac- 
count of the way in which affections of the sensory nerves are 
converted into muscular movements through the action of the 
brain and motor nerves, quite independently of the mind — an 
account which wants but little change to bring it up to the level 
of the explanation of what is called reflex action, to be found in 
our text-books of physiology. Indeed, Descartes' conception of 
the nature of all organized bodies, whether of men or beasts, very 
much amounts to this : that they are automatic pieces of machinery, 
so adjusted to their external environment that, when acted upon 
by this environment, the bodily machinery reacts in a manner 
conducive to the preservation of its own vigor and efficiency, and, 
he might have added, to the continuance of the race, co-operating 
with changes in the environment which are favorable to these 



A View of the Philosophy of Descartes. 233 

end?, and resisting clianges that tend to the injury of the bodily 
machinery or to the extinction of the race ; that this action and 
reaction go on whether the body is endowed with consciousness 
or not; that beasts of all kinds are probably altogether uncon- 
scious automata, and that man is very largely so. But, whatever 
may be the case with beasts, and Descartes is not quite sure that 
even they are altogether destitute of consciousness, though cer- 
tainly they are of reason — ratione carent et forte omni cogitatione 
— man is endowed with a mind to whose action upon the body 
some of the movements of the latter are due, and whose passions 
and affections are due to the action of the body upon it. 

Cogltationcs^ thoughts, which are the sole functions of our Soul, 
are of two kinds. The actions of the Soul, and its Passions or Af- 
fections. The actions of the Soul are the activities of our Will ; 
they come froui the Soul, and depend upon it entirely. Our Pas- 
sions are, in general, all kinds of perceptions or thoughts which 
are found in us {pmnes sjyecies perceptionum sive cogltationum qucB 
in nohis reperiuntur). The actions of the Will are twofold. They 
cither terminate in the Soul itself, as when we will to think of 
some intelligible or immaterial object; or they terminate in our 
body, as when we will to move our limbs and they move. Of our 
Perceptions, some have the Soul for their cause, others the body. 
The first class of perceptions are the perceptions of the activity of 
Will and the perceptions of intelligible as opposed to imaginable 
things. The perceptions due to the action of our body — that is, 
the activity of our brains and nervous system — are: 1. Dreams 
and phantasies due to the brain working in certain tracks left by 
previous impressions. The phenomena of memory are due to the 
same cause, except that the Will generally takes an active part in 
directino; the activitv of the brain into these traces of ancient im- 
pressions left in the brain-substance. 2. The perceptions due to 
external objects. These objects, affecting our sense-organs, awaken 
our nerves into activity, and they in their turn awaken the l)rain 
into activity, and it is to this activity of the brain that the per- 
<jeptions of external objects in the mind are due. 3. The percep- 
tions we refer to our body, as heat, cold, pain, etc. Like the last, 
these perceptions are owing to the affected part of the body setting 
up activity in the nerves and brain. 4. The perceptions which 
are commonly referred only to the Soul. The effects of these per- 



234 T1ie Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

ceptions are felt as if in the Soul itself, and no immediate cause 
{causa proximo) to which they can be referred is commonly recog- 
nized. Such perceptions are the feelings of Joy, Anger, and the 
like, which are sometimes aroused in us by objects which awaken 
the activity of our nerves {e. g., external objects or feelings of 
bodily pain, etc.), and sometimes by other causes. It is to this 
last class of perceptions to which the word Passions is generally re- 
stricted, and it is this class which, under the name of Aft'ections or 
Passions of the Soul, Descartes undertakes to explain in this Trea- 
tise. He shows how these Passions, Affections, or Emotions, like 
the second and third class of perceptions above, really have their 
cause in the physical activities of the nerves and brain. Let us 
take an example, as it will serve most briefly to explain Descartes's 
ideas on this subject. Suppose an unarmed man to come sudden- 
ly across a tiger in a forest. The external object, the tiger, has its 
image impressed point for point on the retina of the eye, the optic 
nerve sends to a particular part of the brain impressioiis each of 
which corresponds with a particular point of the retinal image. 
There is thus formed on the brain a physical image or figure cor- 
responding point by point with the tiger, or, at any rate, so much 
of the tiger as affected the field of vision. Now, this physical im- 
age has three effects. First, it produces in the man the same effect 
as it would in an unconscious automaton, like the antelope. In 
such an automaton tlie physical image would afiect the nerves lead- 
ing to the muscles of the legs, and the animal would automatically 
take to flight, without the intervention of any consciousness or 
mind in the matter. The second effect of the physical image is 
the mental image of the tiger which presents itself in the man's 
soul and makes him believe he sees an actual tiger. The third 
effect of this physical image is to awaken in the substance of the 
brain, in ways explained at large by Descartes in his treatise, cer- 
tain physical activities, the mental aspect of which activities is the 
Passion or Emotion of Fear. And Descartes explains how the 
object of these Passions and Emotions is the preservation of the 
individual, and of the race he might have added. And the wa}^ 
they effect this object is by evoking the activity of the Will and 
causing it effectually to second the merely automatic efforts of the 
reflex machiner3^ Thus, in the example we have chosen, the 
Emotion of Fear having been roused in the man's mind, he wills 



A View of the Philosophy of Descartes, 235 

to flj. Now, it is only through the Will that the Soul can act 
upon the body, or rather that portion called the brain. The Will 
then sets np an action in the brain which, through the mediation 
of the nerves, sets np an action in the muscles of the legs, or, at 
any rate, makes them act more vigorously than they would have 
done automatically. We see, then, that, according to Descarte?, all 
states of consciousness, except those that originate in the WilU 
have their conditions, origin, or causes in the physical actions of 
the body, and more immediately of the brain. Either external 
objects act upon the nerves, or some of the internal organs of tlie 
body do so, and this action of the nerves rouses the brain to ac- 
tivity, or in some cases the activity even begins in the brain ; well, 
this Action of the brain, which at the present day we should be 
inclined to represent by some kind of vibration of its molecules — 
this aspect of the whole event is the cause of, or has another aspect 
in, some phase of consciousness, whether perception, emotion, im- 
agination, or what not. In the words of Descartes, what is Action 
in respect of the Brain substance is Passion in respect of the 
Mind. " Ita ut quamvis Agens et Patiens sint valde diversa 
Actio et Passio tamen maneant una eademque res, quae hsec duo 
habeat nomina ratione duorum diversorum subjectorum ad quae 
referri potest." So that although Agent and Patient — i. e., Body 
and Mind — in this case are very different. Action and Passion, 
nevertheless, remain one and the same thing, which has these two 
names on account of the two different subjects (body and mind 
again) to which it can be referred. But if, in the cases of con- 
sciousness we have been considering, the Actio is in the body and 
brain, and the Passio is in the Mind, there is another class of 
cases in which the Actio is in the Mind and the Passio in the 
brain and body. In this class of cases the Action arises in the 
Will and terminates in the body, or passes on from it to external 
matter, whereas in the former class the Action originated in the 
body, or, if in external matter, it then passed on to the body, and 
terminated in the Mind. Our Yolitions are by Descartes referred 
to the Mind itself, have the Mind itself and not the body as their 
cause and origin. Such, in brief, is Descartes' account of the af- 
fections of the mind that arise from its intimate union with the 
body. 

The various sensations of color, sound, taste, smell, hardness^ 



236 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

softness, and the like — sensations wliicli exist only in our minds, 
and arise in tliem owing to the action of external bodies on our 
bodies and the intimate union of the latter with our minds — are 
generally considered to be exactly like correspond in i; properties in 
the bodies themselves, and are thus placed in the same class with 
magnitude, figure, motion, and position, properties which exist in 
bodies independently of our perception, and to which our percep- 
tions accurately corres])ond. But this is an error, originating in 
what Descartes considers the prime and especial fountain of all 
€rror3 — the wrong and hasty judgments we form about things in 
our earliest infancy, the p?'cej udicia infanticB. At the commence- 
ment of life our mind had been so closely bound up with the body 
that it had no leisure for any thoughts except those only through 
which it felt the things that affected its body, and even these feel- 
ings it did not refer to any external object. It merely had sensa- 
tions of pain or pleasure according as the body suffered any incon- 
venience or the reverse ; or if the inconvenience or advantage that 
befell the body was trifling, our mind experienced, according to 
the diversitj' of the parts or moods of the bodily affection, the va- 
rious sensations of tastes, smells, sounds, heat, cold, light, color, and 
the like — sensations which represent nothing external to thought. 
At the same time our mind also had perceptions of magnitude, 
figure, motion, and the like, which were displayed to it as things 
or modes of things existing external to thought, or, at any rate, 
capable of so doing, although the infant mind did not yet observe 
the difference between these two classes of perceptions and sensa- 
tions. By and by, when the bodily machine, which has been so 
framed by nature that it can move itself about b^' its own efforts 
in various ways, began in a random fashion to twist itself about 
on this side and that, and in so doing accidentally obtained some 
advantage or escaped from some inconvenience, the mind adherent 
to it began to observe that what it so obtained or shunned was 
external to itself; and not only did it attribute to the external ob- 
ject magnitude, ligure, motion, and whatever it perceived as things 
or modes of things, but also tastes, smells, and the various other 
sensations which it perceived were caused in it by the external ob- 
ject. And taking account of things only so far as they were of use 
to the body, the mind considered that the reality of an object was 
proportional to the degree in which it affected the mind. Hence 



A View of the Philosophy of Descartes. 237 

it thono;ht there was much more Bubstance or corporeity in stones 
and metals than in water or air, because in the one it felt more 
hardness and weight than in the other. Nay, so long as it felt 
neither wind nor cold nor heat in the air, it accounted the air as 
nothing at all. And, receiving from the stars no more light than 
from the flames of small candles, the mind imagined the stars not 
to be larger than those flames. And, not perceiving the rotation 
and globular shape of the earth, it was inclined to think it motion- 
less and a plane. With a thousand like prejudices was om* mind 
imbued in infancy; and afterward, not remembering that these 
opinions had never been submitted to a strict examination, it ad- 
mitted them as most true and most evident. 

We have seen that Descartes held that Creation contained only 
two classes of things, minds and bodies; in other words, that the 
created Universe was com])osed of the two substances. Mind and 
Matter. When, then, in the course of his philosophical system he 
comes to treat of the material Universe, he has to explain what is 
the essential nature of the Matter of which it is framed, and how 
the vast variety ofits phenomena are but the consequences of this" 
essential nature. That material objects external to our minds and 
independent of them really exist, is a truth grounded upon the 
most certain reasons. Whatever sensation we expsrience undoubt- 
edly comes to us from something different from our mind; for it 
does not lie in cur power to feel one thing rather than another. 
This depends entirely on the thing which afl'ects our senses. Kow, 
we have a clear and distinct perception that this thing is a kind of 
matter extended in length, breadth, and depth, whose various parts 
are endowed with various shapes and motions, and cause in us a 
variety of sensations of color, smell, pain, etc. And as we can not 
believe that God is a deceiver, and causes us to have clear and 
distinct perceptions of what is false, we are bound to believe that 
extended objects really exist, possessed of all those properties which 
we clearly ]>erceive are congruent with extended things. It is this 
extended thing which is called body or matter. Extension, then, 
constitutes the nature or essence of any body; not its hardness or 
softness, or weight, or color, or any other sensible quality. Its na- 
ture depends on none of these. 

But, if extension is all that constitutes the nature of matter, how 
is to be explained the phenomenon of rarefaction and condensa- 



238 Jlie Journal of Speculative Philosojyhy. 

tioii, whereby bodies seem to be of difterent volnmes at different 
times. And, again, where nothing but extension is perceived, it is 
not nsual to speak of body, but to call it empty space, and mere 
space is believed to be nothing. As to condensation and rarefac- 
tion, it is, observes Descartes, a mere change of figure in the con- 
densed or rarefied body, resulting from the nearer approach of its 
constituent parts to each other, or their removal to a greater dis- 
tance from each other. If a body of air or water becomes rarefied 
its quantity remains unaltered, the particles merely move to a 
greater distance from each other; in other words, the intervening 
pores become larger, and, as wherever there is extension there is 
the extended substance called matter or body, Descartes, with 
perfect consistency, maintains that the increase in the size of the 
intervals between the parts of the rarefied body is due to the acces- 
sion of new bodies, although those bodies may be quite impercepti- 
ble to our senses. To take his own illustration : when a dry sponge 
is squeezed, pieces of extension are squeezed out of it, and when 
the grasp upon it is relaxed, the sponge recovers its shape tiirough 
pieces of extension making their way into it again. As to the ob- 
jection to his definition of matter, advanced by those who distin- 
guish between matter and empty space, he observes that it is easy 
to see that the extension which constitutes the nature of space is 
the same as that which constitutes the nature of body, if we are 
careful to attend to the idea we have of any particular body — a 
stone, for example — and separate everything from it which is not 
required for its corporeal nature. Its hardness may be rejected, 
because if the stone is fused or ground into powder it will lose its 
hardness and yet not cease to be a body. Its color may be rejected, 
for some bodies are so transparent as to be colorless. Its weight is 
immaterial; fire, which is exceedingly light, is none the less a body. 
Its heat or cold or other qualities may also be rejected, because, 
though they ma}" sufiier change, the stone still remains a body. 
Kow, after all these rejections, nothing remains of our idea of the 
stone except its extension in length, breadth, and depth ; the only 
thing whicb is contained in our idea of space, whether that space 
is full of bodies or, as it is called, empty. It follows that there 
can be no such thing as a true vacuum ; wheresoever there is ex- 
tension there must substance be. Nihili nulla potest esse extensio. 
Hence no vessel filled with any kind of matter can be emptied of 



A View of the Philosophy of Descartes. 239 

that matter without new matter entering as fast as the old matter 
is got rid of. And should any one ask the question, What would 
happen if God were to remove the contents of tlie vessel and allow 
nothing else to take their place ? the answer must be that the sides 
of the vessel would thereby become contiguous. When nothing 
interposes between two bodies they must of necessity touch. It is 
a clear contradiction to suppose there can be distance between 
them and yet that distance be nothing, since all distance is a mode 
of extension and therefore cannot exist without extended sub- 
stance — that is, matter. Hence it follows that a hollow vessel can- 
not contain more matter at one time than at another, and that, 
when it is tilled with lead or gold or any other lieavy or hard 
body, it contains no more matter or corporeal substance than when 
it is filled with air or than when it is considered empty. The 
quantity of matter does not depend on weight or hardness, but on 
extension only, and this in the same vessel is always the same. 
From this conception of the nature of matter, Descartes deduces 
several important consequences. There can be no such things as 
atoms or portions of matter in their very nature indivisible, since 
extension itself is divisible without limits. The Universe can have 
no limits, since we cannot conceive extension as limited. The 
substance of the earth is the same as that of the heavens, and, how- 
ever many worlds there may be, they are all made of the same 
extended substance. Thus in the whole Universe there exists one 
and the same matter, known by the sole attribute of extension ; 
and all the properties we perceive in it are reducible to the fact 
that it is divisible and its parts able to move among each other. 
Hence matter has capacity for all those affections which are per- 
ceived to be consequences of the motion of its parts. Every varia- 
tion in matter, all the diversity of its forms, are due to motion. 

According to Descartes, then, not only is all Matter extended, 
but all extension is Matter. Space is a Plenum ; such a thing as 
a Vacuum is an impossibility. The quantity of Matter contained 
within any closed surface is the same as the volume of that closed 
surface. All physical phenomena are to be interpreted in terms 
of matter and motion ; in other words, in terms of extension con- 
ceived as capable of division without limits, and with parts capable 
of motion among themselves. 

Let us now examine what Descartes understood by the term 



240 The Journal of Speculatwe Philosophy. 

Motion. He is dissatisfied with the common account which takes 
motion to be the action whereby a body migrates from one place 
into another, as it fails to explain how the same body can be said to 
be at the same time both in motion and at rest. Thus a man sit- 
ting on board a ship sailing out of harbor is in motion with ref- 
erence to tlie shore, but at rest with reference to the ship. Ac- 
cording to tlie common notion which places motion in action and 
rest in the cessation of action, the man ouglit to be said to be at 
rest, inasmuch as he feels no action in himself. Descartes there- 
fore gives as a definition of Motion that it is translatio unius 
2)artis materice, sive unius corporis, ex vicinia eorum corj)orum, 
quel} illud immediate contingunt, et tanqxiam quiescentia spectan- 
tur, in viciniam aliorum — Motion is a transference of one portion 
of matter, or of one body, from tlie neighborhood of those bodies 
which are in close and immediate contact with it, and are regarded 
as at rest, into the neighborhood of other bodies. Now, bearing 
in mind the fundamental conception that lies at the bottom of 
Descartes' whole system of physics — namely, that matter and ex- 
tension are convertible terms, and space consequently a Plenum — 
we see that tlie bounding surface of any body must at every point 
be in immediate contact with some point or points of the bound- 
ing surfaces of other bodies, and, according to Descartes' defini- 
tion, the body is in motion when its bounding surface passes con- 
tinuously into contact with the bounding surfaces of an ever- 
changing succession of fresh bodies. 

We may form a ])icture of his idea by observing the motion of a 
fish as it swims through water. The surface of its body is always 
in contact with the water, but as it swims along it is continuously 
passing into contact with fresh watery surfaces. As a moving 
body can only be in contact with one set of bodies at the same 
moment, it cannot correctly be said to have several motions at the 
same time, though, in thought, this motion may be considered to 
be the resultant of any number of motions in different directions. 
In all cases of motion the difficulty arises of settling which are to 
be considered the moving bodies and which the bodies at rest, a. 
problem to be solved by considering the circumstances and his- 
tory of each case as it arises. 

But though a body can have only one proper motion of its own^ 
it may share in innumerable other motions. For it may form 



A View of the Philosophy of Descartes. 24i 

part of some larger aggregate of matter, having a motion of its 
own, and that aggregate be but a portion of some still larger body 
with its own motion, a ease we may illustrate by the example of 
the movements of the wheels of a watch carried in the pocket of 
a man pacing the deck of a ship sailing upon the surface of our 
globe as it moves round the sun. 

We are now in a position to understand the very important 
principle which, according to Descartes, governs all actual mo- 
tions of bodies in the Universe — the principle which forins the 
foundation of his celebrated theory of Yortices. This principle is 
that, in every case of motion, a complete circle of bodies moves 
simultaneously. Since space is a Plenum, a body can only move 
by expelling some other body from the place into which it enters, 
and this latter body must expel a third bod}^ and so on, till we 
come round to a last body, which enters the place left by the first 
at the momient the first body left it. We can form a mental im- 
age of this kind of circular motion by imagining a water-pipe 
quite full of water, bent round till both ends meet and form a 
closed rins:, within which the water circulates round and round. 
If, furthermore, we imagine the section of the pipe not to be uni- 
form, it is clear that the smaller the section of any portion of the 
pipe is, the quicker the water must flow along that part. The 
same, too, will be the case with Descartes' rings of moving mat- 
ter. His matter, too, must be capable of indefinite subdivision 
to be able to accommodate itself to the innumerable varying 
grades of section of his rings. 

When he comes to speak of the cause of Motion, the general 
cause thereof he makes to be God himself, who in the beginning 
created matter with motion and rest, and still by his ordinary 
concurrence preserves in that totality of matter exactly the same 
quantity of motion and of rest as he then placed in it. For, al- 
though in the separate parts of matter the quantity of motion 
changFS, yet is the sum total the same fixed and determinate 
quantity. Proceeding to discuss particular laws of motion, he 
succeeds in giving a clear statement of what is called by New- 
ton the first law of motion ; but the erroneous and confused ac- 
count he gives of other cases of motion are of interest only as 
showing that the human mind had not yet attained the kine- 
matical and dynamical conceptions that the labors of his great 
XYIII— 16 



24:2 The Journal of Sjyeculative Philosophy. 

successor, Newton, were destined to develop into full clearness 
and precision. 

According to Descartes, the distinction between fluid bodies 
and hard bodies is that the particles of fluid bodies are moving 
about in every direction, whereas the particles of hard bodies are 
at rest. It is because the particles of fluid bodies are in motion 
that they offer no resistance to pressure, while hard bodies offer re- 
sistance to subdivision simply because their particles are at rest. 
For, he argues, assuredly we can imagine no kind of glue which 
could hold more firmly together the particles of hard bodies than 
their own rest. For what could that glue be ? Not a substance, 
because, since the particles are themselves substances, there is no 
reason they should be joined together by another substance rather 
than by themselves. There is also no mode different from rest, 
for no other mode can more oppose the motion which would 
separate the particles than their own rest. And, besides sub- 
stances and their modes, we know of no otlier kind of things. 
He then, on liis own principles, discusses the nature of fluid 
pressures and motions, and ends the second part of his princi- 
ples by declaring that the ])rinciples laid down in it are suffi- 
cient to explain all natural phenomena, as will appear in the 
following books. 

Having laid down the general principles of matter and motion 
— principles derived from the light of reason, not from the preju- 
dices of the senses — he proceeds to apply them to the explanation 
of the phenomena of nature. But first he warns his readers against 
supposing that such finite beings as they are can understand the 
purposes of God in creation — an error they fall into whenever 
they say that all things were made by God on our account. In 
his description of the positions and relative sizes of the bodies that 
compose our system he places the Sun, which is far the largest, in 
a fixed position at the centre, where it shines by its own light, 
while the Moon and other planets, one of which and not by any 
means the largest is our earth, shine by light borrowed from him. 
Just as the Sun occupies the centre of a vast sphere in which are 
the planets only and no fixed stars, so the fixed stars, which are at 
an immeasurable distance from us, are, each of them, suns shining 
by their own light and occupying each the centre of a vast sphere 
of its own. As to the constitution of the Sun, it is a flame of fire 



A View of the Philosophy of Descartes, 243 

made of a highly mobile and fluid matter, that needs no aliment, 
because its material is not dissipated by the circumjacent matter, 
as are flames on this earth. Not only do the Sun and fixed stars 
consist of fluid matter, but all the heavens — he uses the word in 
the plural because each fixed star is the centre of its own heaven 
— all the heavens consist of fluid or liquid matter, are plena of 
fluid or liquid matter, each of which in its motion carries along 
with it all the bodies, however hard and solid, contained in it. See- 
ing, then, that our Earth is upheld by no pillars nor suspended by 
any ropes, but merely surrounded by the highly fluid material of 
the heaven in which it lies, we ought to think that it is at rest, 
and has no tendency to motion ; nevertheless, we must not think 
til at this fact is any obstacle to its being carried along by that 
heaven, and, while immovable itself, obeying its movements ; even 
as a ship, impelled by no oars nor winds and bound by no anchors, 
is at rest in the midst of the sea, although, perchance, some vast 
body of its waters, gliding along in an unobserved current, may be 
carrying the ship along with it. In like manner all the other 
planets are at rest, each in its own region of the heaven, and all 
the variation of position which is observed in them is merely due 
to the fact that all the material of the heaven which contains 
them is in motion. And here Descartes reminds the reader that 
what he has just said about the earth and planets being at rest is 
entirely in accordance with, and follows from, his own definition 
of motion — namely, that it is the transference of one body from the 
neiffhborhood of the bodies which are in immediate contact with it 
and are reo;arded as at rest into the neighborhood of other bodies. 
"With such a definition of motion it is easy to see how Descartes 
could uphold the earth's immobility. 

Descartes' reasons for considering the Earth at rest are highly 
interesting. They show us how he succeeded in reconciling his 
science and his orthodoxy. Well may he pride himself when he 
compares his own skill in avoiding Copernicus's error of attribut- 
ing motion to the earth with the clumsiness of Tycho Brahe, who 
verbally denied the earth's motion, but really attributed more 
movement to it than Copernicus himself. Had poor Galileo 
known of Descartes' definition of motion, he might have evaded the 
censures of the Church, defied the Inquisition, and yet held to his 
own views of the Solar System. Having thus removed every 



244 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

scruple oil the subject of the earth's motion, Descartes tells us tha:^ 
we should think that the whole material of the heaven wherein' 
the planets abide is perpetually whirling round after the fashion 
of a vortex, with the Sun in the centre, and that the parts of the 
heavenly material nearer to the Sun move more rapidly than the 
more remote, and that all the Planets (one of wliicli is the Earth) 
always abide within the same portion of the celestial material. 
In this way, without the aid of any machinery, may all their phe- 
nomena be most easily understood. For, just as when straws float 
on the surface of an eddy or whirlpool in a river, we see that they 
are carried along by it, and some even turn round their own cen- 
tre, and that the nearer they are to the centre of the eddy, the 
quicker they complete a whole gyration, and that although their 
motions are always circular, yet they scarcely ever describe abso- 
lutely perfect circles, but deviate a little therefrom in length and 
breadth, so can we, without any difficulty, imagine all the same 
things concerning the Planets. And l)y this one thing are all 
their plienomena explained. Those planets that have satellites 
revolving round them he considers to occupy the centre of minor 
vortices contained in the greater vortex, whose centre is the 
Sun. Thus the Earth is the centre of a subordinate Yortex, 
which not only serves to carry the Moon round in her monthly 
course, but also carries round with it the earth in every twenty- 
four hours ; and thus we see that, as in the case of the Earth's 
annual motion round the Sun, Descartes could maintain that 
the Earth was at rest, so, in spite of its daily revolution round 
its own axis, he can once more uphold the doctrine of its immo- 
bility. 

As regards the Matter that fills the Universe, Descartes supposes 
that as originally created by God it consisted not of spherical parts, 
as with such a shape they could not have constituted a Plenum, 
but of parts with angles or corners. These parts, being in motion, 
were gradually ground into a spherical shape, and the corners thus 
rubbed off (like filings) form an exceedingly fine and subtle mat- 
ter — Descartes' first element — which fills the interstices between 
the spherical portions, which are likewise very minute, and consti- 
tute his second element. There is besides a third kind of" matter 
of parts more coarse and less fitted for motion. This is his third 
element. Of the first element are made the sun and the fixed 



A View of the Philosophy of Descartes. 245 

stars ; of the second, the transparent substance of the skies ; and 
the third is the material of opaque bodies, as the earth, phxnets 
and comets. As the material Plenum gradually shapes itself into 
vortices, the first element collected at the centre of each vortex 
forming the sun and stars, the second element formed the great 
body of each vortex, surrounding the central element on every 
side, and, by the pressure caused by its centrifugal efibrt as it 
whirls round and round, it constitutes light. The planets are car. 
ried round the sun by the motion of his vortex, each planet being 
at such a distance from the sun as to be in a part of the vortex 
suitable to its solidity and mobility. The motions are prevented 
from being quite circular and regular by various causes ; a vortex, 
for instance, may be pressed into an oval shape by contiguous vor- 
tices. Comets are free to glide out of one vortex into the next con- 
tiguous one, and thus to travel, in a winding course, from system 
to system, through the universe. Such is a brief sketch of Des- 
cartes' system of the Heavens. It is worked out in all its details 
in the third book of his " Principia," and it is impossible not to 
be struck by his extraordinary ingenuity in making it account for 
the very large number of phenomena to which he applies it in that 
book. Three phenomena, however, three laws of planetary motion, 
well known in Descartes' time, he does not account for, passes 
over in total silence, as though they were facts of no moment ; and 
it was his neglect to account for these three laws that caused his 
" Principia" to be superseded by the " Principia " of his great suc- 
cessor Newton, who did account for them. The laws referred to 
are, of course, the celebrated ones discovered by Kepler : that the 
planetary orbits are ellipses with the Sun in a focus ; that the areas 
described or swept out by lines drawn from the Sun to the planet 
are proportional to the times of describing them, and that the 
squares of the periodic times of the planetary revolutions round the 
Sun are as tiie cubes of their mean distances from him. These 
laws Descartes passes over in silence. It is impossible to suppose 
he had no knowledge of them. Kepler had published his discov. 
eries as early as 1G09. Descartes, moreover, shows his familiarity 
with the works of Tycho Brahe, who was Kepler's fellow-laborer 
at Prague. Whatever the cause of his neglecting to take these 
laws into account, that neglect ensured the rejection of his theory 
of the solar system, when ^Newton advanced his theory accounting 



246 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

for them. Should, however, the hiw of gravitation ever be suc- 
cessfully explained by a system of stresses in an all-pervading flnid^ 
Descartes' tlieory, though in a form much modified and altered, 
might again reign within the realm of Science. 



A POPULAR STATEMENT OF IDEALISM. 



BY WILLIAM M. SALTER. 



The object of this paper is not so much to prove idealism as to 
state it with a measure of clearness and consistency. If there is 
at times an undue positiveness of statement, let it not be charged 
to an intention of lording it over the reader, but simply to a desire 
to thoroughly enter into and speak from the intellectual stand- 
point under discussion. Further, the sciences of physics and phy- 
siology, ordinarily regarded as having a more or less materialistic 
tendency, are in truth, at the present time, rather inclining to play 
into the hands of the idealist.' We shall not, however, presuppose 
a technical knowledge of these sciences on the part of the reader, 
as we lay claim to no such knowledge for ourselves, and hence 
shall, from necessity as well as choice, abstain from any extended 
use of their technical phraseology. Without further preface, then, 
we may begin. 

When the thorns of a rose-bush prick our finger, we liave as a 
result a pretty recognizable feeling, called pain. It is a real sen- 
sation, and we may localize it in the finger, yet we do not attribute 
it to the thorns and say that it exists in them. We know very 
well that as our sensation it cannot exist apart from ourselves, 
and so we call it a subjective reality. Suppose, now, that we bend 
over to smell one of the roses on the bush ; we are greeted with a 
new experience of a more agreeable character, viz., perfume. Is 
this perfume a reality outside of us, or a sensation of our own % 



' W. K. Clifford even says that the " doctrine of Berkeley's has now been so far con- 
firmed by the physiology of the senses that it is no longer a metaphysical speculation 
but a scientifically established fact." ("Right and Wrong.") 



A Popular Statement of Idealism. 247 

The idealist regards it as a sensation, and we may sometimes, 
especially in the case of strong odors, whether agreeable or disa- 
greeable, feel quite distinctly that this is the case. If so, it exists 
just as the pain, and, though we may locate it in our nostrils, we 
may feel as little inclined to attribute it to the flower as the pain 
to the thorns. The rose produces in us this sensation, as the 
thorns that of pain. Professor Huxley, remarking upon the odor 
of the musk-plant, even says that " it is as absurd to suppose that 
muskiness is a quality inherent in one plant as it would be to 
imagine that pain is a quality inherent in another, because we feel 
pain when a thorn pricks the finger." ^ This is strong language, 
though it is possible to become so distinctly conscious that odors 
are our sensations or feelings as to have no hesitancy in subscrib- 
ing to it. All depends here on each one's own consciousness, and 
this is not a thing to be created or changed by the mere assertion 
of another. Physiology, however, comes to the side of the idealist 
in the matter, not only by saying that the odor does not exist out- 
side of us, but by attempting to show how it arises within us. It 
teaches not only that our nostrils are necessary that the sensation 
may arise, but that these nostrils, being lined with a delicate mem- 
brane, in which terminate very small nerve-fibres, having their 
other endings in the brain, the sensation of smell is ordinarily the 
result of the working of this entire apparatus. Some infinitesimal 
parti(!le3, being thrown off from the odorous substance, touch the 
membrane, the vibrations produced therein are communicated by 
the nerve-fibres to the brain, and there in some mysterious way 
the sensation of odor arises. The odor does not, strictly speaking, 
belong to our nostrils, or any part of the olfactory apparatus, any 
more than to the external object, but first comes to be in our mind. 
A sensation of odor may even arise without the presence or action 
of any external object whatever. If the appropriate changes take 
place in the nerve-fibres, and are communicated to the brain, the 
odor results as truly as if an external object were the cause of it. 
And we should be mistaken, not in saying that the odor exists, 
but only in supposing that it comes from without. For the local- 
izing of the odor, as of the pain before spoken of, is an act of the 
mind. The pain is not in the finger, nor the odor now in the nos- 



> " Science and Culture," p. 259 



248 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

trils, but we place thcni in tliose parts of the body. Of themselves 
they have no position, and, indeed, if we had only such simple sen- 
sations, it is doubtful if we should have any notion of space what- 
ever. But we may assign them their places so many times that 
the act of localizing becomes at last almost instantaneous, uncon- 
scious, or, what is the same, mechanical. 

It does not require much imagination to suppose that bitter and 
sweet, and all kinds of tastes, may be similarly sensations, which 
are given to ns by external objects, but, strictly speaking, are not 
their own properties, but their effects upon ourselves. On slight 
reflection, we may realize the same of heat and cold — viz., that 
they are our own feelings, linked indeed with various objects, but 
not intrinsic qualities of them. Heat is, according to the teaching 
of physics, a mode of motion ; by this is not meant that heat is 
motion, but that, when motion is communicated to our own organ- 
ism, it gives rise to the sensation of heat. 

That sound may similarly be a sensation within us rather than 
a reality without, is probably harder for most of us to realize. 
The thunder rolls, we believe, whether we hear it or not. Yet 
physics teaches, and most educated men at the present time are 
trying to accustom themselves to the conception, that the only ex- 
ternal thino;s in this relation are the air and its vibrations, and 
that these, when reaching the ear. produce sound, but are them- 
selves soundless. On occasion of a loud report of a cannon, we 
may be distinctly conscious of the vibrations of the air as such ; 
indeed, the very house, or, if we are in the open air, the ground 
may shake with them. And after such an experience it cannot 
be difficult to distinguish between the vibrations and the sound, 
and to entertain the idea that the sound is only an effect upon 
ourselves. A person who becomes deaf may be aware of the vi 
brations in certain cases and yet realize to himself thsit, owing to 
certain physical defects, their ordinarj^ results cannot follow in 
him. 

Color, doubtless, seems like a still more inviolable possession of 
the outer world. Physics, however, treats it as it does sound. The 
waves of the supposed ethereal medium are, according to its teach- 
ing, the real objective counterparts of color, color itself being a 
sensation, which we transfer to the particular object from which 
the wave-motions are supposed to be reflected. We may indeed 



A Popular Statement of Idealism. 249 

-conveniently speak of color and li2;lit, as of sound and heat, as 
existing outside of us in this or that portion of space, and there 
can be no objection to our doing so as long as we do not assume 
that our language is strictly accurate and scientific. But, in strict- 
ness, we can only say that color and light are our sensations, pro- 
duced indeed by a combination of physical and physiological 
■causes, but not themselves inhering in the external world. Physi- 
ology assures us of an optical apparatus, similar in the essential 
manner of its construction to the olfactory apparatus already de- 
scribed. Each mode of sensation is, in fact, similarly provided 
for. And color, being the result of the action of the apparatus, is 
no more in the retina, or the nerve, or the brain, than in the object 
iiself. It arises on the completion of these mechanical processes 
in a manner that physiology confesses to be beyond its power of 
comprehension. And colors, as odors, may arise without the ac- 
tion of external objects if but the appropriate changes take place 
in the optical apparatus. Many of us have perhaps some time had 
that unfortunate experience known as "seeing stars," and yet this 
imaginary light, as we may term it, was as truly and really light 
as that of the actual stars in heaven. We should be mistaken 
only in supposing that the " imaginary " light came from heaven — 
that is, in localizing the sensation, not in recognizing its existence. 
This localizing is a matter of the judgment. Even if we say that 
color and light must exist somewhere (that is, that they necessarily 
imply the idea of space), their determinate place is not their own 
property, but is given them by the mind, though of this mental 
act we may cease to be distinctly conscious. And color-blindness, 
it may be added, does not mean that the color-blind individual 
sees what does not exist, but simply that the sensations of others, 
who make the majority, are not like his own. The practical uses 
of life lead us to call him mistaken in consequence, but, if the ma- 
jority of human sensations should shift and become like his, those 
of us keeping our present sensations, and in the minority, would 
have to allow ourselves " mistaken." In itself, the light of a 
switch-lantern is neither green nor red ; what it is in itself no one 
knows. But green and red are names for its effects on individuals? 
and may differ as individuals differ. 

But most difficult of all to realize, or even, as it may at first 
seem, to think, is the notion that hardness and pressure are our 



250 The Joiirnal of Sjpeculative Philosophy, 

sensations rather than qualities of bodies in themselves. Is not 
the ground hard, we ask, "when we stamp upon it, and the diction- 
ary heavy when we try to lift it? Why, if solidity was but a sen- 
sation of his, could not the forlorn Hamlet have caused his " too, 
too solid flesh *' to melt ? But the real question with the idealist 
is simply, What is meant by hardness, pressure, and solidity ? Color, 
no more than pain, is denied to exist, because its manner of exist- 
ence is found to be subjective ; nor is color any more than pain 
changeable at our will. That hardness, etc., exist, is beyond dis- 
pute ; but what are we to understand by their existence ? The only 
answer any one can make is that on stamping the ground the 
loot is resisted, and, on attempting to lift the dictionary, its press- 
ure is experienced. That Hamlet's flesh was solid he knew by 
touching one part of it by means of another and experiencing their 
mutual resistance. And the idealist only conceives that he is 
making a more accurate statement of all this when he says that 
the ground and the dictionary and the flesh produce in us these 
feelings. In a word, hardness, etc., are sensations produced by 
objects, even as sound and color, and as such exist in us, though 
their causes may well be external to and independent of us. If 
the ground does not give me the feeling of hardness when I strike 
it, it boots little to call it hard ; ^ if it should some time give me 
no such feeling, it would thereby cease not only to be hard, but to 
be the ground in any intelligible sense. Instances might be mul- 
tiplied, only conspiring to show that hardness, etc., in objects really 
mean their capacity to produce such experiences in us — and yet I 
doubt not that, unless the reader already agrees with me, he will 
have to question himself and analyze his experience for some time 



' It may be asked, when any object — e. g., a ball — falls upon the ground, Does it not ex- 
perience the hardness of the latter, and so may not hardness exist independently of our- 
selves ? The answer is, Yes, if the ball is supposed to be a sentient thing. But, if not, 
our attributing to it an experience of hardness rests upon a harmless anthropomorphism, 
and, while allowable enough to popular speech, is destitute of any real warrant. Does 
not the ground resist the ball, then ? All we can say is that, if we were in the place of 
the ball, %ve should experience resistance. Our sensible knowledge in the case amounts 
to simply this : that the ball ceases its downward motion (or, if you will, that its mass 
motion is to a certain extent turned into a motion of its molecules, which latter is again 
convertible into heat — all of which are assertions, it hardly needs be said, respecting 
' actual or possible sensations). The hardness or resistance of any object means simply 
that, if we (sentient beings) touch it, we experience such sensations. 



A Popular Statement of Idealism. 251 

before he can agree. Proof is not only out of place, it is impossi- 
ble in a matter where all depends upon immediate knowledge — 
that is, experience. The idealist can only say to another. This is 
my experience, and, if I cannot lead you by your own reflection 
to a similar understanding of your own, I will at least spare you 
" arguments " and "proofs," which can be to no purpose. 

Use may be made, however, of one further illustration, which 
may possibly be helpful: What do we mean by distinguishing 
between a ghost or phantom and a real body ? The former may 
sometimes seem to have a shape and features, and even, as in the 
case of Protesildus in Wordsworth's noble poem of Laodamia, " ro- 
seate lips." And how do we know it to be a phantom, as how did 
Laodamia know her blooming hero to be, after all, but a vain 
shadow, save by essaying to clasp it, and finding that it eludes our 
grasp; that, instead of real and unmistakable sensations of resist- 
ance, it gives us none at all.' Hence the poet calls Protesilans 
an "unsubstantial* form." A thing that resists us is ipso facto 
real. Even things that we cannot see, or smell, or taste, or have 
any sensible proof whatever of save of tliis single kind, viz., ca- 
pacity to resist us, we know thereby to exist — for example, the air. 
Resistance is ordinarily called a primary quality of bodies, and, 
though our previous analysis will not allow us to make tlie ordi- 
nary distinction between the primary and secondary qualities of 
body (as if the former were in the object, the latter only in our- 
selves), yet there is a difference — viz., that resistance is a univer- 
sal and unchanging quality of bodies (even the molecules and 
atoms being supposed to have this power, however inappreciable 

' " Forth sprang the impassioaed Queea her Lord to clasp ; 
Again that consummation she essayed ; 
But unsubstantial Form eludes her grasp 
As often as that eager grasp was made. 
The Phantom parts — but parts to reunite, 
And reassume his place before her sight." 
Virgil's lines are similarly suggestive : 

" Frustra comprensa manus effugit imago, 
Par levibus ventis, volucrique simillima somno." 

^ Substance has this primary sensible meaning, viz., that an object is not a mere empty 
form, but one that resists us when we attempt to pass through it. It would be well for 
those philosophers who make such an ambitious use of the term at least to remember 
this its primary significance. From what is demonstrable it has come to mean some- 
times just what is indemonstrable. 



252 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

to tlie senses), while color and other sensible qualities may change 
before our very eyes. A colorless body may at least with an ejffort 
be conceived, but a body that gave no resistance, and would give 
none even if our power of noting the same were increased 
ad infi)niuin, would not be a body at all, this term having no 
other intelligible meaning than that which gives resistance. Yet 
sensations, by being permanent and universal, do not lose their 
cliaracter as sensations and become separate realities. Another 
reason for calling resistance a primary quality is perhaps that re- 
sistance is a sensation of more vital importance for us to note than 
any other. For, if we experience it in too emphatic a manner, we 
are in danger of losing, for a time or permanently, the power of 
lurther sensation, while odors, sounds, or colors rarely bring after 
them so serious a consequence. It is, then, rational to give a higher 
rank to resistances than to other kinds of sensations, and the latter 
acquire serious import chiefl}'' when from past association they lead 
us to suspect that resistances will follow after them, as when, for 
example, we hear at the foot of a mountain a rumbling and crack- 
ling noise and know that an avalanche is coming. It would be an 
interesting general inquiry how far such motives of practical con- 
venience or necessity enter into the formation of not a few dis 
tinctions and conceptions in common use ; yet the interest would 
be chiefly psychological, since distinctions and conceptions so 
formed can hardly be regarded as having real or philosophical 
validity. 

But, to return. What is the residue of the external world left 
after the foregoing analysis ? Apparently very little that we may 
properly call an external world. The common sense of men re- 
gards the fragrance of a flower as external in the same sense that 
its color and shape are. But our ungracious analysis has not only 
divested the flower of its fragrance, it has stripped it of its color 
and of every sensible quality it possesses.' What is left, then ? Is 

' Cf. Dr. William James : " To the naive consciousness all these attributes [color, taste, 
smell, sonority, as well as hardness and pressure] are equally objective. To the criti- 
cal, all are equally subjective." (" The Feeling of Effort.") A similar view is elaborated 
by Professor Huxley, in papers on Descartes and Bishop Berkeley. (" Lay-Sermons," p. 
320 ff.; " Critiques and Addresses," p. 287 ff.) Herbert Spencer says: "Thus we are 
brought to the conclusion that what we are conscious of as properties of matter, even 
down to its weight and resistance, are but subjective affections produced by objective 
agencies that are unknown and unknowable." (" Psychology," vol. i, p. 206.) 



. A Popular Statement of Idealism. 253 

it the form or shape? Now, the form is not indeed a sensation, 
but a boundary or limit of sensations (of color or resistaiice), dis- 
cerned and marked out by the intellect. But what is a limit 
when that which is limited is taken away ? If a form changes 
when its content changes — for example, in shifting clouds — does it 
not cease to be when the content ceases to be — ^for example, when 
the clouds vanish and leave a clear sky ? Now, in the idealist'^ 
view, the material of the world does not indeed cease to be, but its 
manner of existence is found to be subjective. Plainly, then, the 
form cannot remain objective. Our common sense indeed asserts 
that a form which has no content is not a real form, but only an 
idea of our mind. A similar line of remark applies to the change 
and motion observed in and among sensible objects. If these ob- 
jects are really resolvable into groups of sensations, their changes 
and the motion among them must beequalh^ matters of sensation. 
For, apart from the objects of which they are predicable, what are 
change and motion but abstractions of the mind ? Professor Hux- 
ley says : " All that we know about motion is that it is a name for 
certain changes in the relations of our visual, tactile, and muscular 
sensations." ' Quite as little can the molecules and atoms, out 
of which the sensible world is supposed to be composed, serve as a 
truly objective residuum. For, though they may not be thought 
of as having the secondary qualities of matter, they are as having 
the primary ones of extension and resistance in however infinitesi- 
mal a degree. And even the conception (now gaining some cur- 
rency) of the atom as a point without extension considers the 
point as a centre of force or resistance, and, if these are recognized 
as subjective sensations, the same difficulties present themselves in 
attempting to regard the point as something real and objective 
that we met with in trying to think of an empty form. In any 
ease, the supposed molecules and atoms are not the causes of the 
sensible world, but this world itself stated in the simplest possible 
terms.^ They would be discovered, if ever they could be, not in 



^ " Science and Culture," p. 279, 

^ Lange regards the atoms as phenomenal, the only difference from ordinary sensations 
being that the latter are immediate, the former vermittelte and gedachte. (" Gesch. des 
Materialismus," ii, 165.) Contrast Biichner, who regards the modern doctrine of atoms 
as an " Entdeckung der Naturforschung," while the ancient was a " willklirhch specula- 
tive Vorstellung." (Lange, ii, 181.) 



