Those who have made their way through the German systems of idealism,
from Kant to Hegel--destined in a future age to form one of the most
curious chapters in the history, or romance, of philosophy--have
probably, for the most part, come to the conclusion of their task, with
the profound impression of the futility of the study of metaphysics,
which, full of labour, is yet fruitless as idleness. _L'art de s'egarer
avec methode_--such it has been wittily defined, and such our Teutonic
neighbours have been resolved to demonstrate it. Yet, this is not
altogether the impression, we think, which such a course of study ought
to produce: a better lesson may be drawn from it. There is, after all, a
right as well as a wrong method of philosophising. The one leads, it may
be, but to a few modest results, of no very brilliant or original
character, yet of sterling value and importance. The other may conduct
to startling paradox, to applauded subtleties, to bold and novel
speculations, but baseless, transient, treacherous. It evidently
requires something more than intellectual keenness; it requires the
virtue of forbearance, and a temperate spirit, to adhere to sober
rectitude of thought, and eschew the temptations that a daring and
self-willed philosophy displays. Such is the lesson which these "follies
of the wise" ought to inculcate. They should lead us to intrench
ourselves more securely than ever within the sound rules for the
investigation of truth.
Philosophise men will--men must. Even the darkest paths, and the most
labyrinthine of metaphysics, must be perpetually trodden. In vain is it
proclaimed that they lead back only to the point of ignorance from which
they started; in vain is it demonstrated that certain problems are
indemonstrable. If the same race of men lived for ever upon the earth,
such inextricable problems might at length be set at rest. But each new
generation finds them as fresh and attractive as if they had never been
touched, never probed and tortured by fruitless examination; to each
generation they appear in all the unabated charms of mystery; to each
generation must their solution at least be shown to be unattainable. In
vain you write over the portal _Lasciate ogni speranza_! there is always
a band of _youth_ newly arrived before the gates, who will rush in.
It is futile, therefore, to think of discarding metaphysics; if a good
system is not adopted, its contrary will speedily prevail. "A good
physician," says Paul Richter, "saves us--from a bad one--if from
nothing else." And a rational method of philosophising has, at all
events, the same negative merit. Good sense, cries one, is sufficient
for all the purposes of life, and even for all the useful walks of
literature. The remark might be pertinent enough if you could secure a
man in the quiet, uninterrupted possession of his plain good sense. But
he who has not studied philosophy in his youth, will probably plunge
into it, without study, in his old age. There is no guarantee against
the infection of speculative thought. Some question suddenly interests
the man of hitherto quiescent temper--invades his tranquillity--prompts
him to penetrate below the surface of the matter--to analyse its
intricacies--to sound its depths. Meanwhile, untutored, undisciplined
for such labours, he speedily involves himself in inextricable
difficulties--grasps at some plausibility that had been a thousand times
before seized on and relinquished--tilts valiantly at his men of
straw--thrice slays the dead--and in short, strong-limbed as he is, and
with all his full-grown thews and sinews, plays upon this new arena all
the vagaries of a child. It may be said of philosophy, as it has been
said of love,--it is, or it has been, or it will one day be, your
master.
We have seen reverend doctors of divinity present no very dignified
spectacle when they have suddenly bethought them of paying their
somewhat late devotions to philosophy. Accustomed to receive, as their
due, a profound respect from others, they assume with easy confidence
the cloak of the philosopher; and while they are thinking only how to
arrange its folds with classic grace, they are unconsciously winding
round their sturdy limbs what will sadly entangle their feet, and bring
them, with shame and sore contusions, to the ground. Some will parade an
ancient theory of morals, and introduce to us with all the pride of
fresh discovery what now looks "as pale and hollow as a ghost." Others
explain the beautiful; and with a charming audacity, a courage that is
quite exhilarating, propound some theoretic fancy which has the same
relation to philosophy that Quarle's Emblems bear to that pictorial art
they especially delight to descant upon. But the greater number of these
belated wanderers in the paths of philosophy, enter through the portals
of religion. How could it be otherwise? Religion and philosophy touch at
so many points--have so many problems in common--that the first moment
the good man bethinks him he will be profound, sees him plunged in all
the darkest enigmas of speculative thought, there to lose himself in we
know not what heretical delusions.