254 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

connection with efforts to verify an inference to somewhat out of 
the circle of our sensations, but by successively dividing and sub- 
dividing the contents of the sensations themselves, and reaching 
at last their irreducible elements.' 

Is there nothing real and objective left ? So far as sensible 
phenomena are concerned, we must answer, Yes ; the whole sensi- 
ble (material) world is but an effect upon ourselves. But, because 
nothing sensible is left, it would be a hasty inference to say that 
nothing whatever is left. If we are asked, What ? — we answer. 
All that causes the sensations. We have allowed and posited a 
cause for each species of sensation we have considered, and the 
only trouble has been that each conception of the cause, provision- 
ally allowed, has turned out, on examination, to be itself an effect — 
i. e., a sensation in us. We have, for example, regarded odor and 
other secondary qualities as coming from an extended body exter- 
nal to ourselves. But, on turning our attention to the extended 
body, we found that the element which makes it a body, viz., its 
resistance, is a sensible experience of our own. Yet, apart from 
the resistance, there is but the empty extension or form, and this 
can hardly be called a cause, if indeed it can be said to exist, in 
any real and objective sense. Our search, then, for causes was 
unsuccessful. But, though we know of no causes, we have an inex- 
tinguishable faith that there are such causes, there being, in fact, 
no particular thing we are more sure of than that for every event 
(and every sensible phenomenon is an event, viz., in ourselves) there 
is some kind of explanation or cause. It remains for us, then, in the 
absence of knowledge, only to think, or conjecture, or speculate, 
by which we mean, to form some kind of hypothesis, which we 
cannot hope to verify. An hypothesis as to the nature and order 
of sensible phenomena need not remain an hypothesis, since we can 
experience the phenomena with which it has to do, and test the 
hypothesis by its conformity to the same. But we have no expe- 
rience of the causes themselves, and can have none, and so, though 
one opinion may seem to us more probable than another, and may 
even be practicall}' settled and acted upon, it can never in the 
present state of human faculties take the rank of scientitic knowl- 
edge. To recount the opinions of men on this subject would be 



' Atom = particle of (vibrating) matter. Tyndall, " Frag, of Sc," p. 431. So ether 
is matter, dense, elastic, etc. Ibid. 



A Popular Statement of Idealism. 255 

to write the history of metaphysics ; and to examine them, with 
the aim of fixing upon some one as an opinion for ourselves, would 
be venturing on a solution of the metaphysical problem. The 
theist has one solution and the speculative materialist has another ; * 
the agnostic, in the Kantian and Spencerian sense, is content sim- 
ply with acknowledging the problem and asserting it to be beyond 
human power of solution. But it is no part of our present pur- 
pose to discuss these varying views. We wish in what follows 
simply to become a little more at home in the position respecting 
sensible phenomena, which has already been reached." 

The first difficulty which naturally arises in one's mind may 
seem to be a very radical one. It is, that to be consistent we 
must acknowledge our own body to be but a tissue of sensations, 
like any external object. Hence the various organs of sense, the 
nose, ear, eye, etc., the nerves connecting them with the brain, 
and the brain itself, are but groups of sensations, and as such exist 
only in our mind. And consistency does demand this. For though 
our attention was directed primarily to the external world, tlie 
same line of thought, a little more closely followed, manifestly 
conducts to the same conclusions respecting the nature of our own 
body. If the yellow of a pair of gloves I am wearing is ray sen- 
sation, surely the simple flesh-color of my hands is no less my sen- 
sation. If the sound of the piano does not strictly inhere in the 
piano, but in myself, the same must be said of the sound of my 
own voice— viz., that it is not properly in my vocal organs, but in 
my mind. If the weight of the dictionary is really a sensation I 
experience, equally so is the weight of my own arm when I hold 



' The question may be raised, Has there ever been such a materialist ? For ordinary 
materialism does not hoM to some supersensible matter and motion as an explanation of 
things, but to matter and motion as we know them and are in constant contact with 
them, though, it may be, reduced to their lowest terms, e. g.^ molecules and atoms. If 
idealism is true, ordinary materialism is simply confusion of thought. Professor Huxley, 
however, suggests a genuine speculative materialism {vide his " Hume," p. 79) ; whether 
involving self-contradictions or not, we do not now undertake to say. 

^ The position might be called sensible or physical idealism, and is nowise inconsistent 
with, but rather implies, a supersensible or metaphysical realism. And such a union of 
idealism and realism is the view of Spencer, and was of Kant, and even Berkeley, abso- 
lute idealism taking a step farther and involving the causes of sensible phenomena in 
the same subjective relationships (whether in a human or an absolute subject) wherein 
we have found sensible phenomena themselves to be involved. The statement of abso- 
lute idealism, however,' is made under correction. 



256 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

it at rio;ht angles from iny body. The hardness and resistance of 
my skull or of any bone in my body are sensations jnst as much as 
the hardness and resistance of the table or of the floor under my 
feet. And there is no reason why we should except the sensible 
qualities of tiie nose, eye, or ear, or of the nerves connecting them 
with the brain, or of the brain itself. The gray color of the mat- 
ter of the brain can no more have existence outside some one's 
mind than any other color. The weight, texture, and outlines of 
the nerves are matters of sensation as much as those of the blades 
of grass out in the field. And of themselves, and out of relation 
to our mind, they are all equally mysterious. So considered, they 
are no longer nerves or blades of grass, but simply tlie unknown 
causes of these groups of sensible phenomena in us. But, in so 
saying, does not the idealist, it may be asked, cut the ground from 
under his own feet, since, in the previous analysis, he has been 
treating, after the manner of ordinary physiological teaching, the 
various organs of sense, the nerves and brain, as the very means 
by which we get sensations ? The question is fair, and must be 
fairly met. And the idealist has a choice of only two alterna- 
tives : either to deny that we have any real sensations, the su- 
perstructure disappearing, as every superstructure must, with its 
groundwork ; or to allow that the organs of sense, nerves, and 
brain are not such a means and groundwork, that the origin of sen- 
sations is not merely partially but totally inexplicable, and that 
all explanatory' language, such as has been used, and physiologists 
genei'ally are nsing, is but provisional, and, when assuming to give 
an anywise strict and scientific account of the matter, must be 
reprobated. 

It is not possible to deny with any soberness that we have sen- 
sations, and so the latter alternative must be taken. The organs 
of £ense and the nervous system cannot in any strictness be said to 
produce sensations, because they only exist as sensations. The 
mind cannot be really dependent on the bodily organization, be- 
cause the bodily organization has no meaning save as a group of 
phenomena in and to the mind. All sensible phenomena, things 
as near as the beating of our hearts or the movement of the parti- 
cles of our brain, and things as far as the shining of a star or the 
sweep of a system, are equally phenomena to us and in us, and 
have no meaning apart from us. However venturesome the ex- 



A Popular Statement of Idealism. 25T 

preseion may seem, idealism demands that we say that, instead of 
the world's containing us, we ourselves contain the world; that, 
however much meaning the word "outside" may have in refer- 
ence to the body, it has none to the mind of man. 

The idealist is aware that this seems to involve an altogether 
mysterious, if not unthinkable, notion of the mind. Ordinarily, 
the mind is regarded as existing within us, and the mind of another 
we not only connect with that assemblage of sensible qualities we 
call his body, but more definitely with the nervous system that is 
hid in it and has its head and centre in the brain. According to 
idealism, however, brain as well as body exists in the mind. What 
in the name of common sense, then, it may be asked, is this mind,, 
and where is it? First let it be said, relapsing for the moment 
into ordinary habits of speech, that the assertion of the existence 
of the mind in the body or the brain is destitute of all experiment- 
al support. "We do not find the mind, however diligently and 
minutely we may examine the body or the brain. The supposed 
existence of the brain itself at times when we do not see it, and 
all that physiology may tell us of its structure, may be verified ; 
but no one has ever found a sensation or thought ' in the brain, or 
has the slightest ground for hope that he ever will. The alterna- 
tives are, then, to deny or ignore the mind, or to allow that we are 
altogether off the track in making this kind of a search for it. 
The idealist takes the latter. What the significance of the ordi- 
nary view is, that the mind is connected with the brain, will be 
considered later ; it suffices now to say that the idealist cannot 
allow that the mind is in or anywise spatially connected with the 
brain. But as to the question, what the mind is, the answer may 
be given, it is that which experiences sensations and thoughts ; 
and to the other, where the mind is, it may be said, not that the 
question is unanswerable (as we might say in reply to a question as 



' It is, perhaps, superfluous to remark that the " sensation or thought " of another 
than the one making the search is meant. Of course, the brain and its movements are 
the latter's sensations. The sensations of the other are, however, there only to his im- 
agination. Conceivably, indeed, we may examine our own brain, and try to find the 
sensations that we may think are hidden somewhere in it. And lucky are we if, after 
some fruitless searching, the thought suddenly strikes us that we are experiencing the 
only sensations we can ever iind, and that, being essentially subjective, it is vain and 
meaningless to seek for them where they do not exist. An explanation of the double 
use of sensation will be given later on. 

XYiii— n 



258 The Journal of Speculative Philosopliy . 

to the orio-in of a mysterious noise in the niglit), nor tliat tlie mind 
is nowhere, but that the question has no meaninij;, or just as much 
meaninc^ as one wonkl have as to what tlie color of a certain plea- 
sure is, or what the weight in pontids avoirdupois of a pang of re- 
gret. The conception of the mind, which Idealism necessitates, 
is indeed mysterious, but only as we try to range the mind along 
with the 'sensible phenomena which it takes cognizance of, and 
forget that it is not itself one of tliem, but that to which they all 
exist. 

At least, however, it may be urged, the idealist must allow that 
his conception of the world makes it altogether illusory. If he 
saves the mind, he does so at the expense of all the objects to 
which the 'mind can direct itself. Now, the present writer cannot 
answer for all the theories that have passed under the name of 
Idealism. Some are doubtless hastily conceived, and, in truth, 
not so much interpretations of experience as departures from it 
and attempted flights in the air. The idealism here considered, 
however (which, but for the seeming presumption of the title, 
would be called "scientific idealism"), results simply from an 
analysis of what experience is. The very head and front of its of- 
fending, to the mind of the dogmatic realist, is that it so resolutely 
holds to the ground of experience, and refuses to give the name 
of reality to anything apart from experience (save, of course, the 
transcendental and unknown ground or cause of all experience). 
What is the meaning, then, in an assertion that such a world of 
experience is illusory % Illusory, in common speech, is something 
which does not correspond to real facts. But in this case what 
are the real facts with which we can contrast the world of experi- 
ence? In the sense of facts separate from the mind, the idealist 
does not allow that we know of any such facts (the transcendental 
cause being left out of the account since we know nothing of it). 
All facts in his view are facts of mind, or mental experience, and 
he does not leave us so much reality in the separate sense as to 
constitute the possibility of an illusion. The semi-idealism some- 
what current at the present day, which — while holding to the 
subjective nature of odors, sounds, colors, and other secondary 
qualities of bodies — asserts that matter, in its essential or primary 
qualities of extension, resistance, figure, motion, etc., exists quite 
apart from the mind, does make the secondary qualities illu- 



A- Popular Statement -of ■Idealism. ■ ' 259- 

sory,' since we all suppose that these qualities belong to the exter- 
nal world as truly as anv others. But a thorough-going idealism 
finds the primary or essential qualities of matter to be subjective 
in just the same sense that the secondary are. The whole mate- 
rial world is but an eifect upon us ; hence illusory is a word in- 
applicable to it. If we had no waking hours we should not call 
•Gur dreams illusory ; and it is but. an affectation of knowledge to 
give the name of dreams to our daylight experiences. For who 
knows, or has reason for believing, that there is anything more 
real than these daylight experiences ? 

But if the world of the idealist may not properly be called illu-. 
sory, does not another difficulty arise — viz., that all objects of con- 
sciousness are made equally real, and no possibility is left by 
which there can be any illusory objects at all ? Yet that many 
objects of (supposed) human knowledge are fanciful, or imaginary, 
or illusory, is beyond question. IIow will the idealist explain this 
dualitj' in consciousness, according to which there are real and 
unreal objects, save on the hypothesis of two orders of existence, 
one in the mind and the other out of the mind ? The question is 
not really difficult to answer. The idealist cannot deny the dual- 
ity or the existence of illusions ; but, he says, it is not tliat we 
contrast our sensations with realities existing apart from the sen- 
sations, but our thoughts or judgments with our sensations. Illu- 
soriness simply means, according to the idealist, that one state of 
mind does not correspond with another. Let us take an example. 
Suppose that I entertain the idea that I can suspend myself in the 
air, or at any rate that, like Darius Green, by attaching some- 
thing like wings to my body, I can fly. Here is plainly one state 
of mind. And now, having mustered my courage and arrayed 
myself with the requisite paraphernalia, I make the experiment ; 
but, owing to a lingering doubt of the result, not from a very 
great height. The consequence is that, after perhaps a flutter or 
two, I find myself on the ground, and, retaining my power of sen- 
sation, that I feel bruised, lame, and certainly well undeceived. 
This all makes up another state of mind, and plainly it does not 
correspond with the first. Why not, then, call the first an illu- 
sion ? Indeed, th.e idealist may say that only in accordance 
with the requirements of his theory can any ideas or beliefs be 
proved to be illusory ; for the only way is to experience some 



200 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

sensation, or succession of sensations that contradict these ideas 
or beliefs. 

The revealer and real enemy of illusions is not any objective 
reality outside and independent of us, but sensible experience it- 
self. The distinctions of truth and error, fact and fiction, reality 
and illusion, have as much validity to the idealist as to any one ; 
for we have not only sensations, but thoughts of them — thoughts 
of what they may be ; and thoughts thus acquiring a kind of in- 
dependence of the sensations, their truth and worth can only be 
tested by discovering whether they correspond to our sensations 
or are convertible into sensations. Illusoriness can, then, be only 
in our thoughts. It is meaningless to say that a pain I experi- 
ence is illusory, and just as meaningless that any color, or sound, 
or resistance is illusory. Mistakes are always mistakes of the 
judgment in locating or interpreting the data of the senses, not in 
these data themselves. All sensations are subjective, yet they are 
all real. No one would care to know of anything much more real 
than an acute pain under which he is suffering. It is slight con- 
solation to tell him his pain is only a sensation. So the idealist 
does not see why his world should be slightingly spoken of as 
made up only of sensations ; why the heat, light, color, beauty, 
movement of nature, should be ranked less highly because they 
are what we experience, and not something existing apart from 
our experience. But the notion of reality will engage us in what 
follows. 

[Part II, on the Notion of Reality, will be given in the next 
number.] 



KANT'S CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. 



BY T. B. VEBLEN. 



The place of the Critique of Judgment in Kant's system of 
Philosophy is that of a mean between the two Critiques of the 
Pure and of the Practical Reason. A feeling of the lack of cohe- 
rence between the other two critiques prompted him to the elabo- 
ration of this one, and the Doctrine of Method at the close of the 



KanCs Critique of Judgment. 261 

work is mainly a sketch of the way in which he conceived that 
the results of this Critique were to be made useful in the system of 
Philosophy to which he regarded all his critical work as prelimi- 
nary. The outcome of the Critique of the Practical Reason is the 
notion of freedom in the person ; the outcome of the Critique of 
Pure Reason is the notion of strict determinism, according to 
natural law, in the world. It will hardly do to say that the two 
are contradictory, for they are so thoroughly disparate that, taken 
by themselves only and placed in juxtaposition, they do not even 
contradict each other. It is well known that it was on account 
of this disparity of the two notions that Kant was able to hold to 
the reality of personal freedom at the same time that he held to 
the doctrine of unavoidable determination according to natural 
law. But while he found the disparity of the two indispensable 
in order to the reality of freedom, he also found that, in order to 
free activity, a mediation between the two was likewise indis- 
pensable. 

The idea of freedom of moral action contains the requirement 
that the concepts of morality are to be actualized in the sphere of 
natural law. Without the possibility of realizing the concepts of 
morality in the realm of nature — without ability to affect events 
in the course of nature — morality would be only a fiction. The 
free person must be able to exert a causality on things, or else his 
freedom would be only an absurdity ; but, even if it be granted 
that the person can and does come into the course of events as an 
efficient cause, that is not enough. Thus far the conclusions of 
the Critique of Practical Reason reach, but Kant was not satisfied 
with that. The action of the person must be capable of falling 
in with the line of activity of the causes among which it comes; 
■otherwise it will act blindly and to no purpose. The agent must 
know what will be the effect of this or that action, if his activity 
is not to be nugatory, or worse than nugatory. And, in order 
to such a knowledge of the results of a contemplated action, the 
knowledge furnished by simple experience is not sufficient. Sim- 
ple experience, whether we accept Kant's doctrine concerning the 
knowledge given by experience, as he has developed it in the Cri- 
tique of Pure Reason, or not, cannot forecast the future. Expe- 
rience can, at the best, give what is or what has been, but cannot 
say what is to be. It gives data only, and data never go into the 



362 The Journal of Speculative Philosophij. 

future unaided and of tlieir own accord. Data do not tell what 
the etiect of action Avill l)e, except as we are able to judge the 
future by the help of the data given. Judgment must come in, 
if experience is to be of any use, and morality anything more than 
a dream. The power of judgment, or of reasoning, must mediate 
between theoretical knowledge and moral action ; and the kind of 
judgment that is required is inductive reasoning. All this is sim- 
ple enough. It is so simple and is so obvious that it is difficult 
to see it until it has been pointed out, and after it has been 
pointed out it seems to have been unnecessary to speak of it. 
Though Kant, in giving his reasons for undertaking the Critique 
of Judgment, speaks mainly of the indispensableness of this 
power of inductive reasoning for the purposes of morality, it is 
evident that it is no less indispensable in every other part of 
practical life. To-day any attempt, in any science, which does not 
furnish us an induction, is counted good for nothing, and it is 
with this power of inductive reasoning that the most important 
part of the Critique of Judgment has to do. 

In Kant's trichotomous scheme of the faculties and capacities 
of the intellect", the Power of Judgment lies in the middle, be- 
tween the Understanding and the Reason, just as the faculty of 
pleasure and pain lies between the faculties of cognition and of 
desire, and affords a connection and mediation between the two. 
The Understanding has to do with cognition, and is a priori 
legislative for empirical knowledge ; the pure Reason has to do 
with desire, and is a priori legislative for action ; by analogy we 
should be able to say, at least provisionally, that the Power of 
Judgment has to do with the capacity of pleasure and pain, and 
legislates a priori concerning the adequate or subservient, the 
commensurate, appropriate, or adapted {das Zweckmdssige). 

The Power of Judgment is, in general, the power of thinking 
the particular under the universal. " If the universal (the rule,, 
the principle, the law) is given, then the judgment which sub- 
sumes the particular under it is determinative [Deductive reason- 
ing]. But if only the particular is given, for which the judgment 
is to find a universal, then the judgment is only reflective " [Induc- 
tive reasoning]. {Kr. d. Urtheihhraft, e(\. K. Kehrbach, 1878 ; 
Einl., IV.) Inasmuch as this Critique is a critique of the pure 
Power of Judgment only — i. e., of the Power of Judgment in so 



KanCs Critique of Judgment. 263 

far as none of the pi'inciples of its action are borrowed from else- 
where — it has to do only with the reflective judgment ; for, in or- 
der that the judgment be determinative, the universal which is to 
serve it as a rule in the work of subsumption must be given, and 
so must be present as a premise, and will condition the action of 
the judgment working under it. The determinative judgment is 
simply the activity of the intellect in general iu applying the 
laws given by Understanding and Reason, and, as such, its action 
has been analyzed in the two critiques which treat of those fac- 
ulties. The determinative judgment, subsuming particular data 
under general laws which are also data, is nothing but the activity 
of the Understanding in combining simple experience into a syn- 
thetic whole, under those laws of the understanding which are a 
necessary condition of experience. Therefore the discussion of 
the determinative judgment belongs in the critique of the theoret- 
ical Reason, The reflective judgment passes beyond the simple 
data of experience and seeks a universal wdiich is not given in em- 
pirical cognition ; therefore it must proceed according to a prin- 
ciple not given to it from without. It has a power of self-direc- 
tion, and therefore calls for a critique of its own. 

This is the starting-point of the Critique of Judgment, and, 
if this had been borne in mind, it might have saved many of 
Kant's critics a good deal of mistaken criticism. As a rule, the 
criticisms offered on his doctrine of Teleology have gone to work 
as though his starting-point had been from the developed principle 
of Final Cause, and as though he had proceeded from that prin- 
ciple to the notion of adaptation, and thence to that of sesthetic 
appropriateness, which is precisely reversing the truth. They 
have taken up the Critique wrong end foremost, and it is no 
wonder that they have found fault with it. Kant's doctrine of 
Final Cause is arrived at from a consideration of the way in which 
the reflective judgment works; the nature of the reflective judg- 
ment is not deduced from a preconceived notion about finality. 

The office of the reflective judgment is to find unity in multi- 
plicity, or to give unity to multiplicity. Its action is not only 
synthetic, but it is to make a synthesis which shall reach beyond, 
and include more than what is given in simple experience. The 
problem of this Critique, as of the other two, is : How are synthetic 
judgments a priori possible 1 but, while the faculties under con- 



264 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

sideration in the otlier two Critiques have to do with laws una- 
voidably given and unavoidably applied to given data, the reflect- 
ive judgment has to find the laws to be applied to given data. 
The reflective judgment is the faculty of search. It is the faculty 
of adding to our knowledge something which is not and cannot 
be given in experience. It is to reduce the manifold of nature» 
the various concepts we have of the things in the world, to a syn- 
thetic totality. It has to bring the facts given in experience under 
laws and principles, and to bring empirical concepts under higher 
concepts. Whatever is ascertained, and so becomes an item of 
knowledge, becomes therewith a point of departure for the reflect- 
ive judgment. The reflective judgment is continually reaching 
over beyond the known, and grasping at that which cannot come 
within experience. Its object is a synthesis, a systematization of 
whatever is known ; and, in order to the attainment of a system, 
its procedure must be governed by some principle. As the result 
aimed at lies beyond experience, the principle according to which 
it is to proceed cannot be given by experience. The principle is 
not taken from outside the power of judgment, for, if such were 
the case, the judgment working under that principle would be de- 
terminative and not reflective ; therefore the principle according 
to which the reflective judgment proceeds must originate with the 
reflective judgment itself; or, in other words, it must be an a pri- 
ori principle of the intellect, and must hold its place as a principle 
only in relation to the reflective judgment. It cannot be the same 
principle, in the same form, as any of the principles governing the 
other faculties. 

The nature of this principle is to be found from a consideration 
of the work it is to do. The reflective judgment is to generalize, 
to reduce our knowledge to a system under more general laws 
than any given by experience. Its oflice is to systematize, and to 
systematize is but another expression for reducing things to intel- 
ligent order; that is, to think things as though they had been 
made according to the laws of an understanding, to think them as 
though made by an intelligent cause. But to think things in a 
system as though they were made by an intelligent cause is not 
the same as to think that they are made by such a cause. So 
much is not required by the principle. All that is required is 
that the things be thought as falling under a system of law accord 



Kanfs Critique of Judgment. 261) 

ing to which they adapt themselves to the laws of our understand- 
ing — that they are such in the manner of their being as they would 
be if they were made with a view to the exigencies of our capacity 
of knowing. The principle of the reflective judgment is, there- 
fore, primarily the requirement of adaptation on the part of the 
object to the laws of the activity of our faculties of knowledge, or, 
briefly, adaptation to our faculties. 

Now, whenever the intellect finds the objects of its knowledge 
to be such as to admit of the unhampered activity of the faculties 
employed about them, there results a gratification such as is always 
felt on the attainment of an end striven for. The more nearly the 
concept of the object known approaches to what such a concept 
might have been if it had been constru(tted simply under the guid- 
ance of the laws of the mind's own activity and without being in 
any way hindered or modified by external reality — that is, the more 
nearly the activity of the mind in thinking a given thought coin- 
cides with what would be the mind's activity if that activity were 
guided by its own intrinsic laws alone and were not influenced or 
hampered bj' the environment — the moi-e fully will the require- 
ments of the mind's activity be realized, and the more intense will 
be the gratification felt in contemplating the object of thought 
which so employs the mind. A feeling of gratification, or the con- 
trary, accordingly, goes along with the activity of the reflective 
judgment as a sanction and a test of its normality. 

What this feeling of gratification testifies to is, that the play of 
the faculties of the intellect is free, or but little hampered by the 
empirical element in its knowledge. It therefore indicates that 
the objects contemplated are, in the form in which they are pres- 
ent in thought, adapted to the faculties. This adaptation of knowl- 
edge to our faculties may take place in two different ways, or 
rather it may take place at two different stages in the elaboration 
of the material gained by experience. A simple datum may be 
given to the apprehension such as to conform to the normal action 
of our faculty of knowledge, and, by its so conforming, it shows 
adaptation to the faculties tliat are employed about it. In such a 
case, the concept which is contemplated and found adapted is not 
thereby an item of knowledge which goes to make up our concep- 
tion of the world-system, or to make a part of any systematic or 
organized whole. As a datum of the apprehension, it is consid- 



266 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

ered singly by itself only in relation to the apprehending subject, 
no thought being given to its making or not making an integral 
part of our knowledge of reality. In so far as concerns the adapta- 
tion conceived to belong to the concept, it is no matter whether 
any external reality corres})onds to the concept or not ; and, there- 
fore, it makes no difference, as to the adaptation, whether the con- 
cept is derived from experience or is a pure figment. The adapta- 
tion belonging to such a concept, which is only a datum of the 
apprehension, is, therefore, subjective only. It is only a question 
of the conformation or noncontbrmation of a simple concept ( Vor- 
stellung) to the norms of the apprehension. The question is, how 
far the concept given is suited to the normal activity of the fac- 
ulty of cognition ; whatever may be the objective validity of the 
concept, that does not enter into consideration at all. This being 
the case, the only way to judge of the adaptation of such a con- 
cept is to take cognizance of the way in which the faculties act on 
occasion of it, and the test can only be whether the faculties act 
unhampered and satisfactorily ; and the only indication of the nor- 
mal activity of the faculties, again, is the resulting feeling of grati- 
fication or dissatisfaction. If the concept, simply as such, pleases, 
it is normal or adapted ; if it displeases, it is not. The object cor- 
responding to such a concept, which pleases in its simple appre- 
hension, is said to be beautiful, and the reflective judgment, in so 
far as it proceeds on the simple adaptation of the data of appre- 
hension to the faculties of cognition, is aesthetic judgment. It is 
of a purely subjective character, and its action is not based on 
logical, but wholly on pathological grounds. The decision of the 
aesthetic judgment is made on the ground of the feeling called 
forth by the apprehension of the concept, and the feeling is, 
therefore, in this case, the only authority that has a voice in the 
matter. 

From these considerations it follows that there can be no ob- 
jective principle of gesthetic judgment. The principle which gov- 
erns taste must accordingly exert its authority, not through the 
means of logical argument and proof, but by an appeal to the 
nature of men in respect to reflective judgment in general. " The 
principle of taste is the subjective principle of the judgment in 
general" {Kr. d. U., p. 148). The universal validity Mdiich a 
judgment in a matter of taste bespeaks can, therefore, rest only 



Kanfs Critique of Judgment. 26Y 

on the assumption of an essential similarity of all men in respect 
to the feeling involved in such a judgment. 

On the other hand, the data of cognition may also be contem- 
plated, with reference to their adaptation, at the stage at which 
they are no longer simple data of apprehension, but constitute a 
part of our knowledge of reality. That is, they (the concepts) 
may he considered as making a part of our knowledge of nature, 
and, consequently, as entering into a system in which they must 
stand in relation to other data. Their adaptation will conse- 
quently here be found, if at all, in the logical relations of con- 
cepts — items of empirical knowledge or laws of nature — to one 
another, and the conformity of these relations to the normal ac- 
tivity of the faculties ; not in the immediate adaptation of par- 
ticular items or data of experience to be taken up by the facul- 
ties, as was the case in the aesthetic judgment. And since the 
faculties, in dealing v. ith the relations of concepts as making up 
our knowledge of realitv, have to do with the relations of real ob- 
jects as known to us, the relations of the concepts, in which the 
adaptation is supposed to lie, are here conceived to be real rela- 
tions of objects ; the adaptation of these concepts, as standing in 
logical relations to one another, to the normal activity of the mind, 
therefore comes to be looked on as a quality of the objects contem- 
plated. The objects are conceived to stand in such relations of 
dependence and interaction as correspond to the logical relations 
of the concepts we have of them. Now, as a matter of fact, the 
connection or relation of our concepts which will be found adapted 
to our faculties, and which answers the requirements of their nor- 
mal action, is one according to which they make a systematic, con- 
nected whole. The relations of objects which shall correspond in 
the world of reality to this logical relation of our concepts are 
such relations of interaction and interdependence as will bind the 
particular things in the world of reality together into a whole, in 
which the existence of one thing is dependent on that of another, 
and in which no one thing can exist without mutually condition- 
ing and being conditioned by every other. That is, the adapta- 
tion found, or sought to be found, in concepts when contemplated 
in their logical aspect, is conceived to be an adaptation of things 
to one another in such a way that each is at the same time the 
means and the end of the existence of every other. 



•268 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Such a conception of the world of reality, in which things are 
united into an oro;anized whole, can proceed only on the assump- 
tion that the particular things which go to make up the organic 
whole are subject to laws of a character similar to that of the 
logical laws according to which our mind subsumes the particular 
under the general, and holds together all the material gained by 
our cognition in a systematic totality of knowledge ; which is the 
same as saying that in such a conception is contained the idea that 
tlie world is made according to laws similar to the laws of our 
understanding, and therefore that it is made by an intelligent 
cause, and made with intention and purpose. To put the same 
thing in another way : To conceive the world in the way required 
hy the reflective judgment is to conceive it as being made so as 
ito harmonize with the laws of our understanding ; that is, in being 
made, it is adapted to our faculties, and therefore made by a cause 
working according to laws like those of our understanding, and 
with a view to the exigencies of our understanding in compre- 
hending the world. The cause producing the world must there- 
fore be conceived to have worked it out according to a precon- 
ceived notion of what it was to be, and the realization of the form 
in which the world so created actually exists, accordingly, has its 
ground in an idea conceived \>y the cause which created it. The 
idea of what the world was to be precedes and conditions the 
world as it actually comes into existence — which is precisely what 
we mean when we say that the world was created by final cause. 

All this argument for a final cause in the world rests on the 
action of the reflective judgment, and its validity therefore extends 
only so far as the principle of the reflective judgment reaches. 
That principle is the requirement of adaptation, on the part of our 
knowledge, to the normal action of our faculties of knowing; it is 
therefore of subjective validity only, and can say nothing as to the 
nature of external reality. The finality which is attributed to ex- 
ternal reality, on the ground of the adaptation found by the reflect- 
ive judgment, is simply and only an imputed finality, and the 
imputation of it to reality is based on the same ground of feeling 
as every other act of the reflective judgment. Our imputation of 
^finality to the things of the world, and our teleological arguments 
ibr an intelligent cause of the world, proceed on subjective grounds 
entirely, and give no knowledge of objective fact, and furnish no 



Karifs Critique of Judgment. 269" 

proof that is available for establishing even a probability in favor 
of what is claimed. 

"What is proved by the tenacity with which we cling to our 
teleological conception of the world is, that the constitution of our 
intellect demands this conception — that our faculties, in their 
normal action, must arrive at this before they can find any halt- 
ing-place. The mind is not satisfied with its knowledge of a 
thing, or of any event or fact, until it is able to say, not only 
how the thing is, or how it came about, but also why it is as it 
is, and what was the purpose of its coming to pass. At least 
it must be able to assert, before it will rest from its search, that 
the thing or event has a purpose ; the proposition may be put 
into this general form, and we may be obliged, oftentimes, to 
leave the matter in this state of generality ; but we cannot be- 
lieve, concerning anything, that there is no reason why it is, or 
why it is as it is. It is, of course, possible to give our attention 
to any item of knowledge — to employ ourselves about any object 
or any process or law in nature — without bringing in the notion of 
purpose ; but our knowledge of it cannot be regarded as complete 
until we have asked the question why it is. 

But though this question of teleology is of extreme importance, 
yet a knowledge of the teleological end of a given thing, or the 
purpose of an action or event as considered from the standpoint 
of the economy of the universe, is not absolutely necessary in or- 
der to human life, nor even in order to a high degree of develop- 
ment in moral life. In truth, a knowledge of ultimate particular 
ends and purposes is of no use whatever in the affairs of every- 
day life ; and, therefore, the principle of teleology, as being the 
principle of conscious purpose in the world, is not indispensable 
in order to such knowledge of things as is required by the exi- 
gencies of life. The knowledge we need and use can be got, and 
got in sufficient completeness for all purposes of utility, without 
any appeal to, or any aid from, the developed principle of finality ; 
and, if the exercise of the reflective judgment, in its logical appli- 
cation, consisted in the decision of teleological questions alone, its 
value would be small enough. Such, however, is not the case. 

The principle of the logical use of the reflective judgment was 
found to be the general principle of adaptation ; and since, in 
its logical use, the judgment has to do with reality, the principle 



270 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

which sliall o-overn the reflective jiido-inent here will be that of 
objective adaptation ; that is, adaptation which is conceived to be- 
long to things objectively. The motive which leads to the appli- 
cation of this principle to our knowledge of things was found to be 
a feelina: of dissatisfaction witli our knowledgje so lono; as it consists 

~ Cj CD 

only in a chaotic manifold of concepts. We are dissatisfied with a 
conception of reality which makes it only a congeries of things, 
without connection, system, or order, beyond juxtaposition in space 
and succession and duration in time. Yet such a congeries is all 
that unaided experience can give ; and the determinative (deduc- 
tive) judgment can do little to bring further order into this chaos. 
It is true, we have the general law of cause and effect given, and 
it looks as though we ought to be able to establish some system by 
the aid of it, when experience gives us the data to which the law 
applies ; but further thought will show that we should be as help- 
less with that law as without it if no further principle came in to 
guide us in the application of it. We should have the law which 
says : " Every change has a cause and an effect " ; and all that the 
data of experience would enable us to say further would be, that 
this law in general ap))lies to these data. The abstract law and 
the data, simply under the action of the determinative judgment, 
could never get so far as to afford us groun:3 for asserting that a 
given effect has a given cause ; still less, that a given cause will 
produce a given effect. The truth of this is shown by the na- 
ture of our knowledge of particular causes. We can never desig- 
nate, with that certainty which belongs to every deliverance of 
the deductive judgment, what is the cause of any given effect. 
We may have no doubt as to what is the cause of a given effect ; 
but still, if it should turn out that the effect under consideration 
has some other cause than the one we counted on, we should not, 
therefore, conclude that the world is out of joint. It is possible 
that we may be mistaken in our opinion as to particular cases 
of cause and effect — even the most certain of them — wliich would 
not be the case if we arrived at our knowledge of them by sim- 
ple deductive reasoning from data of experience and an a priori 
law. There is always an element of probability, however slight, 
in our knowledge of particular causes ; but simple experience — 
cognition — never has anything to say about probability ; it only 
says what is, and leaves no room for doubt or probability. 



Kanfs Critique of Judgment. 271 

In order to find what is tlie cause of a given effect, and, still 
more, what will he the effect of a given cause, we need a guiding 
principle beyond anything that experience gives. We have to go 
beyond what is given us, and so we need a principle of search. 
That is what is afforded by this principle of adaptation. The 
mind is unsatisfied with things uutil it can see how they belong 
together. The principle of adaptation says that the particular 
thino;s do belons: t02;ether, and sets the mind hunting to find out 
how. The principle of adaptation says that, in order to the nor- 
mal action of the faculties, things must be conceived as adapted 
to one another so as to form a systematic totality — that things 
must be conceived to be so co-ordinated in their action as to make 
up an organized whole — and the miod goes to work to make its 
knowledge of reality conform to its own normal activity ; or, in 
other words, to find what particular cases of interaction under 
the law of cause and effect will stand the test of the principle of 
adaptation. What the principle of adaptation does for us is, 
therefore, in the first place, that it makes us guess, and that it 
guides our guessing. If it were not that we are dissatisfied with 
our knowledge so long as it remains in the shape of a mere 
manifold, we should never seek to get beyond a congeries of 
things in time and space; and, if it were not that the principle 
of adaptation shows us what we are to seek further, we should 
never find anything further in our knowledge. 

But the principle of adaptation cannot give us any new data, 
nor can it tell us anything new about the data we have. All it 
can do is to guide us in guessing about the given data, and then 
leave it to experience to credit or discredit our guesses, . That is, 
it is a regulative, not a constitutive principle of knowledge, accord- 
ing to the distinction which Kant makes in his classification of « 
priori principles of the mind. IS^ow, as has already been pointed 
out, the direction in which this principle will lead us is that of 
generalization, since no such principle is needed in order to deduc- 
tive reasoning. In order to analyze the content of our empirical 
knowledge, there is no guessing necessary; all that is then re- 
quired is that we take a more complete inventory of what we 
already know. The guessing, under the principle of adaptation, 
is in the direction of a higher systematization of what we know. 
The principle suggests that, in order to conform to the norms of 



272 The Journal of Speculative Pldlosophy. 

our faculties, things should fall into a system under laws of such 
or such a character ; that they should stand in such or such rela- 
tions of interaction and co-ordination ; and that the laws which 
are given a priori as applying to things should apply to them in 
such or such a way ; and so it leads to an hypothesis as to the 
nature of particular things and the laws of their connection. The 
principle guides us to an hypothesis, but it has nothing to say as to 
the validity of the hypothesis in the world of reality. It proceeds 
on the basis of a feeling, and so it can decide whether the hy- 
pothesis suits the mind, but not at all whether it applies to reality. 
Experience alone can say whether the hypothesis fits the things it 
is intended for ; or, rather, it can say whether it appears to lit 
them, since, inasmuch as an hypothesis never can become an object 
of experience in the same sense as things are objects of experience, 
it can also not have that empirical certainty which belongs to our 
knowledge of individual tilings. The testimony of experience as 
to the validity of the hypothesis can only be of a cumulative char- 
acter, and all it can do is to give it a greater or less degree of 
probability. It is of the nature of circumstantial evidence. 

The principle of adaptation, in its logical use, is accordingly 
the principle of inductive reasoning. The need felt by the mind 
of bringing order and systematic coherence into the knowledge it 
acquires, and therefore of conceiving the things about which it is 
engaged as adapted to one another, affords, at the same time, the 
motive and the guiding principle for induction. The unrest felt 
on account of the inharmonious and forced activity of the facul- 
ties, when engaged about a mere manifold or a discordant mis- 
cellany, drives the mind to seek a concord for its own activities, 
and, consequently, a reconciliation of the conflicting elements of its 
knowledge. The reason for the unrest felt in contemplating ex- 
ternal things simply as individual and unconnected things lies in 
the fact that the mind is adapted to conceive the subject-matter of 
its knowledge in the form of a connected whole. If the mind had 
not an inherent capacity for thinking things as connected into a 
totality, or at least as being connected in a systematic way and 
under definite laws, it could not feel the lack of totality in con- 
templating things under the mere form of juxtaposition in time 
and space. It would not be dissatisfied with things as mere data 
if it knew of nothing better; and it would not seek for anything 



Kanfs Critique of Judgment. 273 

different if the conception of things, as a mere congeries, satisfied 
the requirements of its normal activity. But, the requirement of 
totality, of adaptation of part to part, being present, the mind has 
no alternative but to reflect and reflect on the material given it, 
and make the most it can out of it in the way of a systematic 
whole ; and the requirement of adaptation points out the direction 
which its search must take. One consequence of this is that the 
search is never ended, as, from the nature of the case, tlie require- 
ment can never be fulfilled. As soon as a result is obtained by 
the process of induction, that result becomes, for tlie purposes of 
the question in hand, a fact of empirical knowledge, and therefore 
acquires the character, not of a completed whole, but of an iso- 
lated and disconnected datum. As fast as one step of induction 
is completed it becomes a means to another step, which must 
inevitably follow it. 

According to what has just been said, the motive and guiding 
principle of inductive reasoning, and, with it, of the teleological 
judgment, is the requirement of adaptation or totality in our 
knowledge. When we find this requirement answered, in 
greater or less degree, the consequence is more or less of a feeling 
of gratification, just as there is always a feeling of gratification on 
the successful completion of an undertaking, or the attainment of 
a desired end. This feeling of gratification may therefore be re- 
garded as a sanction to the principle of the reflective judgment, 
and, in the last resort, it is this feeling of gratification alone which 
can decide whether the principle has been applied successfully in 
any given case. 

Therefore, so far as concerns the distinctive characteristics of 
the reflective judgment — and, therefore, of inductive reasoning — it 
proceeds on subjective ground entirely. Its motive is subjective, 
and, though the evidence by which it seeks to establish the results 
aimed at is of empirical origin, yet the criterion, to which the 
result must conform in order to answer the purposes for which it 
is sought to be established, is subjective. The consequence of 
this subjectivity of the principle of induction is that the results it 
arrives at are only more or less probable. Yet, singular as it 
might seem, hardly any part of our knowledge except that got by 
induction is of any immediate use for practical purposes. For by 
induction alone can we reduce things to system and connection, 
XVIII— 18 



274 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

and so bring particular things and events under definite laws of 
interaction ; therefore by induction alone can we get such knowl- 
edge as will enable us to forecast the future ; and knowledge which 
shall help us to forecast the future — to tell what will take place 
under given circumstances and as the result of given actions — is 
the only knowledge which can serve as a guide in practical life, 
whether moral or otherwise. 



INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION. 

TBANSLATED FROM HEGKL'S "PHILOSOPHIE DEB RELIGION," BY F. L. SOLD AN. 

II. 

The Position of the Philosophy of Religion in regard to Phi- 
losophy and in regard to Religion. 

« 

1. THE RELATION OF PHILOSOPHY TO RELIGION IN GENERAL. 

From what we said above, namely, that philosophy makes re- 
ligion the object of its contemplation, and from the further appar- 
ent fact that contemplation and the object of contemplation are 
two different things, it would seem as if our inquiry were still 
dealing with that relation in which the two sides are independent 
of each other and remain in separation. If this were the true re- 
lation, our contemplation would necessarily step out of the field 
of piety and enjoyment which religion forms, and contemplation, 
which is the movement of thought, would become as different 
[from religion] as, for instance, the diagram and figures in pure 
mathematics are from the spirit which contemplates them. But 
this is in its first appearance only of such relation, when cognition 
is still in a state of diremption with the religious side, and is finite 
cognition. If we examine this question more closely, we see that, 
as a matter of fact, philosophy has content, needs, and interests 
in common with religion. 

The subject of religion as well as philosophy is the eternal truth 
in its objectivity, or God, nothing else but God, and God's expli- 
cation. Philosophy is not the wisdom of [this] world, but the 



Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 275 

cognition of what is not of this "world ; not the cognition of the 
external universe, of empirical existence and life, but the cognition 
of what is eternal, of God and whatever flows from his nature. 
For this nature must reveal and develop itself. The explication o£ 
philosophy involves, therefore, the explication of religion, and its; 
own explication is also that of Religion. Philosophy, in its occu- 
pation with this eternal truth which is in and for itself, is the 
occupation of thinking spirit and not of caprice or of a special in- 
terest in this subject, and it is therefore identical in its activity 
with that of religion. The spirit, in its philosophical reasoning, 
enters upon this subject with as much energy, and renounces its. 
particularity as fully, when it penetrates its object, as religious con- 
sciousness does, which will give up all particularity and forget it- 
self in this content. 

Thus religion and philosophy coalesce ; philosophy is really in 
itself a cult, or religion, for it is the renunciation of subjective 
notions and opinions in the occupation with God. Philosophy^ 
therefore, is identical with religion, but with the distinction that 
it is so in a peculiar mode, different from that which we are accus- 
tomed to call religion proper. Their common characteristic is 
that each is religion, but they differ in regard to their mode and 
manner of being religion. They differ from each other in th& 
mode of their occupation with God, and in this are found the dif- 
ficulties which seem so insuperable that it is considered impossible 
to identify philosophy and religion. Hence the apprehensions of 
theology in regard to philosophy, and the hostile position of relig- 
ion and philosophy. This Theology assumes that such a hostile 
position exists, and, when it looks upon it from the standpoint thus 
assumed, philosophy seems to have a corrupting, destructive, and 
desecrating influence on the content of religion, and its occupation 
with God seems to be altogether different from religion. This is 
the old contrast and contradiction, which we find first among the 
Greeks; with the Athenians, this free democratic people, writings 
were burned and Socrates condemned to death. In our times 
such contrast is generally admitted to exist, and finds more cre- 
dence than the Unity of religion and philosophy which we have 
just asserted. 

And yet, old as this contrast is, the connection between phi- 
losophy and religion is just as old. Even to the Neo-Pythagoreans 



276 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

and Neo-Platonists, standing as tbej do within the pagan world, 
the Gods of the people were no longer the Gods of phantasy, but 
they had become to them Gods of thought. Such connection is 
found also with the principal Fathers of the Church, who were 
(essentially philosophical in their religious attitude, for their fun^ 
lamental principle was that theology is religion as it appears to 
thinking, pliilosophical consciousness. To their philosophical cult- 
ure the Church owes the first beginnings of a content of Christian 
doctrine. 

This union of religion and pliilosophy was still more thoroughly 
carried out during the middle ages. There was so little fear that 
any injury could come to faith through philosophical cognition, 
that the latter was considered essential for the development of 
faith itself. Those great men, Anselmus and Abelard, worked at 
the further development of the determinations of faith from the 
standpoint of philosophy. 

Cognition, when it reared its own world, distinct from that of 
religion, had mastered the finite content only ; but, when it devel- 
oped into true philosophy, its content became the same as that of 
religion. 

If we inquire into the difference between religion and phi- 
losophy, as it shows itself in this unity of content, we find it to be 
as follows : 

a. Speculative philosophy is the consciousness of the idea [Ger- 
man : Idee], so that everything is conceived as idea ; the idea, how- 
ever, is the True in [the form of] thought, and not as mere precept 
or image-concept (Yorstellung). The True in [the form of] thought 
may be explained, more particularly speaking, as that which is con- 
crete, which is posited as dirempted in itself in such a mode that the 
two sides of the diremption are contrasting categories of thinking 
(Denkbestimmungen), whose unity the idea is conceived to be. 
To think speculatively means to analyze a reality so that the dif- 
(terences, as determinations or categories of thought, are contrasts, 
and that the object is conceived as the unity of the two. Our 
perception looks upon the object as a whole, our reflection dis- 
tinguishes and conceives [the existence of] various sides ; it cog- 
nizes manifold elements in them, and severs them. Reflection, in 
considering these differences, does not bear in mind their unity ; 
at one time it forgets the whole, at another the difierences [or 



Introduction to the Philosophij of Religion. 'ilT'X 

parts], and when it has both in mind it separates the object frora 
its qualities, and represents both in such a way that that in which; 
the two coalesce becomes a third something, which is different 
from the object and its qualities. Such a relation may exi«t in 
mechanical objects which belong to externality altogether, for 
with them the object is but the dead substratum of the diflPerences, 
and the quality of being One is the collection of external aggre- 
gates. In the true object, however, which is not an aggregate, 
not a merely externally joined plurality, the object is one with 
the distinguished determinations, and it is speculation alone- 
which conceives unity in the contrast itself as such. It is the 
general business of speculation ever to grasp all the objects of 
pure thought, of nature, and of spirit in the form of thought, and 
thus to conceive them as the unity of the difference. 

Ij. Eeligion itself is the standpoint of the consciousness of the 
True which is in and for itself; it is therefore that phase of spirit 
in which consciousness has for its subject the speculative content 
in general. Religion is not the consciousness of this or that truth 
in individual objects, but of the absolutely true, of the True as 
Universal, as All-comprehending truth beyond which nothing else 
exists. The content of its consciousness is, in the next place, the 
universally true which is in and for itself, which is self-determined, 
and not determined from the outside. "While the finite depends on 
something else for its determinations, the True has its determina- 
tion, its limit, its aim, wdthin itself ; it is not limited by another, but 
the other lies within it. This is the speculative principle of which 
we become conscious in religion. There is, indeed, truth in every 
other sphere as well, but not the highest, absolute truth, for this 
exists only in perfect universality of determination and in that 
which is determined in and for itself. To be determined in and 
for itself is not simple determinateness, which exists in regard to 
another thing, but that which contains the other, the diflPerence, 
within itself. 

c. Religion contains this speculative principle as a state of con- 
sciousness, as it were, whose sides are not simple determinations [or 
categories] of thinking, but are filled with concrete content. These 
phases can be no other than the phase of thinking, active univer- 
sality, activity of thinking, and reality as immediate, particular 
self-consciousness. While in philosophy, on the one hand, the 



278 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

rigidity of tliese two sides vanishes through a conciliation by think- 
ing — for both sides are thoughts, and it is not true that one only 
is pure universal thinking and the other empirical, individual [in] 
character, — ^^religion, on the other hand, can attain the enjoyment 
of unity only through lifting these two hard extremes out of their 
diremption, and by elaborating and uniting them. For the reason 
that religion divests its extremes of the form of diremption, dis- 
solving the contrast through the element of universality, it remains 
akin to thought in form and movement even, and philosophy, as 
the ever active thinking through which contrasts are united, 
stands in the closest relation to it. 

The thinking contemplation of religion has transformed its par- 
ticular phases into thought, and the question arises, as to the gen- 
eral relation in which this thinking contemplation of religion holds 
as a department of the system of philosophy. 

2. RELATION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION TO THE SYSTEM OF 

PHILOSOPHY. 

a. In philosophy the highest [principle] is called the absolute, 
the idea ; it is superfluous to trace this [doctrine] back, and to show 
how in the Wolfian philosophy this highest [principle] was called 
ENS, Thing ; for the latter term proclaims itself as an abstraction 
which is not sufficiently adequate to our idea of God. The abso- 
lute in more recent philosophy is not an abstraction to the same 
extent, but, for all that, it has not yet the same signification as our 
term, God. In order to show the difference fully, we must first 
consider what " Signification" itself signifies. When we ask what 
is the signification of this or that [expression], we ask for two, 
and, moreover, two opposite things. 

In the first place, we ask for what we call the meaning, the pur- 
pose, the general thought of such or such an expression, or work 
of art, etc. [In this sense] we ask for the inherent [meaning], and 
what we try to conceive is the thought. If we ask in this sense : 
What is God? what signifies the expression, "God"? we want 
the thought — although we may, possibly, alread}-- possess an image- 
concept (Vorstellung). It means, therefore, that the logical idea 
is to be stated, and the logical idea is therefore the signification. 
What we want is the absolute, God's nature expressed in thought, 
a logical knowledge of him. This is one signification of the 



Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 2Y9 

■" signiiication," and in this respect that which we call the abso- 
lute signifies the same as the expression, God. 

T). But the question is asked, also, in a second sense, which calls 
for the opposite. If we begin with the pure logical definitions 
and not with the image-concept (Vorstellung), it may happen that 
the spirit neither finds satisfaction in it, nor feels at home there, 
and will ask for the signification of this purely logical definition. 
Thus we have, for instance, the definition of [God, as] the unity 
of the subjective and the objective, or the unity of the real and 
ideal. One might understand every part of this definition by 
itself, and know very well what unity, subjective, objective, etc., 
mean, but, nevertheless, confess that he does not understand this 
definition. When we ask the question in this sense, the significa- 
tion is the opposite from that mentioned before. What is asked for 
now is an image-concept corresponding to the logical definition, 
an example of the content which was given in the form of thought 
only. If we find the content of a thought difficult, the difficulty 
lies in the circumstance that we possess no image-conception of it. 
Through an example the signification is explained, and thus alone 
the spirit sees itself in this content. 

In case we begin with the image-concept of God, the philosophy 
of religion must consider the signification of this concept, namely, 
that God is the Idea, the Absolute, the Being comprehended in 
thought and idea, and philosophy of religion has this in common 
with logical philosophy. The logical idea is God as he is in him- 
self [or in jyotentia]. But it is God's essence that he is not merely 
in himself [or potentially] ; he is just as essentially /or himself [or 
actually]. He is the absolute spirit who does not contain himself 
in thought, but gives to himself phenomenality and objectivity. 

c. In thus considering in the philosophy of religion the Idea of 
God, the mode, also, of his image-conception is placed before us : 
he is conceived by himself only. This is the absolute on the side 
of its existence in time and space [Dasein]. In the philosophy of 
religion we have thus the absolute for our subject, but not merely 
in the form of thought, but also in the form of its manifestations. 
The universal idea is, therefore, to be understood in the purely 
and simply concrete signification of being on one side, essence in 
general ( WesentlichTceit ilherhaupt), and, on the other, in its ac- 
tivity of positing itself externally, of becoming a phenomenon, of 



280 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

revealinp: itself. It is a common saying that God is the Lord of 
the world of nature and of spirits ; that he is the absolute har- 
mony of the two, and that which produces and sustains this har- 
mony. In these expressions neither the thought, nor the concept, 
nor its existence in time and space (Dasein), its manifestation, is 
wanting. But, since this is a philosophical inquiry, the side of ex- 
istence in time and space (Dasein) itself must be comprehended 
in the form of thonght. 

Thus, philosophy considers the absolute, in the first place, as the 
logical idea, as the idea as it exists in thought, whose content is 
formed by the determinations and definitions of thought. Phi- 
losophy shows the absolute in its activity also, in its creations ; this 
is the process of the absolute itself, namely, to become Being for 
itself, to become spirit. God is thus the result of philosophy, but 
a result known not simply as result, but as producing itself and 
being its own presupposition. The one-sidedness of the result is 
annulled in the result itself. 

Nature, finite spirit, the world of consciousness, of intelligence 
and will, are incarnations of the divine idea, but they are distinct 
forms or special modes in which the idea appears, forms which 
are not yet so permeated with the idea, that the idea is in itself in 
being in them, and exists as absolute spirit. 

In the philosophy of religion we consider the potential {die an 
sieh seyende) logical idea not merely as determined as pure thought, 
nor simply in its finite determinations where it is in some finite 
mode of its phenomenality, but rather as it is in itself [or poten- 
tially] in thought, and also how it becomes a phenomenon, how it 
manifests itself. Such phenomenality or manifestation, however, 
is an infinite one, for it is that of spirit reflecting itself within itself. 
Spirit which does not become manifest, or phenomenal, does not 
exist. In this determination of phenomenality there is contained 
the finite phenomenon also — that is, the world of nature and the 
world of finite spirit — but spirit is the [creative] force underlying 
the latter, which produces them from itself, and itself from them. 

This is the position which the philosophy of religion occupies 
in regard to the other departments of philosophy. God, in the 
other departments, is a result, but here this end is made the be- 
ginning, and forms our special subject. It is considered as the 
purely and simply concrete idea with its infinite phenomenality — 



Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 281 

and this determination concerns the content of the philosophy ot 
religion. This content we consider with thinking reason ; this 
regards theform^ and leads us to [the consideration of] the posi- 
tion of the philosophy of religion in regard to positive religion. 

3. KELATION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION TO POSITIVE 

RELIGION. 

It is a well-known fact that the faith of the Church, and more 
particularly of the Protestant Church, has been fixed in the form 
of a dogma. This content has generally passed for truth, and, as 
a deiinition of the nature of God and of man's relation to God, it 
has been called a creed, which means, in a subjective sense, that 
which is believed, and, in an objective sense, that which should be 
recognized in the Christian Church as the content [of religion], 
and which is the mode in which God has revealed himself. As a 
common, definite dogma, this content is embodied partly in the 
apostolic symbol, and partly in the later symbolic books. In the 
Protestant Church the custom prevails to regard the Bible as the 
essential basis of the Dogma. 

a. In the cognition and definition of the doctrinal content, rea- 
son forms an element of the argument. At the beginning of this 
course the doctrinal content of the Bible was still made the posi- 
tive basis of the argument, and thinking was to be merely the 
exeo-esis which collects the thoughts of the Bible. But, as a mat- 
ter of fact, the understanding had previously and independently 
fixed its views and thoughts before it began to inquire how the 
words of the Scripture might be explained in accordance there- 
with. The words of the Bible form a presentation which is not 
systematic. They are Christianity as it appeared at the begin- 
ning ; spirit alone comprehends the content and explains it. 
Throuo'h the fact that the exeojesis calls in Reason as adviser, it 
has come to pass that the so - called rationalistic theology has 
sprung up, which has put itself in contrast to that Dogma of the 
Church, or that the latter places itself in contrast with it. In 
this process the exegesis takes the written Word, interprets it, and 
pretends to aim at nothing but to bring to light the true spirit of 
the word and to adhere to it faithfully. 

But, no matter whether the Bible is adopted for the basis merely 
as a matter of courtesy, or whether it is so adopted in good faith. 



282 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

the nature of all interpreting explanation requires that thought 
must have its share in it. Thouo;ht contains inherent in it defini- 
tions, principles, and presuppositions, which come into play in the 
work of interpretation. If interpretation is not merely verbal ex- 
planation, but an explanation of the meaning, it must carry its 
own thouo-hts into the word which is its basis. Mere word-inter- 
pretation can do no more than to substitute one word for another 
of the same scope. In an explanation, however, further .logical 
reflections [Gedankenbestimmungen] are connected with it; for 
explication means the evolution of further thoughts. Apparently 
we still adhere to the meaning, but, in fact, we develop further 
thoughts. The commentaries on the Bible are not simply guides 
which introduce us to a knowledge of the content of the Script- 
ures, but rather present to us the mode of thought of their own 
time. The intention is, to state the meaning of the word ; but a 
statement of the meaning implies that the latter be drawn forth 
into consciousness, into conception, and [therefore] the conception, 
which has categories of its own, becomes a factor in the exposition 
of thought, which is represented as being simply the meaning. 
Even in the exposition of such fully developed philosophic sys- 
tems, as, for instance, that of Plato or Aristotle, the various pres- 
entations and expositions differ according to the peculiarly con- 
stituted conception of every expounder that undertakes it. The- 
ology has proved exegetically the most contrary opinions out of 
Scripture, and thus this so-called Sacred Writ has been treated like 
a nose of wax. There is no heresy which has not appealed to 
Scripture in the same way as the Church itself. 

h. Rationalistic theology, which thus originated, did not confine 
itself to exegesis on the basis of the Bible, but, proceeding to free 
cognition, it assumed a certain relation to religion and its content. 
In this more general relation the process and the resnlt can be no 
other than that cognition takes possession of whatever is fixed and 
given in religion. The doctrine of God thus branches out into 
definitions, qualities, and actions of God. Cognition seizes this 
definite content and claims it as its own. In its finite mode it con- 
ceives, on the one hand, the infinite as something which possesses 
limitations (als ein Bestimmtes) as abstract infinity, and thereupon, 
on the other hand, it finds that all special qualities are inadequate 
to the infinite. Thus by its own mode it annihilates the religious 



Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 283 

content and completely impoverishes the absolute object. This 
mode of cognition knows very well that the finitude of limitation 
which it has drawn into its circle points toward a world beyond, 
but it conceives the latter in a finite manner as an abstract highest 
being to which no character whatever is attributed. Rationalism 
(Aufkliirung) — for so is the system of cognition just described 
called — imagines that it places God very high when it calls him 
the infinite for which all predicates are inadequate and unjustifi- 
able anthropomorphisms, but, in reality, while conceiving God as 
the highest being, it has made this idea hollow, void, and poor. 

c. If it should seem as if the philosophy of religion stood on the 
same basis with the theolooi;v of rationalism, and is therefore in the 
same contrast with the content of religion, this is a delusion which 
will disappear soon, from the following considerations : 

1. By that rationalistic consideration of religion (which is iden- 
tical with the abstract metaphysics of the understanding) God 
was conceived as an abstraction which is empty ideality and to 
which finitude forms an external contrast. From this standpoint 
morality, as a special science, is the doctrine of what belongs to 
the side of the real subject in regard to action and conduct. The 
other side, that of the relation of man to God, was distinct and 
separate by itself. Thinking reason, however, which does not 
stand in the attitude of abstraction, but starts from man's belief 
in the dignity of his spirit, and, deriving its impulse from the 
courage which truth and freedom give it, conceives truth as some- 
thing concrete, as fulness of content, as ideality in which limita- 
tion or finitude is contained as a phase. God, according to tbis 
view, is not empty [abstraction], but spirit, and this definition of 
spirit not a mere word, but it sees the development of the nature 
of spirit in its cognition of God as triune. Thus God is con- 
ceived as making himself his own object — in which distinction the 
object remains identical with God, and God loves himself in the 
object. Without this definition of the trinity, God could not be 
spirit, and spirit would be an empty word. But when God is con- 
ceived as spirit, this conception includes the subjective side, or it 
itself develops into it, and the philosophy of religion [therefore] is 
a thinking contemplation of religion which encompasses the whole 
definite content of religion. 

2. As far as that form of contemplation is concerned which 



284t The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

confines itself to the words of the Holy Writ, and maintains that it 
exphiins the same throns^h reason, it, too, occnpies apparently only 
the same basis as the philosophy of religion. For that mode of 
contemplation makes its own arguments arbitrarily the basis ot 
Christian doctrine, and, while it allows the words of the Bible to 
stand, it makes its own particular opinion the principle to which 
the presupposed biblical truth must subordinate itself. This mode 
of reasoning retains thus its own presupposition, and moves within 
the limits of reflecting understanding without subjecting the latter 
to criticism. The philosophy of religion, as cognition through 
reason, forms a contrast to the arbitrariness of this mode of reason- 
ing ; it is the reason of the universal, striving for unity. 

Philosophy is so far from walking on the common high-road of 
thought of that rationalistic theology, and from this exegetical 
mode of reasoning, that it finds itself most exposed to their war- 
fare and calumnies. They protest against philosophy for the sole 
purpose of reserving for themselves the right of their own arbi- 
trary reasoning. They call philosophy a specialty (etwas particu- 
lares), whereas it is naught but rational and truly universal think- 
ing. To them philosophy appears like a ghost, a spook, of which 
no one knows exactly what it is — something alarming; but in this 
estimate [of philosophy] they only show that they find it more 
convenient to remain on the standpoint of their own fantastic, 
arbitrary reflections, which philosophy cannot look upon as the- 
ology. Those theologians whose arguments move within the 
limits of the exegesis and who appeal to the Bible for every one 
of their wild notions, and who deny to philosophy the possibility 
of cognition, have carried things so far, and have lowered the re- 
spect for the Bible so much, that, if their views were correct, and 
no cognition of the nature of God were possible from a proper ex- 
planation of the Bible, spirit would be compelled to look for 
another source to gain full truth. 

3. Philosophy cannot stand in a contrast to positive religion 
and to the doctrine of the Church, which has preserved its positive 
content, in the manner in which this is done by the metaphysics 
of the understanding and rationalizing exegesis. It will be shown, 
on the contrary, that its kinship to the positive doctrine is in- 
finitely greater than appears at a first glance, and that the reha- 
bilitation of the dogma of the Church, after it had been reduced 



Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 285 

by the understanding to a minimum, is so largely the work of phi- 
losophy that, for this very reason — which is its true content — it 
has been decried as an obscuration of spirit ^ by a rationalistic the- 
ology which does not rise above the limits of the understanding. 

The fears of the understanding and its hatred against philosophy 
originate in the apprehension with which it sees philosophy re- 
ducing the reflections of the understanding to their [true] basis ; 
that is to say, to an affirmative principle on which the under- 
standing becomes shipwrecked, while philosophy finds [there] a 
content and a cognition of the nature of God after all content 
had seemed cancelled and annulled. A content of any kind ap- 
pears to that negative view an adumbration or obscuration of 
spirit, although its very object is to remain in the night which 
it calls rationalism, and to which indeed every ray of the light of 
cognition must appear hostile. 

It may suffice here to say, in regard to the supposed contrast of 
the philosophy of religion with positive religion, that there cannot 
be two kinds of reason and two kinds of spirit, not a divine reason 
and a human reason, not a divine spirit and a human one, absolutely 
diflPerent from each other. Human reason, or the consciousness of 
its essence, is reason in general ; it is the divine principle in man. 
Spirit, in so far as it is the spirit of God, is not a spirit beyond the 
stars, beyond the world ; God is present, is omnipresent, and, as 
spirit, he is in every spirit. God is a living God, and is all energy 
and action. Religion is a creation of divine spirit, not an inven- 
tion of man, but the work of the]divine activity and creativeness in 
him. The expression that God as reason rules the world would be 
senseless if we did not assume that it refers to religion, and that the 
divine spirit is active in the determination and formation of it. 
The perfection of reason through thinking does not stand in any 
contrast to this spirit, and, therefore, it cannot absolutely differ from 
the work which spirit has produced in religion. The more man, 
in his rational thinking, allows the object itself to fill his mind 



' Teanslator's Note. — Hegel's argument is based on the relative position which he 
assigns to understanding and reason, the former being the faculty which conceives the 
finite and its relations, while the latter conceives the infinite. Any attempt, therefore, to 
apply to the infinite and divine the reasoning process of the methods of the understand- 
ing, Hegel considers futile and fraught with inevitable error. Hegel's view reminds us 
of Dante's " Reason, when following the footsteps of the senses, has short wings." 



286 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

freely, the more lie renounces his particularity and tries to reason 
from the standpoint of universal consciousness ; and the more his 
reason refrains from seeking its own in the sense of a particular, 
the less will it be liable to descend to that contrast. For the ob- 
ject is reason itself, spirit, divine spirit. 

The Church or the theologians may refuse this succor or take 
offence at seeing their doctrine stated in terms of reason ; they may 
even reject with haughty irony the endeavors of philosophy — al- 
though these are not only not hostile to religion, but ratlier aim at 
fathoming its truth — and make merry about the " fabricated" truth. 
But this disdain is to no avail, and becomes idle vanity after the 
need of cognition and its contrast to religion has once arisen. 
Judgment has its rights which cannot be withheld in anv manner, 
and the triumph of cognition is the reconciliation of the contrast. 

Although philosophy, as philosophy of religion, is so very dif- 
ferent from the rationalistic views — which in their heart are hos- 
tile to religion — and is by no means the spectre which it has been 
represented usually, we see, nevertheless, even to-day, that the most 
rigid contrast between philosophy and religion is made the shib- 
boleth of the times. All the principles of religious consciousness 
which have sprung up in the present time — no matter how their 
forms differ among themselves — agree in this one point : that they 
wage war against philosophy, and that they try to make it refrain 
at any rate from concerning itself with religion. It therefore be- 
comes our business to consider the relation in which philosophy 
stands to these principles of our times. Such an investigation 
seems all the more auspicious, as we shall see that, in spite of that 
hostility to philosoph}', in spite of enemies in many directions or in 
each and every direction of the consciousness of the present day, 
the time has come when philosophy may take religion for the 
subject of its investigation without prejudice or favor, and in a 
happy and profitable manner. For its opponents are those forms 
of divided consciousness which we have considered above. These 
rest either on the standpoint of the metaphysics of the understand- 
ing — for which God is [an] empty [idea] of which the content has 
disappeared — or on the standpoint of feeling which, after the loss 
of the absolute content, has retired into its empty inwardness, 
but which agrees with that metaphysics in the result, that every 
definition or predication is inadequate to the eternal content 



Bradley's ^^Principles of LogicP 287 

— which they treat as an abstraction. "We shall even see that 
tliere is nothing in the assertions of the opponents of philosophy- 
hut what philosophy itself contains as its principle and as the 
basis of its principle. Tiiis contradiction — that the opponents of 
philosophy are also the opponents of religion whom philosophy has 
conquered, and that they nevertheless possess in their reflections 
the principle of philosophic cognition — finds its explanation in the 
fact that they are the historical element out of which the perfect 
philosophical thinking has developed itself. 



BEADLEY'S "PEINCIPLES OF LOGIC. 



55 1 



BY S. W. DTDE. 



The question as to whether Logic has anything to do with Meta- 
physic, at one time either wholly or partially ignored, admits now 
of only one answer. It has come to be understood that Meta- 
physic bears a relation to Logic similar to the relation between 
the trunk of a tree and some of the branches. Not only in Logic, 
but" also in Ethics, is this relation now admitted to hold good. 
Because of this. Green, in his latest work, " Prolegomena to 
Ethics," saw the necessity of making plain, first of all, his meta- 
physical basis. Those who discuss logical or ethical questions, 
either explicitly or implicitly, make use of metaphysical princi 
pies. Inasmuch as, however, one may attempt to ignore the fact 
that his ethical or logical system depends upon a metaphysical 
position, it is better to preface any announcement of such a sys- 
tem by stating, as clearly as possible, the principles intended to be 
used. Those who have not done so have been prevented by dif- 
ferent motives. Some have a horror for the seeming endlessness 
of Metaphysic, and so think the best course to pursue is to have 
nothing whatever to do with it. Some may have thought that 
their principles would of themselves become apparent in the prog- 
ress of their work. But the main reason, no doubt, is that this 



' " The Principles of Logic." By F. H. Bradley, LL. D., Glasgow, Fellow of Merton 
College, Oxford. London: Kegan Paul, French & Co., 1 Paternoster Square, 1883. 



288 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

method, which is plainly the most intelligible, is at the same time 
the most difficult. It must presuppose that the writer has thought 
out satisfactorily to himself the vital connection between Logic 
and its principles, and that he can show wliat in Logic has been 
a natural growth, and what an unnatural excrescence, what is na- 
tive and what foreign. The difficulty of this plan is that it is 
directly contrary to the method in vogue. Logic and Metaphysic 
have been until lately almost diametrically opposed. At times, 
however, one writer has shown one point of connection, and an- 
other anotlier. It seems a mucli easier course in consequence, fol- 
lowing in the well-worn ruts, first to state the connections already 
proved, and then, by a critical examination of the rest, to discover 
negatively what should be set aside as useless, and positively what 
further connections may^thus have been established. But that 
still leaves, as it must in any case, the whole question at the mercy 
of the author's own philosophical opinions. So that, whatever 
plan may be followed, a concise account of first principles is loud- 
ly demanded, and the demand is undoubtedly rational. 

Bradley, though not expressly setting aside one portion of his 
work as a prolegomena, has nevertheless been at considerable 
pains to state what philosophy seems indispensable to a proper 
miderstanding of the subject. He is driven by the mere press of 
the discussion to declare his views regarding the relation between 
intelligence and nature, mind and matter. But his statements 
are far from satisfactory. E"ot, indeed, until he has, to use his 
own language, almost accomplished his voyage does he lay bare 
his inmost thought. The consequence is that his readers feel that 
he should have begun just where he ended. His foundation so 
ill accords with much of his superstructure that he impresses us 
with the conviction that he has labored in vain. He takes too 
much the attitude of one who has built a castle, and, after lead- 
ing the spectators to believe it is made of marble, reveals that it 
is but a house of cards. Apart from that, much that he has writ- 
ten is exceedingly suggestive, and will prove, even when he is 
considered to be in error, a stimulant to thought. His work will 
repay a careful examination. 

Before proceeding to take up in detail " The Principles of 
Logic," I will endeavor to state the principles which should guide 
us in our criticism. These principles will serve at once for a po- 



Bradley's ^^Pri7iGvples of LogicP 289 

sition by which to test the correctness or otherwise of a particular 
theory, and also, because of that, for a basis upon which must be 
built any system that will endure. In order to accomplish this 
purpose, a discussion of that proposition which Bradley announces 
last will be our point of departure. 

Eirst of all it must be made particularly prominent that no 
treatment of the principles of Logic is worthy of consideration 
that does not attempt to explain the connection between conscious- 
ness on the one hand and the world on the other. The failure to 
recognize the urgency of this need has led to the tremendous 
amount of almost useless writing commonly known as Formal 
Logic. This science, divorcing at the outset mind and nature, 
has proceeded in all seriousness to give an account of the laws 
rules, regulations, methods, etc., which govern an abstraction ; 
the mass of rules that have been heaped up are worth little more 
than waste paper. Only so far as they have ignored their first 
position, and considered thought not as unrelated but as in essen- 
tial relation to reality, have they produced lasting results. Only 
so far as they have been untrue to their principles have they real- 
ized truth. 

But Bradley's is not a mere Formal Logic. He has seen that 
some connection between intelligence and nature must be made. 
So far, then, he is much beyond the formal logicians. Yet it is 
one thing to see that a solution of a difficulty is necessary, and 
another thing to offer the correct solution. Many have recog- 
nized that as there is a world, and as there is reason, and as the 
world so far as we know is rational, there must be a connection 
between the two. But fewer have stated a valid connection. Of 
course, it is always an easier task to destroy than to build. There 
are more who are willing to pull to pieces the theories of others 
than to construct a theory of their own. These maintain a mere- 
ly negative attitude, and always have this advantage — that while 
they themselves are attacking they do not present any front to 
the enemy. It is always open to the skeptic to say, if any one 
ventures to dispute his standpoint, " Oh, yon have mistaken vc\j 
position." Such will-o'-the-wisp philosophers are extremely hard 
to catch. It is doubtful, indeed, if they are worth catching. But 
they are at least so far useful, and even necessary, that they en- 
able a constructive metaphvsician, if he is open to persuasion, to 
XYIII— 19 



290 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

correct his errors ; and, besides, as no position can be absolutely 
negative, tlie skeptic, if be has been sound in his attack upon a 
received system, has so far pointed the way toward a better solu- 
tion of the problem. 

In a treatise on Logic the main trouble with a writer, who sees 
that it is necessary to state his view with regard to the relations 
of mind and matter, is not so much what to say as what not to 
say. For in one aspect of it the discussion of the relation between 
mind and matter involves the whole of Metaphysic. When once 
the subject is introduced, it is harder to stop than it is to con- 
tinue. But we must attempt to outline what appears to us the 
basis of a true system of philosophy. We shall, perhaps, best ac- 
complish our object by quoting, iirst of all, Balfour's objection to 
Green's Metaphysic. It will be presently shown that Bradley's 
position is substantially the same as Balfour's. The latter says : 
" If the world of experience consists solely of relations, what are 
these relations between ? Let it be conceded, for the sake of argu- 
ment, that, however far we carry back the analysis of what consti- 
tutes an object, we still find ourselves dealing with relations ; are 
we not still compelled to believe that there cannot be relations un- 
less something other than relations exists to be related, even though 
this ' something ' (apart from its relations) is ' nothing for us as 
thinking beings ' ? And it this be so, does the transcendental the- 
ory, in Green's hands, save us, after all, from the philosophic dual- 
ism of which he is so much afraid? " (" Mind," No. 33, pp. 76, 77.) 
This is an objection which occurs to almost every student of phi- 
losophy, and which, in spite of the evident contradiction involved 
in its very statement, seems to persist. The contradiction is that 
while something to be related has no meaning for Balfour except 
as independent of consciousness, the truth is that it can have no 
meaning if it is independent of consciousness. For that which 
is by definition beyond consciousness cannot be known to exist. 
However, this high-handed criticism has proved unable to bring 
conviction home to those who hold such a theory. The reason is, 
that while no one will dare to deny the truth of this criticism, they 
believe that, although their theory must in its general aspect be 
false, there is an element concealed beneath its wording which is 
not so much false as unexplained. 

Let us take an illustration — e. g.^ iron. To start with, it may 



Bradley's ^'"Principles of LogicP 291 

be said that iron exists for us only as we know it. What, then, do 
you know of iron ? An ordinary individual will answer that ques- 
tion by stating some of the common properties of iron, but he will 
give you to understand at the same time that his knowledge is 
not complete. A chemist, besides telling you that iron is an ele- 
mentary substance, will proceed to give additional properties, con- 
cluding, perhaps, by saying that much still remains to be discov- 
ered about this metal. Now, both will admit, without question, 
that a certain property of iron which I know is related to me as 
knowing — ^'. e., that a certain property is a relation between the 
thinking subject and the thought object. And the same is true of 
all the known properties. Indeed, most will agree as well that 
substance itself has no signification apart from relation to the self 
and means the permanent possibility of sensation. We have, so 
far, then, explained the knowledge of iron by relations. But what 
is yet to be explained is tliis, that both the ordinary individual 
and the chemist declare that their knowledge is not absolutely 
complete — that more may still be known after further tests or 
experiments have been made. Indeed, most will be prepared to 
assert that, no matter what analysis may be made and chemical 
experiments performed, it will still be possible to know more, and 
that we can never say^ authoritatively that nothing more can possi- 
bly be known of iron. This something more or residue, which, as 
just now said, cannot possibly be known, vigorously maintains its 
existence and refuses to be considered a nonentity. Different 
philosophers have given different names to this ''something" 
which cannot be known. One will maintain that it is a substra- 
tum in which the known relations inhere. Spencer has called it 
the Unknowable. If once we can find the key to unlock the mys- 
tery of this residue, we shall have laid bare one of the secrets of 
philosophy. 

First of all, this " something more " cannot be real and at the 
same time unknowable. By real is not meant materially existing, 
but simply existing for consciousness. If we hold by the view 
that there is " something more," we must let go the idea that it is 
unknowable, for it is not unknowable if it is known to exist. It 
cannot be argued that while we do not know that it exists we 
cannot help believing that it exists, and therefore, although it ex- 
ists, it is still unknowable. For whether it exists for us as a fact 



292 The^Journal of Speculative Philosojjhy. " '"^ 

or only as a belief, it still exists as a fact or as a belief for our con- 
sciousness, and therefore is so far known. But, again, the very 
statement of those who we supposed were answering our queries 
"was that, while they had announced all they knew, they still be- 
lieved it possible to know more. In other words, they declared 
the residue knowable. Consequently, there is nothing left but to 
predicate reality of this " something." Reality is not equivalent 
to materiality, but to that which exists for consciousness. That 
much may be considered settled. 

In the second place, this residue is not a substratum which un- 
derlies the properties, but is not itself a j^roperty. The only mean- 
ing that can be given to such a substratum is that it exists, 
although it cannot be known ; so that " Unknowable " and 
*' Substratum " are so far convertible terms. As a result, the rea- 
son already given for condemning the applicability to the residue 
of the term " Unknowable " equally condemns the applicability 
of the term " Substrate." But there is a second reason : The resi- 
due is knowable. Consequently, from one point of view (it is not 
said it is the only point of view) it is a diminishing quantity. 
What is brought to light is always seen to add to the existing re- 
lations. While we persist in our avowal that what we know of 
iron is not completed knowledge, we cannot fail to notice that all 
that has yet been discovered of iron is just properties of iron, i. e., 
new relations for consciousness. Naturally, then, we might infer 
that, as everything that has yet been found is a property, what 
remains to be found will also be properties — that, as all we know 
of iron is relations, all we can know will be relations. Therefore 
the residue cannot be a substratum. 

It might be objected to the argument just advanced, that it has 
failed to realize the full meaning of substratum. The objector 
might very naturallj^ urge that substrate was considered not sim- 
ply as not a relation, but as what from its very nature could never 
be a relation. It was looked upon as that in which the properties 
inhered, and therefore to reduce it to a mere property was to 
make the object vanish. While one might talk away forever 
about relations and properties, there is something in the nature 
of an object — of substances in general — which is, by that method, 
wholly overlooked. While all would be willing to admit that 
what was not known of iron and yet was capable of being 



)e: 



Bradley's Principles of Logic.'''' 293 



known must, when known, be resolved into relations, still there 
seems to underlie not any more what is not known than what is 
already known, that without which the properties would be dis- 
connected tatters. Indeed, the conviction cannot be erased that, 
even were there only one property known, there would exist some- 
thing, not that nor any property, without whose existence it 
would be impossible for the property to exist. That something 
is not an object, for an object implies properties. But it is that 
element of an object which, while not a property, is essential to 
there being an object at all. That is what is meant by "sub- 
strate." Or again, to put the objection in popular language. The^ 
chemist says iron is an elementary substance, and he also says iron 
has a peculiar lustre. Now, it may be true that each of these facts 
is a relation to consciousness, but any one can see that they are- 
not upon the same level. There is more in calling iron an ele- 
mentary substance than in saying it has a metallic lustre. The 
diiference between, the two seems to be that, while the latter i* 
content with making prominent the manner of existence, the for- 
mer makes prominent the existence itself. Everything, it is true, 
has an indefinite number of ways of existing, which may be called 
its properties or relations, but the ways of existing presuppose in 
their very terminology the existence of an object. An object has 
properties which are, so to speak, accidents, e. g., it may be round 
at one time and square at another. Properties change, but that 
which does not change but remains the same throughout every 
change of properties — that cannot itself be a property or a rela- 
tion. That is what is meant by " substrate." 

From the above objection we may be able to limit the discus- 
sion by noticing what underneath its negative character is essen- 
tially positive. It is agreed upon that in the idea of a substrate 
there is some truth. That is asserted both by the advocates as 
well as by the opponents of an underlying something. It may ba 
discovered, also, that those who hold that there is a substi*atnm 
underlying the properties of an object must maintain, to be con- 
sistent with their owu views, that that substratum underlies not 
the properties in a bunch, but every single property. Were that 
not the case, then the retort could be made that, if one property 
could exist without a substratum, could two not? And that would 
lead finally to the conclusion that the substratum was a phantom. 



294 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Our inquiry, therefore, presents this aspect: Wliat is there ac- 
companying a single property tliat is not that property? When, 
for example, we touch something and say, " It is hard," what 
have we done? The property of the thing is hardness— but we 
do not mean that hardness j^er se has any existence. A relation 
cannot possibly exist unless it I'elates the subject feeling to the 
object felt. But we do not assert the independent existence of a 
relation when we say " It is hard " ; we refer the hardness to the 
thing, and of that thing is already predicated existence. " It is 
hard " means " It (whatever it is) exists as hard," so that the single 
property is discovered to be not single but complex, for with the 
property " hardness " has come, in spite of ourselves, the existence 
of something not yet known except as hard. Now, if we assert 
about the same thing, " It is blue," the same process is gone 
through. But, while in this case the property is diflerent, we still 
predicate the existence of the object. 

The above analysis goes to show that a sensation simple and 
immediate is impossible. It is impossible to say "hard" or 
" blue " without including in that statement, in the first place, 
the result of previous impressions ; in the one case hard or not 
hard, in the other case blue or not blue. These relations of agree- 
ment and discrimination are so necessary that no knowledge can 
be obtained without their aid. If, then, a sensation pure, simple, 
and immediate is an impossibility, and if we still have sensations 
of some kind, of what nature are our sensations ? We may an- 
swer complex and mediate. But in saying " hard " or " blue " 
"we have not only implied the union of the present impression 
with others both like and unlike itself formerly experienced, but 
also its permanence. That characteristic of our sensation which 
is especially significant in the present discussion is its permanence. 
Sensations which come and go without leaving any trace, like 
flashes of light in a looking-glass, can have no existence for us as 
conscious beings. Immediately upon a color being brought with- 
in our range of vision, we consciously or unconsciously (according 
as the color is well or only slightly known) contrast it with other 
colors ; but before that is done we have referred it to the self as 
permanent. Referring the sensation as a sensation for tne, or as 
ray sensation to the self, we give it that character of permanence 
which it cannot have except for conscious beings. Now, that 



Bradley's '■^Principles of Logic.'''' 295 

permanence is what we have hitherto called existence ; and all 
that it means at this stage of our knowledge is the capacity of 
causing again the sensation in me which I have already felt. Ex- 
istence is, then, the permanent possibility of sensation. We can- 
not help ascribing this permanence to a sensation. The idea of 
permanence, so long as we continue at the stage of existence, only 
means from one point of view that, no matter how often the sen- 
sation is present to sense, its capability of continuing so to be pre- 
sented will never be exhausted. That is the whole meaning of 
simple existence {i. e., material existence). From another point 
of view the compulsion to ascribe permanence to an impression 
arises from the refusal of consciousness to be exhausted by a mo- 
mentary impression. Answering, then, to the capacity of the ob- 
ject to be seen or felt is the capacity of consciousness to see and 
feel. It is plain that this compulsion cannot be produced by 
something independent of consciousness, for something independ- 
ent of my consciousness can have no effect upon my conscious- 
ness. As soon as it affects my consciousness it ceases to be inde- 
pendent ; of course, this does not mean that what /do not know 
is not known, but only that what I do not know is not known hy 
one. 

From all this we can now say tliat this " something more " 
which was announced to underlie the property is the existence of 
the object of which it is a property, but that this existence is not 
only not independent of consciousness, but is a result of conscious- 
ness itself. We have learned, moreover, that the " something 
more " is from the point of view of the sensation the permanent 
capacity to be again what it has been, and, from the point of view 
of the subject, the permanent capacity of knowledge. 

The relation of the sensation to consciousness has occupied our 
attention so completely that we have ignored the full import of 
the sensation. We have been tempted to overlook the vital truth 
that a sensation 2)er se, no matter how permanent, cannot exist. 
When we say, "It is blue," besides referring the blue object to 
the self, we have in thought related this blue object to other ob- 
jects both blue and not blue. The relation of this object to others 
which are blue is a potential infinity ; so also is the relation of 
this object to other objects which are not blue. Consequently this 
^' something more " will assume a new phase, viz., the permanent 



296 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

capacity of this object as blue to be related not only to itself re- 
peated, but to others which are blue, as well as to others which 
are not blue. This is a relation from the point of view of the ob- 
ject or of the perception, and corresponds, as does the relation 
from the point of view of sensation, to the permanent capacity of 
knowledo-e. 

The net gain of our research has been principally of a negative 
kind. It has been shown that the residue which persists in con- 
sciousness is not and cannot be something alien to consciousness 
as the " Unknowable " or the " Substrate," but springs from the 
essence of consciousness itself. But it is not wholly negative; 
for, while engaged in the criticism of other theories, we have in a 
measure exposed our own. A broad hint was given that this resi- 
due was a potential infinity, which had its origin in the fact that 
consciousness not only rose above any sensation or any perception, 
but testified to its ability to rise above any number of sensations 
and perceptions. Accordingly, the more we bring to light con- 
cerning the nature of matter in general, or of any particular ob- 
ject, we are only in one sense revealing the nature of self-con- 
sciousness. But that part of the work was only glanced at. If it 
were attempted here to construct a system of Metaphysic or Eth- 
ics, this " something more " would require to be not simply men- 
tioned but explained. But for the purposes of Logic nothing more 
is required than a glance. Logic is concerned mainly with the 
negative value of this residue. Having firmly secured the posi- 
tion that it is not a thing-in-itself, whatever that thing- in-itself 
may be called it is ready to uphold its own fundamental dictum 
that nature, or matter, or reality, by whatever names it may be 
known, is not in any sense independent of consciousness, though 
it may in large measure be independent of my consciousness. Out 
of^the struggle and turmoil of the foregoing discussion is precipi- 
tated this result— that matter is thought matter, that reality is 
thought reality, that nature is the world as known ; or, to put the 
principle in a light a little more favorable to the universality of 
consciousness, matter and reality are only thinkable matter and 
thinkable reality, and the world is a knowable world. 

One remark more may be added. It will be observed that 
nothing has as yet been said of space and time. The omission ot 
them was intentional. Although space and time must enter 



Bradley's '''' Prineijples of LogioT 29T 

into the constitution of anything as an object, it would be apart 
from the aim of Logic to engage in any protracted debate concern- 
ing their nature. That well may be left to metaphysicians. But 
there is one aspect of these categories (for I think we may call 
them categories) that bears directly upon the question now at 
issue. Every one is willing to admit that it is impossible to think 
an absolute limit to space or time. He will admit, further, that 
if a limit, i. e., a relative limit, is thought, and if thought seeks to 
go outside that limit, it will find the space or time on the other 
side of exactly the same nature as the space or time upon this side 
of the imaginary line. Now, while from its very nature it is im- 
possible to know space — if to know space means to know it as an 
object — yet we assert that space is intrinsically knowable. It 
would be thought an outrage upon consciousness if the idea were 
for a moment entertained that, should we prosecute our journey 
through space sufficiently far, we should come upon space quite 
different from the space we know. Such a proposition is self-con- 
tradictory. We should immediately say that whatever that some- 
thing was, it was certainly not space. And so with time. Now, 
the world we know is in space and time. So far, then, as these 
two categories are concerned, we are prepared to say that, no mat- 
ter what in the world is yet unknown, it, when known, will be 
placed under space and time. It will conform to the conditions 
of intelligence. No one ever thinks of inserting underneath the 
particular spaces we know or the particular times we know a sub- 
stratum, and then declaring that, while we can know particular 
spaces and times, we cannot know this substratum. That would 
be equivalent to maintaining that we can at once be conscious and 
step outside of consciousness. We can no more leap outside of 
our own consciousness than we can jump out of our own skins. 
If we could leap out of our own consciousness we should be irra- 
tional in the very act. Simple Simon, when he jumped into the 
bramble-bush and scratched out his eyes, did not then see what, 
when he had his eyes, was invisible. He saw nothing. The con- 
sequence was that he concluded he would get his eyes again. In 
the same way, if it were possible for us to get beyond conscious- 
ness, we should not then know the unknowable or the substrate. 
We should know nothing. It is well for us that consciousness 
cannot commit suicide. The nature of space and time, therefore^ 



298 The Journal of Speculatloe Philo8opli>j. 

lends its aid in support of the theory that the " something more " 
is the same as that which is ah'eady known, and that the world is 
a knowable world. 