Therefore, there is no one thing on which we are more disposed to
congratulate Scotland than on her chairs of philosophy. Occupied by her
most distinguished men, and teaching a sound system of psychology, they
early train her youth to the severest and most useful discipline of
thought. They have given its tone and its strength to the intellect of
Scotland. They teach it to face all difficulties manfully, and to turn
with equal manliness from vain and presumptuous speculations, which,
under a boastful show of profundity, conceal invariably an arrant
dogmatism. We turn with hearty satisfaction from the tissue of false
subtleties which the German professor lays before his youth, to the
careful and modest analysis of mental phenomena by which a professor in
our northern universities at once enlightens and fortifies the mind.
Scotland, may well be proud of the position she has now long held in the
philosophical world. Her oscillations of error she, too, has no doubt
exhibited--a necessary condition this of vitality and progress--but
nowhere has a body of philosophers so systematically adhered to the
sound canons of reasoning and research, and that upon a subject where
there is the greatest facility and temptation to depart from them.
M. Cousin, and others who take that discursive light-tripping
philosopher for their guide, have represented the Scotch as a sort of
half Germans, and have both praised them, and praised them coldly, on
this very account, that they have travelled half-way, and only half-way,
towards the region of "high _a priori_" speculation. With M. Cousin's
permission, the Scotch come of quite another house. His praise we should
beg leave to decline: he may carry it to Alexandria, if he will. The
method of philosophising pursued in Germany is fundamentally different
from that which happily obtains in Scotland. No two schools of
philosophy could resemble each other less. For ourselves, we regard the
whole history of modern German speculation--the most remarkable
instance, in our judgment, of great mental powers ill applied which the
world has ever witnessed--as one continuous comment upon this text, the
necessity of adhering to careful, honest observation of mental
phenomena, however homely may be the results of such observation, and
the astounding conclusions to which a train of thought rigidly pursued
may conduct us, if, at its very point of departure, it has broken loose
from this the first obligation of philosophy. The whole career of German
speculation manifests a disregard of some of those fundamental
principles of human belief, which, according to M. Cousin himself, it is
the peculiar merit of the Scotch to have seized and held with tenacity.
These observations we will illustrate by a glance at the theories
propounded on the great subject of perception--on the nature of our
knowledge of the external world, this _visible and tangible_ creation.
To a plain unsophisticated man, a stranger to the subtleties of
metaphysical thought, it appears quite inconceivable, when he is told
that the existence of the visible and palpable scene before him should
be converted into a problem of apparently invincible difficulty. Yet so
it is. The metaphysician first carries off in triumph what are called
its secondary qualities, as colour and heat, proving them to be no
qualities of matter, but of mind, or the sensitive being. He next
assails what had been pronounced to be its primary or essential
qualities; the dark tangible mass that he had left behind is not
suffered to retain its inert existence; extension, the power to fill
space or resist pressure, what are these, he asks, but our own
sensations or remembered sensations of touch, which have got associated,
embodied together, agglomerated round some occult cause? What, after
all, he exclaims, do we know of matter but as a _something_ which
possesses certain influences over _us_?--a something which is utterly
unrepresented to us by the senses. And now this word "substance," which
formerly expressed a thing so well known, and every moment handled and
looked at, is transformed to an invisible, intangible, imperceptible
substratum--an unknown upholder of certain qualities, or, in more exact
language, an unseen power clothing itself in _our_ attributes--an
existence far more resembling what is popularly understood by spirit
than by matter. At length, even this unseen substratum is drawn within
the world of thought, and becomes itself mere thought. There is _no_
matter, there is no space, save what the mind creates for, and out of
itself. Our man of simple apprehension, much bewildered, not at all
convinced, breaks from the chain of sophistry, opens wide his eyes, and
declares after all that "seeing is believing."
We think so too.
On this subject of _perception_ it is well known that Reid and Stewart,
refusing to be drawn into any hypothesis or unsatisfactory analysis,
contented themselves with stating, in the preciser language of the
schools, the _fact_ as it appears to the plain unsophisticated observer.