Having thus cleared the way, we may now advance without 
fear of stumbling over philosophical obstacles at every turn. The 
remainder of our work will fall easily into two divisions : 1, An 
<3xaminatioji into the " Principles of Logic," in order to discover 
how far Bradley conforms to the principle laid down in the intro- 
<luction. Apparently', at least, this will be chiefly negative. 2. 
A tabulation of the results wliich Bradley has himself obtained, 
not so much in conformity with the principle into which he was 
unwillingly pressed as in conformity with the true principle 
above adduced. Inasmuch as these results are scattered at ran- 
dom through Bradley's book, it will be some gain, at least, to have 
them set forth apart from the mass of detail and criticism in 
which they are almost completely hidden. This method will pre- 
pare the way for an intelligent appreciation of the real value of 
the positive portion of the " Principles of Logic," and will demon- 
strate how far Bradley has gone in determining a true system. 

This, it must be remarked, overlooks an interesting portion of 
the book — i. e., the chapters devoted to the criticism of the Asso- 
ciation School. But while from them we may receive useful hints 
concerning Bradley's own theory (and that is the objective point 
in this essay), it will not come within the limits of our undertak- 
ing to present any detailed review of these parts. This course 
may be the means of causing me to appear in the role of a fault- 
finder. And it is true that many seemingly unimportant points 
will thereby be brought into prominence. But Bradley has him- 
self in a measure, at least, been my excuse. He has separated in 
part between his own view and his criticisms of others. It would 
have been better if he had made the separation still more abso- 
lute, for the criticism or destructive portion of his work and the 
constructive portion are essentially different. As this is so, we 
propose, after stating that the criticism is able and valuable, to 
confine ourselves to the positive portion of the book. 

With this end in view we may, so to speak, diagnose the " Prin- 
ciples of Logic" in order to find its exact metaphysical condition. 
The difficulty that at once confronts us is, as was already men- 
tioned, that the philosophical theory underlying the Logic is 



Bradley's ''''Principles of LogicP 299 

fragmentary ; besides that, when led at times by the argument 
into abstract discussion, he frequently breaks off abruptly before 
reaching the crisis. The bunch of grapes and the water are tan- 
talizingly kept just beyond our reach. I am among those readers 
of the book who, as he states in the preface, think that he has 
given too little philosophy, and what little he has given he has 
given too often. If, like the child and the medicine, he had made 
a wry face and said, " Now, and be done with it," and had writ- 
ten a concise statement of his ideas, it would have proved more 
tangible as well as more satisfactory. The scattered and incom- 
plete nature of the statements made has driven us to adopt a 
rather unusual mode of procedure. By examining them as they 
occur we may see in what 7'espects they are alike, and thus lay 
bare the thread of connection. Here and there is given a glimpse 
of the regions that lie beyond, and it will be as good a plan as 
any other to take these glimpses up in turn ; this will presuppose 
in the reader some knowledge of the work in question. In their 
order the phases or the questions to be examined are as follows : 

a. The nature of Judgment. 

1). The distinction of Singular Judgments of Sense, as Analytic 
and Synthetic. 

c. The ultimate nature of the Real, as involving the distinction 
of " Thisness " and " This." 

d. The Relations of the Negative and the Afhrmative Judg- 
ment. 

e. The Category of Subject and Attribute as the basis of In- 
ference. 

These may be analyzed in t irn, and thus their signification and 
tendency will be made clear. " Tendency " is added, because it 
may be nowhere explicitly acknowledged by Bradley that what is 
attributed to him is in reality his ; indeed, it is quite probable 
that he might feel inclined to make some demur at the interpre- 
tations given. But questions mnst be pushed home, and no arbi- 
trary barrier can shut off investigation. 

(7b he continued in the next number.) 



300 The Journal of Speculative Philosojmy. 



A STUDY OF THE ILIAD.^ 

BY DENTON J. SNIDER. 

IV. 
Book Fourth. 

The connection between this and the preceding Book is most 
intirciate, not simply in incidents, but specially in thought. This 
connecting thought it is our main concern to see and unfold ; that 
is the thread which holds the poem together, and has held it to- 
gether against all the attacks of time and of criticism. The pre- 
vious Book showed the personal conflict for the possession of 
Helen, and the treaty based upon it ; the present Book shows that 
no such treaty can ever be carried out, being contrary to the di- 
vine government ; that this conflict at Troy is not a personal mat- 
ter between husband and seducer, but a national struggle ; indeed? 
we may add, looking back at it, a world-historical struggle, which 
has to be fought out between the contending elements before any 
peace is possible. Such Olympian emphasis we mnst hear in this 
Book. 

We have just seen placed before us in living reality the central 
conflict of the war, of the entire Trojan war, in the person of 
Helen, whom we may therefore call a type or character, which 
embraces the essence of all characters of this time and of this 
struggle ; she has in her the whole Trojan war, both sides of it, 
fighting there as well as outside of her. Around her and for her 
the two contending peoples fight, must fight, since she denotes 
their verj' essence ; the Greeks are not Greeks unless they rescue 
Helen ; the Trojans are not Trojans unless they keep her in her 
alienation. 

Such is the image of the great general war ; but into this gen- 
eral war a special occurrence is playing, the wrath of Achilles. 
We now begin to see what that wrath really means ; the with- 
drawal of Achilles from battle signifies his withdrawal from the 



' Articles I, II, and III of this series appeared respectively |in the April and the 
July numbers of this Journal for 1883, and in the January number for this year. — 
Editor. 



A Study of the Iliad. 301 

Greek cause, which is the restoration of Helen. These books are 
necessary to show what the Hero abandons through his wrath ; 
they portray the world in which he is a chief factor ; now he quits 
that world in auger, and is ready to let it be destroyed. But, 
separated from it, he is no longer a Greek, no longer himself 
truly; the deep scission in his soul, growing deeper with every 
Trojan victory, is to be pushed to the last limit, till he quit his 
wrath and be restored to harmony with his world and with him- 
self. 

But we are far from that point yet, though visibly going thith- 
erward ; at present we must return to the general phase of the 
conflict, which is in the process of unfolding. Let us look at that 
treaty again ; by it, apparently, the whole war has been brought 
to an end ; Menelaus is now to have Helen and her treasures in 
reward for his personal victory over Paris, and the Greeks are to 
sail off home, leaving Troy undestroyed. Impossible ; the treaty 
was not ratified by Zeus ; the Poet says it cannot be. The su- 
preme Governor cannot let the matter be settled thus, for the 
simple reason that it is no settlement. Here it is that we have of 
necessity an intervention of Zeus, the mighty overruling hand 
which has to descend and seize the rudder when mortal men are 
running the world into chaos. 

Yet he interferes in his own way ; that way is humorous. 
Zeus is again the humorist ; indeed, must be so, having to deal 
with mortals and immortals who must have their own will, and 
yet must be made to fit into the divine order, even when willing 
the very opposite thereof. Can Zeus, our Greek Providence, help 
laughing, and even breaking his jest, when he sees the little man 
or the little God working busily all the while to thwart his pur- 
pose, and just by that means forwarding it, and indeed making it 
possible ? In this world-embracing humor of Zeus I cannot see 
hate or even contempt ; on the contrary, its root is love, as is the 
case with all true humor ; when Zeus hates, he grasps for his 
thunderbolts, which are always at hand, and in good order. Love, 
I say, is at the bottom of his rugged heart, still to be unfolded 
somewhat, it is true ; love is that which overrules the hostile deed 
of man for man's own good, and gives him, besides, out of pure 
grace, his own sweet will even in opposition. But not man now, 
as we said in the case of Agamemnon at the beginning of the 



302 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Second Book, but deities, Here and Pallas, are the object, the 
Olympian humor of Zeus. 

This war, then, is no personal quarrel between Paris and Mene- 
laus; it cannot be settled by a duel between two individuals, 
though they be the injured and the injurer. Paris is all Troy, 
Menelaus is all Greece, the peoples are the real participators in 
the conflict ; that is, this Trojan struggle is not personal, biit na- 
tional, and is to be fought out to its true result by the nations in- 
volved in it. The Trojans cannot give up Helen without becom- 
ing Greeks, without acknowledging the triumph of the Greek 
principle. A few men of this kind are in Troy — Hector and An- 
tenor, for example ; but most of its people side with Paris, and 
sustain him, even though they hate him personally for having 
brought on the issue, or for other untold reasons. One thing is 
certain : they never compelled him to restore Helen, though they 
must have had the power. We must see that their spirit is to 
keep her in estrangement, and that Zeus, the Hellenic God, is de- 
termined to crush this spirit out of the Hellenic race. Her forci- 
ble surrender would, therefore, be no solution of the great ques- 
tion for either side, especially for the Trojans; they must break 
the treaty ; Zeus will have them break it, since he is bent upon 
putting them and their principle down in the end. The Supreme 
Deity will overrule this work of man, whereby he would shun 
his task, making a peace where there is no peace. 

This treaty, then, through which the war is to be brought to an 
end by a personal duel, is a violation of the great purpose of Zeus 
in the entire Trojan struggle. But specially it is a violation of 
the promise to Thetis, of the promise that her son Achilles should 
have honor. Thus the Heroic Individual would not get his meed 
which is the very theme of the poem. He must be harmonized 
with his people, they honoring him, he sustaining them, ere the 
conflict can be brought to a close. So we see that the whole 
Providence_of the poem in its two phases — namely, that Troy shall 
be destroved as the outcome of the entire war, and that Achilles 
shall be reconciled as the outcome of the Iliad episode of the war — 
is contradicted by this treaty and its result. Zeus, therefore, ap- 
pears and sets it aside, turning the human course of action back 
into the divine plan. 

Why, then, does the Poet introduce the duel at all ? It is, in- 



A Study of the Iliad. 303 

deed, necessary to teach the providential thought and discipline ; 
the Greeks, and we, too, might otherwise imagine the affair to be 
a merely personal matter between husband and seducer, and no 
concern of theirs or ours ; a fight over a beautiful but dubious 
woman, such as many figlits have been and will continue to be 
without causing a national war. But this Book raps us over the 
head, saying. Awake, O indolent brain ! and think ; my Helen is 
not simply one little woman and nothing more, but the supreme 
object of two great peoples, yea, of two continents ; not merely 
a runaway wife of a Greek chieftain, but the very heart of the 
two struo-o-lino; tendencies of the Hellenic race. This Book has 
an interpretation of Helen, we may say, as well as a prophetic 
outlook upon the result of the great war. 

The structure of the Fourth Book is simple, yet reveals the 
thought at its essential points of juncture. Two chief parts we 
behold, which may be named the Breaking of the Treaty and the 
Renewal of the War. They are seen to carry us at once beyond 
the individual grievances involved in the rape of Helen, and to 
bring us to the universal import of the struggle. 

I. It has already been indicated that there must take place at 
this conjuncture an interference of Zeus as the supreme world- 
governor, for the purpose of asserting the Providence of the poem. 
The treaty is to be annulled ; the Gods order it, and then find the 
human instrument to bring about the annulment. For the Gods 
work through human instruments, but do not thereby destroy free 
agency ; they rather confirm it ; the intention must be in the man 
as well as in the God. Hence we shall have two phases of this 
First Part, the divine and human, each of which is unfolded in 
sequence. 

a. The deep underlying fact in this divine utterance is the doom 
of Troy. It is to be destroyed ; there can be no treaty, no compro- 
mise which would leave it standing ; its attitude toward Helen is 
its character, and that character must be wiped out of the Hellenic 
world of which Troy is the oriental tendency. Thus Zeus decrees 
unwillingly, for it is not a personal matter with him ; indeed, if 
he were to follow his own wishes, he would spare the Trojans and 
their city, which he has honored above all cities " under the sun 
and staiTy heaven," and which has always given to him due sac- 
rifice. But he also, the supreme deity, must put aside personal con- 



304 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

siderations, and look at the eternal reason in all things ; so Troy 
must perish. Zeus, too, has liis struggle with himself in a mo- 
mentary pang of finitude ; then it is over. Such is the deep feeling 
of penalty in the universal order, as it bursts up everywhere out 
of the " Iliad " — tlie feeling of the justice of tlie world, and the 
world's deed. 

It may be asked. Why do the Gods punish the Trojans for what 
the Gods compelled the Trojans to do, as, for example, to violate 
this treat}' ? Such violation was decreed by Zeus ; is that justice, 
to punish men for wrong which they are forced to commit ? The 
answer lies in that axiom of Homeric interpretation which the 
reader must always have present to the mind : Homer's Gods and 
their decrees are in the man as well as outside of him ; they are 
his own character, his own free-will, his very essence indeed. Zeus 
through Pallas moved the Trojans to break the treaty, it is said ; 
but already the Poet has indicated that the general feeling at Troy 
was that Helen should not be restored ; she was refused to an em- 
bassy demanding her back before the war. Indeed, she cannot be 
restored if Troy is to remain Troy ; that there was no serious and 
abiding purpose of fulfilling the treaty we see by the readiness 
with which the Trojans renew the fight when it is broken. 

Here we may make a note on the character of the Gods in Ho- 
mer, especially of Zeus. The highest as well as the lowest traits Zeus 
has in him ; if he had not, he would not be all. He is the Whole, 
both centre and circumference, both divine and human. His di- 
vine side surpasses all the Gods in its divine greatness ; his human 
side surpasses all mortals in the magnitude of human frailties. 
Human, terribly human he is, just in proportion as he is tran- 
scendently divine ; the one conditions the other. Zeus is the prod- 
uct of Greek plastic imagination which figures the God as man 
universalized ; not the spiritual man simply, but the sensuous man 
also, the total man, magnified into a colossal image. Zeus is not 
an abstraction, not a virtue or a dry catalogue of virtues, or enti- 
ties ; he is a person, and has caprice, for personality without ca- 
price cannot be conceived by the Homeric Greek. But under that 
capricious, humorous play we shall always find the eternal element. 

In accord with this character of him we notice that in his very 
first words he is teasing Pallas and Here, the strongest Greek par- 
tisans among the Gods. He also propounds to them the question 



A /Study of the Iliad. 305 

whether Troy shall be left standing and Menelaus lead his Helen 
home, or not. Yet we see that he is not serious in this, but it is 
his sport, his humor. In his next speech, however, we see in a 
gentle way the iron hand ; the side of necessity appears, which 
decrees, at present in the mild form of permission, that Troy must 
perish, though his caprice contemplates the opposite and plays 
with the thought for a moment. Sportfulness he has, yet is capa- 
ble of exploding into sudden wrath which is usually very evanes- 
cent, and more often feigned than real. The froth of existence 
he shows, too, in his seething moods, but the granite is always peer- 
ing forth above and around ; we know, too, it is at the bottom of 
the surges and holds them, though we do not see it. So he plays 
with the Goddesses ; fun or anger, it is still play, and takes the 
form of teasing which has always a rude love under it ; he teases 
them now just because it is their heart's desire which he is about 
to accomplish. After teasing them well, he tells them that he is 
going to do just what they wish. 

Mighty truth we may well feel in this portraiture of Zeus, a 
genuine image of the Time-spirit which delights in sporting with 
chance, which reveals itself under the thousand forms of contin- 
gency called events, which seems to take pleasure in teasing the 
struggling sons of men with false visions of hostility and defeat 
just at the moment of victory. " Yet the will of Zeus was accom- 
plished " is the grand Homeric refrain through all this bustle and 
tumult of cross-purposes among men and Gods. It is the humor 
of existence, this colossal humor of Zeus, who, in appearance, is 
foiling while in reality carrying out the plan of the individual ; 
or, on the other hand, he is, in appearance, carrying it out while 
foiling it, or turning it into his own plan. 

The cry is always heard: "A very unworthy conception of 
deity." It is imperfect, we may well believe, but not base. It will 
do good to every son of every century to take to heart and make 
real to himself that Greek standpoint which put a God at the centre 
in all things, a person, and endowed him witli all the traits of per- 
sonality, the lowest as well as the highest. A shadow of the com- 
plete humanity, all of it, hovers therein, and the voice of it speaks 
the word of hope. We must see, too, that Zeus is playing only 
on the surface with time-bubbles. Underneath is the one great 
earnest end ; that end is universal — the end of the race. Who will 
XYIII— 20 



306 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

deny tliat the cau?e of the Greeks is tlie cause of humanity, and 
Zeus putting down Tro,y and its oriental tendency is the mighty 
image of tlie AVorld's Reason surmounting its obstacles in Time, 
and unfolding into its own pure reality? Zeus is a mythus as- 
suredly, but mythus is truer than history — the essence, indeed, of 
all history concentrated into a single colossal visage. 

He is also figured in the domestic relation, in the broadest sense, 
as father of Gods and men, for religion always conceives the world 
as one family, whose bond is love. In the more narrow Olympian 
household he is husband and parent; so he sports with, in fact 
teases, wife and child. He has the character of the Greek who, 
under the form of play, of artistic spontaneity and sportf illness, 
worshipped the Gods seriously and was pious. But listen to that 
divine wife Here in response. While acknowledging the supre- 
macy of the husband, she strongly asserts her place and preroga- 
tive not only in the family, but in the world-government, being 
equal both in birth and rank to the highest God ; the first and 
grandest assertion of woman's rights, one may think, and pre- 
figuring much that has followed in that line. Truly everything 
is in Homer, to the eye of the student who has faith in his heart. 
But Here has no humor ; she is bitterly in earnest, divinely in- 
dignant, yet she can be sarcastic, with a woman's sting in her 
tongue. Still, she lias no humor, and cannot stand teasing. Zeus, 
master of all limitation, alone can possess the true Olympian hu- 
mor ; no lesser beings, mortal or immortal, can manage it any 
more than they can handle his thunderbolts. So Zsus permits 
his wife, the strong partisan, to bring about that which he had al- 
ready resolved upon as world-judge. 

Such is this divine intervention, which we must grasp in its 
double phase : first, as a necessity in the supreme order; secondly, 
as a caprice of the Gods. Nor can we pass by that descent ot 
Pallas from Olympus in the form of a blazing meteor, a wonder- 
ful sign to Greeks and Trojans. Sign of what — peace or war ? 
Alas, poor mortals ! both sides interpret the sign both ways. 
It is but an appearance to them, without any certain divine 
stamp — a touch of sympathetic humor in the old bard, which 
some unfeeling critics would cut out, being as ignorant of the 
meaning of the sign as were the Greeks and Trojans. But 
the Goddess is seeking her human instrument for breaking the 



A Study of the Iliad. 307 

treaty, for such is her way. She has found him ; behold, he steps 
forth. 

h. This human instrumer.t is Pandar, the archer. It is instruct- 
ive at this point to watch the procedure of the poet, and see how- 
he links the divine decree into the deed of the man. Observe 
how he gives to Pandar an ample internal motive, " Thanks and 
praise from all the men of Troy and gifts from Paris." Yfell did 
Pandar read the Trojan spirit in regard to the treaty. Glory and 
cupidity move him within ; thus he is a free agent with his own 
mainspring of action.' Yet it is a Goddess who suggests and in- 
spires these motives, the Goddess Pallas, who knows her man and 
finds the character ready for her promptings. Why bring in the 
Goddess ? Because it is she who adjusts these individual motives 
into the universal course of events. Ordinarily they would be of 
no significance ; but now the war turns on them, and they have a 
place in the divine order. From Zeus the Highest comes this act 
of Pandar ; yet it is Pandar's own. He is the instrument of the 
Supreme Euler ; yet he none the less proceeds of his own accord. 
Man has his will, and just therein is realizing the will of the 
Gods ; but to connect the two is the work of a deity, of Pallas, 
Goddess of Wisdom, beheld in the poetic vision of Homer. 

Thus the " Iliad " is a poem of freedom, having the true glance, 
which joins into one harmony the divine and human relations. 
Providence is here, free-will is here. Neither side is left out or 
blurred ; yet they work together, fit into one another, nay, the 
one could not be without the other. The Gods are in the man as 
well as in the world ; thought is not merely subjective, but also 
objective ; the individual is not simply free in himself, but 
through his freedom he links himself into the universal order of 
the world. One may put his finger upon this point and say : 
This is the chief greatness of Homer, this is the reason why man- 
kind will not let him die. He has spoken the reconciling word, 
has given both sides of this existence of ours — the human and di- 
vine — working in concord. He tells of the decrees of the Gods, 
then of the doings of men ; these are the two threads of the poem, 
of life, of the universe. 

The arrow speeds, Menelaus is wounded, the treaty is broken. 
The Trojans at once move into array of battle without disowning 
the act of Pandar ; they, indeed, make it their own. All along 



308 Tlie Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

we have seen that this was their secret spirit ; the treaty was but 
a momentary fit of weariness of war. Tiiey would not, in fact 
couUi not, f^ive up Helen. Hector, leader in war, is manifestly 
not the political leader. In this respect Paris is stronger than he, 
and represents more truly the character of the Trojans. 

We have already had the divine utterance concerning the doom 
of Troy. Agamemnon now gives the human utterance in regard 
to this violation and in regard to the Trojan character, of which 
this violation is but one outburst. Troy will perish. Not in 
vain has the treaty been made and the sacred pledges given. The 
Trojans with their heads, with their wives and children, will pay 
for this wrong. Again breaks up that strong feeling of penalty 
so frequent in the " Iliad." Agamemnon sees the great fact of 
the Trojan action in its complete circle ; he, the mortal, spies the 
plan of the world-ordering Zeus in this incident. It is the human 
vision beholding the divine purpose ; the Leader is the man cho- 
sen to take a glimpse into the all-governing principle above him. 
In the very wantonness of the Trojans he beholds them as victims 
of supreme justice. The man now speaks what the God has al- 
ready decreed, Helen is not to be restored except through the de- 
struction of the city. If Troy were not doomed it would have 
allowed Helen to return. Zeus will punish them, says he. The 
mortal sees in Zeus only the punisher and not the originator of 
the violation. The poetic eye takes in the complete Zeus, and 
beholds the free act of the Trojans working into the purpose of 
the Highest. 

This vaticination of Agamemnon is in many things remarkable, 
particularly so in style. A prophetic rapture and earnestness lie 
in it, an elevation of the look into what is everlasting, like some 
Old Testament writ. The Greek bard seems suddenly changed 
into the Hebrew prophet, and the Hellenic song is transfigured 
into a strain of Israel. That Olympian humor of Zeus is gone, 
swallowed up in a sublime seriousness ; that serene life is clouded 
with wrestling, with agony. It is the mortal in contrast with the 
immortal ; particularly it is that mortal Agamemnon whom this 
speech fits. He has fallen out with the Hero Achilles, and is on 
his road to repentance, which we shall witness in the Ninth Book, 
a very sober business and inclined to make men see the justice of 
the Gods. Of this penitential journey the present speech may be 



A Study of the Iliad. 309 

takeu as an important landmark, lying about half way toward 
the destination. 

II. It has ah'eady been seen how the Trojans at Pandar's shot 
move into battle array without any warning to the Greeks, with- 
out even the command of their own chieftains; they make his 
breach of the treaty theirs. The result is the renewal of the war, 
which forms the Second Part of this Book. Fighting now mainly 
fills the Homeric canvas, the painful struggles of mortals below 
on earth. This part it is not necessary to follow in much detail, 
being easily comprehensible in itself, and having had its signifi- 
cance already unfolded on Olympus. For this Lower World, with 
all its tumult and conflict, is but the finite material on which the 
will of the Gods is impressed ; that will in its pure form Homer 
brings before us in his Upper World. This Second Part falls into 
two divisions : the personal tour of Agamemnon, and the general 
battle which follows. 

a. The King hastens on foot around the army, rousing the peo- 
ple in general and the chieftains in particular; the thought which 
propels him is what he has just seen and uttered in his prophecy ; 
now atjain he declares that " Zeus will never aid the false." He 
seeks to carry out the will of the supreme God, and to make the 
Greeks the instrument thereof. It is a true mission, and the 
Leader shows its inspiration ; he does his work with a demoniac 
power. He is dexterous with praise and rebuke, softening rebuke 
when it has stung too deep. The Greek chieftains are again 
brought before us in order, as we beheld them in the view from 
the wall of the previous Book, but in a different manner. Subtle 
touches of character we get from them all ; particularly we mark 
the proud-spirited Diomed, disdaining to reply to the unjust 
reproof from the King, and restraining his companion from angry 
words in answer thereto ; he will rather suffer wrong than quarrel 
with the shepherd of the people, as Achilles has done. One takes 
delight in thinking these noble words as the prelude and the 
prerequisite of the noble deeds of Diomed to be recorded in the 
very next Book. No sulking from him. " Come, now, let us, too, 
think of the furious charge." 

1). There^pith the general battle opens ; the personal round of 
Agamemnon has come to an end. Certain differences between 
the two armies the Poet has marked : the noise which the Trojans 



310 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

make in contrast to the silence of the Greeks, which implies, appar- 
ently, a better discipline; the confusion of many tongues ainonj^ 
the Trojans in contrast to the unity of speech among the Greeks, 
a curious philological fact, which hints the mixed Asiatic non- Hel- 
lenic tendency of Troy in contrast with the pure Hellenic tend- 
ency of the Greeks; tlien, too, the ever- recurring differentiation 
of the Gods into the two hostile sides is the final mark of the 
great conflict. 

Personal encounter is the marrow of the Homeric battle ; every 
kind of situation is introduced, every difference of weapon, of 
wound. Finally, tlie whole line begins to retreat ; this time it is 
Hector and the Trojans. The Gods now come in for a moment ; 
Apollo calls to the Trojans down from their holy citadel ; to fight 
for that is, indeed, a prodigious inspiration, and every man can 
look up there and hear, if not see, the God who is also telling him, 
as the chief encouragement, that Achilles has retired in wrath 
from the side of the foe. But Pallas fights among the ranks of 
her people, just before their eyes, or rather souls, having no cita- 
del to call down from. So the Gods cannot keep out of the ter- 
restrial conflict. 

But we are now to see a new phase of the struggle — the combat 
of the mortal with the immortal, the Hero grappling with the God, 
and, what is stranger, putting him down. That Hero is Diomed, 
whom we have already heard with so much favor, and thought 
him, of ail Greeks present, best prepared to meet and vanquish the 
Gods of Troy. As this Fourth Book is in the nature of a descent 
from Olympus to Earth, the highest God having his judgment 
brought down to the mortal, so the I'^ifth Book is in the nature of 
an ascent from Earth to Olympus, the mortal having his deed 
brought for judgment up to the highest God. 



RosminVs Innate Idea, etc. 311 



KOSMmrS INNATE IDEA, A PRIORI IDEAS, AND 
SUBJECT-OBJECT IDEAS. 

BY CONDE B. FALLEN. 

To investigate a subject involving so many intricate difficulties 
as the one about to be discussed offers, may seem to many a futile 
undertaking, and wherein little harvest can be expected from 
much labor. All that may be said in the present paper as regards 
the origin of ideas, I am aware, will be forestalled by the usual 
objection that, as no solution has as yet been arrived at by the 
most acute intellects who have given it consideration, it is not 
likely, indeed of the highest improbability, that a satisfactory an- 
swer can ever be given. Admitting the full force of the objec- 
tion, it may, however, be replied that, although no satisfactory 
solution can, perhaps, be expected, yet there is hope that it may 
be approximated ; and, at least, that all speculations which stamp 
themselves with error in their contradiction of plain facts may be 
refuted and shown to be an intellectual seduction from even a true 
approximate reply. If this can be done, we are getting just so 
much nearer the truth as we recede from the path of error. 

It may belaid down as axiomatic that any theory — built up for 
the explication of attested facts, which in its conclusion contradicts 
any single fact, whose solution it purports to give — that such the- 
ory is essentially false, and, so far from elucidating the subject, 
only involves it in greater difficulties. In, therefore, explaining 
the origin of ideas in the Human Intellect, if the explanation 
given obviously stands in contravention to any single known fact, 
we must rigorously conclude that the given solution is not true. 
It should be carefully noted, however, that the contradiction be 
real and not merely apparent ; for it often happens that what 
seems a contradiction is only so in appearance. It will, therefore, 
require a careful analysis of the fact in question before we can 
with safety conclude against the explanation given. 

All the various theories proposed by philosophers as solutions 
of this problem resolve themselves under three general heads, with 
certain specific distinctions — viz., firstly, that theory which declares 



312 The Journal of Speculative PhUosophy. 

that all primitive ideas come solely from the thinking subject; 
secondly, that which holds that they come wholly from the object 
without, and a third theory, advocating their orgin, as rising both 
from the object without and the activity of the thinking subject 
within. The Hrst divides itself into two specifically distinct sys- 
tems, the one holding that at least the most primitive of all ideas, 
that of Being, is innate to the subject, getting nothing either from 
the object without or from the activity of the subject within ; 
the other postulates that certain primitive ideas are produced by 
the sole activity of the thinking principle, independent of the ob- 
ject without. In considering these two divisions, we shall, by way 
of implication, though not explicitly, touch on the validity of the 
second general division enumerated, which makes all ideas the 
product of the object alone. The third general division, which 
holds an intermediate position, we shall consider independently. 

Taking these systems in the order given, let us first consider the 
theory of the innate idea of Being. If it be shown that this most 
primitive and first of all ideas in the human intellect cannot be 
innate, it will follow a priori that no other idea can. The theory 
of the innate idea is warmly espoused and vigorously championed 
by Rosmini. In a little pamphlet, translated and edited by the 
Rev. Father Lockhart, and published last year, we have a clear 
and succinct statement of Rosmini's position, as well as a preface, 
from the pen of the editor, giving a short exposition of its contents. 
On page 43, in what may be called the ninth article of Rosmini's 
pamphlet, we find his solution of the " Origin of the one indeter- 
minate idea," the idea of Being. In his first allegation Rosmini 
states that " the idea of Being in general precedes all other ideas. 
■In fact, all other ideas are only the idea of Being determined in 
one way or another, and to determine a thing supposes that we al- 
ready possess the thing to be determined." 

The first statement that the idea of Being precedes all other 
ideas cannot be denied, but the second statement, that all other 
ideas are but determinations of the indeterminate idea of Being, 
must be more carefully considered. In one sense this latter may 
be readily admitted, if by it is understood, that contained in all 
determinate ideas is the idea of Being as determined ; in this sense 
there is no objection. But if it is meant that in any determinate 
idea whatsoever is /bn^ia^Zy contained the indeterminate idea ot 



RosminVs Innate Idea. etc. 513 

Being, qua indeterminate, it is to be denied. For instance, the 
idea of substance is not the indeterminate idea of Being-, but the 
determinate idea of Being as substance ; otherwise we should have 
to exclude accidents from the periphery of Being. Likewise the 
Infinite is Beinof, and so is the Finite, but neither is Beino; indeter- 
minate, since one is Being essentiall}^ imperfect and the other 
essentially all perfect. Being in its formal signification absolutely 
prescinds from all determinations whatsoever, and equally disre- 
gards all modes. 

But the crucial point of the statement lies in the assertion 
that, in order to determine a thing, we must already possess 
the thing to be determined. This means that we must first 
have the indeterminate idea of Being before we can get any de- 
terminate idea of determined Being. It is true that the inde- 
terminate idea of Being precedes all other ideas ; but the ques- 
tion is, How do we get this indeterminate idea ? The fact that it 
precedes all other determinate ideas does not establish as a fact 
that it is innate to the soul, but only shows that it has precedence 
in the order of cognition. That it \b first idea will not be denied ; 
the question is, How do y^e first get this idea ? Rosmini, in his sec- 
ond statement, aflSrms that " this idea cannot come from sensation 
or from our feelings," and this may be readily granted ; but it 
may be added that not only can this indeterminate idea not come 
from sensation, but that no idea, qua idea, can come from sensa- 
tion, even the most determinate. But his reason for this state- 
ment is not valid, for he goes on to say that " the sensations and 
the feelings do not furnish the spirit anything except determina- 
tions of the idea of Being by which it is limited and restricted." 
This position cannot hold, for the reason that the sensations do 
not furnish to the spirit the limitations for the ideal determina- 
tions of Being, since the idea of determined Being is not the par- 
ticular contingent and concrete restriction of the Idea, but the 
ideal determination of an ideal indeterminate. Sensation fur- 
nishes the intellect nothing ideal at all ; but, if the determination 
of Being is a determination in the Idea, that determination can- 
not be furnished by tiie concrete restriction which exists in the 
sensation. 

This determination must, therefore, come from the intellect, 
for the reason that it is an ideal limitation. And this leads 



314 The Joicrnal of Speculative Philosophij. 

us to the consideration of the third Rosminian canon, that the 
indeterminate idea of Being " cannot come from the operations 
of the liuman spirit, such as iiniversalization and abstraction ; 
because these operations do nothing more than either add de- 
terminations to this same idea Being ^ or take them away when 
they have been added, and this on occasion of feelings expe- 
rienced." It may at once be asked, Wliere is the proof for this 
canon ? It is not sufficient to affirm tliat the operations of the 
human intellect, such as universalization or abstraction, cannot 
evolve the indeterminate idea of Being, but it must be shown why 
the human intellect is incapable of any such process. If we ex- 
amine carefully into the reason alleged to uphold this incapability, 
we shall find an admission which virtually denies the assumption. 
Rosmini admits that the human spirit can tahe away certain de- 
terminations from its determinate ideas; in other words, that it 
has the power of abstracting certain determinations from its ideas, 
so that one determinate idea can, by the lifting of certain ideal 
restrictions, be evolved into a less determinate idea ; for instance, 
in the idea Man, by taking away the determining note Rational, 
we arrive at the less determinate note Animal ; thence by abstract- 
ing the note Sensive we arrive at the still more indeterminate idea 
of Living Thing, and, in continuing the process by lifting the note 
Living, we reach a still greater indetermination, that of Body; 
thence we can prescind from the note Corporeal and hold as a 
remainder Substance. What, then, is to prevent us from abstract- 
ing once more and arriving at the transcendental notion Being ? 
When Rosmini admits the power of abstraction to be possessed at 
all by the human intellect, where is he to draw the line ? At what 
point of the process will he set the limit ? 

If the intellect can go at all from the more determinate to the 
less determinate, what is to prevent it from reaching the least 
determinate or the indeterminate ? In the face of this it may be 
held that it is not necessary for the idea of indeterminate Being to 
be innate, for, if the power of abstraction be at all conceded to the 
human intellect, and this Rosmini admits, it can arrive at this 
indeterminate idea by the active exercise of its abstractive power. 
Moreover, although the idea of Being in general is indeterminate 
as regards all determinate modes of Being, yet in its formal con- 
cept it is determinate in so far as its formal indetermination 



Rosmini's Innate Idea^ etc. 315 

marks it off from restrictive determinations, and constitutes it as 
most universal of all concepts. In its formality it is neither Sub- 
stance nor Accident, neither Finite nor Infinite. Considered, 
therefore, in its own formal nature, it is determinate for the reason 
that it cannot be confounded with anv determinate beinsj what- 
ever. What, therefore, is to determine it if, as Rosmini liolds, all 
ideal determinations are furnished b}' sensation % He surely could 
not hold that sensation furnishes the determination of the inde- 
terminate ! To admit this would make even the general idea of 
Being partake of the nature of the concrete, for Being must be 
formally determined in some way — that is, it must be marked off 
from all other concepts as that which suffers no determination at 
all. But if Being in general is innate to the human intellect and 
suffers determination through sensive restriction, it descends to 
particularity, and its universal nature is destroyed. 

The necessity, therefore, of any innate idea is not established 
in the assertion that the abstractive power of the human intellect 
is incapable of reaching the indeterminate by lifting the limita- 
tions of the determinate. For if it be at all admitted that the 
human intellect can abstract from any determination, it follows 
that it can abstract from all determinations. But, since the chief 
argument upon which Rosmini bases his theory lies in this so- 
called necessity, the foundation of his system falls with the doing- 
away with this presumed necessity. It may be admitted that 
there is a necessity to the human intellect of possessing first the 
idea of Being indeterminate before it can cognize any determinate 
beings, but may be altogether denied that there is, for this reason, 
any necessity that this first idea must be innate, or given to the 
soul at its creation. Rosmini's averment that this first idea is 
innate is only an arbitrary assumption, and lacks all confirmation 
in fact. 

Outside of all that has been said, the postulating of such a the- 
ory involves us in complications which seriously affect well-estab- 
lished conclusions from other departments of Philosophy. In the 
first place, what does this idea of Being represent ? In other 
words, what is the formal object which this concept covers ? If it 
be an idea at all, it must have an object. What is this object ? If 
this idea be con-created with the human spirit, the object of this 
idea must have been cognized bj the human spirit from the first 



SL6 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

moment of its existence, or it lies latent therein until sensation, as 
Kosmini attirms, fnrnislies the occasion for its production. In 
whichever wa}' we consider the matter, there must be an object 
corresponding to the idea as soon as it becomes active in the 
human intellect. That object, it will be answered, is simply Being. 
But it is a verified metaphysical fact that Being, q^ia indeterniined, 
has no objective existence. All Being objectively existing is de- 
termined Being, Infinite or Finite, Substance or Accident. Be- 
fore, therefore, the human intellect can possess this indeterminate 
idea, there must be some object present to it objectively ; but, as 
all objects in the order of nature are determined beings, unless 
first a determined being be present objectively to the intellect, it 
can conceive no idea at all, much less the most indeterminate of 
all ideas. 

It cannot get its first idea from any indeterminate object, for 
no such object exists. The object which, therefore, presents 
itself first to the intellect must be the object whence it gets 
its first idea; but that object must be objectively a determined 
being. Now, as every idea must have its object, the first of all 
ideas must also have its object ; and, since the first object present 
to the intellect is that object which gives the human intellect its 
first idea, and this first idea is that of indeterminate Being, it fol- 
lows that the human intellect must get this first idea of indeter- 
minate Being from the first determined being objectively present 
to it. But the only way in which the human intellect can get its 
idea of indeterminate Being from determined being is by appre- 
hending it apart from all its determinations — that is, by abstracting 
from determined Being all its determinations and considering it 
as Being simply under the transcendental concept Some Thing. 

It may be stated, on the validity of the foregoing argumenta- 
tion, that the indeterminate idea of Being must necessarily follow 
by way of abstraction from the presence of the determined object, 
and cannot, therefore, be innate to the human soul, for the reason 
that it must be the resultant of the combined operation of the in- 
tellect and the determined being which is its object. To give to 
the intellect the idea of indeterminate being without an object be- 
ing present to the intellect, to which that idea in some way corre- 
sponds, is, depotentia ordinata, impossible. There can be no object 
in the objective order of things which is not determined being, 



Rosmini^s Innate Idea. etc. 31T 

and there can be no idea in the intellect which has not an object 
fundamentally corresponding to it in that order, whether that ob- 
ject be an actual entity or only a possible entity ; and this object 
must have its own definite essence or quiddity, which determines 
it to its own liature and marks it off from all other objects, pos- 
sible or actual. It must, therefore, follow that the intellect finds 
the foundation for its itideterminate concept of being in the de- 
termined objective order, and hence can only arrive at its tran- 
scendental concept by abstracting from the determined object pres- 
ent to it all determinations. If this be not held, we must assume 
the radically false position that there is nothing in the objective 
order, even fundamentally, which corresponds to our indeterminate 
concept of being; and, therefore, when we predicate being of any- 
thing, we are not attributing to it any reality, but only an intellect- 
ual fio;ment. Than tliis there is no broader road to Idealism, and 
thence, as a logical sequence, to Pantheism. 

Furthermore, this determined object whence the intellect ab- 
stracts its indeterminate idea is either infinite or finite, either God 
or creature. If it be infinite, either this infinite object is imme- 
diately apprehended by the intellect or mediatel}^ ; if immediately, 
then the first object of human cognition is the Divine Essence 
directly ; if mediate, then the first object is not the infinite at all,, 
but the medium through which the infinite is apprehended sec- 
ondarily or as a sequence from the first. But on this last suppo- 
sition we are forced to the conclusion that it is the finite, after all, 
which the intellect first apprehends. On the supposition that the 
intellect first and directly apprehends the Divine Essence we are 
thrown upon the theory which Gioberti champions — viz., that our 
first idea is God. Indeed, Gioberti advanced this last objection 
against Rosmini, who admitted that there must be a distinction 
between indeterminate Being and God ; but we think with little 
success, for, on his premises, that the idea of being is innate, it 
seems to us he must be forced to Gioberti's position. 

Gioberti argued that " this idea must be God, because everything 
is either God or a creature, but the idea of Being is not a creature ; 
seeing it has divine characters, therefore it must be God." The 
Divine characters to which Gioberti referred are its Eternity, Im 
mutability, and Necessity. To this Rosmini replied that " Every 
real being must be God or creature, but not so every ideal being. 



318 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Tlic Idea of being abstracted from God's reality is neither God nor 
creature; it is sonietliing sui generis., ^\\ appxi^rtenance of God^ 
This reply seems to us but a distinction in words, and involves 
some very fatal fiilsities. In the first place, Rosmini explicitly 
declares that an idea is not a real Being. But this is false on 
the face of the assertion, for an idea is as real in its own order as 
its object is in tlie ontological order. Its reality is not, of course, 
the same reality as its object, for the one is a real ideal and the 
other a real objective determined essence. AVhat is more, this 
real idea is a real modification of the thinking subject, and as 
such has a real existence in the physical order. Not onl^', there- 
fore, is it a creature, but an accidental modification of a creature, 
a Being of Being. To hold, therefore, that it is neither God nor 
creature is to contradict the logic of facts. Furthermore, to affirm 
that it is something sui generis., and yet is an appurtenance of 
God, is also a manifest contradiction ; for, if it be something of its 
own kind, it must be by that raucli distinct from God, and what 
is not God is infinitely distinguished from him ; if it be an appur- 
tenance Qii God, it cannot be any other than God Himself, for in 
the Divine Being there is no real distinction. He can have no 
appurtenances, for everything which belongs to him is essentially 
Himself. 

Here we find Rosmini running adverse to certain indisputable 
philosophical dicta. Ideas are realities, which he denies ; they are 
not God, which he implicitly aflirms, although he attempts to 
evade the difficulty ; God can have no appurtenances, for all that 
belongs to Him must be of His own Essence, and this Rosmini 
seems to dispute when he affirms that there are appurtenances of 
God which are not God. In brief, therefore, the idea of Being 
cannot be innate, because there is no necessity which demands 
that we hold to the opinion that it is innate, although there is a 
necessity that we should hold to the undeniable fact that it is the 
first idea of the human intellect. The fact, however, that it has 
precedence to all other ideas in the order of cognition does not 
establish the fact that this first idea has been given to the human 
intellect. In the second place, the human intellect could never 
get its first idea of indeterminate being save by abstraction from 
some determined being which presents itself objectively to the 
intellect, for all objective being is determined being, and so it is 



Bosmini^s Innate Idea^ etc. 319 

only determined being which can become the object of intellectual 
cognition, and alone can serve as the objective foundation of the 
concept of indeterminate Being. The intellect, therefore, can 
only get its indeterminate idea by abstracting from that deter- 
mined object. In the third place, this determined object must 
either be infinite or finite ; it cannot be infinite, for then our first 
idea, which is indeterminate, would be God, and this leads us to 
many serious complications and contradictions to established truths 
in Metaphysics. 

Let us now examine into the position held b}^ the advocates of 
a priori ideas.' In this theory it is affirmed that the human intel- 
lect produces its first idea or ideas by its own activity without the 
aid of any extraneous object. It is asserted that the intellect de- 
termines itself to the act of cognition, and hence is self-determined ; 
that the intellect has the power of making its own idea in this act 
of self determination. This determination is not the act of deter- 
mining its own entit}^ or creating itself in the order of being, but is 
the self-determination, its own operation in the act of knowing. 
It must be admitted, therefore, that the intellect is in its first act 
of entity, or in the act of existence, before ic arrives at its second 
act of operation, or that act by wdiicli it knows. If, however, it 
be held that the act of knowing creates the intellect entitatively, 
or makes it to be something in the order of being by virtue of 
that cosrnoscitive act, we fall into the followinsi: contradiction: ante- 
cedent to this act of knowing the intellect does not exist, for it is 
ouiy made to be by the cognoscitive act ; but on the hypothesis this 
cognoscitive act itself is not being, or does not exist ; hence we 
have a iVb^i-Entity determining another iVb^-Entity, the as yet 
non-existent intellect, and, by virtue of its determining act, creat- 



' That there may be no misapprehension in this matter, it will be well to state our 
ontological standpoint. In the present paper the word a priori is used with reference to 
the order of cognition in the finite intellect. It is here held that no idea in our intellect 
is a priori to the cognition of its object. When, therefore, we deny any a priori idea 
to the finite intellect, it is not to be understood that we mean the same of the Divine In- 
tellect. All created objects, which are intelligible because they possess the nature of 
Being, are posterior to their prototypal idea in the Divine Mind ; and hence the divine 
idea is a priori to all objects in the created world. Moreover, all objects are intelligi- 
ble — i. e., can be known to the finite intellect, because they are true being through their 
conformity to the prototypal idea after which they were fashioned. It must, therefore, 
be remembered that our argument applies to finite and not to Divine cognition. 