Reid's explanations are unfortunately mingled up with his controversy
against the old hypothesis of _ideas_ or _images_ of things perceived in
the mind--an hypothesis combated by him with unnecessary vehemence--but
this detracts little from their substantive correctness or utility. This
strange notion of images emanating from the external object, entering
the mind, and being there perceived, was, after all, in its origin,
rather a physical than a metaphysical hypothesis. The ancient speculator
upon the causes of things felt, as we feel at this moment, the necessity
for some medium of communication between the eye and the distant object,
and not having detected this medium in the light which traverses or
fills the space between them, he had recourse to this clumsy invention
of _images_ or _species_ raying out from the surfaces of things. At the
time when Reid wrote, this hypothesis, in its crude form, cannot be said
to have existed; but it had left its traces in the philosophical
language of the period, and there was certainly a vague notion prevalent
that the idea of an object was a _tertium quid_, a something that was
neither the mind nor the object.
We will quote the statement which Dugald Stewart makes of Reid's
doctrine of perception. As he himself adopts the statement, it will
embrace at once the opinion of both these philosophers:--
"To what, may it be asked, does this statement (of Reid's) amount?
Merely to this, that the mind is so formed that certain impressions
produced on our organs of sense by external objects, are followed by
correspondent sensations, and that these sensations (which have no more
resemblance to the qualities of matter, than the words of a language
have to the things they denote) are followed by a perception of the
existence and qualities of the bodies by which the impressions are made;
that all the steps of this progress are equally incomprehensible; and
that for any thing we can prove to the contrary, the connexion between
the sensation and the perception, as well as that between the impression
and the sensation, may be both arbitrary; that it is therefore by no
means impossible that our sensations may be merely the occasions on
which the correspondent perceptions are excited; and that at any rate
the consideration of these sensations, which are attributes of mind,
can throw no light on the manner in which we acquire our knowledge of
the existence and qualities of body. From this view of the subject, it
follows that it is the external objects themselves, and not any species
or images of these objects (_or, we may add, any mere agglomeration of
present and remembered sensations_) that the mind perceives; and that
although, by the constitution of our nature, certain sensations are
rendered the constant antecedents of our perceptions, yet it is just as
difficult to explain how our perceptions are obtained by their means, as
it would be upon the supposition that the mind were all at once inspired
with them, without any concomitant sensations whatever."--(_Elements of
the Philosophy of the Human Mind_, Vol. i. p. 92.)
It is seen here that both Reid and Stewart considered perception as a
simple elementary fact or phenomenon of the human mind, and refused
their assent to that analysis which would resolve it into sensation,
accompanied with certain acts of memory and judgment. This last,
however, has been the most popular amongst modern psychologists, who
have many of them expressed an extreme impatience at the apparent
sluggishness of these veterans in philosophy. We remember the time when
we shared the same feeling of impatience, and thought it a most useless
encumbrance to maintain this _perception_ amongst the simple elements of
the human mind: we now think otherwise, and see reason to acquiesce in
the sound judgment, which took up the only safe, though unostentatious
position, which this embarrassing subject affords.
Dr Brown, it is well known, departed from his predecessors at this
point, and may here be considered as one of the ablest representatives
of the _sensational_ school. He expended much ingenuity in his analysis
of perception, though in our opinion with very little result. No one saw
more distinctly than he, that sensation alone could never give us the
idea of an external object, or of space, or any thing external to the
mind. No one has more satisfactorily shown that the notion of an
extended resisting body, supposed by many to be resolved into the
sensations of touch, cannot be derived from this source alone, but must
have some other origin than the pure sensation, which is a mere mental
phenomenon or state of the consciousness. But he imagined he had
overcome the difficulty by introducing to us a new sensation, the
_muscular_, that which we experience when we move our limbs. What he
could not derive from the old sense of touch, he thought himself able to
deduce from the reasonings of the mind on this muscular sensation; but
the same difficulties which he himself so lucidly set forth when
treating upon touch, will be found to pursue him here also. This
muscular sensation, like every other, is in itself a mere state of the
consciousness, begins and ends in a mere pleasure or pain. That it
terminates abruptly, and contrary to our volition, in a feeling of
resistance, (as when our arm is arrested in its motion,) is saying
nothing more than that one sensation gives place to another without our
willing it; a statement which might be made in a thousand other cases of
sensation with equal propriety. But the author shall explain his own
theory.
"The infant stretches his arm for the first time, by that volition
without a known object, which is either a mere instinct or very near
akin to one; this motion is accompanied with a certain feeling; he
repeats the volition, which moves his arm, fifty or one thousand times,
and the same progress of feeling takes place during the muscular action.