320 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

ijig Being ; in other words, we sliall have a non-existent, non-deter- 
mined something acting upon a non-existent something, and thereby 
determining it ; but as this supposed first has no determination 
of its own, how can it give determination to this second, the sup- 
posed subject of its act ? Nemo dat quod non halyet — the first has 
no determination of its own. How, therefore, can it give any deter- 
mination to the second, seeing that it has nothing to give ? Ope- 
ratio sequituresse — operation follows being ; that is, the second act, 
M'hich is operation, follows the first act, which is that of existence. 
The first act of existence, therefore, cannot be determined by the 
second act, but, on the contrary, must necessarily antecede it. For 
before any being can perform any operative action it must already 
be. It follows, therefore, that the existence of the Intellect as en- 
tity must precede its operation, the act of thinking. Hence the 
act of thinking cannot make the intellect to be entitatively. 

Since, then, the intellect as entity antecedes its act of thought, 
the question remains. Can the intellect determine its own act of 
thought ; in other words, create its own idea ? It will be admitted 
• that, prior to its act of thought, the intellect holds itself o\\\y poten- 
tially to that act ; that is to say, it does not yet actually think, but 
can think — i. e., it is possible for it to think. As yet it is not deter- 
mined to think, but has the power of such determination ? Whence 
comes the determination which will give it the actuality of think- 
ing % From itself will be the answer of the a priori advocate. 
Let us see if such can be the case. If the intellect can deter- 
mine itself into the actuality of thinking, it must already possess 
that actual determination, which it will give to itself; in other 
words, it must already be in the act of thinking, for it cannot give 
anything to itself unless it already have that something to give. 
But the very hypothesis involves a contradiction, that the intellect 
is only potential to the act of thought, and yet already is in the 
state of actuality which the act of thinking connotes ! What is 
potential can never be actual, and what is actual can never be 
potential under the same aspect. The potential and the actual 
mutually exclude each other, for what can be, now is not, and 
what now is, has ceased to be any longer possible, for the reason 
that it is now actual. It may be answered to this that the fact of 
the intellect's possessing entity at all is sufficient for its cognition 
of itself, and hence for its knowing the nature of entity or being.. 



RosminVs Innate Idea, etc. 321 

By this means it will arrive at its idea of being, and may, there- 
fore, be said to determine itself to its second act. 

It seems that this process is compatible upon the basis that it 
has the power of reflection, and may thereby turn in upon itself, 
and hence know itself as Being. In reply to this difficulty, if 
we examine into it carefully, it will be found that it is noth- 
ing more than a restatement of the assumption that an entity 
holding itself potentially to its operation can determine itself 
to that second act without already possessing this second actu- 
ality : for the act of reflection is a second act, to which the in- 
tellect in its first act of entity holds itself potentially, and, in 
so far as it is potential to the intellect, requires a determination 
from something already in act ; but reflection is as yet poten- 
tial, and for that reason not actually possessed by the intellect. 
In order to determine itself to the act of reflection, the intel- 
lect should already hold the actuality of reflection before it can 
give to itself this actual operation. This involves us in the same 
contradiction that the intellect reflects before it performs the 
act of reflection. It may be furthermore urged that the intel- 
lect only reflects upon its own essence, through its own acts. It 
must, therefore, be already in its second act before it can reflect 
upon its essence through this act. Once given its second act, it 
can readily return upon that act, for the reason that this second 
act then becomes an object of which it may think by a third act, 
whereby it cognizes its own thought, and so gets an idea of its 
idea. It follows from this that the intellect cannot determine 
itself to its second act by holding its own entity up to itself as 
object of cognition. "Whence, then, does the Intellect get its first 
idea, that of Being ? "We have seen that this idea cannot be in- 
nate to the soul — that is, given to it. On the other hand, it cannot 
come from the sole activity of the intellect itself, for the reason 
that the intellect primarily possesses only the first activity of ex- 
istence and not the second activity of thought. 

So far we have taken into consideration the solution propounded 
by those systems advocating a priori ideas, either innate or other- 
wise ; under the test of analysis they fail to give the desired answer. 
"We will now turn our attention to that third system, which affirms 
that the first idea is the combined product of both the extraneous 
object and the intrinsic activity of the thinking subject. We have 
XYIII— 21 



322 The Journal of Speculative PKilosophy. 

already seen that there can be Jio idea without an object ; we have 
also aro-ued that every object in the universe of bein^ exists as a 
determined something — this or that something. In the first place, 
then, it may be asserted that the first object of intellectual cogni- 
tion must l)e a determined object — that is, as an entity objective to 
the intellect, it must have a determined form. But we also know 
that the first idea in the intellect is not of the object as determined, 
but as undetermined — that is, of the object apart from its determi- 
nations, whatsoever they may be. Granting, then, that the first 
idea is that of undetermined being, and also that there is no unde- 
termined object existing in the ontological order, it follows that 
the intellect can only get this first indeterminate idea from a de- 
termined object by cognizing that object not as a determined ob- 
ject, this or that, but by conceiving this or that object, prescinding 
from its determinations, as merely something i in other words, 
by an immediate abstraction of all determinations, or, to speak 
more precisely, by first cognizing the object as simple being before 
conceiving it as any determined being. It may be safely laid 
down at the start that the first idea in the human intellect, inde- 
terminate being, is in some way the combined resultant of both 
the object and the thinking subject. This is exactly what the 
system under immediate consideration postulates. So far we are 
forced to an admission of this much as a logical sequence from our 
argumentation against the two foregoing systems. 

The question now remains, How do the object and the intel- 
lect combine to the production of the idea ? In the first place, it 
must be carefully noted that when we speak of the idea as the 
resultant of the combination of object and intellect, it is not meant 
that there is a coalescing into one after the manner of a synthesis 
of object and intellect, so that the idea may be considered entita- 
tively to be made up of object and subject as the composite ele- 
ments of a physical whole. On the contrary, we mean that the 
idea is a resultant of both intellect and object, as causes which go 
toward the production of the idea, inasmuch as it is an effect of 
their joint action. Again we must distinguish what aspect of cau- 
sality each holds to the efiect — that is, what sort of cause the object 
is in relation to the idea, and what sort the intellect. This we 
will take into consideration in its proper place during the course 
of our investigation. 



Rosminv's Innate Idea, etc. 323 

Since the human soul does not exist as a pure spirituality, but 
is conjoined to a material body as that which gives the determin- 
ing form to the human nature, making a composite unity in con- 
junction with the material part, we may start out with the evi- 
dent premise that the first idea of the human intellect is drawn 
in some way from the concrete object outside, through the medium 
of the senses. The intellect may be called an interior faculty 
which does not come into immediate contact with the material 
objective world, from which it is hedged in by the integument of 
sense. It must therefore come to or reach the intelligibility of 
the object mediately or through a medium. This medium must 
be, firstly, the external senses, for it is the external senses which 
first and immediately apprehend the sensible object as such. 
Again, as the intellect does not apprehend or cognize the mate- 
rial concrete singularity of the object, but comprehends it as uni- 
versal essence, it follows that the intellect, in its cognition of the 
object under its universal nature, must, in some way, rid it of its 
material and sensible qualities ; in other words, there must be an 
active abstraction on the part of the intellect, whereby it strips 
the object of its sensible properties. So much, then, for the facts 
which are patent to any accurate observer. To state the matter 
explicitly, we have this : the object outside, the intellect within ; 
the object material, concrete, and singular ; the concept within, 
immaterial and universal. Furthermore, the intellect can only 
draw its universal concept from the singular object, and through 
the medium of the senses. 

The question now remaining for solution is, How the intel- 
lect acquires its universal abstract idea from the particular con- 
crete object? Human cognition, it has been said, begins with 
the senses; let us therefore regulate our method of investiga- 
tion by following the natural order of cognition ; we shall 
therefore start out with sensive knowing as the first step in the 
process. An object presents itself fo the senses ; the eye sees 
that it has firstly many varieties of color; secondly, that it has 
certain dimensions; the ear apprehends certain sounds which it 
emits ; the touch, exercised in whatsoever organ it resides, feels 
the qualities of hardness or softness, etc. Such are the general 
sense cognitions, and consequent upon these may follow others, 
such as odor, moving, rest, and modifications of various kinds. 



324 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Let us now suppose that all the sensible qualities first apparent 
to the senses have been separately apprehended by each sense — the 
eye, color; the ear, sound ; the touch, hardness, etc. — and the vari- 
ous senses each its special object of cognition. In order to an intact 
and complete sensive cognition of the object, there must be a sen- 
sive synthesis of all the various parts as apprehended by the 
senses. This synthesis cannot be brought about by any one spe- 
cial sense, for the eye, as an instance, cannot apprehend the sound 
from the hardness, softness, etc., and likewise each sense can only 
apprehend its own special object of cognition. Therefore, that 
there may be a complete sensive cognition of the whole object in 
synthesis, there must be some sensive faculty which sensively ap- 
prehends all the properties of the object in its totality. Further- 
more, there must be some sensive faculty by means of which each 
special cognition by particular senses are distinguished one from 
another. Otherwise, how is the feeling or sensive subject to dis- 
tinguish between each particular sensation or apprehension ? 

How will the subject know the difference between the color of 
the object and its property of hardness, unless there be some sen- 
sive means of comparison ? The eye, for instance, cannot distin- 
guish between the color and the hardness of the object, for the 
reason that it only apprehends color and not hardness, and so no 
more knows hardness from sound or any other property which 
does not fall under its own special act of cognition. As a conse- 
quence, not knowing any other property than that which falls 
under its special cognition, it can institute no comparison between 
its ov7n object and another. There must therefore be a sense 
organ which can make the comparison and distinction between 
the special objects of each sense, and so synthesize all into one 
complete sense perception. This sense faculty is called the Com- 
mon Sense, because it has in common as its object all sensible 
properties. It is an organ on which are registered all sense per- 
ceptions coming from the external senses, and on which is ex- 
pressed the complete image of all sensible properties in the object 
according to the extent in which they have been apprehended by 
the external senses. "Wheresoever this organ may be located in 
the sensive subject is a matter of indifference to the present dis- 
cussion, but it is commonly supposed that it is situate in the brain. 
In philosophical terminology it is also called the Imagination. 



Rosraini^s Innate Idea, etc. 325 

On the Imagination it may therefore be said that the complete 
picture of the object is expressed analogously to the way in which 
the picture of the individual is received and expressed on the plate 
in the camera of the photographer. This picture, or phantasma, 
as it is called in philosophical speech, is, however, only sensible, 
being but an image of the sensible properties and qualities of the 
object. 

So far we have had but sensive cognition, the apprehension 
of material properties, as such. There is as yet no apprehension 
of the Universal, but simply of this particular concrete object. 
Let us suppose that the object which we have instanced is a 
man. All that the sensive subject knows is this particular con- 
crete individual, offering itself for cognition under material de- 
terminations. There is no knowledge, as yet, of man in his 
essence, or under the abstraction Rational Animality, which is 
equally applicable to each and every individual of the species. It 
is the intellect, we have said, which apprehends the universal 
nature or essence. 

How, now, does the intellect acquire its concept from this 
concrete phantasma expressed by the faculty of Imagination ? 
It is evidently from this phantasma that the intellect draws its 
concept, but how ? Here we stand in face of the difficulty. 
Just as the phantasma stands, it cannot be taken up into the 
intellect, for it is concrete and particular, while we know that 
the concept is abstract and universal. It may therefore be safely 
stated that the intellect does not grasp and take up into itself 
the phantasma as such. The phantasma must undergo a puri- 
fying process before the intellect can abstract from it its idea; 
that is to say, the phantasma must be stripped of its concreteness 
and all its particularity before the intellect can apprehend the 
essence of the object which it (the phantasma) presents.' Now, 
this concreteness and particularity consist in those very material 
qualities and properties which are pictured in the imagination by 



' The Phantasma or picture in the Imagination is not to be regarded as a barrier stand- 
ing between the Intellect and its object, but as a medium by means of which the intel- 
lect reaches its object. On the retina of the eye is formed an image of the sensible 
object by means of which the organ sees its object. The eye does not see the image on 
the retina, but the object by means of its image. Analogous to this sensive process is 
the intellectual cognition by means of the image. 



336 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

means of the phantasuia, such as this color, this hardness, this sound, 
this size, etc. It must here be remembered that the phantasma is 
but the means through which the intellect apprehends the object, 
which is presented to it through the sensible representation of 
itself in the phantasma. 

The intellect, therefore, in order to reach the essence of the 
object, must thrust aside the sensible properties expressed in the 
phantasma; that is, it must strip the object of all its sensible 
properties and apprehend its bare essence free from all its con- 
creteness. By what means does this process take place? Plainly 
the imagination cannot strip the phantasma of its concreteness 
and particularity, for its only function is to apprehend and ex- 
press these sensible properties in a synthetical image ; in other 
words, its function is to make the phantasma, and not unmake 
it. It remains, therefore, that the intellect itself should per- 
form this operation, and this it does by its abstractive power, 
which is nothing more nor less than the power of stripping off 
the particular and concrete in any material object presented to 
it for cognition. But this is not all ; so far the intellect has only 
taken the concrete and the individual properties from the object 
as present in the phantasma, and thereby rendered it ready for 
cognition ; upon this there follows another act by which the image 
now made intelligible is received into the intellect and then ex- 
pressed or conceived into the idea or concept. 

Hence the intellect, in its intellecting operation, is to be re- 
garded according to a threefold act : the first, that of making 
the phantasma intelligible by purifying it from its concreteness 
through abstraction ; the second, of receiving the purified or intel- 
ligible image into itself, and the third, that of expressing or 
giving birth to its concept, which is the idea or image repre- 
senting the object under the form of universal essence or nature. 

To return to the example we have already given, we will sup- 
pose an individual man to be presented to the feeling and think- 
ing subject. First comes the sensive cognition, according to 
particular and concrete properties and qualities affecting the 
external senses, then the transference of these to the imagina- 
tion, forming an image in synthesis of the whole ; so far, it is 
all sensive cognition ; the next step is that of intellectual cogni- 
tion, wherein not this particular color, shape, size, etc., is the 



Hosmini's Innate Idea, etc. 327 

object of cognition, but the universal nature of man, viz., rational 
animal, which can be predicated univocally of each and every 
individual man that does now or ever can exist. The phantasma 
cannot be predicated of each and ever}- actual man or possible 
man, for the phantasma is only the concrete image of this par- 
ticular individual, with his individual qualities and accidents. As 
an instance, suppose the individual in question has red hair, blue 
eyes, short stature, and is stout ; if I were to predicate the phan- 
tasma of any other individual, I should be simply saying that he 
has the assemblage of all these qualities and accidents I saw in the 
first individual, viz., red hair, blue eyes, short stature, and stout- 
ness. I should not be in this case predicating any nature or es- 
sence, but only an assemblage of accidents which this second per- 
son may not have, for he may have black hair, black eyes, etc. 
But, when I predicate of this second the nature of rational ani- 
mal, I am declaring of him an essence which altogether pre- 
scinds from all qualities and accidents whatsoever, and may be 
equally said of both. 

We see, therefore, that there is an essential difference be- 
tween the concept in the intellect and the phantasma in the im- 
agination, the latter being but a concrete and particular image 
of a particular and concrete object, whereas the former is a uni- 
versal and abstract image of this same object, stripped of all its 
individualizing notes. 

Kow that we have stated the method of intellectual opera- 
tion in its act of cognition, let us examine with more precision 
into the nature of its act. It will be remembered that in ad- 
vancing our objections to the a priori system of ideas we held 
that the intellect by its own unassisted activity could not produce 
its second act or that of cognition. We then said that the in- 
tellect, before its act of thought, held itself potentially to this 
second act, and since no power could generate its act save by a 
determination to that through some actuality other than itself, and 
that since the intellect did not possess the actuality of thought 
before thinking, it followed that it could not give this actuality to 
itself for the reason that it had no such actuality to give. We 
argued upon this ground that, therefore, there must be an object 
present to the intellect which alone could determine the intellect 
to think. 



328 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

It is now incumbent upon us to define what we mean by the 
act of thinking. Firstly, it may be stated that the act of think- 
ing is that operation wliereby the intellect grasps and conceives 
its object ; in other words, it is that act of the intellect whereby 
it forms within itself an image of the object under the nature 
of abstraction and universality. Its concept is the term of its 
act — that is, the concept is that in which the act terminates or 
results. The intellect holds itself potentially to the exercise of its 
thinking activity, until there be some object present to it ujjoyi 
which it can exercise its activity. Until, therefore, there be some- 
thing present to it upon which it can act, it will not and cannot 
act. An object, therefore, must needs be present to it in order to 
determine the intellect to act upon it. An act cannot be exer- 
cised upon nothing, and inasmuch as an active power requires a 
something to determine it to the exercise of its activity, before 
there is present to it some object, which can serve in its operation 
as that factor necessary to call forth its potential activit}^ into 
active exercise, before this factor is present there can be no action. 

Now, the intellect, from its very constitution, has the power of 
thinking ; but, since to think means to conceive a universal and 
abstract image of an object, there can manifestly be no thought 
until the object is present to be thought of. In this sense, then, 
the object determines the intellect to think, namely, inasmuch as 
it moves the intellect to become active in the exercise of its second 
act, and, moreover, is an essential factor in the act of cognition, 
for the reason that the intellect could not think without something 
to think of, and that something must be an object. The object, 
therefore, is that actuality which determines the intellect to its 
second act in the way we have stated. The actuality of this second 
act is nothing more than the grasping of the object and conceiving 
its image ; and so all that is requisite for the production of this 
second activity is, on the one hand, the power in the intellect, and 
on the other the actual object to be grasped ; the act is the me- 
dium which has for one term the object, and for the other the 
concept. 

And here we have adequate and proportionate causes for the 
production of the act. The material efficient cause is the object, 
offering the material to the intellect for cognition ; the formal 
efficient cause is the intellectual power of conception. Let us 



RosminVs Innate Idea^ etc. 329 

look upon the intellect as a sun, with the power of illuminating 
any object which is presented to it. In order that it may actually 
exercise its illuminative power there must be some object for it to 
illuminate. Until, therefore, some object is present to it to suffer 
illumination, the intellectual sun cannot be said to illuminate, but 
simply has the power of illumination ; but as soon as an object 
comes within the radius of its light, then it can be said to be ac- 
tually illuminating. This illustration is, of course, inadequate to 
express the complete intellectual action, but it is good in so far as 
it goes. For not only does the intellect illuminate its object, but 
also takes it up into itself and conceives it by giving birth to it in 
a new order, by making the object participate, as it were, in its 
own nature, clothing it with immortality, and lifting it up into the 
immaterial world. 

As far as we have proceeded in our investigation, we have ascer- 
tained that the concept is the mutual production of the object, on 
the one hand, and the active power of the intellect, as determined 
to act through the object, on the other. In other words, ideas ori- 
ginate in the intellect, not through the unassisted power of the in- 
tellect alone, nor are they the sole product of the object, but are the 
resultant of both combined as causes to their production. It now 
remains for us to inquire how it is that the intellect abstracts from 
the object, firstly, the indeterminate idea of Being, which, it will 
be remembered, was said to be its primary idea. It might be said, 
immediately, that there is no question as regards the fact that such 
is the case. An argument conclusive enough might be built upon 
the ground that, since the intellect must get its ideas from the 
object without, and that since the first idea is that of indetermi- 
nate Being, this first idea must come from the object. But the 
question now is not that such is the case, but, rather. How does 
this fact come about ? the fact is undeniable, but we wish to ac- 
count for it rather than dispute it. 

It would seem that the first concept in the intellect should 
be that of some determined Being, and not that of indetermi- 
nate Being, for the reason that no object can be presented to it 
except a determined object ; and, therefore, it would follow that 
its first idea, being drawn from a determined object, should be 
the idea of the determined essence of this object. Upon this 
hypothesis it would also seem that the very last idea the Intel- 



330 Ths Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

lect arrived at is the indeterminate idea of Beitii:; through a pro- 
cess of abstraction. We should then have the idea of Being in 
genera], the hist and not the first concept of alh In sensive cog- 
nition it must be admitted that the first apprehension is that of 
the lirst particular concrete object which becomes present to the 
sense. The lirst, as well as all phantasmata, in the imagination is 
that of the particular concrete thing, whatsoever it may be. 

Let us suppose the first image formed in the imagination is that 
of this man, John. We have present to the intellect the sensible 
image of John, whence it is to draw its first idea of indeterminate 
Being. This idea will not be that of the essence of John as a ra- 
tional animal, but the indeterminate notion of Being or essence 
in general, prescinding from the determined essence rational ani- 
mal. But how does the intellect grasp the most indeterminate of 
all ideas, firstly and immediately, without going through the pro- 
cess of abstraction by lifting, one after the other, the various de- 
terminations to be found in the determinate essence rational ani- 
mal? To solve this difficulty will require a word by way of 
premiss to what has ab'eady been stated, and that word refers to 
what may be the nature of the object of intellectual cognition in 
general. 

The proper object of the intellect is essence in general ; that is to 
say, the intellect holds itself indifferently to the cognition of any 
essence that may be presented to it, and is only determined to the 
cognition of a particular essence when it cognizes this essence as 
such. The primary object of intellectual cognition is, therefore, 
essence, in so far as it prescinds from all determinations. Hence, 
when a determined essence presents itself to the intellect, it first 
apprehends such essence, not as this essence, but simply as an 
essence, without regarding the determinations which actually limit 
it in its existence. Its first act of apprehension, therefore, in seiz- 
ing upon the essence offered to it, is to grasp it under its highest 
generality, viz., simply as a something having essence ; in other 
words, to simply apprehend it as an essence prescinding from all 
consideration of its determinations which make it to be this 
essence. This is to do nothing more than to apprehend the object 
as Being, and in so doing the intellect conceives its first and most 
indeterminate concept, that of Being. 

To put the matter clearer, we will have recourse to an analogy 



Hosniinv's Innate Idea, etc. 331 

drawn from the physical order. An object comes within the vision 
of the eye, though at a great distance. What definite object it is, 
whether horse, man, or locomotive, is not seen. All that can be 
seen is that it is an object, a something. It might be only a vapor, 
yet it is a something, an object. The intellect first apprehends its 
object in a like way, viz., as a something, though not this something.. 
In this first apprehension we have its most indeterminate concept 
formed, that of Being, What is more, intellectual cognition could 
not take place unless the intellect first apprehended its object as 
something simpl)', for not to apprehend it as something would be to 
apprehend it as nothing — that is, not apprehend it at all. Further- 
more, this apprehension of the object simply as something or Being 
must precede its cognition as this something, for the reason that the 
intellect could not apprehend the object under its determination 
at all unless it also apprehended these determinations as some- 
thing, and, hence, must first apprehend them under the nature of 
indeterminate Being. 

It follows, therefore, that the intellect must have its idea of 
something in general before it can cognize something in its de- 
terminations. When, therefore, the phantasma is presented to 
the intellect, the first act of the intellect is to apprehend the 
object presented through the phantasma as an essence, and an 
essence, simply, under the transcendental notion of Being. It 
is in the way just explained that we see how the intellect gets 
the idea of Being as its first idea. But whether the idea of Being 
is first or last idea, is a matter of indifference as regards the theory 
of the origin of ideas, which we have advanced as the only one in 
keeping with the facts known in intellectual cognition. For, in 
either case, whether the idea of Being is first or last, the theory 
holds good that ideas are the conjoint production of the object 
and the intellect. 

The theory which holds that the idea in the intellect is but a 
sensile image impressed on the brain organ by the object reduces 
all concepts to mere phantasmata, and, as a consequence, denies 
all universality to them. But this is simply to destroy intellectual 
cognition, and is a patent contradiction to the evident fact that 
ideas do possess a universal nature. For this reason we have re- 
frained from seriously considering the empirical theory. It is such 
an overt contradiction to what we have the very clearest evidence 



332 Ths Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

is a necessary truth, that the statement of this theory is a refuta- 
tion of its position. Its absurdity lies on the face of it, declaring, 
without comment, its inutility and impossibility. 

In conclusion to our investigation of this intricate subject, it 
may be said that, even if the theory we have advocated does not 
satisfactorily conclude its truth to the reader's mind, at least it 
must be admitted that it is the nearest approximation to the truth 
that the human intellect has reached. It may also with safety be 
affirmed that the true and full explication of the question, if any 
is ever to be attained, will be arrived at by a further development 
of the system we have endeavored to elucidate, rather than by any 
theory opposed to it. 



NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS. 



ROSMmrS SKETCH OF MODERN PHILOSOPHIES} 

Through the efforts of the brotherhood at Saint Ethelreda's 
(Ely Place, Holborn), London, English readers are furnished with 
the means of access to the writings of the great Italian philoso- 
pher. Mr. Thomas Davidson (well known to the readers of this 
journal) has given efficient aid to this movement by numerous 
magazine articles, and by translations and original expositions.*^ 
Mr. Davidson has just now in press a translation of Rosmini's 
" Psychology." The first and second volumes of the English trans- 
lation of Rosmini's " New Essay on the Origin of Ideas " ^ have 



' " A Short Sketch of Modern Philosophies and of his own System." By Antonio 
Eosmini-Serbati. With a few words of Introduction by Father Lockhart. London: 
Burns & Gates, Orchard Street, W., 1882. 

2 " The Philosophical System of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati." Translated, with a sketch 
of the Author's Life, Bibliography, Introduction, and Notes, by Thomas Davidson. 
London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1882. 

^ " The Origin of Ideas." By Antonio Rosmini-Serbati. Translated from the fifth 
Italian edition of the " Nuovo Saggio suU' Origine delle Idee." Vols. I and II. Lon- 
don: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1 Paternoster Square, 1883. 



Ifotes and Discussions. 333 

appeared from the hands of the brotherhood named, and the third 
and concluding volume may be expected. 

We have reserved full notices of these works for a future num- 
ber of this journal. If the study of Rosmini shall serve to intro- 
duce thoughtful readers to the rich mine of ideas called " Scholas- 
tic Philosophy," a great event will be achieved. Rosmini himself 
must be regarded as a genuine son of the school, and a worthy 
continuer of the famous line. 

In this number we print a criticism on Rosmini's theory of In- 
nate Ideas as found briefly stated in the little volume whose title 
is given above. It is only fair to quote the following passages 
relative to the general subject from Father Lockhart's Introduc- 
tion, and refer our readers to Professor Davidson's account of the 
system, and to the translations of the " Origin of Ideas" and the 
" Psychology " for the complete discussion of the subtle and pro- 
found views of the author on these questions. 

Rosmini undertakes to account for Ideas. 

" Now, the preliminary difficulty in understanding the Rosminian phi- 
losophy is that it goes deeper than what are popularly assumed to be the 
first principles of human thought. It undertakes to account for ideas. 
But to many people it has never occurred that there is any difficulty 
in this matter requiring explanation. They have been used to assume 
with Locke and others, more or less of the same school, that the forma- 
tion of ideas is so simple that it does not require to be accounted for. It 
is assumed to be a simple fact like sensation. They say : ' We have sen- 
sations, and we have ideas ; the sensations come first, and they are trans- 
formed into ideas by the faculty of reflection.' " 

Ideas enable us to know Facts of Experience. 

"The fundamental principle of Rosmini's philosophy concerns, as I 
have said, the origin of ideas — how the ideas or thoughts of things arise 
in our mind. For it is certain that, whenever that modification of our 
sensitivity which we term a sensation takes place, we immediately and 
necessarily think, not of the sensation within us, but of a something out- 
side of us to which we attribute existence, call it a thing, and credit it 
with being the cause of our sensations ; so that we actually attribute to 
it the qualities of heat or cold, blackness, whiteness, or the like, which, 
when we reflect or think again, we know exist within our own sensitivity 
only. 



334: The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

*' This mental process is obviously a judgment, in which we predicate 
the existence of a cause of our sensation. To say nothing at present of 
the idea of cause, it is clear that we could not apply the predicate of ex- 
istence unless we knew what existence is — that is to say, unless we had the 
idea of existence already in our mind. We have thus two modes of 
knowledge to be carefully distinguished from each other — knowledge by 
judgment, whereby we affirm the reality of individual things ; knowledge 
by intuition, whereby we intellectually think pure ideas." 

The Idea precedes the Judgment and is the Source of Objective Knowledge. 

" We are said to know a thing when we apply to it the idea of existence 
or judge that it is an existing thing. 

" That which is no thing is unthinkable, for the object of thought — the 
idea of existence — is gone. And this shovi^s that the idea of existence is 
the necessary object of thought, as S. Thomas says, ' Ohjectum intellectus 
est ens vel veriim commune ' (S. Thorn., S. I., 55, I. c). It is the first idea, 
without which we can form no judgment and know nothing. It is plain, 
therefore, that the idea of existence must be self-known (per se nota), 
otherwise we should be incapable of knowing it or of knowing anything. 
And this is the same as to say that it must be the first idea and the one 
innate idea in the human mind. 

" But how does this idea of existence make its appearance in the 
mind ? Not as a product of the senses, for we are obliged to apply this 
idea on occasion of each sensation in order to form that idea of the thing 
which necessarily arises in our mind on occasion of each sensation. 

" It does not account for the oriorin of the idea of existence in our minds 
to say we have in us a faculty endowed with the virtue of acquiring the 
idea of existence on occasion of the sensations. The question is. What 
is the nature of this faculty ? For, in order that this faculty may be able 
to operate, must it not be itself in act ? Surely that which is not in act 
does not exist, and therefore can not operate. For a faculty is nothing 
but a ' first act ' [actus primus), whence ' second acts ' {actus secundi), 
or what we commonly call ' acts,^ may proceed. Now, the first act of the 
intellectual faculty — the act by which this faculty exists — must in the 
very nature of things be an intellectual act, else the faculty would not be 
intellectual ; and if the act is intellectual it must consist in the vision or 
intuition of an object, because this is what is meant by an intellectual act. 
The very etymology of intellectus (derived from intus legere, to read with- 
in) shows this clearly. The act of reading necessarily implies the act of 
seeing ; and there can ,be no seeing without something which sees and 
something which is seen ; in other words, without the intelligent subject 



N^otes and Discussions. 335 

and the object which this subject looks at and thus understands. The thing 
seen — the object present ab initio to the intelligent subject — the consti- 
tutive form of the human understanding {vis intellectiva), is existence, 
being, and this is the light of reason." 

Ideas are Divine in their Source. 

" Now, the idea of a thing is the same as the logical possibility of the 
thing. That which is possible was always possible, and is therefore eter- 
nal, and that which is eternal is divine ; therefore Rosmini teaches that 
ideas are in a certain sense divine, i. e., because they have divine charac- 
teristics. 

" The idea, therefore, is so totally distinct from the sensations, so im- 
mensely elevated above them, that it is absurd to suppose it to be the 
product of sensations, because no effect can rise higher than its source ; 
although it is, at the same time, an obvious fact that ideas are made known 
to us on occasion of the sensations. In a word, the sensations furnish the 
material element; the innate idea of existence [furnishes] the formal ele- 
ment of all the ideas we form by aid of the senses. 

"If, then, the idea of existence is not a product of sensation, yet if on 
occasion of the sensations we always find it in our mind, it is clear that 
we find there what was there before, which was aever formed, but which 
was given from without by means of another faculty, that of intelligence, 
which, as Rosmini teaches, is endowed with the intuition of the idea 
of existence by God, in Whose Mind the idea of existence, and of all 
existences, was from all eternity. This is expressed by S. Thomas when 
he says : ' Deus cognoscendo se cognoscit naturam universalis entis^ (C. G., 
I, 50)." 

Ideas are Divine Archetypes. 

" These ideas of possible being in the mind of God are the types 
according to which He created all things, by an act of His free will, 
selecting out of all possible things such as He saw it was for the best to 
create. Thus an architect forms in his own mind the design which he 
intends to draw or to build, selecting also, for good reasons, not always 
the thing most perfect in itself, but that which is best, all the circumstances 
being considered." 

The Human and the Divine Ideas of Existence the same. 

" S. Thomas says : ' Esse in quantum est esse non potest esse diversum ' 
(C. G., 1, 52). The idea, therefore, of existence or of possible being in 
the mind of God is the same essence of being as the idea of existence in 



336 The Journal of Speculative PJnlosophy. 

the mind of man. It must, therefore, be a communication to man of 
something that considered in itself is Divine, since the ideas in God are 
His Divine substance. In God they are God." 

The Idea of Existence the Light of the Mind. 

" The idea of existence is the light of the mind, according to the 
analogy with the material light, so that the light of reason is the name 
given universally to the informing, constitutive principle of the intellectual 
faculty. For as it is by the material light that our eye is enlightened so 
as to receive the impressions of form and color which aid us to distin- 
guish one thing from another (and without this light the whole universe 
would remain for us perfectly dark), so the idea of existence is the light 
of our mind, by which we actually distinguish objects and know existences, 
on occasion of our eye being enlightened by the material light, or on 
receiving other sensitive impressions. 

" This light of reason is, according to Rosmini, what Philosophy, fol- 
lowing the lines traced out by Aristotle, defines as the lumen intellectiis 
agetitis, and of which S. Thomas says that it is participatio Luminis in 
nobis impressa, sen participatio Lucis aeternae. 

" S. John tells us : Deus erat Verbum . . . erat Lux vera quae illu- 
minat omnem hominem venientem in hunc inundum — ' The Word of God is 
the light that enlighteneth every man coming into the world.' " 

Idea the Objectivity of Truth. 

"It is this 'idea of existence' or 'light of being' given to man which 
constitutes the objectivity of truth, as seen by the human mind. For 
truth is that which is, as falsehood is that which is not. It is this which 
makes man intelligent, and gives him a moral law by which he sees the 
beingness or essence of things, and recognizes the duty of his own being, 
to act toward each being, whether finite or infinite, creature or God, 
according to the beingness or essence of being which he beholds in the 
light of the truth of being." 



THE JOURNAL 



OF 



SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY 



YoL. XYIII.] October, 1884. [No. 4. 

THE PEOBLEM OF ANTHROPOLOGY.' 

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF LUDWIG NOIRE BY M. B. BONNER. 

The German word for Art^ '"''Kunst " is derived from " konnen " 
(to be able to do something). It signifies everything that an ani- 
mate being can work or accomplish with consciousness and at awi/ 
time — consequently not by chance, not by a happy coincidence of 
outward circumstances, nor under constraint of a foreign superior 
judgment, nor a foreign overpowering will. The breaking in of 
animals and the training of laborers and slaves to (to them) un- 
intelligible tasks — even if the former appear ever so artistic, and 
the latter produce beautiful works of art — are for this reason ex- 
cluded from the idea oiArt. 

Accordingly, the idea of Art involves in its inmost essence — and 
this even in its very lowest manifestations in the animal world — 
the idea oi Liherty (Freiheii — freedom); indeed, the latter is in 
reality built on the former, for a being has only as much liberty 
as it can gain and maintain for itself ; and with Goethe we may 
call it the final conclusion of wisdom, that only he, who daily con- 
quers them, deserves life and liberty. 



' " Das Problem der Anthropologie : Die menschliche Kunst und ihre Bedingungen." 
Von Prof. Dr. Ludwig Noir6. 

XYHI— 22 



338 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

For this reason Kant's ' sayino; concerninor human art is so true 
and to the point: "that only the productions of liberty — i. <?., of 
a Volition that founds its actions on reason — ought properly to be 
called Art." If we generalize this clear and luminous definition, 
so that it may also include the Art of the animal world, there re- 
main as the two most important attributes Volition and Conscious- 
ness of action. By virtue of this definition large fields of animal 
activity must be excluded from the idea of Art. Foremost the 
organic functions, as breathing, digestion, change of matter, the 
circulation of the blood, etc. Firstly, the attribute of Volition is 
wanting in them. Though all these vital functions certainly oi'igi- 
nate in some activity of the will, this latter is confined in such 
narrow bounds that the expression to be used in speaking of them 
is: "The animal must do all this" ; not, it is able to ("caw,") do 
it — it is function, not art. Secondly, the degree of consciousness 
of action is so obscure that these activities appear to us as inner 
processes, not illumined by any coincidence with the external 
world, but, as it were, unconscious, going on with mechanical ex- 
actness and continuity; accordingly we can in these cases only 
speak of unity of will and effect, but not of consciousness. What 
there is wanting is the imaginative faculty, the soul of all true con- 
sciousness, of which the external senses are the principal media. 

Nevertheless, we are obliged to exclude the activity of these 
senses from the precincts of art. We must not say that seeing, 
tasting, smelling — astonishing activities as they are, and bound to 
certain organs or implements — belong to animal art. What are 
wanting are liberty and volition, and especially an eflfect on the 
outer world. 

The cause of this lies in the fundamental relation in which each 
individual — i. e., " limited " being — stands to the rest of the world. 
This fundamental relation is that ot subject and object. As the 
result of this relation, we have the fundamental distinction he- 
iween feeling and volition^ both only subjective qualities, but both 
only possible through relation to something external, an object. 
There can neither be a feeling which is not caused by some change 
in external relations, nor a volition that has not a goal, an external 
object on which it tries to "realize" itself. 



'"Kritik der Urtheilskraft," p. 171, edition Rosenkranz. 



The Problem of Anthropology. 339 

Thoush volition is the real fundamental instinct and the true 
essence of all things, still in itself it is only a dim impulse, a blind 
instinct, which only grows enlightened in the measure that sensa- 
tion conveys to it more and more knowledge of the external world, 
and thereby effects a constantly increasing relation between the 
two. The will remains unaltered, but the motives on which it re- 
acts increase. There is then, even in the lowest species of ani- 
mals — among which one can hardly speak of higher perceptions 
than those conveyed by the sense of touch and instincts for sus- 
tenance — nevertheless, a consciousness of a constant change in an 
objective outer world which is intimately connected with the ani- 
mal's interests in life. This change of sensations forms the real 
substance of its life ; as it were, the matter of the total conscious- 
ness of the animal, for its entire attention and all exertions of its 
will are directed toward it.' 

As, according to this, all knowledge of the external Avorld can 
only enter consciousness as an effect on the external senses; as, 
furthermore, every effect on the external world, especially among 
the higher animals, is controlled by the senses, and in every case 
is felt as counter-action or reflex — it is easy to understand why 
feeling is clearly separated from the real acts of volition, and, in 
spite of its eminent importance for the accomplishment of all con- 
sciousness, is yet regarded as purely passive. 

Only on attaining the very highest step, viz., human science 
and art — where the external world is observed for the knowledge 
it brings ; where one sees only for the sake of seeing ; where one 
hears only for the sake of hearing ; where even smelling and tast- 
ing are performed for the sake of smelling and tasting — only there 
it becomes plain and obvious that a specific art dwells in the 
senses, tliat we have to learn to see and hear as well as to speak 
and write, and that, in consequence of higher talents and cultiva- 
tion, the sight and hearing of one is quite different, much more 
perfect than that of another. But all this will be treated of more 
fully on some other opportunity. 

Here only this much : In all conscious and feeling beings we 
must unconditionally separate Activity^ or action of the will on 
the outer world, and Receptivity^ or the capacity of receiving or 

' Partout I'intelligence se montre unie ^ I'instinct ; pas d'instinct possible sans une in- 
telligence pour le diriger et dominer. — Blanchard. 



340 The Journal of Sjoeculative Philosophy. 

suffering impressions from tlie same source ; we must consider them 
as final opposites. Still we must never forget that ever3'where in 
nature there is inseparable unity, and that it is only our objective 
thinking which makes these distinctions and divisions, to gain 
thereby as comprehensive, clear, and intelligent a view as possible. 
Let us therefore constantly keep in mind the unity and incessant 
reciprocal action of these two separated poles. All expressions of 
will and dexterity, all performances of strength and adroitness, that 
we admire in animals, are only possible under the presupposition 
of their external senses — that is, their sensations and their constant 
co-operation. And the converse of this is true — the senses must 
grow finer, more sensitive, and therefore more perfect, the more 
they are practiced, the more they assist and control the outward 
manifestations of the animal's organs ; they, too, have a school and 
are learning an art. But both the mechanical perfection of the 
organization and the perceptions of the senses must act with unity, 
which, considered from one point of view, is Yolition, from the 
otXier Consciousness. Both harmonize in another point: that a 
living being can never have a broader sphere of consciousness than 
that which is in accord with the purposes of its existence, and is 
of service to them. For instance : Consciousness of danger, a 
wider survey, a higher perception, without the power to make 
them available by a corresponding activity, and of use to its life, 
would make the existence of an animal insupportable and a torture. 

Those external faculties which show themselves through the 
assistance of its senses, and through the power of which the animal 
(as a vital mechanism, perfectly adapted to the conditions of the 
element in which it moves) is able to carry out all the functions 
which are of use to its subsistence, as well as to the propagation 
and preservation of its kind, we may justly call, in the most gen- 
eral sense of the word, its Art. 

What elements are there inherent in this idea, are inseparable 
from it, and therefore constitute its real essence? They are the 
following : 

1. The idea of ^'' Konnen'''' (power) or " Yermogen^^ (to be able 
to do) includes the idea that the being can at all times, according 
to its free inclination, therefore w4th consciousness, control this ac- 
tivity ; as Horace says : " Ut quamvis tacet Hermogenes, cantor 
tamen atque optimus est modulator." This idea rests in its last 



The Problem of Anthropology. 341 

grounds on the contrast between " actu " and '■^ potential'' {Ewdfjuei 
Kol ivepyeia), a conception the immeasurable significance and ex- 
tent of which Aristotle's philosophical penetration first perceived, 
and it has been reserved for the present day, which has learned to 
consider the universe as an unalterable sum of living and elastic 
forces, to make its entire immensity apparent. 

2. Inseparable from the idea of Art is that of Interest, which 
is, as it were, the unity-idea {Einheits-ldee) of all life, and nearly 
identical with volition, only that it contains rather the objective 
side of the latter, the sum total of everything toward which its 
efforts and strivings are directed. From this follows, that for the 
same reason and as little as there can exist a perception or sensa- 
tion that does not serve the ends of existence of the being, and 
therefore is in perfect accord with its whole activity (as we re- 
marked above), just as little is an activity or a mechanical liberty 
(freedom) in a living being conceivable which does not concur with 
the unity of the life interests, and is attached to it by most indis- 
soluble ties. This is jnst the organic unity, the unerring certainty, 
with which nature fits out all living beings for the maintenance 
of their existence with all powers and organs that most perfectlj^ 
correspond with their ideas and conditions of life. Every organ- 
ism is, according to its degree, perfectly teleological (or in perfect 
conformity to an inward design or purpose). "Natura sibi ubique 
consentanea est." 

3. This latter idea, conformity to an end or aim, can only 
appear after presupposing the two just-named ideas — viz.: a cen- 
tral-will, permeating and governing all parts of life and its func- 
tions, and its external interest. But nothing but the latter, and 
that only, gives to the idea of art meaning and perspicuity. 
And it is a fact that this idea was first formed and developed in 
the human mind by that branch of man's activity where con- 
formity to the end in view appeared clearly and objectively. The 
creation of whatever answered to human needs and necessities — 
the work of artisans — was the first phenomenon and consideration 
from which the idea of art could spring and become generally 
current. 

The infinite adaptability, laughing all human art to scorn, which 
we meet in the construction of the animal organism, and which is 
the cause of all those activities and dexterities which are in the 



34:2 The Journal of Speculative Philosophij. 

highest degree adapted to the preservation of its existence, has 
led, in consequence of the analogy from which proceeded a similar 
contemplation and comparison of these artistic organizations with 
human works, to a twofold, equally near, but equally precipitate, 
conclusion. 

1. Either these organisms have been completely identified with 
Imman works of art, and therefore one has equally assumed an 
active creative intellect acting from without, through whose in- 
fluence the whole wonderful structure has been accomplished (for 
to regard it as the eifect of a chance meeting of unorganized mat- 
ter is a resort which cannot satisfy any thinking being), and has 
not tired to this day of adducing this infinite adaptability to ends 
as the surest proof of the existence of a Creator, and of varying 
this so-called physico-theological proof in all possible keys. 

2. Or one has, in incomprehensible blindness, identified all 
activities of the animal that proceed from design, especially those 
by which it creates external works, like the ant its hill, the bird 
its nest, etc., with human activity to such a degree that one has 
ascribed them to the reason, the thought of the animal ! This 
absurdity — hatched by the most recent materialistic school, the gal- 
lant defenders of which did not even seem to see that in lifting the 
animals to such a height they were becoming apostates from their 
own doctrine, and were giving it its death-blow — is not worthy of 
serious refutation.' 

What is it, then, that distinguishes human art in its deepest I'ea- 
son so much from animal art, as just characterized, and makes it 
at the same time belong so intimately to the special nature of 
man that it has been truly said, " L'art est la nature meme de 
I'homme" ? and as Longinus said : ''Human art is not perfect till 
it seems to be Nature." ° 



' Any one wishing to investigate these things may compare the following excellent 
works : Reimarus's " Allgemeine Betrachtungen iiber die Triebe der Thiere, hauptsach- 
lich iiber ihre Kunsttriebe " ; Le Roy, " Lettres philosophiqiies sur rintelUgence et la 
perfectibilite des animaux " ; Flourens, " Resume analytique des observations de Fred. 
Cuvier sur I'instinct et I'intelligence des animaux " ; as also Schopenhauer in the second 
book of his " Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," vol. i, § 28 ; vol. ii, chaps. 26, 27. 

* Xlep\ v^ovs, § 22. 'V6re t) ts'xj''? rihuos, 'iivii^ &v (piffis elvai Sok^. Similarly Herder, 
" Kalligone," p. 172 : " Man, according to his kind, is an Art-Creature. The Being and 
the Well-being of his race are built on the use of active reason, working through the 
organs of sense ; only through Art has he become what he is. Art is to him, as Man, 
natural." 



The Problem of Anthropology. 343 

Let lis say it in one word : Human art is activity, directed, 
elevated, perfected, multiplied, and made effective by Reason. 
Everything will depend, therefore, on apprehending clearly and 
correctly the definition of Reason. 

In the foregoing it has already been pointed out that there can 
be no animal instinct that is not led by a certain degree of intelli- 
gence, comprehending the latter to mean conscious notice of casual 
external circumstances. A passage of Flourens, often quoted, 
will illustrate this best. " Everybody," says he, " knows the gar- 
den-spider, whose web is a perfect model of radii springing from a 
centre. I have often seen this spider, after it had just left its 
egg, spin its web ; then instinct alone was acting ; but when I tear 
its web, it repairs the damage, and will do it as often as I tear its 
work. Consequently there is in the spider, besides the purely me- 
chanical instinct which creates the net, also a kind of intelligence 
which informs it of the places damaged, and in what part its in- 
stinct has to be active." 

This faint light — which is burning in every animal, even in those 
of lowest forms, and which lights the path for its actions and will 
in the narrow bounds in which, according to its nature, it is con- 
fined, and, as it were, closed in — is developed in man to the radiant 
light of reason, which endows him with a plenitude of power, 
self-consciousness, and internal and external liberty, which sharply 
and without exception separates his entire activity — as one thor- 
oughly conscious of its object — and frees it from everything which 
could be placed by its side from the animal world. 

What, then, is the essence of this reason ? How does it operate? 
How has it become a possibility ? How came it first to a reali- 
zation % And what connection does it hold with human art % 
Did it proceed from the latter, or, vice versa, did reason spring 
from art ? 

It is a notable fact that in our day nearly everybody acknowl- 
edges that art had a beginning — first, rude beginnings, hardly 
worthy of the name of Art — but is reluctant to admit the same of 
human Reason, being unable to divest himself of the idea that 
reason was inborn in primitive man, as if it were a power be- 
queathed to him in full perfection. How is this contradiction to 
be explained ? Manifestly by the disinclination most people have 
for submitting to any but the most palpable arguments, and such 



344 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy . 

arguments can be brought forward for ^r^ in tlie crudest and most 
primitive tools and art-effects, whereas the intimate connection 
of these with Reason — which is in itself a necessary preliminary 
condition for the origination of these art-objects, and as the oldest 
and petrified manifestation of which such antediluvian treasures 
ought to be regarded — is overlooked, or not heeded, as being 
insignificant and unessential. Only serious and conscientious 
thinkers are penetrated by the conviction that both are indissolubly 
connected, that such primitive art-objects point at the same time 
to a very primitive state of reason, that no progress of art is con- 
ceivable which does not at the same time involve a progress of 
reason, that is to say, has it as well as a consequence, as a presup- 
position. The latter seems paradoxical, but is easily explained by 
the infinitely small degrees in which all progress, and especially 
that of primeval times, advances, and the uninterrupted chain of 
reciprocal action between intuition and activity or skill. 

But if there is to be any question of priority, it must be admit- 
ted that art always precedes reason by a step, and that, as is the 
case to this day, the productions of the former always increase the 
power of expression, and with it the insight and force of the latter. 
For instance, that an organism is nothing but a machine, and can 
only operate mechanically, could not penetrate the general under- 
standing before the age of steam-engines ; just in the same way, 
in primitive times, the idea of cutting, boring, etc., could not be 
thought of before tlie existence of the primitive stone-knife, borer, 
etc. The words of Aristotle, " One can only understand what one 
can make," are simple truth. 

This assertion receives another clear and unanswerable argu- 
ment through the fact, as shown us in the animal world, that there 
is an art without reason, whereas reason witbout art — that is, 
vrithout a heightened, multiplied activity of practical functions in 
the service of life — can nowhere and never be found. 

The enormous transformation which human existence under- 
went, and which became possible and necessary through the 
gradual development of reason — and the result of it, a conscious 
stepping out of the sphere of the animal world — can best be 
summed up in the following simple formula: Animal is a living 
mechanism, and its intelligence only serves to make this mechan- 
ism move in its own proper way, in conformity with external cir- 



The Problem of Anthropology. 345 

cumstances. Man, on the other hand, creates, by virtue of his rea- 
son, the mechanism, which he makes subservient to his purposes. 

Whereas in Animal the intellect reaches only far enough to be 
able to accommodate itself within certain bounds to external cir- 
cumstances, human reason subjects to itself the external world 
and dictates laws to nature. A universal art confined by nothing, 
and therefore capable of any and every development, takes the 
place of individual art, as the living embodiments of which the 
separate kinds of animals might be regarded. Then there awakens 
in man a desire for knowledge, which is in its moat primitive form 
curiosity — a sort of intellectual craving for mental food, as hunger 
is a physical one. 

I have treated this subject in detail in my work, " Das Werk- 
zeug und seine Bedeutung fiir die Entwickelungsgeschichte der 
Menschheit," which discusses the outward active life of humanity 
extricating itself from the bonds of the animal world, consequently 
treats of the beginnings of human art, and must therefore be 
considered as a necessary complement, as the objective counterpart, 
to my " Origin of Language " (" Ursprung der Sprache "), the 
significance of which is really the origin of reason. Both works 
combined contain the solution of the question of the origin of 
man. 

But here we wish to show the necessity of the connection be- 
tween reason and art, to show the common root from which both 
have sprung, and make their true essence — that is, the truly hu- 
man in them palpable. 

The most important principle through which this can and must 
be done is Tradition or Continuous-Life (Folgeleben) [or partici- 
pation in the life of the social whole]. 

The causal efficiency of the animal terminates with its individ- 
ual existence. All experiences which it might gain in the narrow 
sphere which encloses its existence are lost again, as it has neither 
a possibility nor an interest to impart them to a being of its own 
kind. All its capacities are, therefore, only transmitted to its 
descendants directly through Generation. How ? is even to the 
present day a great secret. But the fact is firmly established. 
The bird sino-s its natural sono; and builds its artistic nest without 
having learnt how to do it ; the young beaver constructs its lodge, 
the young badger burrows its nest without the least instruction, 



346 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

without ever having seen anything like it. That in the course 
of long periods of time modifications take place in this natural 
activity no sensible person will deny ; that some bird must have 
built a nest for the first time, some beaver a lodge and dam, is an 
inference of logic; but it is certain and without doubt that all 
these abilities are only transmitted by birth and inheritance. 

How entirely different in Man ! Here we find a conscious trans- 
mission of intellect and skill in art, an interest in imparting and 
instructing tradition and imitation, a connection between succeed- 
ing generations which in no way can be traced back to what is 
innate to nature; the proof of which can be found in observing 
that all human activities proper, belonging here, would never 
develop without the pale of this association [social combination], so 
they can only become the property of the individual by lemoning. 

In the first place, it is easy to understand, if it were not known 
to every one of us by experience, that such a collection and trans- 
mission of the knowledge and skill of succeeding generations 
could not but lead to astonishing results in the course of time ; 
so that human culture and development of power would pour 
down through the thousands of years like a strong, constantly in- 
creasing river, forming at last a mighty ocean, which at this pres- 
ent day has become able itself to feed and preserve all its springs 
and tributaries, just as the enormous expanse of water which sur- 
rounds the continent feeds and keeps in never-ending circulation 
all the rivers flowing through and fructifying the country. 

We, therefore, readily understand that it is solely this " con- 
tinuous life" which can explain the grand miracle of the immeas- 
urable power and glory of man, and we feel an ardent desire 
awaken in us to know how this continuous life originated, how 
it became possible, and how a reality. Let us therefore, with our 
whole mind and fervent zeal, strive to find an answer to this ques- 
tion — a question of loftier interest to human reason than any 
other, for it treats of its own origin. 

The only safe way in all highest and most important questions 
is to conduct the inquiry according to the supreme principles of 
reason (as Kant calls them). We shall therefore proceed accord- 
ing to the three Analogies of Experience (Permanence, Conse- 
quence, and Reciprocal Action). 

We shall therefore ask : 



The Problem of Anthropology. 34T 

1. What was the most important cause of the setting in of the 
"continuous life" [solidarity of life, participation of each in the 
life of the whole], or (which means the same) of its becoming per- 
manent ? 

2. What was its most important effect f 

3. What was the most important medium which, joining cause 
to effect, produced a continuous reciprocal action, and, in unison 
with it, a chain of reciprocal actions, each effect becoming in its 
turn a cause, so that, through the extent and number of its effects 
and their interlacings, a constantly increasing progress, tending to 
infinitude, became possible? 

To the first question I respond : It was, is, and will remain, 
the interparticipation of wills, or sympathy. This reason, which 
unites a large number of individual wills into a single one, is 
ethical. It is the indispensable condition and presupposition of 
all community of life. Take Sympathy away, and all life in com- 
munion — consequently, also, its most important product, reason — 
becomes impossible. That life in communion continues can only 
be explained through this ethical factor as ultimate root. In de- 
ducing, as many do (even Kant among others)^ ethics and social life 
from reason, they confound the cause with the means — Volition, 
which is primordial, with the consciousness of Volition, which is 
secondary. Reason is cold and calm ; it has regard only for end 
and means ; it does not act in us, it only helps us to act ; it does 
not glow for the whole ; it does not subordinate egotistical will to 
higher aims; it does not sacrifice; it does not renounce, nor hope, 
nor suffer, for it knows nothing of love ; it is nothing but the 
faithful mirror that reflects everything, the external world as well 
as our inner emotions ; but all those emotions, whether noble or 
ignoble, good or bad, spring from quite another source — from the 
heart, the will. This will, which in the single individual we call 
character, is what endures, never changes — the tree that bears fruit 
according to its kind. And so the common or ethical will (sym- 
pathy) is the true and only reason for the permanence of social 
life, i. e., continuous life. 

The second question I answer by saying : The most important 
effect of this community of the will of individual beings is com- 
munion of action, which, as I have shown in another place,' falls 



^ " Die Lehre Kant's und der Ursprung der Vernunft," p. 379. 



34:8 , The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

still vvitliiu the bounds of the animal world — for which examples 
can easily be cited, as when wolves or dogs hunt their prey in 
packs, buffaloes or monkeys defend themselves in herds. The 
province of humanity begins with the community of productive 
activity, and in it lies the true source of this higher continuous 
life which is directed and supported by reason. In it lie also the 
beginnings — that is, the first manifestations — of those ideas of 
right, property, and value which are inseparable from the idea 
of man, which, if permitted, I shall treat of fully in a separate 
work ; here our concern lies with human art and skill. Let us then 
show how, through this social life, the natural and unconscious 
could, and had to, pass under the rule of art and consciousness. 

It is certain that the creations of primitive man were little dif- 
ferent from what we find analogous among higher animals ; in- 
deed, I believe that the constructions of the beaver far excel them 
in ingenuity. But there was one thing which promised them a 
great future — they were social affairs. The mound of earth, or 
the nest made of the branches of trees, was not for the single indi- 
vidual, to use it for himself and his young — as is the case every- 
where, and without exception, in the animal world (for the con- 
structions made in common by birds or beavers and others are 
only aggregates) ; they were, on the contrary, created through the 
joint will and combined activity of many. It would be well here 
to observe and weigh the first sign of reciprocal action ; how union, 
in giving permanence^ obtains perinanence ! For the work jointly 
finished, the dwelling becomes a tie; it unites all the members of 
the flock, and does it by the equal interest which each one has in 
the whole. So it is not love alone that is acting, but also egotistical 
interest; the two most potent powers unite, and in their unity be- 
come invincible. And so it has remained to this day ; human be- 
ings who bear each other deadly hatred are kept together by in- 
terest ; the largest part of the marriages that occur show only an 
extinct and chilly heap of ashes on the altar of home, but the 
walls of the house surround the unwilling parties, and the unity 
of interest makes an escape impossible. Not less important nor 
powerful is another effect of this reciprocal relation — that between 
the whole and the single indivichials ; the former consists of noth- 
ing but the latter, but, nevertheless, exercises an unlimited power 
over the individual. For the strong and mighty carry the weak 



The Problem of Anthropology. 349^ 

and timid along with them, supplying them with self-confidence, 
which everybody feels who knows himself to be a member of a 
larger body, and the want of which often tortures the one excluded 
into self-destruction ; no plague, no leprosy, was feared as much as 
the excommunications of the Druids or of the Christian Church. 
The most important product of this reciprocal relation is Dlsci- 
jpline in the twofold sense of the word — to wit, training and in- 
struction. All instruction is a training of the will, and only by 
these means is man's skill in art trained or developed. The im- 
portant point here is that this is not done by a foreign will, but by 
that of their own totality, which in this wise alone maintains and 
develops itself. Therefore, what the present day calls art tradi- 
tion — and the reverse of which is considered to be objective dab- 
bling, or subjective vagaries — has been the oldest human tradi- 
tion ; indeed, the very germ which enclosed the whole of human 
continuous life, its ethical (preceding) side as well as its reason, or 
intellectual side. The instruction of the young generation was at 
first a natural, but soon became a conscious, task of the com- 
munity, for by instruction consciousness is first awakened. All 
skill in art, simple as it was in primitive times, had to be de- 
veloped, learned, and to become a conscious exercise in this way. 
It would have remained unconscious if the individuals had always 
separated themselves from the community and made use of their 
inborn skill — i. e., animal art — for the maintenance of their own 
lives as separate individuals. The twofold reciprocal action here 
explained between the Creator and the Creation., and between the 
Community and the Individual, leads up to the answer of the 
third question : What was the most important medium in the care 
and preservation of this life of community and continuity ? 

Without hesitation I answer : " Language, for she is the mother 
of reason, even reason herself." 

In the foregoing I stated that animal organism was distinguished 
from pure mechanism by consciousness ^ that all animal art and 
mechanical skill must be subservient to the central will of the 
animal by a certain degree of consciousness. This consciousness 
increases by aid of the external senses, and the intellect of the ani- 
mal reaches as far as it is internally conscious of its own power 
of action, and exercises it appropriately under the control of its 
external senses. 



■350 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

The di8tin2;insliing feature of human art — an art that con- 
stantly renews itself in the continuous life of generations, and 
thereby aspires and grows higher and higher — lies evidently in 
tlie consciousness of Community^ which has its two bases or double 
roots in community of Volition and community oi Actio7i. With- 
out this consciousness of community — the preliminary step to 
human reason, which, since then, has carefully guarded this char- 
acteristic — a solicitude for tradition, and therefore the training and 
instruction of the growing generations in art, could not be im- 
agined. 

Nobody will now be surprised if I here say that this conscious- 
ness of community was forced from within to seek a means of Ex- 
pression, and that it found it, finally, in language. 

Those that have read my former writings will know w^hat I am 
aiming at, and will rejoice with me at the perfect agreement ot 
the result, obtained on this, another road, with my theory of the 
origin of language in other works. 

Consciousness of community and the desire to communicate 
are so closely and nearly related ideas that it is hard to conceive 
how one can exist without the other. The desire to communicate 
is an urgent impulse ; from it sound is born, as we can daily observe 
in deaf-mutes, infants, even in dogs, for their barking is an 
attempt to speak, and only acquired by living with man. But 
sound is no language ; it has no meaning; it is only the expression 
of the inner subjective emotion, which cannot be an object of 
rational thinking, but only of sympathetic feeling of congenial 
beings. To become a vehicle of communication, it must take to 
itself a means of comprehension, an object — which, intimately 
united with it, becomes capable of reminding every one of the 
same idea. 

What else could this object be than the only thing understood 
in those primeval times, ot mere dawning reason, the only thing 
all understood — for what can we understand but that which we can 
make? — the product of the common activity, the common Work? 

I need not here stop to repeat the numerous proofs brought 
forward on the same subject and reached by different roads, laid 
down in my writings. It is hard to preach to deaf ears, and, I am 
grateful to say, the disagreeable task of forcibly removing the 
morbid matter which clogs these ears is not for me. 



The Problem of Anthropology. 351 

So it was art that bore human thought in her lap, and from 
which it came forth a weak, helpless, lisping child ; and then a tre- 
mor went through the world, for the moment had come when 
mind tore itself free from obtuse matter, and commenced on angel's 
wings its flight toward pure ethereal heights. 

All language is poetry. All power of expression was given to 
her by Art, all that enriches her to this day, and always comes to 
her in no other way. But only those that are called to it can 
truly enrich her. '" Chemistry," says Jacob Grimm, "jabbers 
Greek and Latin ; in Liebig's mouth, it becomes a powerful lan- 
guage." 

Art gives to thought externality, and, in doing this, it creates it 
first. Thought gives to art inwardness. Its body, language, is 
the all-powerful medium of keeping, upholding, communicating, 
and propagating — in other words, is the real continuous life of 
all human knowledge, power, and volition. Banish these delicate 
aerial forms, and all that is human will become rigid, and die like 
the life of the individual when his breath forsakes him. 

The river of tradition flows solely through the river-bed of lan- 
guage. The word is the imperishable seal of the human mind, the 
clearest mirror of the thought and spirit of each succeeding period 
of time. Whatever was hnown was named, and, if anything had 
no name, it is the surest sign that it was not known. 

We have shown how word as a connecting link stepped in, a 
real medium between volition and power, between creator and 
creation ; how it took hold of both in their reciprocal action and 
laid them down as thought in the consciousness of man, and with 
it reciprocal action began its never-ending play. 

For the word binds together minds, and, in going forth from the 
mouth of one man and entering the ear of another, it awakens in 
him the same thought, which is yet as another, and, therefore, 
returns enriched in meaning to him who sent it ; in this way, in 
increasing I'eciprocal speech and reciprocal action, growing ever 
clearer, more perfect, more conscious, it travels through generations 
of man, uniting the living with the dead, and already now prepar- 
ing future perspicuity for unborn generations. 

But mightier still, and inexhaustible in plenitude and multiform- 
ity, is the reciprocal action which is consummated between things. 
Drawn into the realm of human action are the eternal stars, which 



352 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

from' their unattainable heights proclaim their harmonies to the 
calculation of the sages, and through them trace the safest path for 
the mariner on the lonely depths of the oceans. Foreknown is 
the shadow which after thousands of years shall veil the light of 
the sun, and which formerly filled the souls of men with dreadful 
fears. All the zones of the earth exchange their products, all 
that is accomplished in the world becomes mutual property of 
knowledge, and nothing important happens that does not speed 
on wino-s of thought from one end of the world to the other. The 
will of man, who joins countries and continents by boring through 
the everlasting mountains, and bridges over the immeasurable 
oceans by the fine line of thought laid low in the depths of its wa- 
ters, accomplishes all these miracles by nothing but the winged 
messenger, the faint breath of his mouth, which flies hither and 
thither in restless haste and joins the most distant things to each 
other, no less than the minds that are separated b}' immense spaces 
of thousands of years. Immortal companion of mortal man, how 
grand and amazing is thy power ! Through thee humanity is 
formed into one consciousness, into one single experienced mind, 
the blessings of which every single individual enjoys, and has 
onl}' to acquire, retain, and continue a small part of this conscious- 
ness. 

This is not the place to present in detail the incomparable 
importance and significance of language in the accomplishment of 
an intellectual continuous life. This task may be left to him who 
in future days will venture on the bold enterprise of writing a 
" History of Reason." I bid him welcome to-day. From this 
logograph they will — and with better reason than from the old ones 
— date the commencement of the real history of the world. In 
the meanwhile, flow on, ye tears of youth, tortured by names, dates^ 
battles, and treaties ; and bloom yet awhile in your obscurity, ye 
dust-born pedants of dryest philology, who by your senseless logom- 
achy and word-catching have succeeded in imbuing the majority 
of thinking people with thorough disgust for the most glorious 
thing that the world holds — language ! 

I must here call attention to a very important difference be- 
tween Instruction and Intellectual Tradition. This difference 
corresponds, on a higher plane, to the difference already stated 
between the inborn skill of the animal and its intellect. Intel- 



The Problem of Anthropology. 353 

lectnal tradition, carried on continually through the organ of lan- 
guage, improves the intellect of the young human individuals, and 
makes them participants of reason ; it is the all-embracing means 
of every instruction. But is such a purely intellectual tradition 
sufficient? Is it sufficient to have a thing in one's mind and be 
able to say it in words? Certainly not. As the young painter 
must to this day educate his arm and hand as well as his eye by 
constantly practicing and contemplating the models of present and 
former masters, as every art is only preserved and developed by 
such practical tradition — i. 6., instruction — just so, in primitive 
times, growing generations had to practice incessantly the very 
primitive skill in art of the first founders of human power and 
grandeur, and they had to do it under direction and by imitation 
of their elders, who already knew how to manufacture the rough 
stone implements, how to use them, to cut the tree, or weave the 
branches. Even the organ of intellectual tradition, language — 
regarding it as an art, i. <?., the movement of the organs of voice — 
could not then, and cannot to this day, be imparted to the child in 
any other way. Therefore language, regarded from this point of 
view, is also nothing but a skill acquired by imitation (repeating 
what is said), and therefore an object of instruction. But its con- 
tents, that which is thought in making the sounds, form the object 
of tradition. And this embraces all the rest, but as Knowledge, 
not as Power. " Doctus," among the Romans, referred to both, 
but the " Yiri Docti " speak of tactics, strategy, agriculture, 
etc., according to books ! 

We have now drawn a distinct boundary-line between animal 
and human art, which, by reason of its origin, must be thoroughly 
clear and intelligible to everybody. As we insisted that the most 
important character of the former was its being mhorn, not learned, 
and must absolutely serve only the interest of the purpose of 
existence of the individual being, and no other interests — just as 
definitely do we characterize human art by saying it is not in- 
born ; it has to be developed in each single individual, consequently 
learned, and from this follows just as certainly that it does not 
exclusively serve individual, but also other purposes. 

This truth sheds a distinct light on the former confused at- 
tempts to make an absolute distinction between animal instinct 
and human understanding or reason, without anybody being able 
XYIII— 23 



354 The Journal of Speciilative Philosophy. 

to state just what he wished to be understood by the former or 
the hitter. " Words, mere words," as in so many human dis- 
putes ! A nearer approach toward truth was made when Kant ' 
and Reimarus first framed the definition tliat the idea of instinct 
embraced everything which, without heing learned, was done 
unconsciously and suitable to the end in view. The reason fortius 
definition they were unable to give ; they simply stated the fact. 

We know now what this negative definition " without being 
learned" means. With the animal (excepting the exceedingly 
trifling sum of what in its life it may learn for itself) all learning 
is training (breaking in) in the service of man, not its own nature. 
The ox yoked to the plough, the horse docile to its rider, have 
experienced a "capitis deminutio," a degradation, since ''Jove 
took their day of Liberty and with it the half of their strength." 

In the human being, on the other hand, a miracle has been 
enacted ; what he learns is his own nature, as to subdue the primi- 
tive savage instinct of nature is the principal task of all education. 
The whole man and everything human must be formed, devel- 
oped, and educated. 

And how did this miracle become possible? Only by the 
educator and the educated, the teacher and the taught being one 
and the same being. This seeming: paradox has lost all incon- 
gruity; by our treatment it has become clear and compreliensible. 
The newly-formed organism, the social community, with the in- 
terest of the individual and of the whole inseparably united, cre- 
ates a never-dying, continuous life, the products of which — lan- 
guage, reason, rights and morals, sciences and arts — are carried 
and perfected from generation to generation, and insure to hu- 
manity an ever-increasing power and internal perfection. 

And with this we have also drawn the boundary-line between 
Nature and Culturem their general opposition. Culture is every- 
thing which humanity — since it has been humanity, i. e., a social 
organism — has acquired of" ability, knowledge, and skill in the 
community, and which it preserves to the community with never- 
tiring zeal ; indeed, with a stern solemnity which proves its prin- 
ciples of life are at stake. The organic powers spring from 
nature ; the intellectual are the special property of man. 



' Muthmasslicher, Anfang, etc., p. 367, Rosenkranz. I mention this because latterly 
Darwin has always been called the originator of this definition. 



The Argument from. Exjperience against Idealism. 355 

"Whether, according to this view, language, the essentially and 
exclusively human, must be reckoned nature or culture, every 
one may answer for himself. 



THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE AGAINST 

IDEALISM. 



BY GEORGE S. FULLERTON. 



" Poor philosopher Berkeley," wrote Doctor Arbuthnot to Swift, 
in 1714, " has now the idea of health, which was very hard to pro- 
duce in him; for he had an idea of a strange fever upon him, so 
strong that it was very hard to destroy it by introducing a con- 
trary one." 

Arbuthnot's jest is the first on record of that innumerable host 
of jests, criticisms, and condemnations of the Berkeleyan Idealism 
which have repeated themselves in each succeeding age, and each 
successive harvest of which has sprung from the same old root of 
misconception and misinterpretation. Swift, to whom the above 
letter was directed, is said to have left Berkeley standing at the 
door in the rain, on the ground that, if his philosophy were true, 
he could enter as well with the door shut as open. Dr. Johnson 
confuted the system by kicking a large stone — " striking his foot 
with mighty force against it." " Pray, sir, don't leave us," said 
he on another occasion, as a gentleman who had been defending 
Berkeley's views w^as about to take his departure, " for we may 
perhaps forget to think of you, and then you will cease to exist." 
"According to this doctrine," said Voltaire in his " Philosophical 
Dictionary," " ten thousand men killed by ten thousand cannon- 
shots are in reality nothing more than ten thousand apprehensions 
of our understanding." Beattie, in his " Essay on Truth," speaks 
of " Berkeley's pretended proof of the non-existence of matter at 
which common sense stood aghast," and declares that on the basis 
of this philosophy one can have no evidence that any being exists 
in nature but himself. 

Everywhere we find it accepted as a notorious fact that there 



356 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

is an incompatibility between Idealism and the experience of daily 
life — that every hour will furnish facts as to the existence of a 
world independent of and external to the percipient mind, which 
will sweep away these speculative cobwebs, spun in secluded clos- 
ets, and too frail to bear the touch of the investigator. It is sup- 
posed that to become an Idealist is to doubt the evidence of one's 
senses, and to declare human life a dream void of reality. In 
speaking of the violent motion of a table under s})iritual influence, 
Mr. R. Dale Owen, in his " Debatable Land," says: "It would 
need a disciple of Berkeley to witness these phenomena, and still 
remain a skeptic in the reality of such manifestations " — intimat- 
ing that a disciple of Berkeley is not bound to receive the evidence 
of his senses as are other men. And this sentence of Mr. Owen's 
well represents the general opinion as to the nature of Idealism. 

Such a misconception we might expect from persons of merely 
general knowledge ; but from specialists, those who have given 
time and attention to reasonings of this nature, they are not a lit- 
tle surprising. In Mr. Fitzgerald's "Essay on the Philosophy of 
Self-Consciousness," published in 1883 — a book written from a 
Hegelian standpoint, which makes it the more surprising — we find 
it stated that the Idealism of Berkeley has become untenable since 
the advance of Physiological science has demonstrated the intimate 
connection and interdependence of mind and body, as if the dis- 
covery of new relations between phenomena within the sphere of 
consciousness could either prove or disprove the existence of that 
noumenal something which was the object of the keen Irish Bish- 
op's brilliant polemic. 

And in the notes appended to the German translation of Berke- 
ley's "Principles," which appeared in von Kirchmann's "Philoso- 
phische Bibliothek "^both translation and notes from the hand 
of so ripe a scholar as the late Dr. Frederick Ueberweg — we find 
that the criticism constantly made against the system is, that upon 
a basis of Idealism laws of nature may be maintained, but none 
can be actually demonstrated. Here, evidently, the argument 
against Idealism is, as in the former cases, an argument from ex- 
perience, and the criticism is, in some instances, supported by the 
authority of the lamented Dr. Charles P. Krauth, to whom we 
owe an American edition of the " Principles," enriched with the 
results of his wide and varied reading and mature refiestion. 



The Argument from Experience against Idealism . 357 

In all these objections it is assumed that experience, rightly 
interpreted, refutes the Idealist, and that Nature and the Laws of 
Nature are not to him what they are to the Realist — a misconcep- 
tion which arises from confounding two very different things, 
Idealism and Unrealism. And to show that such objections are 
really founded on a misunderstanding, there is, perhaps, no better 
way than to exhibit the true process by which a knowledge of na- 
ture and her hiws is built up in the mind of the Realist, which 
will make evident the fact that that in which he differs from the 
Idealist cannot at all affect the process or the result, but lies 
entirely outside of the sphere of immediate knowledge, and can 
never modify in the slightest degree what lies within the held ot 
experience. 

One of the most common objections to Idealism is that it anni- 
hilates the external world and reduces waking life to a dream. 
" Bishop Berkeley," said Sydney Smith, " destroyed the world in 
one volume octavo, and nothing remained after his time but mind, 
which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume in 
173Y." But to any one who will consider what it is by which the 
Realist distinguishes between dreams or the pictures of memory, 
or imagination and waking life, it will be apparent that precisely 
the same distinction may be made by the Idealist. We know 
dreams from waking life partly from the fact that they are ordi- 
narily not so clear and vivid, but principally (and this is the only 
satisfactory criterion) from the fact that the continuity of our con- 
scious experience is broken into, the natural laws of succession and 
co-ordination, which we call laws of nature, not being followed. 

No matter how clear or connected has been my dream of lead- 
ing a storming party at Teb, if I wake to find myself lying in a 
bed in ray own house, and take up again the thread of a regular 
existence, with which the life of which I have dreamed is incom- 
patible, I conclude that the warlike experiences through which I 
have just passed are unreal. But my decision is based purely upon 
what is immediately known, the character and connection of the 
phenomena, and not at all upon any reasonings from a substratum 
external to mind, which might be perceived to add reality to the 
phenomena. In no case does this come into the judgment formed ; 
it is not itself perceived, but merely inferred; and, after a com- 
parison of the phenomena themselves has decided us to call one 



358 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

clasps real and the other imaginary, we then, and tlien only, as- 
sume a substance underlyino; tlie real. The substance is not the 
deterniininoj cause of our judi^ment, but the determined effect. 

If, after having the dream above mentioned, I should wake to 
find myself in circumstances compatible with tlie experiences of 
my dream ; if I should have no sensations of waking; if the thread 
carried on in the dream should be continued in waking; life with- 
out a break, there would be no means of knowing that my ex- 
periences had not been real throughout. So with the pictures pre- 
sented by the imagination. It is from the fact that they are de- 
pendent upon the will of the individual, and come and go, not 
according to the laws of the appearance and disappearance of 
what we call real things, but according to laws of their own, that 
we can distinguish them from things in nature ; and not at all 
from the fact that we can discover, by ocular or tactual demonstra- 
tion, that the one class have a foundation in substance while the 
other have not. The tree that I saw vesterdav looks iust as much 

»y' •' %} 

extended, now that I call it up as a picture in imagination, as the 
tree which I see from ray window at this moment. The tree, I 
imagine, is not so clearly seen ; but, apart from the liveliness of the 
image, it does not differ in any respect from the tree before my 
eyes. If I assume that the one is real and the other not, it is not 
from a difference in the pictures themselves, but from their con- 
nection with the sum total of my conscious experience. 

It may be here apropos to remark the inconsistency in the rea- 
soning of that large class of philosophers to whom Sir William 
Hamilton gives the name of Hypothetical Realists — those who 
claim that we know matter and mind only through their phenome- 
na, but that we rightly infer two different substances to account 
for the two classes of qualities — in assuming a non-extended sub- 
stance to account for certain phenomena, and among these placing 
the pictures furnished by memory and imagination. Now, the 
dome of St. Paul's does not look one whit less extended when 
called up as a reminiscence of European travel than it did while 
it was the immediate object of vision. If I think of my study- 
table while taking my morning walk, it looks just four feet long, 
and does not expand an inch when I re-enter my study and tix my 
eyes upon it. In apparent extent there is no difference between 
an imaginary and a real thing. We do not assume the picture of 



The Argument from Experience against Idealism. 359 

imagination to be a modification of a non-extended substance be- 
cause it looks non-extended, but we inter that, however it may 
look, it cannot really be extended, or it could not be attributed 
to the indivisible substance assumed by our theory. If, however, 
we have a right to infer in this fashion that things are not what 
they seem, surely it would simplify matters to attribute the real 
extension of the real table likewise to a non-extended substance, 
since there can be no necessary relation of similarity between a 
substance and its qualities. 

This is, however, to some degree, a digression. The point to be 
kept well in mind is, that it is not by any reference to substance, 
as something underlying phenomena, that one decides whether a 
given experience is to be set down as real or unreal ; and, if the sub- 
stratum has nothing to do with the distinction made, surely the 
difference is just as broad a one to the Idealist as to the Realist. 

The existence of real things, as distinguished from unreal or 
imaginary, being thus allowed by both sides, the question which 
next arises is : Whether there is in nature (which the Idealist 
might call the system of sense-ideas) anything, at least anything 
which can in any way touch actual experience, which is not the 
same to the Idealist as to the Realist ? And to this question we 
may confidently answer, No ! 

Investigation of the laws of nature proceeds upon a basis of 
observation and experiment, and observation and experiment have 
to do with the immediate object of knowledge, and in no case with 
the " substratum " or "thing in itself." Apart from the interpre- 
tation of nature through the conception of Final Cause, a knowl- 
edge of objects consists, not in any fancied insight into their "na- 
ture," as a something underlying the qualities of the things, but in 
a knowledge of those qualities, their co-ordinations and sequences, 
and their relations to other objects (themselves immediate objects) 
past, present, and future. 

The five experimental methods admit of precisely the same use 
in the hands of the Idealist as in the hands of the Realist. In no 
case are they applied to a " thing in itself," but to real things as 
we are made cognizant of them by the senses, or infer a possible 
future experience from actual experience in the present. The 
view of the world as a world independent of perception, and of 
phenomena as supported by a substance, it is claimed, is neces- 



360 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

sary to a demonstration of the laws of nature ; but, in point of 
fact, no instance can be shown in which natural science makes the 
slightest use of this assumed substratum. Though it is kept on 
hand as a safeguard, as one might put on a life-preserver to give 
himself a feeling of safety where he could by no possibility fall into 
the water, in experimentation it is always utterly disregarded. 

When Baron Liebig instituted his series of experiments to ascer- 
tain the immediate cause of the death produced by metallic poisons, 
he sought the cause just where an Idealist would have sought it — ■ 
in those phenomena which were found to be an invariable, uncon- 
ditional antecedent of the phenomenon to be explained ; and his 
whole process could have been performed just as well, with results 
in no respect different, had he been a follower of Berkeley and 
repudiated the " thing-in-itself ," to which he never once refers in 
explanation of anything. That fine specimen, too, of inductive 
experimental inquiry. Dr. Wells's theory of dew, might well have 
been produced by an Idealist. 

Had Dr. Wells lived earlier, he might have explained the phe- 
nomenon by a reference to " occult qualities," or to the " nature " 
of the objects concerned ; but, as it is, he nowhere passes beyond 
the sphere of the immediate objects of knowledge, or trespasses 
upon the realm in which the Realist and Idealist disagree. 

The explanation of any particular phenomenon by reference to 
an " essence " or " substratum " is a relic of the past. It being 
generally admitted that we know, primarily at least, only the phe- 
nomena, all that we know of the substratum must be derived from 
this; and the using this derivative knowledge again to explain the 
qualities, although so palpably a case of reasoning in a circle, and 
now universally abandoned in any special investigation, is still 
held as an explanation of the possibility of sense-experience as a 
whole. Moliere, in his Malade Itnaginaire, makes one of his ab- 
surd physicians say : 

Mihi a docto doctore, 
Deraandatiir causam et rationem quare 

Opium facit dormire. 

A quoi respondeo, 

Quia est in eo 

Virtus dormitiva, 
Cujus est natura 

Sensus assoupire. 



The Argument from Experience against Idealisjn. 361 

Such explanation, now abandoned by natural science, lias been a 
fruitful source of error in the past, and it being accepted, though 
in a modified form, in philosophy, may we not expect from it evil 
results ? 

Should it be said that, in making such assumptions as those of 
atoms and molecules, science really makes use of that which is not 
a possible perception, and yet must be considered as really exist- 
ent, it may be answered that no Idealist would deny the right, 
reasoning from analogies founded upon past experience of the con- 
nection of phenomena, to assume a possible future experience in 
some degree different from what we have at present ; and should 
it be claimed that the things assumed to exist could never become 
objects of experience, it may be answered that there are symbols 
used in algebra which, though they cannot themselves be regarded 
as representing real being, are yet useful as formulae to express the 
relations to be maintained between real beings — i. e., they have a 
formal, though not a real, significance. 

It is, therefore, most clear and evident that the "substratum" 
or " thing-in-itselt'" does not at all enter into the question, and in 
all reasonings from nature, or about natural objects, it is totally 
disregarded. We may safely affirm that the only difference in the 
views of nature taken by the ordinary scientific Realist and the 
consistent Idealist is, that the one regards objects as actually exist- 
ing between the intervals of his perception, while the other attrib- 
utes to them a merely potential existence. That this difference is 
not one which can be settled by an appeal to experience, or in any 
way touches experience, "jumps at the eyes" ; but Ueberweg, in 
the seventy-eighth note appended to his translation of the " Prin- 
ciples," criticises from this standpoint the illustration used by 
Berkeley to show that laws of nature, regular and unvarying 
methods of the production of the objects of perception, are ust as- 
necessary to his system as to that of the Realist. Let us look first 
at the passage in Berkeley, and then at the note of his critic. 

" That there is a great and conspicuous use in these regular con- 
stant methods of working, observed by the Supreme Agent, hath 
been shewn. . . . And it is no less visible that a particular size, 
figure, motion, and disposition of parts are necessary, though not 
absolutely to the producing any effect, yet to the producing it ac- 
cording to the standing mechanical laws of nature. Thus, for in- 



362 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

stance, it cannot be denied that God, or the Intelligence that sus- 
tains and rules the ordinary course of things, might, if He were 
minded to produce a miracle, cause all the motions on the dial- 
plate of a watch, though nobody had ever made the movements 
and put them in it ; but yet, if He will act agreeably to the rules 
of mechanism, by Him for wise ends established and maintained 
in the creation, it is necessary that those actions of the watch- 
maker, whereby he makes the movements and rightly adjusts 
them, precede the production of the aforesaid motions ; as also 
that any disorder in them be attended with the perception of some 
corresponding disorder in the movements, which, being once cor- 
rected, all is right again." 

"According to this," is the comment, "the irregularity we per- 
ceive in the movement of the hands seems to be the prior and 
conditioning thing ; and the derangement in the interior of the 
watch, which, on Berkeley's principles, does not exist until it is 
perceived, is the subsequent and conditional thing; the natural 
mechanical connection, however, is exactly the reverse. By what 
antecedent perceptions or ' signs ' is the irregularity of the whole 
conditioned? If, for example, a little dust, which no one has per- 
ceived, has got into the watch and put it out of order, the result is 
linked with something unperceived in the interior of the watch. 
This thoroughly unperceived something, of wliich not even a dim 
susi)icion exists, is, according to Berkeley, a nothing, and out of 
the nothing comes the change in the running of the watch. But 
that this, as a thing self-contradictory, is not possible, must, to 
adopt Berkeley's way of speaking, be clear to any one who will 
reflect even a little. The recognition of the fact, therefore, that 
nature is regulated by law, draws with it irresistibly the inference 
that material objects exist without the mind." 

It is here objected, in the first place, that, since we perceive the 
irregularity in the movement of the hands before perceiving the 
derangement in the interior of the watch, we must regard this 
movement as the conditioning thing, and thus reverse the natural 
order of cause and effect ; and, in the second place, that the un- 
perceived speck of dust is nothing, and out of this nothing cannot 
come the change in the running of the watch. 

That these points are not well taken will be evident to any one 
who considers for a moment the process by which an investigator, 



The Argument from Experience against Idealism. 363 

whether Realist or Idealist, discovers the cause of the disorder in 
his watch. Having noticed the disorder in the movement of the 
hands, he looks turther — never once referring to anything which 
cannot become an immediate object of vision — for some phenome- 
non, perhaps a speck of dust, which may be regarded as abnor- 
mal ; and which, whether Realist or Idealist, he will call the cause 
of the derangement. If.no such phenomenon be found, both Real- 
ist and Idealist would declare the cause unknown, and would, 
upon the very same ground, assume that, could the investigation 
be made sufficiently thorough, some such cause would be found. 
Whether the as yet unperceived cause be actually existing out of 
mind, or only potentially exist, could not in the least affect the 
question; for, when perceived, both would acknowledge its actu- 
ality and true causalit}', and, while unperceived, both would have 
the same expectation of a possible perception. The actual existence 
of the cause, while still unperceived, is manifestly capable of no 
proof by an appeal to experience, as such proof must depend upon 
observation ; and it is a truism to say that objects can only be ob- 
served during the intervals of direct perception, or while actually 
existent. The objection, too, that, since the irregularity of the 
movement of the hands is first observed, it must be the cause and 
the internal derangement the effect, is by no means just. The 
method by which the cause is distinguished from the effect is just 
the same to the Realist as to the Idealist. Were an adherent of 
Reid and a disciple of Berkeley both to look at the watch at the 
same time, they would both see first what, from a reference to a 
broad general experience, they would call an effect, placing as 
logically prior what is chronologically subsequent in order of 
knowledge. The appeal to general experience — which aids us in 
determining, in the case of any two interdependent phenomenaj 
which is logically the antecedent and which the consequent — is open 
to a Berkeleyan as to any one else. It is evident, therefore, that, 
whether we regard objects as existing unperceived or not, we can 
draw no proof for the statement from an analj'sis of such cases as 
the one selected by Dr. Ueberweg, nor indeed from the whole field 
of experience, which is accepted in its entirety by both of the op- 
posing parties. We are driven for our proof to an a priori law, 
and with this argument I have here nothing to do. 

There is still an objection, and to many minds it seems to be 



364: The Journal of Speculati/De Philosophy. 

a stroni::; one, iirjj^ed as^ainst Idealism. On tlie hypothesis of the 
Idealist, it is said, even if it should be acknowledged that expe- 
rience is left intact, that we lose nothing of which we have here- 
tofore been possessed, yet we must regard experience, the whole 
objective system of nature, as well as the subjective succession of 
ideas, as a mere play of phenomena — reguhir and orderly it is true, 
but not fixed by the very nature of substance, liable to change at 
some time in the future. How can we on this hypothesis demon- 
strate, for example, any necessary causal connection between ob- 
jects ? Must we not be content with a mere observed succession ? 

Now, there is no reason why the law of Causation — to take a 
representative instance — should be one whit less certain and inva- 
riable for the Idealist than for another. We may regard the law 
of Causation as either gathered from observation or an a pinori 
deliverance of intelligence. If we hold that it is gathered from 
observation, we base it, in any case, on the immediate object of 
knowledge, and not in the least on the connection of " things-in- 
themselves," which have never been observed. Here we cannot 
differ from the Idealist, who accepts the same facts and follows 
the same methods. The certainty arrived at is the same for both. 
If, on the other hand, we hold the law to be a deliverance of intel- 
ligence, we have the highest reason to accept it as certain, and a 
reason quite independent of the " thing-in-itself." Since it is not 
drawn from this last, it cannot depend upon it for its validity ; and, 
if upon this basis the law is to be regarded as less certain to the 
Idealist than to the Realist, it can only be so because of another 
deliverance of intelligence which informs us that the law is only 
valid as applied to " substances." This assumption — considering 
the existing usage of natural science, which applies it only to phe- 
nomena — seems rather absurd. The fact of one's being a Realist 
or an Idealist will not determine for him the confidence to be 
placed in the law of Causation, or in any other law of Reason, as 
these laws have their scope and application exclusively within the 
field of immediate knowledge. 