In this repeated progress he feels the truth of that intuitive
proposition, which in the whole course of the life that awaits him is to
be the source of all his expectations, and the guide of all his
actions--the simple proposition that _what has been_ as an antecedent,
will be followed by _what has been_ as a consequent. At length he
stretches out his arm _again_, and instead of the accustomed
progression, there arises, in the resistance of some object opposed to
him, a feeling of a very different kind, which, if he persevere in his
voluntary effort, increases gradually to severe pain, before he has half
completed the usual progress. There is a difference, therefore, which
we may without any absurdity suppose to astonish the little reasoner;
for the expectation of similar consequents from similar antecedents, is
observable even in his earliest actions, and is probably the result of
an original law of mind, as universal as that which renders certain
sensations of sight and sound the immediate result of certain affections
of our eye or ear. To any being who is thus impressed with belief of
similarities of sequence, a different _consequent_ necessarily implies a
difference of the _antecedent_. In the case at present supposed,
however, the infant, who as yet knows nothing but himself, is conscious
of no previous difference; and the feeling of _resistance_ seems to him,
therefore, something _unknown_, which has its _cause in something that
is not himself_."--(Vol. i. p. 514.)
There is a certain pre-arrangement here of the circumstances to suit the
convenience of explanation. The little arm of the infant being very
closely fastened to its own little body, it could hardly move it fifty
or a thousand times in succession, or even once, without its muscular
sensation terminating in the sense of resistance, or pressure, which is
but another form of the sense of touch. In short, this would be always
sooner or later the consequent upon this muscular sensation. And it
appears very evident that "the little reasoner," more especially if he
held the same doctrine as Brown on the nature of cause and effect, would
look no further than the _first_ sensation for the cause of the
_second_. There would be few instances in his limited experience more
marked of invariable antecedence and consequence than this,--that the
muscular sensation would sooner or later be followed by a tactual one.
If we could suppose it possible, that the infant logician had to make
the discovery of an external world by an effort of reasoning upon its
sensations, we should say that this case was the least likely of any to
lead him to the discovery--the least likely to impel him to look out of
the circle of sensations for a cause of them.
Mere sensation of any kind, reason on it how we will, cannot account for
the perception of external objects, which is another and separate fact.
We are reduced to admit that it is by a simple primary law of our
constitution that the organs of sense (which may with equal propriety be
called the organs of perception) convey to us a knowledge of the
external world. We touch, and a tangible extended body is made known to
us; we open our eyes, and a visible body is before us.
Dr Brown, adopting and refining upon Berkeley's theory of vision,
attributes originally nothing more than the mere sensation of colour to
the eye, which sensation, by association with that of touch, becomes
extended, so to speak, over an external surface, and defined into
limited figures. We are not disposed to lay any greater stress than Dr
Brown himself upon the _image_ said to be traced upon the retina; but we
say that the eye, as well as the touch, immediately informs us of
external surface and definite figure.
There is, it is true, a _sensation_ of colour apart from the
_perception_. This may be separated, in our reflection, from all
external surface. It is a _pleasure_ which colour gives, and which
enters largely into the complex sentiments of beauty. But our notion of
colour itself we cannot dissociate from external surface: we cannot
think of colour but as something outward. And if it comes to us
originally under the condition of external surface, it must also present
itself originally under certain forms and figures; for only where the
whole field of vision is occupied by one unvaried colour, as when the
eye is fixed upon a cloudless sky, could there be the perception of
surface without some figure, more or less defined on it.
And why is it, that on a subject of this nature the manifest facts
witnessed in the whole animal creation are to be overlooked? If other
animals evidently, on the first opening of their eyes, see form, and
movement, and the whole world before them; does not this sufficiently
intimate the instantaneous knowledge which it is the nature of vision to
bestow? The human infant arrives, indeed, more slowly at the perfect use
of its senses. It arrives, also, more slowly at the perfect use of its
limbs. But we never conclude because it does not rise and skip about the
fields like a dropped lamb, that there is any essential difference
between its muscular powers and those of other animals of creation. Why
should we suppose that its vision is regulated by different laws merely
because it obtains the perfect use of its eyesight somewhat later?
Let us now turn from the imperfect analysis which the _sensational_
school presents, to the speculations of the _idealist_. It will be seen
that the hasty conclusions of the first gave a sort of basis for the
strange results to which the second would conduct us.