The Idealist accepts, therefore, if he be consistent, the whole 
field of experience ; and this is to him just what it is to the Real- 
ist, containing all the distinctions marked by science or by com- 
mon observation between real and unreal, dream-life and waking- 
life. 



The Argument from Experience against Idealism. 365 

And in saying that he accepts experience, this must be under- 
stood as comprehending experience in its totality, future as well 
as present. The arguments for the existence of other minds, both 
Divine and human, and for the Immortality of the Soul, are not 
drawn (at least those of them which have really exerted an influ- 
ence upon the belief of mankind) from that in which the Realist 
and Idealist disagree. They are as forcible to the one as to the 
other. The Realist, when he argues from the beauty and harmony 
which obtain in the world, from the evidences of wisdom and 
goodness, from the needs of his own moral nature, to a wise and 
good Spirit as the reasonable cause, argues from the world which 
he sees and touches, the world of experience, which is equally 
accepted by the Idealist. What is to prevent their arriving at the 
same conclusion ? 

Berkeley's system has of late been criticised as leading to skep- 
ticism and dangerous in its moral influence. Although Berkeley 
himself looked upon his philosophy as a strong bulwark of Theism, 
in the historical development of Idealism, it is claimed, we can 
see its unfortunate tendency. Now, some Idealists have undoubt- 
edly been atheists and agnostics. But the danger which threat- 
ens thoughtful youth at the present time comes from a very differ- 
ent quarter ; and it would hardly be just to hold all Realists 
responsible for the views of that by no means insigniticant subdivi- 
sion of their party who are adherents of perhaps the most incon- 
sistent and unphilosophical of modern doctrines, modern material- 
ism. There are those who find no place in their creed for a Deity, 
both among the ranks of the Realists and of the Idealists ; and 
their diiFerence of opinion as to the existence of "■ things-in-them- 
selves " has little to do with determining their decision upon this 
point. Most criticisms directed against the moral influence of 
Idealism arise out of a misconception — a confounding of Idealism 
with Unrealism, which certainly reflects no credit on the former. 
But the subject of morals is a practical one, which finds its whole 
scope and application within the limits of a possible experience, 
and consequently remains just the same to the Idealist as to the 
Realist. 

The interest of the controversy between them is, therefore, a 
purely theoretic one, or at least has only that practical importance 
which we are compelled to grant to all knowledge, however little 



366 The Journal of Speculatme Philosophy. 

it may appear to touch human hfe and practice; and, indeed, 
wlien we come to practice, may we not call every one an Idealist? 
for thought, desire, volition, are exercised in every-day life solely 
upon the immediate objects of experience, the things we see and 
touch, and never have the slightest reference to the much-debated 
" thing-in-itself." 

That Berkeley's Idealism is the iinal philosophy, no one who 
really understands Berkeley can for a moment admit. In his 
" Siris" we find gleams of a coming light, which Berkeley himself 
was not prepared for. But the weakness of Berkeleianisin does 
not lie in the direction of the objections cited in the foregoing 
pages ; and all objectons, made from such a stand point, are pow~ 
erless, as directed against the truth and not the error of Berkeley's 
system. 



A NEW THEORY OF GENERAL IDEAS. 



BY PAYTON SPENCE. 



It is not my intention to revive that hopeless discussion of Real- 
ism, Conceptualism, and Nominalism, which centuries of specula- 
lation and disputation have transmitted to us in so confused and 
unsettled a state. Nevertheless, I propose, in this article, to dis- 
cuss the subject of general ideas and the significance of general 
terms ; and I feel justified in doing so by the fact that there is 
an explanation of those perplexing subjects which has, thus far, 
escaped the attention of investigators — an explanation which is 
more satisfactory to my mind than any other with which I am ac- 
quainted, not excepting that of Kant, which can hardly be classed 
wnth either Realism, Conceptualism, or Nominalism. 

Of all the theories of general ideas with which I am familiar, I 
cannot regard any one as true. Realism seems to be abandoned in 
modern times ; and while Conceptualism and Nominalism both 
have their champions at the present day, yet the very fact that 
there are defenders of both, after so many centuries of investiga- 
tion and disputation, raises a presumption that there is something 
radically defective in both ; and this presumption is favored by 



A New Theory of General Ideas. 36T 

the fact that nobody is entirely satisfied with either of those 
theories, even as presented by its ablest advocates. 

If Nominalism still has its defenders, it is because they do not 
clearly set before their minds what it is they are required to ascer- 
tain. They are required to find out what mental phenomena gen- 
eral terms stand for ; or into what we must translate them if we 
wish to ascertain their real significance. For instance, when we 
Bay man^ what do we mean ? Man, as a word, is, of course, merely 
a sign, a representative of some mental fact, movement, or process ; 
and, hence, when I wish to point out its meaning — to translate it 
into its real significance — I must not substitute another sign for it.. 
That would be like giving the Latin name for the English one, and 
saying that man means Jiotyio / or it would be like giving a verbal 
definition of the word, man. Now, this is what the Nominalists 
do, some in a less obvious way, perhaps, than others ; and this is the 
hidden reason why neither themselves nor anybody else is satisfied 
with their work. The following, for instance, is Hamilton's defence 
of Nominalism, and it is substantially that of Berkeley and Hume : 
" We cannot represent to ourselves the class Tnan by any equivalent 
notion or idea. All that we can do is to call up some individual 
image, and consider it as representing, though inadequately repre- 
senting, the generality." ' Now, if we merely use that " image " as 
the representative of something else, we virtually make it, like the 
word man itself, merely a sign ; and hence we are no nearer the 
solution of the difiiculty than when we started. That something 
— that "generality " — is just the thing that we are in search of; 
and, when we find it, we get the real significance of the word rnan 
— we get the mental fact, movement, or process of which the word 
man and the Nominalist's "individual image" of a man are mere- 
ly representatives. 

On the other hand, if Conceptualism has its defenders, it is be- 
cause they do not use the word conception in its ordinary accepta- 
tion, or in any sharply defined sense. A conception, as ordinarily 
understood, "is a notion of past sensations, or of objects of sense 
that we have formerly perceived." " It is a reproduction in imagi- 
nation of sensations or perceptions. This ordinary understanding 
of the word carries with it the idea that a conception is something 



^ Hamilton's " Lectures," p. 4'7'7. "^ Stewart. 



368 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

detinite and determinate, and tliat therefore, whenever an effort to 
conceive a thing fails to attain this determinateness, it fails to be- 
come a real conception — the labor is an abortion ; yet tlie effort — 
the mental movement or process — while valueless as a conception, 
may still, as we shall hereafter see, be as easily handled by the 
mind as a conception, and may be of equal value as an element of 
thought. The following quotation is given by Hamilton as evi- 
dence of Locke's Conceptualisra. In the above understanding of 
the word conception, however, Locke's "general idea "is not a 
conception, whatever else it may be. " Does it not require some 
pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle (which is yet 
none of the most abstract, comprehensive, and difficult), for it must 
be neither oblique or rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor 
scalenon ; but all and none of these at once. In effect, it is some- 
thing imperfect that cannot exist; an idea wherein some parts of 
several different and inconsistent ideas are put together.'" 

It does not in the least help us out of the difficulty with gen- 
eral terms to say, as some have done, that they are only abbrevi- 
ated definitions ; for this only shifts the difficulty from the former 
to the latter, and we find ourselves just as much embarrassed in 
our endeavors to ascertain the real significance of the definitions 
as of the general terms. If the definition of a general term is made 
as general as the term itself, it is necessarily as inconceivable as 
the latter. 

We must not pass unnoticed Kant's interpretation of general 
ideas, particularly as his and the one that I shall presently give 
trench somewhat u|)on each other in one respect, although, in 
another, they are diametrically the opposite of each other. The 
first of the following extracts is taken from Dr. Stirling's trans- 
lation of the "Critique" ; the second is from his reproduction of 
the " Critique" ; and the third is from a note in the reproduction, 
in which Dr. Stirling evidently adopts Kant's explanation of gen- 
eral ideas. 

" I set down five points one after the other, thus, ; what 

I have is a picture or representation (figure, image) of the number 
five. But if I think just a number, any number at all — let it be 
five, or let it be a hundred — then this thinking is rather the con- 



1 Hamilton's " Lectures," pp. 479, 480. 



A New Theory of General Ideas. 369 

ception of a method toward the picture of some sum under a cer- 
tain notion than this picture itself, which picture, in this latter 
case, it would hardly be possible to realize and compare with the 
notion. This idea, novv, of a general process of the imagination for 
providing a notion with its corresponding picture or image, I call 
the schema of the notion,"' 

"The general notion triangle is simply a conceived formula 
whereby you can construct a type, but it is itself a schema, for It 
is Tio single iorm — rather it is an infinitude of forms. ... So with 
the general notions, dog, horse, man, etc. : these are not types, 
but schemata. The type is a single image or ligure set up by the 
empirical imagination, whereas the schema is an absolutely gen- 
eral formula for the production of a whoie family of types." '^ 

"Kant is here seen to make an easy end of our nioderii nomi- 
nalistic quibbling. . . . Surely it is common sense to see that a 
general idea involves in imagination only a schema, and that a 
schema there is not a type, but a general receipt for a whole family 
of types." ' 

The slight resemblance and the vast difference between Kant's 
interpretation of the subject and my own will be more intelligi- 
ble to the reader when my own shall have been presented. Tiiis 
much, however, I wiil say here, that, while a general term is a 
sign or symbol of a u\eut2i\ process — ^ formula^ if you choose — yet 
it is not a process "for providing a notion with a corresponding 
picture or image," nor is it a " formula whereby you can construct 
a type," nor a " formula for the production of a whole family of 
types," nor a "receipt for a whole family of types;" but ir, is a 
proceilure, a %Tooess^ the essential feature of which is the de- 
struction (i:ot the construction qv production) of all types, figures, 
images, perceptions, and concteptions — the reduction of the deter. 
7ninate to the indeterminate — the conceivable thoufrht to one of 
its inconceivable elements; it is a process of making /fy^'w 5 (pict- 
ure?, images, iigures, types, perceptions, and conceptions) ybrm^es* 
— of taking out iha particular and special and leaving the general 
— of removing the positive and leaving the negative element of 
thought. It is, in brief, a process of analysis^ not one o^ synthesis. 
There can be no better evidence that the truth has not been 



1 Stirling's "Text-book to Kant," pp. 250, 251. « IbiJ., p. 89. 

2 Ibid., pp. 89, 90. 

XYIil— 2i 



370 The Journal of Sjyeculative Philosophy, 

reached in reference to sjeneral terms and their sijrnificance than 
the vai!;nene?s and contusion with which they liave been treated 
even by those v/ho are reiranled as among our most profound think- 
ers. When a writer of ordinary ability understands a subject, he 
usually finds no difficulty in making his understanding of it intel- 
ligible to others ; and certainly it is an easy matter for iiira to ex- 
plain his own views so clearly that others of equal ability with 
himself shall not put diametrically opposite interpretations upon 
what l:e has written. Yet we find Hamiltoti accusing Locke of 
maintaining " the doctrine of Concsptualisin in its most revolting 
absurdity," ' while Bain says that "Locke is substantially a ^NTomi- 
nalist." ^ Again, Hamilton, on one page, classes Tleid with the Con- 
ceptualists Locke and Brown, ^ on another he inclines to put him 
with the Nominalist Berkeley,* and on a third he passes him 
over as extremely " wavering and ambiguous;"^ but Bain says 
that Rsid's position coincides very nearly with Conceptualism.* 
Again, Bain says of Hamilton, that " in some parts of his writings 
he expresses the nominalistic view with great exactness, while in 
others, and in his Logical system generally, he admits a form of 
Conceptualism." ' 

One cause, perhaps, of the confusion of thought on the subject 
of general terms and their significance is our symbolical tliinking, 
or the habit which the mind gradually acquires of thinking by 
signs, or by fragments of images or conceptions, instead of those 
images or conceptions themselves. For instance, the words a 
horse signify, or are the signs of, a conception of a horse — a full 
and complete image of a particular horse. But the tendency of 
the mind is to drop all unnecessary encumbrances, and to take the 
easiest and shortest road to the qwX aimed at ; and hencs we drop 
first one and then another of the special characteristics of that 
conception of a horse, until, finally, when we say a horse, there 
flashes into the mind merely a very small fragment of that con- 
ception, such as the head, or even a part only of the head, as a 
representative of the whole image; and so, when we say a covj^ or 
a pig, oi'ly a pair of horns, or a twisted tail, may come before the 
mind as a representative of the whole animal. But this is not all ; 



1 Hamilton's " Lectures," p. 479. ^ Bain's " Meutal Science," Append., p. 27. 

' " Lectures," 47G. ■* Ibid., 479. ^ ibij.^ 430. 

6 Bain's " Mental Science," Append., p. 29. ' Ibid., 31. 



A New Theory of General Ideas. 371 

in the rapidity of the mind's action, even these small fragments 
of full conceptions are encumbrances. It is too much trouble and 
loss of time to ba obliged to translate the words even into the 
fragments — the smallest representatives of their mental signifi- 
cance ; so these fragments themselves are finally dropped, at times, 
and perhaps most of the time, leaving nothing but the words 
themselves, the skeleton machinery of thought, and our thinking 
becomes wholly symbolical. Now, I venture the assertion that 
there is as much symbolical thinking outside of arithmetic and 
algebra as there is in them. Fnun my own observations, I am of 
the opinion that ninety-nine hundredths of our thinking is sym- 
bolical ; that, in ordinary conversation or oral discourse and read- 
ing, we see, and hear, and conceive of nothing but the words 
themselves, with only here and there a real conception, or frag- 
ment of a conception, into which some particular word is translated, 
or partly translated. You say : How is this possible ? Easily 
enough ; for everybody does it. Passing through the stages 
which we have described above (and sometimes without tliis grad- 
ual transition through intervening stages), the process ultimates in 
our transferring to the words themselves the relations which exist 
among the things that the words are merely the signs of; and 
what is, if possible, even more remarkable, the words so far take 
the places of the things they repres3nt that they awaken in us 
emotions (more or less distinct) similar to those produced by the 
tbing-i theiQselves, or our conceptions of them. There is no diffi- 
culty, then, ill understanding how we may read a whole page with- 
out having a single conception, picture, or image, in whole or in 
part, enter our imagination. The words themselves awaken the 
same or similar emotions, and carry with themselves the same rela- 
tions to each other as the things which they stand for, and, there- 
fore, our thinking is just as complete as it would be did we use 
the things themselves, or the fullest and most complete conceptions 
or images of them. This, so far as I know, is almost an unexplored, 
though a vast, department of mental science.' We do not pretend 
to do full justice to it here ; but we have, perhaps, said enough to 
enable the reader to understand how this symbolical thinking may 
delude the Nominalist into the belief that the general idea is noth- 



» Campbell's " Phil, of Rhetoric," B. 2, e. 1, s. 1. 



372 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

ing bat a name, a word, or at most a fraiijment of itself ; and als.> 
how the Caiicpptualist mav lay hold of a conceivable part of a 
process (a part which, unconsciously to himself, his mind has sub- 
stituted for the whole process in the manner just described), ?,nd,, 
mistaking:; that part for the whole, conclude that a general idea is 
conceivable, 

Anothsr cause, or perhaps we should say indication, of the in- 
dsfiniteness and confusion of thought that prevail in reference to 
general terms and their real significnnce, is the fact that writers 
on this subject do not recognize the difference that exists between 
the process of classification and that of" generalization, but seem to 
liave a vaa:ue notion that the two are substantially one and the 
same thins;, a general idea bsin^; to them nothino- more than a 
class. The confusion of language, as a matter of (course, corre- 
sponds wi;h the confusion of thought on this subject, the same 
name being generally given to both the class and tlie general idea. 
Now, what does the process of classification consist of ? We 
make a cla'^s by resemblances, of course. Here is a plain figure 
havinoi; three riglit sides, and there is another one havino; three 
right sides. I put the two together, and I have a class called tri- 
angle, to which I add every other plain figure having three right 
side^. I iiave thus made the class triangle, but 1 have never once 
had occasion to use the general idea, triangle, in the process ; for 
I have only dealt with particular triangles, each one having its 
own determinate sides, its own determinate size, its own determi- 
nate angles, and its own determinate form, color, and relation 
of sides to angles ; and yet all these determinate figures I put 
too:ether — and this is classification. Now, what is the real sirrnifi- 
cance of the word triangle, as applied to the class thus farmed? 
It means a collection oi determinate.^ perceivahle.,2ind conceivable 
triangles. But what does the process of generalization consist in ? 
We will begin as we did bsfore. Here is a plain figure having 
three riMit sides: it is ri2:ht-ano;led, isosceles, six inches lono', and 
is drawn with red chalk upon a white surface. I mentally strike 
out — disregard — negate the redness of its sides, its right angle, 
the equality of two of its sides, its six inches of length, and, in 
fact, everything special and peculiar about that triangle; and 
now I need go no further; I need no more examples, for I already 
have my general idea, which is also called triangle. But see what 



A jVew Theory of General Ideas. 373 

n different tiling it is from the class triangle. It is sornetliing that 
IB formless, indeterminate, non-^jerceivalle^ and inconceivable j and 
yet, in that G;)nfnsion of thouglit to which 1 am trying to call 
attention, this o-eneral idea and the clasi are both called triano^le. 
Triangularity would be a better term for the general idea ; l>ut 
the bare suggestion territies us with the possibility that it might 
open the gates to the entrance of " horseaiity," " dogality," " housa- 
ality," and an innumerable troup of similar uncouth and intolera- 
ble names claiming admission on the score of kinship to triangu- 
larity by similarity of genesis. 

Another indication of theindefinitenessand confusion of thono-ht 
that prevail in reference to general terms and general ideas is the 
confounding of the process of abstraction and that of generaliza- 
tion. To this point we shall return in its proper place, where 
we expect to show that a general abstraction is, in one sense, an 
impossibility except on the supposition that the general idea has 
already been attained, and, of course, attained by some other pro- 
cess (which can only be thnt of generalization); and therefore, 
the general idea being already in hand, it would bo a work of 
supererogation to make a further effort to get by abstraction what 
we already have by generalization. 

"What I have thus far written as introductory is intended sim- 
ply to show that the whole subject of general terms and their real 
significance, lies, at the present time, in a very helpless, hopeless, 
■confused, unsettled, and indefinite state ; and that we should, 
therefore, welcome any attempt to reduce it to an intelligible priii 
<3iple, and to determinate form and order. 

In an article entitled "Ti.riC and Space considered as Xega- 
tions," publi-hed in the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy" for 
October, 1879, I reached the following conclusion: "The prin- 
ciples of Affirmation and Negation are co-extensive with con- 
sciousness, and are the essential elements of all niental phenome- 
na. All the phenoujena nf mind, from the simplest censation up 
to the most complex intellectual operation, are but states of con- 
sciousness, simple and complex. Now, we have already seen that 
the simplest state of consciousness, it perpetual, would be no better 
than a st^te of perpetual unconsciousness. The latter would be 
tantamount to annihilation, and the former would be the siirne. 
Hence, the simplest form of consciousness or mental life must cun- 



374 The Journal of Speculative Phllosophij. 

sist in an alternation of a state of conscionc-ness with a state of 
unconsciousness — a re^-ulnr rliytlimical revelation of the aflirma- 
tion, consciousnes?, by its negation, uncoiiscionsness, and vice versa. 
We mi2,-ht call it a pul-ation or an nndn'ation of the constituent 
of tlie mind, provided such an expression did not fasten upon us a 
premature theory as to the nature of that constituent. . . . The 
simplest state of consciousness, therefore, has its dual elements — 
its atSrmation and its negation ; and as all other states of con- 
Bcionsness, even the highest and most complex, are aggregates of 
such simple states, and as the complex must retain the dual char- 
acter of the simple, and, like the simple, must have its affirmative 
and negative elements, therefore affii"mati(^u and negation are the 
dual foundatit)ns of mental life, and the essential elements of all 
thought, feeling, emotion, and volition." 

My "• New Theory of Consciousness," which was published in 
the " Journal of Speculative Pliilosophj," July, 1880, was not 
an outgrowth from the article just quoted from; but it was sug- 
gested by, and was based upon, the current theory of atomic and 
molecular vil)rations, their inevitable collisions and non-collisions 
constituting the conscious and the unconscious statco of the atoms. 
Nevertheless, the conclusion reached in tiie first article, as quoted 
above, is also the necessary outcome of the second article, my 
"New Theory of Consciousness," although its appearance in the 
latter was wholly independent of its appearance in the ibrm3r. 
In other words, the principle that all mental life consists in 
a regular rhythmical alternation of conscious and unconscious 
states, while it is the inevirable conclusion of the first article, 
and is also the necessary outcome of the second, was reached in 
the two cases by processes of reasoning and considerations wholly 
independent of each other. To this extent, therefore, the two 
articles sustain each other, and I cannot help having more confi- 
dence in the principle which is thus an outcome <>f two independ- 
ent processes of reasoning than if it had been reached by either 
one alone. 

Tho principle which we reached in the two articles above referred 
to, the importance of which we wish uow to illustrate, thereby 
still more firmly establishing its truth, is contained in the follow- 
ing words of our article on '• Time and Space considered as Nega- 
tions " : "Affirmation and Negation are the dual foundations of 



A New Theory of General Ideas. 375- 

■mental life, and the essential elements of all thouojbt, feeling, emo- 
tion, and volition." 

Here is a plain figure, six inclieo long, drawn in red clialk upon 
a white surface; it has three right sides, one right angle, and two 
acute angles, and two of its sides are equal. It is a triangle. There 
is another plain figure ten inches long, drawn in white chalk upon 
a black surface; it has three unequal right sides and three acute 
angles. It also is a triangle. All such particnhir three-sided 
plain figures are called triangles. Then a triangle is a plain fig- 
ure, bounded by three right sides. 

Now, what is triangle f Shall we define it in the same terms as 
a triangle ? Let us see. Triangle is a plain figure — we are balked 
at the very outset, for triangle is not a figure at all, and, of course, 
it is not bounded by three sides. Could we define triangle and a 
triangle in the same terms, there would, of course, be no diiference 
between them — no diflf-irence, in other words, between the uni- 
versal-particular and the universal — between, as we might say, 
water and one of its constituents, oxygen. How, then, shall we 
define triangle ? We must first find out what it is. I now show 
you again that three sided, right-angled, isosceles triangle, six 
inches long and drawn in red chalk upon a white surface; and I 
ask you whether that is triangle. You say, "No, that is a trian- 
gle, not triangle." I next show you the ten-inch triangle, drawn 
in white chalk upon a black surface, and having three unequal 
sides and three acute angles ; and to my question, " Is that trian- 
gle?" you again say, " No, that is a triangle, not triangle." I 
show you another of a different size, color, and shape ; and I show 
you a great number of three-sided figures, all of different colors, 
sizes, and relatione- of sides and angles; and in every case you say, 
" That is a triangle, not triangle." Then I can never show you 
triangle. It is something that can never be present to the sight, 
the touch, or any of the senses. It is a thnig that cannot be per- 
ceived, and hence it cannot be conceived. But this only tells us 
what triangle is not, not what it is — that, whatever it may be, it 
is inconceiva!)le, because non-perceivable. 

When I siiowed you that right-angled triangle, and to my ques- 
tion, " Is that triangle ? " you said " No," yet back of that " No" 
was a secret, scarcely suppressed " Yes," as much as to say, " Well, 
you crowded me to say 'No ' when I half meant ' Yes,' and, if trian- 



376 Tlie Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

gle is r.ot tliat ri^ht angled triangle, it is, perhaps, some other tri- 
angle, for it surely is to be found soniewherL'." But when I 
showed you acute- and obtuse-angled triangles, isosceles, and equi- 
lateral triancrles, laro-e and small triano-les, and triana;les of diflt'er- 
ent relations of sides and angles, in numbers infinite, vou still kept 
pace with me with your " no, no, no " ad wjinitam, and back of 
eacli "no'' was the suppressed "ves," indicating your belief that 
it must be something psrtaining to them — their shadow, perliaps, 
if not their substance. Then what have you done with all my 
nfinitude of triangles'^ To each one you have said, " Triangle is 
not that, yet it is soinctldng pertaining to that." You have negated 
all my particular triangles, and would have negated as many mill- 
ions more as I chose to show you, saying of each, " Triangle is not 
— not that — not any particular triangle. It is the negation of 
your rio^htansled triaiiii-le, of your obtuse- and acute-anojled trian- 
gles, of your isosceles and your equihiteral triangles,, of your large 
and your small triangles — the negation of everything that is spe- 
cial, peculiar, and characteristic about each and every possible, per- 
ceivable, or conceivable triangle." 

How totally different, then, are the two definitions, that, namely, 
of a triangle and that of triangle! A triangle is a plain figure 
bounded by three sides ; but triangle is the negation of every- 
thing that is special, peculiar, and characteristic about each and 
every possible, perceivable, or conceival)le triangle. In brief, tri- 
angle is the negation of a triangle. We now undirstand why 
what is called the general idea, triangle, is a thing that caimot be 
seen or felt — 7.-hy it cannot be perceived, and hence why it is 
inconceivable. It is because it is a mental process for the desti'uc- 
tion of all that is perceivable or conceivable about any particular 
triangle — for the reduction of any particular triangle to one of its 
indeterminate, inccmceivable elements. The process is the same, 
and brings the same result in all cases; hence triangle, the nega- 
tion, is necessarii}' singular and universal. Now, although the 
negation, triangle, is inconceivable, yet, because it is always the 
same without variation and is always siiiguLir, it has a monistic 
simplicity and universality which are the foundation of all mathe- 
matical certainty in the demonstration of the relations of the vari- 
ous pnrts of a triangle, as we shall presently endeavor to show. 

But are we sure that triangle (triangularity) is really a negation. 



A New Theory of General Ideas. 377 

Some of raj readers raay still have donbts upon this point, belicvino; 
"that, in order to set a iieojation, we ouijht to nofcate more than we 
have done — that, in leaving triangnhirity, we leave a positive ele- 
ment, which cannot be called a negation. Let ns go back to our red- 
sided, right-angled triangle, six inches long, and having two of its 
feides equal. I negate the redness of its sides, I negate its right 
angla, I negate the a'juteness of its two other angles, I negate its 
length, and I negate the equality of two of its sides. Havo I not 
negated everything that it is possible to negate ? If I have omitted 
anything, let the reader negate that also ; and what residue will be 
left in consciousness but triangularity? But why not now negate 
that also ? Simply because if I negate that, or banish that from con- 
sciousness, the residuum in consciousness will not be the negation 
of that triangle nor of any triangle. It will be simply nothing, or 
the negation of everything. Now, negations are as different from 
each other as athrmations are from each other; but, if, in negating 
a particular triangle, I must banish triangularity from conscious- 
ness, then, in negating a circle, I must banish roundness, and, in 
negating a square, I must banish squareness from consciousness; 
then there would be no difference between the negations of a tri- 
angle, a circle, and a square ; there would not be, in either case, 
any mental element left t(; relate the negation to its proper affir- 
mation — nothing to indicate which is the negation of the triangle, 
which that of the circle, and which that of the square. Such is 
not the case with the undisputed negations. We never confound 
silence as a negation with darkness; and there is no danger of our 
callino- silence the neo-ation of liii;ht, or darkness the negation of 
sound. Every negation, to be a negation, must have an import 
which relates it to its proper affirmation. Such is triangularity 
as tiie negation of a triangle ; and, without that, a triangle would 
have no negation. 

Then the general idea, triangle, is a negation ; and, of course, 
what is true of triangle is true of all general ideas ; they are nega- 
tions. 

The sum of the three ang'cs of a triangle is equal to two right 
angles. This is a propooitiou to be demonstrated. I draw a tri- 
angle, and prove that the three angles of that particular triangle 
are equal to two right angles. I draw another, and sh.ow that the 
same is true of that also; and I may draw an infinite number of 



378 The Journal of Sj^ecxilative Philosophy. 

particular triangles of clifFerent sizes and of different relations of 
sides and anoles, and of eacii one I may prove the truth ot the 
given proposition ; but, as I can never exhaust the infinitude of 
possible triangles, all differing from each other, I may continue 
upi)lying my demonstration to particular triangles forever without 
reaching that universality which must be reached before the mathe- 
matical demonstration is completed. Now, theparticulardemonstra- 
tion is made universal by transferring it to the only thing which 
is, or can be, universal — namsly, the negation of the particular tri- 
angle. This last step in the demonstration is regarded as so easy 
and simple that it is usually omitted from all demonstrations, it 
being eitlier taken for granted or stated o?]ce for all. If expressed, 
however, it would be something like this : " We have now shown 
that in this triangle the sum of the three angles is equal to two 
right angles ; but that is nothing peculiar or characteristic of the 
triangle before us, and it is therefore true of all triangles." Kow, 
■while the geometrician makes this last step in the process as easily 
and as surely as he would say that the whole is greater than a 
part, yet the explanation of the ease and surety of the step, and of 
the apodictic certainty and universality of the conclusion, can 
only be given when we have solved that puzzling question of the 
centuries, "What are general ideas?" That exolanation is this: 
when the proposiiion is proved to be true in the particular trian- 
gle used, that triangle is negated, and the proposition abides with 
the negation — the triangularity. Now, the negation of all trian- 
gles is the same one thing — triangularity; and hence all proposi- 
tions tliat are true of it, or, we should say, that abide in it, are 
universally true. 

From what has been said, it is evident that the universality of 
all geometrical propositions is dependent upon negations. It is, 
moreover, hardly necessary to remind the reader of the fact that 
the absolute certainty, even of particular geometrical demonstra- 
tions, is also dependent upon negations; for, without the nega- 
tions, j^.oint and line, with which all geometrical figures and 
diagrams are theoretically constructed, there could be no absolute 
certainty in any particular demonstration. 

Tt:e whole science of arithmetic rests upon that element of 
tliouo;ht of which the word one and the figure 1 are our signs. 
When I say of any particular object that it is one house, one tree^ 



A New Theory of General Ideas. 37^ 

one pound, one dollar, it is, of course, not the lionse, the tree, the 
pound, or the dollar that is one, any more than a triano;le is trian- 
gle. One, like trianp::le, is something which cannot be seen or 
felt, or in any way perceived or conceived. The negation of any 
and every particular object, considered as a single ol>J8ct, leaves,, 
as a residue in consciousness, simply the nuni3rical value of the 
single object, or, in other words, leaves the negation, one. The 
arithmetical one, therefore, being a negation, has that monistia 
simplicity and invariableness whi(;h characterize all negations as 
compared with the endless variety and changoablcness of affirma- 
tions. All ones, then (if we may use the plural), are absolutely, 
necessarily, and universally equal ; or, more correctly (since there 
can be but one one as a negation), the negation, one, is absolutely, 
necessarily, and universally equal to itself, or identical with itself- 

Now, the whole of arithmetic proceeds from this negation, one ^ 
and without it there could be no arithmetic as a mathematical 
science. The import of 07ie being determined, and its symbol 
agreed upon, the next step in arithmetic is the deMning and sym- 
bolizing the other numbers — thus: 1-|-1 = 2; 1-|-1-|-1 = 3, 
and so on. Then come the propositions, which may be stated 
either in the form of prol)lems, as, for instance, " to find the value 
of 3-|-2"; or of theorems, as, for instance, " 3 -(- 2 = 5," the 
demonstration of which is as follows: 2>-\- ^ ^=Z-\-l-\-l\ but 
3 + 1 = 4 by definition, therefore 3 + l+l=4-|-l;but4+l = 5 
by definition, therefore 3 -|- 2 = 5. 

Similarly the whole science of algebra rests upon a negation 
with its several symbols, a?, y, s, etc. 

Tiierefore, the certaintv and universalitv of all mathematical 
propositions rest upon negations. 

It is said that "notions without perceptions are void, and per- 
ceptions without notions are blind." Such metaphorical forms of 
expres.-ion are excusable when, as heretofore in this case, the sub- 
ject treated of has not been reduced to a principle that can be 
clearly and distinctly formulated in scientific language. In such 
cases, the best that can be done in di-cussing the subject, is ta 
illustrate it, and talk at it, and around it, and about it, and thus- 
give as clear an understanding of it as can be done in the absence 
of a knowledge of the principle to which it may be reduced. If^ 
instead of the above illustrative, figurative form of expression, we 



380 The Journal of Speculative Philosoplvj . 

substitute the followiiuq^ law, tliere is certainly an immense c;ain 
ill clearness and precision of thought and huii^uage. Perceptions 
and notions determine each other. From tiiis it ibllov/s that the 
one without the other is indeterminate, and, because indetermi- 
nate, non-perceivable and inconceivable. Now, if we reduce this 
law of the subject to some general principle or pi-inciplts, the 
whole matter is then put into scientitic form. That general prin- 
ciple is the }n-ir.ciple of Affirmation and Negation, namely : Af- 
firmations and Negations determine each other ^ and this is 
brought under tlie still more general principle that Consciousness 
and Unconsciousness determine each other. 

Now, is our law true ? Is it true that perceptions and notions 
(general ideas) determine each other? We have endeavored to 
show that general ideas are negations, and, as such, are indetermi- 
nate. AVe shall now endeavor to show that perceptions, consid- 
ered by themselves, are also indeterminate ; and that these two 
indeterminates determine each other. Should we succeed in show- 
ing that general ideas (notions) and perceptions do thus conform 
to the law of Affirmation and Negation, it will be confirmatory 
evidence of the truth of our tlieory that general ideas are Nega- 
tions. 

Something lies before me in the field of my vision — but that is 
already saving too much ; for, in saying that something Yisslxfore 
me, or in the field of my vision, I have already defined or deter- 
mined, partially at least, that which in its real nature is, as we 
shall see, indelinite and indeterminate. If 1 have already recog- 
nized that it is hefore me, or in the field of my vision, I have al- 
ready taken the initiatory steps toward making it a thing perceived 
and to that extent determined, and hence an object, instead of 
that element of an ol)ject which we wish to get at — that chaos of 
unrelated sensations which, as ssnsations, are wholly subjective, 
and therefore have no hefore or behind to th.era, and are never in 
afield of vision. With this check upon our thoughts, we will 
chansie cur illustration. 

You and I are looking in the same direction. You see upon 
the blackboard a right-angled isosceles triangle, six inches long, two 
of its sides being drawn with white chalk, and the third one with 
red. I, liaving as good eyesight as yourself, and looking in pre- 
cisely the same direction, do not perceive that triangle at all. 



A New Theory of General Ideas. 381 

With my eyes turned toward the blackhoard, I sit gazins; thought- 
lessly into vacancy, and the colors, lights, and sliades from that 
triangle, pouring continuo^^ly into my eye, fall upon the retina, 
and cause a great variety of sensations or impressions. I am just 
conscious enougli, or unconscious enough, to realize a dim blur of 
impressions made by the ditfc^rcnt colors, lights, and shades ; but 
it would be saying too much to say that I am conscious of the 
colors, lights, and shades as differing from eai^h other, or as at all 
related to each other into lines or forms ; in short, I have simply 
a great number of unrelated sensations, or of detached units of 
consciousness. That triangle is so plain to you ; yet whatever of 
it lies upon m}' consciousness is but an indolinite, indeterminate 
something, non-perceivable, and hence inconceivable, until I add 
to it that which is not an essential part ot its constitution. I can- 
not perceive it without making it a unit; but to make it a unit is 
to put its parts into relation with each oth.er, whereas the very 
essence of its present natiu'e to me is the non-relation of its parts; 
and so it must continue to be to me until I put into it, or find in it, 
or conjoin with it, another element which shall define and deter- 
mine it, and thus make it perceivable and conceivable. That other 
element is triangularity — that negation Mdiich, as we liave already 
seen, is also indeterminate, non-perceivable, ard inconceivable. 
The general idea, then, conforms to the law of affirmation and ne- 
gation, and thus gives us an additional assurance that it is itself 
a negation. 

It Avill, perhaps, be said that my negation is simply an ab- 
straction, and that I have, therefore, merely given a new name to 
an old thing. There is, however, something more than a mere 
name involved in this matter. All real abstractions are abstrac- 
tions of particulars, that is, of determinate things — an abstraction 
of an indeterminate thing such as a general idea, in the first in- 
stance, being an iraposiibility. An abstraction presuppofcs that 
we alreadv have in hand the thins; to be abstracted. Then to 
abstract a general idea we must already have the general idea 
before the mind ; in other words, the mind must already be in 
possession of the very thing that it is trying to attain — must use 
the end as a 'means to attain the end. This is an impossilulity. 
The general idea, therefore, before it can be abstracted, must be 
attained by some other process besides that of abstraction. Now? 



382 The Joiirnal of Speculative Philosoph]). 

the only other process possible is that of negation — the rejecting 
of the particular determinate things until nothing more can be 
rejecteii, leaving the general idea, the negation, as the only i"e- 
siduum in consciousness. 

An ultimate is that which has not proceeded from anything 
el.^e — that which has no genesis. Things arc ])rocedures from 
ultimates. Science is the ascertained relations of thing-. Phi- 
losophy is the ascertained relations of ultimates ; or, we may say, 
philosophy is the science of ultimates. 

Only a monistic cosmical theory can give us a genesis of things, 
and thus enable us to escape the insuperable difficulties which at- 
tend any theory of two or more ditferent cosmical ultimates which 
must be supposed to have been, in the outset, dovetailed and fitted 
into each other either by an amazing accident or by an equally 
amazing design — a pre-established harmony. And this, its eems 
to me, is a fatal objection to Kant's Time, Space, and Categories. 
If they are procedures, or, in other words, if they have a genesis, 
they are not a priori / if, on the other hand, tlicy have no genesis, 
if they have not proceeded from some common source, then they 
are different ultimates, and, as such, have no relation to each other, 
and can never b}' any possibility be brought into relation to each 
other. This is the hidden weakness of Kant — this complex sys- 
tem of implied pre-established harmonies between things which 
can only be a priori by being unrelated and unrelatable. 

If, as we have said, only a monistic cosmical theory can give us 
a genesis of things, and thus enable us to escape the insuperable 
difficulties that must attend any theory of two or more different 
cosmical uhimates, yet even a monistic theory, which takes in only 
one half of nature — the positive side — and neglects the equally 
important negative side — the realm of negations — must soon be- 
come entangled in difficulties equally insuperable. Negations 
have an equal claim with affirmations upon the attention of the 
philosopher. The moment he crosses the threshold of the great 
temple of nature, as a philosopher, while he may be dazed by that 
brilliant trail of the light, and the life, and the beauty, and the 
harmony of realities infinite, in processions and procedures inter- 
minable upon his riglit, he is appalled at the sight of those awful 
shadows upon his left — Unconsciousness, Time, Space, Cause, 
Universals — those spectral forms that will neither " down " nor 



A Pojpular Statement of Idealism. 383 

"out" — those p;hosts of realities tliat have been the terror of phi- 
losophers in all a,ges, standino; forever there, cliimb, silent, stolid 
as the sphinx, a perpetual defiance to the most royal heads that 
have ever entered the temple ; but which, when approached more 
closely, are found to be nans>;ht bnt harniless ghosts and shadows — 
mere skeleton negations of the living realities. 



A POPULAE STATEMENT OF IDEALISM. 

BY WILLIAM M. SALTER. 
II. 

In Goethe's tragedy, after Faust has pronounced his successive 
curses on ambition, mammon, hope, faith, and patience, the choras 
of spirits laments : 

" Woe ! woe ! 
Thou hast it destroyed, 
The beautiful world." 

They will not, however, give him over to despair, and turn upon 
him with divine cheer : 

*' Mightier 
For the children of men, 
Brigbtlier 
Build it again 
In thine own bosom, build it anew ! " 

It would be straining a comparison to say that we shall now 
attempt to do for the sensible world wliat Faust was summoned 
to do for the world of human aims and passions, which he had so 
rudely destroyed. For, in truth, the idealist has not destroyed the 
sensible world, nor sought to, but only the notion, so sedulously 
cherished by many, of its separateness from ourselves. And, if he 
had destroyed it, it would be quite beyond his power to build it 
aorain. For we do not create our sensations, nor can we. We do 
not think of color, and then by an act of will make it stand be- 
fore our eyes. We cannot conjure up harmonies of sound and then 



384 Tlie Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

actually Iieav them. Our sensations come, we know not how nor 
whence; our sole knowlcd2;e is that they are, in a very limited 
way, subject to our control. They come in order: but I, save 
within certain limits, do not determine that order, and cannot 
determine it; I have simply to recognize and accept it, as I do 
the sensations theuiselves. In proposing a work of reconstruc- 
tion, then, tl:e idealist has no notion of evolving the world out 
of his own thought, or inner consciousness, so called. He wishes 
simply to show that his demolition of the external world has 
been only a demolition of a wrong opinion of it, and that a real 
external world is just as truly his property as any one's; that 
the words " real" and " external " are as significant to him as to 
any one, and this without forgetting for a moment the result ot 
his first analysis, that the whole ssncible woild is nothing and 
means nothing outside of human (or other sentient) consciousness. 
Let us proceed to this task : 

In a way that we have acknowledged to be altogether mys- 
terious, we experience certain sensations. The?e sensations do 
not sngsest the notion of reality, they do not lead us to infer 
something behind them that we may call by this name; they are 
reality.' A color as such, a resistance as such, is real, jnst as 
a pain is ; tiiere is nothing to us human beings that can be more 
real ; and, in fact, our very notions of reality are not prior to, but are 
based upon, these simple and direct sensible experiences. "Where 
these sensations are to be located, how they are to be connected, 
what is their place in a final system of thouglit — these are other 
questions ; the sensations themselves are nowise problematical or 
derived, but the data and material, with the immediate and un- 
questioning acceptance of wiiich every process of reasoning must 
begin. Moreover, these sensations do not come at hap-hazard. As 
we have already said, they do not (si^ve within limits) obey our di- 
rection, either in the time and place of their arising, nor in their 
manner of succeeding one another. Though our experiences, they 



' Professor Huxley says this of odor : " To say that I am aware of this phenomenon, 
or that I have it, or that it exists, are simply different modes of affirming the same 
facts. If I am asked how I know that it exists, I can only reply that its existence and 
my knowledge of it are one and the same thing ; in short, that my knowledge is imme- 
diate or iutuitive, and, as such, possessed of the highest conceivable degree of certain- 
ty." ("Science and Culture," p. 258.) The idealist simply conceives that this is the 
manner of existence of all sensible phenomena. 



A Popular Statement of Idealism. 385 

are in another sense independent of na — that is, independent of our 
wishes or will. We have to learn of them, as truly as if they were 
alien existences havins; no kind of relation to ourselves. And we 
do soon learn that tliey are associated with or succeed one another 
in regular or fixed ways ; and hence a world, a cosmos as opposed 
to a chaos, evolves itself out of our experiences. The f^roups of 
associated sensations we call objects, the difficulty of distinguishing 
the same being simply that of discovering which out of tiie num- 
berless sensations thronging upon us are really associated. The uni- 
formities of succession among sensations or phenomena we <!all 
lawp, the exact marking of which is a still more intricate and 
difficult task. It may perhaps be unfortunate that we have no 
other word than law to designate a unifoi-mity of succession, since 
in politics and ethics (not to say religion), where the word was per- 
haps first used, it has quite a different meaning.' But if the sci- 
entific use of it is defined, as it ordinarily is by physical investiga- 
tors, there is no need of our being confused by it, though the in- 
ferences not infrequently made from the laws of nature to a law- 
giver show that this confusion often exists. 

One of these groups of sensations is our own body. It is true 
that all phenomena are our own according to the idealistic hy- 
pothesis — a stone, or a tree, or a star equally with the bndy. But 
there are reasons for calling the latter specially our own. First, 
we have a double set of sensations in connection with our body. 
When I strike my face v^ith my hand, I experience not only a 
sensation of resistance in ray hand, but also one in my face. When, 
however, I strike the stone, I have but a single sensation, viz., in 
my hand. The assertion may be ventured that if the stone, on be- 
ing struck, gave us a sensation as our own face does when struck, 
we should, though quite perplexed and mystified, feel that in- 
some way it was a pact of us. It may be questioned, indeed, 
whether our own body does not mean so much of the sensible 



' A law in politics or ethics, it hardly needs saying, prescribes what men are to do or 
ought to do ; a law in physics, and natural science generally, is simply a statement of 
actual facts. The laws of the State and of morality are frequently disobeyed ; those of 
physics can never be in the slightest degree, though one may modify the action of 
another. In fact, obedience and disobedience are misleading terms in the physical sphere 
Bodies do not fall because of the law of gravitation, but the law of gravitation is simply 
a statement of the general fact that they do fall. See a clear statement in Professor 
Huxley's "Introductory Primer," p. 13. 

XVIII— 25 



386 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

woi'l'l as ^'ields these double sensations. A second reason \b that, 
with these sensati(Mis W3 call our body, is connected our io:eneral 
power of sensation. We are not so dependent on the stone, or 
tree, or star; if any i)articular one of these were removed or de- 
stroyed, we could see and feel quite as well as before. But if 
the minor group of sensations I call my ear is removed, I no 
Ioniser hear; it my eyes are plucked out, I no longer see. Yes, 
though the external organs remain uninjured, if but those deli- 
cate fibres connecting them with the brain be destroyed or only 
severed, I no lor.ger hear or see ; and if that group of sensations 
we call the brain exists no longer, not only hearing and sight van- 
ish, but all power of thought (so far as we know) vanishes too. 
The light of a candle may be snuflfed out and the candle be lit 
again. The snutfed-out-light of human life and thought is, hu- 
manly speaking, incapable of restoration. As Othello says, in. 
the last fateful scene with the sleeping Desdemona: 

" Put out the light — and then put out thy light : 
If I quencli ihee, thou flaming minister, 
I can thy former light restore, 
Should I repent me : — but once put out thy light, 
Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, 
I know not where is that Promethean heat 
That can thy light relume." 

in this way is it possible for the idealist to do ample justice to 
those common-sense notions of the dependence of the mind upon 
the body, which he may seem to make light ot. The mind is de- 
pendent on the body in the sense that our general power of sen- 
sation and thought is connected with those sensations we call our 
body. Whv this should be so is quite mysterious. Neither 
jphysics, nor physiology, nor psychology explains it, though either 
may give us a most careful and detailed statement of the facts 
to be explained. Why my power of perceiving colors should 
be linked with the particular group of sensations I call my eye, 
I utterlv fail to under.-tand. Why it should not be equally well 
linked with some other group or with no group at all, and I thus 
be but mind with no bodily organism whatever, I cannot in any 
way see. But it is enough for the practical uses of life, and 
enou-'-h for science, that does not concern itself about ultimate 



A Pojpular Statement of Idealism. 38T 

questions, to recognize that there is this connection. And, further, 
it must he stated that we have no proof that any other connec- 
tion — not to say the ahsence of all connection — is or ever has 
been actual, so that the notion of pure mind or spirit may be, tor 
all we know, an entirely vain one, thoui^h it must be recognized 
as abstractly possible. 

It would, however, be a totally unwarranted leap to infer from 
all this that the organs of sense are anywise causally related to 
sensations, or that the bodv in general is to the mind. It would 
be, indeed, forgetting that the organs of sense, as so many groups 
of sensible phenomena themselves, only exist iu the mind, and 
that the body is simply a part of our mental experience. My body 
is not a cause, but a sign of my mental existence — a sign, that is, 
to some one else, or to myself, if I could need one. If I should 
l)ecome blind, the condition of my visual organs would not be 
properly explanatory, but ^\vc\\A^ indicatory \o another of the fnct, 
and it would be indicatory to me if I could need any proof of 
that which I already know. So death as a physical fact cannot be 
seriously called an explanation of the cessation of mental activity, 
though the two, for all we know, may be inseparably connected. 
Death as a series of sensible phenomena can only exist in some 
•one's mental apprehension ; when my own time comes, for exam- 
ple, it will bo simply a sign to some one else of the cessation of 
my mental life, and might be an equally significant sign to my. 
self if I could die and observe my dying at the same time. For, 
if no one is present or observes me, there would be no physi- 
cal death, properl}^ speaking, but simply the inexplicable fact of 
my ceasing to feel and think. And fundamentally mysterious is, 
in the same manner, man's birth, and, indeed, all the stages of his 
earthly existence. Explanation is there for none of them; the 
fancied explanations and causes of which men speak in the sphere 
of sensible phenomena are but man's own experiences, and, so far 
from their explaining man, man is necessary to explain them. 
What in turn explains man is the world-riddle. 

Nor is science anywise inconsistent with such a view. The 
results of physical science, of physiology, and even of physiologi- 
cal psychology, are the same on any theory. They all have to do 
with mental experiences, according to the idealist. He will not 
care to interpose a word, save when the physical or physiological 



3S8 The Journal of Speoidaiive Phllosophfj. 

investisjator talks of objects literally ' outside the mind, or uses such 
objects to explain the mind, or considers laws to si^^nify more than 
matter-uf-fact conMectii>ns or u^es necassity in a t^ense which Pro- 
fessor Huxlay empliatically repudiates.^ Idealism is not a question 
of any special scienc3, but relates to a <>'eneral understand in<!; of 
all tlie sciences. And, as here considered, it must not be identified 
with a priori systems of thou<j:;ht, with transcendentalism or intu- 
itionalism, as those words are frequently understood. It is nowise 
inconsistent with the view that all our knowledi^e of the sensible 
world is gained by experience, that is, with pure empiricism. In 
fact, idealism may claim to have a special affinity with the spirit 
and methods of modern science, since science, too, calk for experi- 
ence and does not concern itself about matters that iie beyond 
experience. If any object cannot actually or conceivably be 
brought within the range of sensible experience, it is as good as- 
non-existent to the sciencilic investigator. And this may be said 
without implying that the scientific investigator may not forget 
his special, and, after all, rather limited 7'dle^ and, as a human 
being, conjecture and speculate and hope and believe like the rest 
of mankind. 

Let us now consider briefly the meaning of the externality of 
the world. The externality of one's own body means very lit- 
tle, unless the thought is that one's body is not a mere idea, but a 
real group of sensations. For that our body is literally external 
to ourselves has meaning, only if " ourselves" has sorr.e position^ 
relatively to whicli the body is external. Bat, as we have seen^ 
there is no warrant for such an assertion, "ourselves" being sim- 
plv that to which the body and all sensible objects exi^t and 
have meaning. But few are concerned aSout so awkward and 
doubtful a conception as the externality of our own body, and 
that about which we are concerned — the reality of the world 
external to oar horhj — the idealist may assert as unhesitatingly 
as the most vigorous common sense. Anil this is the inter])re- 
tation he puts upon the common-sense assertions of a world out- 
side of ourselves: viz., it is outside our bjdy. The ellipsis is 
easily explicable, since our body is "ourselves" in a sense that 



' Properly the language Is perfectly allowable, as will be explained farther on. 
'•"'Lay Sermons," p. 144. 



A Pojpular Statement of Idealism. 389 

no otlier group of phenomena is, as before explained. And why 
«hould we not as immediately know a world external to the body 
as the body itself? Tlie hardness of the ground I may know just 
as immediately as that of my cranium. The color of another's eye 
I can note even more easily than that of my own. The external 
world is not to be called an inference. Such a way of speaking 
rests on misconceptinns which it ha? been the endeavor of this 
-essay to clear up. Neither common sense nor genuine philosophy 
countenances it. It is half-enlightenment. The whole sensii)le 
world, the ground as well as the human body that stands upon it, 
the air as well as the lungs, and the heavens as well as the earth — 
all is equally real and known with equal iinmediateness ; that is, 
it is real, viewed as the real experience of some sentient subject, 
and unreal, and the whole equally unreal, if regarded as a self- 
subsisting thing, apart from some sentient subject. Hence the 
renewed nscessity for asserting the purely provisional character 
of the language used in the earlier part of this essay. The exter- 
nal world is not, in any strictness, simply certain mysterious 
entities in the brain, at the other end of complicated nerve pro- 
cesses. If so pitiable a reduction were made of this vast and 
splendid spectacle about us, the idealist could hardly receive or 
merit the serious attention of his fellow-men. The world is as 
great — yes, possibly as infinite — in extent and duration to the ideal- 
ist as to any one ; for it is not merely what we experience, but 
all we can experience and all that we can conceive that we might 
experience, if there were no limits to our powers. In fact, a 
limitless experien3e would be but another name for a limitless 
world. And the so-called "mysterious entities" in the brain, it 
Lad better be acknowledged, are a fiction, Piiyfiology can get 
along well enough without them, and the true office of physiology 
is not to discover for us tlie causes of sensations, but to investigate 
a certain group of sensations — viz., those that make up what we 
•call our bodily organisms. Indeed, in the idealistic theory, all the 
sciences become, in some sense, branches o^ psychology, and it may 
be questioned whether there can be any separate science bearing 
that name. If there is to be, it must be either an account of 
each individual's own mental experiences (or world), or of general 
liuman powers of sensation and thought, as opposed to the con- 
tent or objects with which they are concerned. For the distinc- 



390 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

tion between subject ;uk1 object is valid to the idealist, as it must 
be to every one wlio thinks. 

A color is not, strictly speaking, ourselves, nor is an odor or a 
resistance. They are wliat we experience, and the fall statements 
would be, we perceive the color, and scent the odor, and feel the 
resistance. It is even possible to realize at times that the pain 
whicli we may experience is not strictly ourselves, but that under 
which we suffer, though pains and pleasures are not shapeable 
into definite objects as other sensations are. The idealist only 
insists that the object shall not be separated from the subject and 
treated as if it were a thing in itself. We are all aware of how 
the moonbeams seem to follow us as we go along a stream of 
water on a bright moonlit night. According to the idealist — • 
and here according to the ordinary teaching of the physicist as 
•well — they do follow us, and, as rays of light ha\e no existence 
apart fro:ii us, the idealist simply adding that this is true in re- 
spect to all material existence. But, for all this, the moonbeams 
are not ourselves, and sensible phenomena in general (nor the 
whole sum of them) are not ourselves, though it may be, tor all 
we know, that we can have no existence apart from them any 
more than they from us. Senfsibile is perhaps a good, if a rather 
scholastic word, for a sensation viewed on its objective side; for 
meaning, as it does, tJiat which may he perceived or felt, it imme- 
diately suggests that which perceives or feels — viz., the subject, 
which alone is seiitiens. Subject and object so taken are evi-^ 
dently not inferences from sensation, but analytical statements of 
what sensation implies. Neither is substance, or some unknow- 
able entity behind the sensation, the one being simply that which 
knows antl the other that which is known. For the sake of the 
utmost clearness, it might have been better to use the word sen- 
sihilia in this discussion wherever sensations have been conceived 
in the objective sense ; since sound, color, weight, etc., are not 
sensations in the sense of being themselves sentient or of imply- 
ing a sentient subject behind them, save in the case of those 
groups of sensations we call other human beings (or animals of the- 
lower sentient creation generally) ; more accurately speaking, they 
are the content or object of sensations. Hence, it could be said, 
as it was (in effect) earlier in this paper, that our own sensations 
never reveal to us sensations in another. Our own sensations 



A Pojpular Statement of Idealism. 391 

have for their content or object simply material qualities. The 
sensations of others are not a matter of observation, but of infer- 
ence, and exist only to our ima2;ination or thought. The diffei'ent 
meanino;s of words have in general to be intrusted to the intelli- 
gence of the reader, unless a scholastic precision of statement is 
attempted. And, moreover, the purpose of this paper has not 
been to build up a complete theory of existence, but simply to 
bring out the subjective references of phenomena, of which we are 
ordinarily unmindful. Sensihilia excellently combines both the 
objective and subjective meanings of material phenomena — ob- 
jective in that they are objects to the mind, and not the mind 
itself, subjective in that they imply the mind to which they exist. 
And yet a consequence of idealism must now be more distinctly 
considered, which may seem almost to cancel the merit of the 
reconstrucKve efforts we have been making. Reality, save in the 
transcendental sense, bein<r placed in our experience and not in 
something apart from experience, what can be said of objects 
when we do not experience them ? A rather awkward phrase has 
already been used now and then — possible sensation. It can 
hardly be defined save by showing how the idealist is led, and 
even com]>elled, to use it. An odor that we scent is real, it is 
real in our sensation of it; what, then, is it when we do not 
Bcent it? Plainly, we can only answer, a possible sensation or 
reality. And we may accustom ourselves to this view of odors, 
and, perhaps, sounds, without much difficulty, but it seems almost 
impossible to realize it in connection with colors and resistances. 
Can it be, we ask. that the grass is only green when we look at 
it, and the ground only hard when we tread upon it ? Look at 
the grass as often as we like, and turn upon it as stealthy glances 
as we can, it always has this color. But, in this very simple illus- 
tration, is it not possible that we can discover our real meaning 
in calling it always green ? How do we know it to be so, when 
we do not look at it? Snrely, we do not. But this we know, 
that, look at it as often as we like, we find it so ; it was so this 
morning, and is this afternoon, and will be, we are sure, to-morrow 
and next day, and so on, as long as the summer lasts, and we may 
run back with equal confidence in the past. How, then, can we 
better express our confidence that these sensations are so continu- 
ously possible than by saying the grass is always green, and, since 



392 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

it is so iiulependent.ly of our will, it is so quite apart from our- 
selves? This is simply popular language, by no means mislead- 
inp; or untrue. It is only when put to exact philosophical uses 
and made to mean that color is independent ol" our ssnsationa 
that the idealist cares to interpose ; and here let us renew a state- 
ment already iu substance made, that it is not his object to deny 
any of the common convictions of men so much as to show what 
they really are — that i^, how they arose and what they mean. 
"Tlie ground is always hard" means, also, that we have always 
found it so, and believe we always shall find it so, and, as we can 
easily in thought go beyond the limits of our own lives, that this 
will be the experience of men in the future, whether alter fifty or 
five hundred years. Similarly, we may go out in space and say 
that distant objects are hard, having the same confidence as to the 
moon's surface that we have as to the top brick of a neighboring 
chimney — meaning in both ca>es not that they are so irrespective 
of ourselves or any sentient being, but simply that, if we go near 
enouirh, we shall find them so. The world thus means an order 
of possible (rather than actual) sensations, stretching out in space 
and backward and forward in time.^ 

Does, then, the world, as more than the limited number of our 
actual sensations, exist only to our imagination or thought ? Yes, 
though with a decided difference from many of our imaginations 
and thoughts, which cannot be confirmed by real experience. 
The scientific imagination is no more an arbitrary thing than 
sensation. I can indeed fancy what I like, can think of trees with 
their roots in the air, of horses with ten legs, etc., but scientific 
imagination is that which limits itself, viz., to real possibilities of 
sensation, and simply presents to u:> a large and flowing picture 
of these possibilities. And imagination may present us with sen- 
sations that were possible at a time when no sentient being actu- 
ally existed, and hence never were actual sensations; for example, 
the appearance of the earth in the earliesl: geological epochs. Yes, 
the steps antecedent to the si'parate existence of the earth, passing 
along which the scientific imagination rises to the thought of an 
original fierv miiit or nebula, are but the stages of a possible ex- 



' No realistic view of space or time is here necessarily implied. Space and time may 
be simply abstractions from oar sensible experiance, so far as the necessities of ideal- 
ism are concerned. Whether they are so is a question that does not now concern us. 



A Popular Statement of Idealism. 393 

perience, which we might think of ourselves as liaving, thongli in 
fact no sentient beings, of the kind that we know, could possibly 
have existed then. And the conversion of the nebular hypothe- 
sis into an assured knowledge (if that were possible) would not be 
■due to a leap from ourselves out into "reality," so called, but to 
an ascertaining that what we before conjectured as a possible 
experience we now somehow ^«(9m? to have been a possible expe- 
rience, and the only possible one. Once with the notion of fixed- 
ness in my present possibilities of experience, I can, as I do, 
unhesitatingly extend it to all past time as well as to the most 
distant space. Idealism introduces not one particle of uncertainty 
or variabilitv into the whole realm with which science deals.^ So 
imagination may present us with the supposed waves of the ethe- 
real medium, with the molecules and atoms out of which the world 
is believed to be constructed, and with the particles of our own 
brains, which could indeed become actual sensations (to ourselves 
or any one else) only at the risk of all further power of sensation 
on our part. 

Are, then, all these objects that exist to our imagination not 
real objects? Is the brain of each one of us but a thought? and 
was the earth, antecedent to the appearance of sentient beings 
upon it, but a possibility and not a reality? An inquiry might 
indeed be made as to the final meaning of reality. But, adhering 
to the ordinary notion of it as something poss3S3ed of sensible 
qualities, there is no way of escape for the idealist ; he must give 
an affirmative answer. The brain has a gray color only when 
some one sees it, and its varied texture means nothing save in 
sonje one's experience. The earth, as a combination of sensible 
qualities and objects, began with the lirst sentient existence upon 
it. The brains of all of us living men exist only to our imagi- 
natitm, and so does the presentient globe. Flowers have no sweet- 
ness to waste on the desert air. The violets I may lind on a 
lonely ramble in the woods, and which I am sure no one saw bs- 



1 Though, of course, knowledge attaches only to ths experieace of the moment, and 
memory, like espestation, is a kind of belief, there ii a clear line of distinctiau between 
beliefs with regard to what were (or mi^ht have bean, or may become) matters of expe- 
rience and those relating to matters of which there can ba, in the present state of our 
faculties, no possible expe:ience — e. g., the whole sphere of the supersensible. The for- 
mer arc scientific, the latter speculative beliefs. 



394 The Journal of Speculatim PhUosophy. 

fore lue, did not exist as violets till I found tliem. What 2;ive3 
tliein to mel know not, though they are gifts, and imply a giver, 
as well as a receiver. I do not create them by m}^ coming upon 
them, and I could not, if I would, change them at will, turning 
them into daisies or roses. And I might have found them an hour, 
or a day, or perhaps a week before. And this continual possi- 
bility of experience I picture under the form of their actual exist- 
ence all this time. And so may I picture my own brain, or the 
earth long before man or any sentient creature appeared on it. 
These are all true pictures, for they are pictures of what we might 
have experienced ; but they are only pictures, and have no mean- 
ing ai)art from those who sketch or contemplate them. Still, if 
there is or was no actual experience, tliere is or was no reality, 
(save in the transcendental sense of that word). 

The reader, who, whether a philosopher or not, is sure that he- 
is not at least lacking in common sense, will perhaps turn from 
such a conclusion in disgust. And though the idealist is very loth 
to part company with common sense, since he conceives it his duty 
to interpret and not to contradict the common opinions of man- 
kind — and knows that he has no other instrument for his conclu- 
sions than men in general have for theirs, namely, human reason, 
and that a real contradiction would logically necessitate skepti- 
cism ; — yet, as simple matter of psychological fact, he may admit 
for himself that it is no easy thing to bear his theory always in 
mind. Idealism is not what he naturally and habitually thinks; 
it is the result of analysis and reflection, and implies an open-mind- 
edness and a patience and a determination to think that are not 
with us as a gift of nature, and are rarely used by us save to reach 
some tangible or practical goal. Philosophy may be acknowl- 
ediied to be not unlike ethics in that it holds before us not so 
much what is (in our thoughts), as what ought to be. We know in 
our moments of moral seriousness what we ought to do, yet in the 
stress and struggle of life we may often forget the moral ideal, and 
even seek to excuse and justify our conduct, whatever it l)e. So in 
an hour of philosophical reflection we may clearly see that the world 
about us, " all the choir of heaven and the furniture of the earth '^ 
(to quote from Bishop Berkeley), are but our sensations, and no 
more separate from us than our triumphs or our pains ; that the 
world is our world, and that its greatness, instead of belittling us. 



A Pojpular Stateinent of Idealism. 395 

is in one sense our own greatness ; and yet in our ordinary work-a- 
day existence forget the pliilosopliical truth, become unaware of the 
significance of our iutellectnal being, divide ourselves into mind 
and bod}', contrast tlie workl within with the world without, sen- 
sation and reality, and become hardened and stiffened in all the 
customary abstractions, Avhich, no doubt, serve a purpose, else 
they would not be made, but are, after all, but a kind of working 
armor for this earthly life, and have no fixedness or finality to the 
mind within. It is the mind that has made these abstractions^ 
and the mind can unmake them, or, what is the same, transcend 
them. It can, in times not of aberration or affectation of tran- 
scendental insights, but of simply genuine thinking, throw off the 
armor and breathe free. And philosophy is injured no more 
than ethics by allowing that we do not always heed its demands. 
It is enough that when we tliink we know it to be true, as it is 
enough that, when our moral nature rises from its sleep, we know 
that the good and the just are intrinsically binding upon us. 

And yet there is such a thing as intellectual seriousness. A 
genuine moral seriousness will not allow us to think of the good 
as simply a fair ideal which we may now and then recall only for 
the sake of a kind of aesthetic satisfaction; it makes us set our 
hearts upon tiie ideal, and turn lite into a prolonged endeavor to 
realize its requirements. So intellectual seriousness is not con- 
sistent with a recognition of truth, at one moment and the next 
forgetting it, not to say contradicting it ; an effb) t must at least 
be made to bring the truth of philosophy into our hal)itual 
thoughts. And the objection cannot be allowed to be valid, that 
idealism will do as a theory for the closet, but not for the street 
and practical life. Because a headache is a sensation, I need be- 
come no less wary in guarding against it by proper exercise and 
diet. Because a resistance is only a sensation, it is nime the less 
real, and I may be none the le=s on the lookout that I do not 
experience it too forcibly ; for there are signs which tell me of its 
approach as truly as there are symptoms of a headache. What 
difference can it make to me whether the pavement is always 
hard or not, so long as I i\\\\a,\?>Jind it so, and am sure I always 
shall ? Expectation may be so vivid and confident as to amount 
to knowledge. Are we indeed practically concerned with the 
qualities of bodies save as we believe we may experience them \ 



396 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

Why should I fear a fallino; stone more than a fallinpj feather, save 
ns T know that a very recognizable sensation will come from the 
one that will not come from the otiier? And even if this Avere 
otlierwise, the true and philosophical way to meet idealism would 
not be by exposing the practical absurdity of it, nor by finding 
fault with any of its remote general conclusions, but by turning 
back upon its premises and testing the truth of its fundamental 
assumptions. And these assumptions are, in the language of Her- 
bert Spencer," that " what we are conscious of as properties of mat- 
ter, even down to its weight and resistance, are but subjective 
affections produced by objective agencies which are unknown and 
unknowable" ("Psychology," vol. i, p. 206) — a seiitence which 
contains in brief the whole of this article. If any one of the prop- 
erties of matter is not such a "subjective affection," but a reality, 
apart from all subjective affections, idealism is overthrown, and 
the sensible world to this extent exists as truly when we do not ex- 
perience it as when we do. 

It may be well, in closing, to formally enumerate some of the 
implications and consequences of the idealistic theory: 

I. Reality is not to be opposed to sensation, but is sensation, 
actual or pos5ii)le. Truth means not the correspondence of sensa- 
tion to some reality apart from it, but of thought to sensation. 

II. Matter is not the cause of our sensations, not a metaphysi- 
cal substratum behind them, but a general name for the sensations, 
viewed on their objective side (pleasure and \)?C\w excepted). And 



> This langnaj^e may be quoted without implying that Mr. Spencer always speaks in 
consistency with it. Elsewhere (" Psychology," vol. ii, p. 484) he speaks of ideas as do- 
pending on pre-oxistcnt nervous plexuses and waves of molecular motion much in the man- 
ner of the ordinary uncritical realist. But what are these nervous plexuses and waves of 
molecular motion ? Are they not material, and as such possessed of at least the essen- 
tial properties of matter? And does not Mr. Spencer teach that the properties of mat- 
ter are " subjective aireclions " '? How, then, can these affections be treated as if they 
were independent of the subject, capable of producing effects in it? 

Professor Huxley has distinctly attempted to harmonize whatever inconsistency may 
seem to lie in his own assertions, now of idealism and now of mateiialism, and idealism 
is always with him the ultimate truth, though not so much by contradicting as by fur- 
nishing a solvent for materialism. (See his " Hume," pp. '78, 79, and " Science and Cul- 
ture," p. 280.) From Professor Huxley the present writer wishes *o acknowledge that 
he received his first lessons in idealism, though, but for some seeming incompleteness in 
the teacher's mental assimilation of the theory, the pupil would not have been led to the 
trains of reflection that are presented, at perhaps unnecessary length, in these articles. 



A Popular Statement of Idealism. 397 

force, it may be added, as science can deal with it, is not a mys- 
tical entity behind material phenomena, but material phenomena 
themselves viewed in certain relations to one another. A stone 
as such, an arm as such, a head of water, as so much weight in 
such position, are forces, actual or potential ; that is, they can 
produce (or, what is the same, be followed by) changes in the state 
of other objects.^ If we use force in another sense, we venture 
into a metaphysical region with which science is not concerned. 

III. Phenomena, which are sensations, are not to be classed, in 
philosophical strictness, as physical and mental, since all phenome- 
na as such are mental. But we may either exi3erience ]>henome- 
na or think of them ; that is, we may have sensations or thoughts, 
and the latter may be called, jipa/* eminence^ mental or psychical 
phenomena. Noumena are the unknown causes of sensations, 
necessarily posited if we regard sensations as effects in us. If 
matter is regarded as an independent I'eality, it is difficult to see 
why the term " ])henomenon " should be applied to it ; and, if it is 
ap')lied, what other than verbal reason there can be for supposing 
the existence of noumena. Matter becomes thus itself noumenal. 

lY. Object is a group of sensible qualities (or sensations), and 
law is a statemciiit of a constant relation obtaining between objects. 
Mind is not a mysterious somewhat lying back of thoughts and 
sensations, but simply that which thinks and feels ; not a substance, 
but a subject. Substance is a conception liable to lead us astray 
in other than material connections, and, if used, should at least 
be carefully defined. Substance and attribute, or subject and 
predicate, are purely logical categories, when applied to non-sen- 
tient objects {e. </., a stone is hard), though, perhaps, containing 
the harmless illusion that the qualities of objects have some such 
centre of unity as we call subject or ego in ourselves. 

V. The causative instinct does not find an answer to its ques- 
tionings in the sphere of sensible phenomena. Sensible phenome- 
na are but so many efiects, though so orderly in their connections 
that from any one we may inler, with well-nigh unlimited practi- 
cal certainty, to any otiier. Science studies these phenomena and 
their connections; and, if it speaks of cause and effect, it means 
antecedent and consequent ; if it speaks of necessary connection, 

^ For light on this point, the writer is indebted to Dr. William James, in the remark- 
able critical paper already referred to, " The Feeling of Effort." 



398 . The Journal of Speculative niV.os.opKy. 

it means no more than matter-of-fact invariability of connection. 
The cauj^ative instinct ini]>els, then, to metaphysical speculation. 
Metaphysics, in the idealistic theory, is not concerned with the 
last elements of the sensible world, but with the causes of this 
world, its elements included. Whether mL'tai>hysics can ever be 
come more than a problem remains undeternuned ; it cannot, 
however, become science — i. e.^ verified speculation — in the pres- 
ent state of human faculties. 

YI. Idealism in no wise aifects any ti'uth of science, and, for all 
that it asserts, pure empiricism may be the true philosophy. It 
simply holds that all the truths of science are truths of mental 
experience (actual or possible) ; but none of the mind's objects 
(which are its experiences) can explain the mind itself. They 
have no existence, save in their unknown causes, outside the mind, 
and hence assertions, as that mind is a function of the brain, 
are, however popularly allowable, in philosophical strictness, 
either tautology or illusion. The general significance of ideal- 
isin is simply that mind (that is, sentient existence of some sort) 
is made essential to the system of sensible things. It is no 
longer an incident, a by-play, a result of organization, compara- 
ble to the perfume of a rose or the music of a piano, but the in- 
dispensable prerequisite of anj* sensible existence. The world- 
problem is thereby simplified. It is no longer to account for mind 
and matter (in the separate sense), but for mind and its experi- 
ences. Idealism is not, however, itself any solution, being otdy a 
clear statement of what the problem is ; and, for all that idealism 
says, the problem may be insoluble. 

VII. Materialism is not to be met by direct attack any more 
than common sense, from which it is not essentially different. 
It is not so much an untrue as an approximate way of thinking. 
Its only weakness is that it does not understand the meaning 
of its own terms. The doctrine of the indestructibility of matter, 
for example, is perfectly true. But what does it mean ? To un- 
critical minds, it seems to assert a brute datum existing outside of 
us, surviving our coming and going, a kind of material deity. 
But, scientifically speaking, the indestructibility of matter m.eans 
the unchangeai)ility of the weight of its elements. Weight, how- 
ever, means pressure, and pressure is what a sentient being feels 
or might feel,'and has in consequence no meaning apart from such 



Bradley's ^^Principles of Logic.''^ 399 

a sentient being. Tlie indestructibility of matter is really a state- 
ment of the constancy of certain sensations. Materialism thus 
needs simply to be led to reflect. It does not stand to idealism as 
a rival philosophy, but is simply a naive, uncritical way of thinking, 
while idealism, if true, is philosophy — philosophy being (as I use 
it now) no mora than thought cleared of obscurity and assump- 
tion.^ The only charge against niaterialism is, that it cannot be 
finally stated save in terms of idealism ; and hence it may itself 
become idealism if it will but abandon the school-boy " cocksure- 
ness"' which is too apt to characterize it, and proceed to the not 
always welcome task of self-examination. 



BRADLEY'S "PEINCIFLES OF LOGIC" 

BY S. Vr. DYDE, 

( Continued.) 

a. Bradley states (p. 10) that " judgment proper is the act which 
refers an ideal content {recognized as such) to a reality beyond the 
act"; again (p. 2): "Not only are we unable to judge before we 
use ideas, but, strictly speaking, we cannot judge till we use them 
as ideas. We must have become aware that they are not realities, 
that they are mere ideas, signs of an existence other than them- 
selves"; and again (p. 40): " The consciousness of ohjectivity or 
necessary connection, in which the essence of judgment is some- 
times taken to lie, will be found in the end to derive its meaning 
from a reference to the real." These tiiree remarks all emphasize 
the same thou";ht. To recognize an ideal content as such is the 
affirmative way of saying to be aware that it is not a reality; 
while again, when it is said that the consciousness of objectivity 
is the essence of judgment, it is meant that judgment in its essence 
does not consist so much in the mere relation of ideal content to 



' I do not presume to give this as a definition of philosophy. 
'^ Professor Huxley. 

3 " The Principles of Logic." By F. H. Bradley, LL. D., Glasgow, Fellow of MertoH 
College, Oxford. London : Kegan Paul & Co., Paternoster Square. 



400 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

reality as in the knowledf^e that the rehation so made is an act of 
judiinient. 

In order fnlly to comprehend the above statements, we must 
discover the exact sii^niHcancc of " ideal content," the exact mean- 
ino; of '' reality," and also what is implied in the assertion that 
such reality exists independent of the act. First of all, What is 
the ideal content? In every thinp^ which we know exists we can 
distino-nish at least two sides — (1) existence, (2) content. Even in 
the most simple proposition, '-This is," for example, is already 
implied more than mere existence ; for in our saying This is, we 
have given it, whatever it is, a position in space. Also when we 
fail to discover the content of a presentation and ask, " AVhat is 
that?" there is already implied that it is, and that it is there. 
The content may be simple or it may be complex, but all that is 
has a content of some kind. A flower exists and has its peculiar 
qualities. These qualities, wliich form the content of the flower, 
can be discovered on examination. It is of a particular color, has 
a particular smell, has a certain number of petals, etc., belongs to 
such and such an oi'der of plant. But we shall examine in vain 
if we expect to discover anytliing which will nf)t come under the 
head of content. And yet some flowers stand for their own kind 
and some have attached to them a meaning. This meaning is not 
in the flower but in our heads. What is in the flower is real, 
y/hat is in our heads is ideal. Thus we have two diflerent aspects 
of everything : («) The aspect of percefition or i)resentation, which 
gives us the object as unique or individual, and ih) the aspect of 
thought, wliich gives us the object in its meaning or in its idea as 
a universal or a representative. 

We may discover the exact significance of " ideal content " in 
another way, by an attention to the diflerent senses of " idea." 
We may take, as an instance, any common perception, e. g., that 
of a horse, of a particular horse which I had once seen and known. 
When my mind is turned toward this object, in all likelihood I 
recall in imagination some particular scene in which the animal 
played a prominent part. A picture is bef(U'e me. I fancy I see 
the whole surroundings as well as the arch of his neck, the color 
of his hair, his prancing to and fro and round and round. This is 
a mental image, and it is particular. Such an image holds good 
of only one horse in the universe and of one particular occasion. 



Bradlei/s ^^ Principles of LogicP 401 

That picture will suit no other animal. Such is an idea, when 
idea means my psychical state. But now I abstract from this liv- 
ing, substantial scene all such attributes as we know are necessary 
to describe a horse. This particular horse vanishes. No position, 
no color, no special size or shape now appear. What is left is an 
idea — my idea of horse, idea now in the sense of meaninsj or logi- 
cal idea. This idea (of a horse) never finds a counterpart in the 
actual world, but is a wandering adjective, having an existence 
only in our heads. The meaning of reality will be discussed here- 
after. 

The main question now to be asked is. What is the meaning of 
the phrase in parenthesis, " recognized as such " ? Already we have 
given Bradley's own explanation. He further says (p. 10) : " The 
ideal content is recognized as such when we know that by itself 
it is not a fact but a wandering adjective." I conceive that the 
writer means, primarily, by all these phrases, that judgment im- 
plies consciousness, i. e., you cannot judge unless your mind is at 
work. It further calls attention to the truth that in judgment is 
a distinction between subject and object. If there were no such 
distinction there would be neither judgment nor idea. Only when 
we recognize that we are not the objects we see and touch are we 
able to judge. It may be that our knowledge of self is little, and 
that little of a negative character, yet it is, so far, a true knowl- 
edge of self. The child only becomes self-conscious when it dis- 
tinguishes itself from the things which surround it. Until that is 
done, the child is only one object among others. When that is 
done, the pulse of thought begins to beat and the child judges. 
But while this is true, and will be admitted by every one, yet 
Bradley has put the position so strongly that it looks suspicious. 
There seems to underlie the phrase " recognized as such " a mean- 
ing which, when expounded, will prove the opposite of true. It is 
stated that we positively cannot judge unless we explicitly recog- 
nize that the ideal content is a mere idea and is not reality ; i. e., 
we contrast sharply ideal content and reality. When that has 
been done we are in a position to judge. In Chapter II, Bradley 
states that exclamations are nearly always judgments. " Fire ! " 
"Wolf!" etc., are judgments. Kay, more, the pointing of the 
finger, the wink of the eye, are likewise judgments. But many 
who cry " Fire ! " many who wink the eye, are so far from recog- 
XYIII— 26 



402 The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 

nizing explicitly the separation of ideal content and reality that 
they could not for the life of them tell if there were such a thing 
in existence as ideal content. But it may be answered that these 
have the capacity to understand that the ideal content is not re- 
ality when the matter is set before them. The answer is, But 
there you desert your own post. It was your theory that the 
ideal content must be recognized as such, tliat one could not judge 
unless he were able to say, " I am now about to refer an ideal con- 
tent to a reality." If this were true, finally, what a comprehen- 
sion a dog must possess when he judges, " What is smells " ! But 
we may maintain, in opposition to the above, that all thinking, 
however vague, however indefinite, just so far as it is thinking, is 
also judging. The only difference between thinking and judging 
is, that judging is the expressing or stating of the thought, cloth- 
ing it in words, thinking aloud. When a child places its hand 
upon a book and cries " Book," in its broken English, it as truly 
judges as the man who says " This is Volume I. of Macaulay's 
' History of England,' " or as the philosopher who has written a 
book on ideal contents. It is only hy analysis that we come to 
discover what judgment truly is — or would Bradley say that all 
philosophers who had not a true theory of judgment were unable 
to judge at all? Further, in order to know reality, to know ideal 
content, and to know a distinction between the two, we must have 
made many judgments, inasmuch as all this is knowledge, and to 
know is to judge. So that, if we still maintain that we cannot 
judge before we recognize the ideal content as such, and reality 
as such, we would conclude that we have judged before we could 
judge, or that, inasmuch as we could not know ideal content or 
reality without judging, we were wholly unable to recognize any 
distinction between them, or, in fact, were wholly unable to know 
anything at all. In the judgment is the synthesis of ideal content 
and reality, and this is discovered only after elaborate analysis. 

Bradley, it may now be seen, has in the above failed to distin- 
guish accurately between two very different things — viz. : the ex- 
plicit and implicit presence of a logical principle. No one will 
accuse him of not seeing at all the difi*erence between these two, 
for his own words would be a sufficient answer to such an accusa- 
tion. When a street urchin cries " Fire ! " he has judged, and it 
is just as true a judgment in one sense, Bradley would admit, as if 



Bradley's '■'■Princijples of Logio^ 403 

uttered by a logician who was aware of what was implied in the 
interjection. Yet, if this were taken without qualification, the 
reason for the insertion of the phrase "recognized as such" would 
have disappeared. He would think that, while the exclamation of 
the street urchin was, equally with that of the logician, a judgment, 
yet something radical was wanting in the former that was sup- 
plied in the latter. All that is absent in the one and present in 
the other is the consciousness of the logical significance of the 
phrase. This would seem to indicate that it would be possible for 
the consciousness of the logical significance to be so far wanting 
that the words would cease to be a judgment. 

The difficulty may be put in another form. There is before us 
an elementary judgment. He who has judged, it may be, was 
ignorant that it was a judgment. The logician takes this judg- 
ment, and, analyzing, finds an ideal content, and a reality, and a 
referring to the reality of the ideal content. He is apt, therefore, 
to consider the judgment enriched by that process, and to think 
that, because the full meaning of the assertion was not before 
understood, the assertion itself has undergone a change. It is 
tempting to transfer the process of an analysis (which must from 
its very nature be a conscious one) to the assertion analyzed, and 
then to maintain that after the analysis something is to be found 
in the assertion that was not there before the analysis. It is the 
cropping up of the insidious belief that our thinking is one with 
universal thought. If it were true that our analyzing absolutely 
added to the idea, the conclusion would be forced upon us that, 
could we go back sufficiently far, we should come upon the 
foundation on which our process was primarily built, and that 
this foundation could not possibly be analyzed, and was, there- 
fore, unknowable. Of course, Bradley nowhere states that such 
a conclusion is held by him ; but this is manifestly the tendency 
of the theory. 

h. The next point to be considered is the division of the Singu- 
lar Judgments into (1) Analytic Judgments of Sense in which the 
given is alone analyzed. (2) Synthetic Judgments of Sense which 
transcend the given. (3) Those which have to do with a reality 
which is never an event in time (p. 48). It will be necessary, first 
of all, to understand what Bradley means by these terms. 

1. Analytic Judgments of Sense. As judgment is the reference 



404 The'' Journal of Speculative PMlosoph]i. 

of ail ideal content to reality, then wherever that reference is 
found, if this theory adequately describes judgment, tliere is also 
judgment. In the first class of analytic judgments the reference 
is not expressly stated, but is yet certainly there. The subject, 
here unexpressed, may be {a) the whole sensible reality, or (?») a 
portion of it only. An example of («) is " Wolf." Now, what 
have we in the assertion " Wolf" ? Every one will admit that its 
meaning is that present to sight, or it may be to hearing, is the ani- 
mal in question. Therefore we may say that we qualif}' the sensi- 
ble present, the external, visible prospect by the adjective " wolf." 
Some have objected that, as single words are often interjections, 
no judgment is implied in them. We can only answer that, as 
single words can all be resolved into their meaning — and not only 
can be, but as a matter of fact are, for the very reason that they 
must be possessed of a meaning — they must also contain a judg- 
ment. An example of (5) is found when bending over a couch we 
should say of its occupant, " Asleep." In that case we do not refer 
to the bed or couch, or the covering, although all these may be 
present, but only to the person — ^. 6., to a portion only of the sen- 
sible reality. In the second class of analytic judgments a subject 
is expressed. The ideal content is referred to the reality through 
an idea. The ideal content may be referred {a) to the whole or 
(5) to a part of what appears. Examples of {a) are : " Now is the 
time" and "The present is dark " ; and of (5) : " This is a bird " 
and " Here is a fish." 

The analytic judgment has for its logical subject the external 
present, or a portion of the external present expressed or under- 
stood. The " external present " has no reference, when we say 
" external," to a reality beyond consciousness, nor any reference, 
when we say "present," to something which is not in time. "Exter- 
nal present" takes its real significance from a reference to the spa- 
tial and temporal position of the speaker, and means that which is 
visibly or tangibly before me while 1 am in such and such a place 
or time, or such and such a condition. When the place, time, or 
condition in which I am is changed, the external present changes 
with it. " The present is dark," e. g., is only true while I am in a 
dark place. "Now is the time" is only true of the particular 
time in which I am. And, again, though I exclaim " Miserable" 
as I look upon a picture of squalor and wretchedness, that is only 



Bradley'' 8 '■^Principles of Lo(jicP 4U5 

true for me wliile I am above that state mjself, or am in my pres- 
ent condition. 

A synthetic judgment, on the other hand, makes an assertion 
about something that we do not perceive, touch, etc. — i. e., about 
something which does appear in our space and time, as was hinted 
at above. Our space and time is not fixed and invariable. It 
may be an hour, it may be a day ; that altogether depends upon 
the character of the judgment. But whatever the space, how 
large or how small, and whatever the time, how long or how short, 
so long as it is not our space and time, it is not analytic. E. g.^ 
the judgment, " The cow which is now being milked by the milk- 
maid is standing to the right of the hawthorn-tree yonder," would 
be analytic though the cow, milkmaid, and tree were half a mile 
off — or, indeed, so long as we could behold the operation of milk- 
ing — while on the other hand the judgment, " There is a garden 
on the other side of the wall," would be still synthetic though I 
could touch the wall with my finger ; and so with the others. 
This is the main distinction. The distinction of Analytic and 
Synthetic will not hold true on examination if the words really 
mean analytic and synthetic. Bradley says : " In ' John is asleep ' 
the ultimate subject cannot be real as it is now given, for ' John ' 
implies a continuous existence, not got by mere analysis." We 
might with equal truth say the same of the subject of any judg- 
ment. Nothing is got by mere analysis at all. With the analysis 
there must be also synthesis. So that every judgment is both 
analytic and synthetic. Consequently, as has already been stated, 
the main distinction must be that the analytic judgment has to 
do with my space, my time, my condition — as I now am — which 
" now " may be longer or shorter, as the case may be, while the 
synthetic judgment has to do with what is not 7ny space, my 
time, iny condition — as I now am — but with what might be or has 
been my space, my time, or my condition under other circum- 
stances. 

It now devolves upon us to discover the reasons Bradley has for 
drawing the above distinctions between Analytic and Synthetic 
Judgments. In the first place, it cannot be that the former refers 
the ideal content to the sensible present and the latter to an idea, 
for Bradley has himself said that synthetic judgments likewise 
refer to the external present, but in this case through an idea. 



40(5 The Jour'nal of Speculative Philosophy. 

But, again, it cannot be that the latter refers indirectly to the 
external present while the former refers to it directly. No doubt, 
when I cry *' Wolf ! " I surely qualify the present by the adjective 
" wolf." Yet when I use the cry, if I have eyesight, I will not 
gaze up into the clouds, or on the ground at my feet, but will at 
least look toward the animal, if not point eagerly in its direction. 
Now that fact, though unexpressed, is surely present in the excla- 
mation " Wolf ! " If so, what results ? This, at least : that the 
present to which the adjective is referred is not a vague, unde- 
fined present like a desert waste. We are, in fact, referring to a 
particular portion of it. No judgment, not even the most ele- 
mentary, refers any ideal content to a sensible present, if we mean 
by " sensible present " a present that cannot be further defined. 
In every judgment is implied particularity as to time and space. 
Accordingly, as particularity with regard to time and space involves 
many references, the sensible present has already many references 
implicit in it, and is therefore, to all intents and purposes, an idea. 
We have already shown that when we cry " Wolf ! " we do not 
mean "in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the 
waters under the earth," but a wolf right there. That is implied 
by some gesture or other which is properly embraced within the 
meaning of the judgment. The gesture stands for words. We 
can see, too, that when we cry " Wolf! " we mean the wolf that I 
now see, or it may be now hear. We have, then, reference to a 
particular time. All this is fairly and legitimately implied in the 
expression. Therefore, it follows that what seems a " visible exter- 
nal present " is much more than what it seems — and is in reality 
a complicated idea. 

It seems evident, then, that the difierence between Analytic and 
Synthetic Judgments does not consist in the one's referring to a 
sensation and the other to an idea, for both refer to the external 
present. Nor was it, again, in one's referring directly and the 
other indirectly to the external present, since both refer indirectly, 
for, even in the case where no grammatical subject is expressed, 
one is implied, which is not adequately described as a part of the 
external present, but is only understood when seen to be an idea. 
The only valid distinction seems to be with regard to the degree 
of expressed or implied complexity. The Analytic Judgment is 
satisfied with the space included within tiie range of vision and 



Bradley's ''^Principles of Logics 407 

with the present time ; the Synthetic Judgment deals with a space 
not now within our range of vision and a time not now present. 
This is certainly a distinction. But it is hard to discover why 
that distinction should make judgments of higher and lower grades. 
There is no faculty called into play by the Synthetic Judgment 
that has not been previously called into play by the Analytic. To 
connect a space not seen with the space seen is no doubt a synthe- 
sis. But to know the space seen equally requires synthesis. It 
is the same with time. To connect to-day with yesterday is a 
work of synthesis. But there is a synthesis necessary in order to 
know the smallest moment of time. An atom