Kant looked in vain for the idea of extension, or of space, where the
philosophers had been seeking it, in the phenomena of sensation. He
pronounced, therefore, that it was not derivable from experience, did
not come to us from without, through any direct communication from the
senses. Not finding this idea of space where the analytical psychologist
had been searching for it, he drew it at once from the mind itself. He
described it as a product of the _subject_ man, a _form of the
sensibility_ with which he invests his own sensations.
We must first remark, that to this description of what perception really
is, there lies the same objection that may be urged against the account
of the sensationalist. A sensation clothed in space!--is this
intelligible? is it by any means an account of the matter? To invest
sensation with space, is it not as if we spoke of a _pleasure_ that was
_square_, or of a _circular pain_?
So far, however, as this internal origin of the idea of space is
concerned, the statement of Kant, though expressed in unusual terms, is
not opposed to the general belief of mankind, or to our irresistible
convictions. It may merely convey this meaning, that the mind has an
immediate knowledge (drawn from the laws of its own cogitation) of
space, or extension. But then, according to the universal and
unalterable convictions of mankind, this idea of space, though it may be
derived from the innate resources of the mind, is in fact the knowledge
of an external reality--of an _objective_ truth. Kant decided otherwise.
He pronounced this _form of the sensibility_ to be merely and only a
mode of thought--that space had, in fact, no other existence, was solely
a _subjective_ truth.
This one decision has been the cause of, or at least has served as the
starting-point for a series of the wildest speculations that perhaps
philosophy has to record. And this decision, how arbitrary!--how
dogmatic!
It must be manifest, we think, to every intelligent person, that,
granting we cannot demonstrate the _objective truth_ of the existence of
space, it is equally impossible to prove its _subjective_ nature. We
cannot conceive of space but as existing really around us. The
metaphysician says we may be deceived. This universal and irresistible
conviction--this fundamental law of human belief, may not be
correspondent with absolute truth, may not be trustworthy. Granted that
we _may_ be deceived, that there is footing here for his _scepticism_,
he cannot proceed a step further, and show that we _are_ deceived. When,
in his turn, he would assert, or dogmatise, he at all events is as open
to our scepticism as we were to his. If a fundamental belief of this
kind is not to be trusted, so neither can it be convicted of falsehood.
We cannot launch ourselves out of our own nature; we _cannot test_ our
own faculties of cognition. This could only be done by some superior
intelligence who could survey apart the object and the percipient
subject.
We _may be_ deceived in believing that we ourselves exist--that there is
any permanent being we call ourselves--but there is no demonstrating
that we _are_ so deceived. The two cases are strictly analogous. We have
just the same proof of the existence of the external object as of the
thinking and percipient subject. The very first sensation or perception
we experience brings with it instantaneously the two correlates, object
and subject; they are made known in the same act or feeling; they are
made known the one by means of the other--for unless through the means
of the antagonist idea of object we should not have that of subject, nor
_vice versa_. In our judgment, therefore, there is as little philosophy
in denying the external existence of matter as the internal existence of
mind. The two ideas, as we have said, rise instantaneously,
synchronously, and are in such manner correlates that it is only by the
presence of the one that the other reveals itself.[6]
When Kant advanced from doubting of the _objective_ truth of our
knowledge of space, to deciding against it--to asserting that it was
purely _subjective_--he was exceeding the limits of the human faculties,
and offering a mere dogmatism which can never be brought to any test
whatever. He was asking us to judge of the trustworthiness of our
faculties of cognition--by what?--by our faculties of cognition. He was
elevating what is at best a strange suspicion, a mere _guess_, into a
doctrine.
And the whole superstructure of the systems of idealism which his German
followers have reared, rests upon this guess!
Kant left nothing of the material world but an indescribable _noumenon_,
which did not even exist in space. Of course the categories of
Aristotle, classifying as they did those relations which constitute our
knowledge of this world, were converted by him into mere forms of the
_understanding_, moulding the given products of the _sensibility_.
Certain other regulative modes of thought predominating, in their turn,
over the products of the _understanding_, he called ideas of the _pure
reason_.
His successor, Fichte, it will be seen, advanced but little further when
he pronounced for a system of _idealism_. The subjective nature of our
knowledge had been laid down; there was nothing left of the real world
but this _noumenon_ which had been ejected from the realm of space; he
acted, therefore, a consistent and charitable part, in taking this
forlorn and banished entity into the region, at least, of thought. All
the external world is now but a projection from the individual mind--the
_non-ego_ is but another development of the _ego_--the _object_ is
nothing but a sort of limitation or contrast which the subject throws
out, to make a life for itself; the web it spins in the blank
infinitude. Of the whole material world we have for ever got rid.
Here it might be supposed that speculation in this direction had reached
its extreme point; and as idealism is a system in which the mind cannot
long rest, contradicting, as it does, its ineradicable convictions, that
here would commence a philosophical revolution, and a return to a more
sober and accurate method of investigation. But the German mind has put
forth at this point an astonishing fertility. It has played with this
idealism, refined upon it, varied it, produced new phases of it;
reviving the strangest paradoxes of the Alexandrian school; and
teaching--in this, the nineteenth century--with the gravest confidence
in the world--with all the assurance of an ancient Scald chanting forth
his mythological fables, a whole system of idealistic cosmogony!
Schelling, in his idealism, in some measure reinstated the _object_; not
by reviving the vulgar notion of its reality, but declaring it to be in
its essence identical with the _subject_, and pronouncing both to have
an equally real or equally ideal existence. He thus got rid of the
embarrassment which encounters us in the ordinary systems of idealism,
of the subjective _Ego_ producing the objective _Ego_. _Thought_ and
_thing_ are identical. But this identity is to be recognised only in the
mind of God, in the absolute--which develops what in itself is unity in
the form of a duality. As if (to use a rude illustration) the same image
should be shot from the interior of a magic lantern through two
diverging tubes, making that twofold which was itself identical.
As it is hard for common apprehension to conceive this _absolute_, and
seize upon this identity of thought and thing, Schelling invented a
faculty of mind expressly for the comprehension of such profound
doctrines of philosophy. He called it _intellectual intuition_. Those
who possess it not--and it is by no means general--must be content to
live without philosophy. Nor can those on whom nature has failed to
bestow this intellectual intuition, acquire it by any study or industry
of their own. _Philosophus nascitur, non fit_.
Viewed from one aspect, Schelling's philosophy is not without a certain
charm. "Spirit is invisible nature, nature is visible spirit." In this
view of things, if mind loses its pre-eminence, nature, or the visible
world, is exalted and spiritualised. It is a system likely to fascinate
the poet and the artist, and we believe it has had a recognised
influence on the cultivation of the fine arts in Germany. It awakens our
enthusiasm for nature. More than ever is mind, is deity, seen in the
visible world. Nature is, in fact, deified, whatever other sacrifices
are made.
But if there was something for enthusiasm to lay hold of in the system
of Schelling, there was much wanting, it seems, to satisfy the rigid
demands of philosophy. _His_ cosmogony, his manner of tracing, _a
priori_, the development of all things from the absolute, was
considered, by those who understand such profundities, to be deficient
in accuracy. Hegel next trod
"with wandering feet
The dark, unbottomed, infinite abyss."
And we are told gravely, by grave expositors, how, beginning with
_nothing_, he showed, with logical precision, how every thing had
regularly proceeded from it!
In the system of Hegel, object and subject are both lost sight of:
nothing exists but the relation between them. As the thing and the
thought of it are identical, and as the essence of a thought is the
relation between two terms, it follows very logically that this relation
is all, and that nothing really exists but relations. We should have
supposed this to be a fair _reductio ad absurdum_, proving (if the
matter could need of proof) that the _thing_ and the _thought_ were not
identical. But the march of ideal philosophy was not to be so easily
arrested.
We have now reached what is distinguished as _absolute idealism_.
"They (the three idealisms) may be thus illustrated," (writes Mr Lewes
in his _History of Philosophy_.) "I see a tree. Fichte tells me that it
is I alone who exist; the tree is a modification of my mind. This is
_subjective_ idealism. Schelling tells me that both the tree and my
_ego_ are existences equally real, or ideal, but they are nothing less
than manifestations of the absolute. This is _objective_ idealism. But
Hegel tells me, that all these explanations are false. The only thing
really existing is the idea--the relation. The ego and the tree are but
two terms of the relation, and owe their reality to it. This is
_absolute_ idealism."[7]
If Martinus Scriblerus were alive, he also might be tempted to give an
illustration of these three forms of idealism.
The crowd of spectators at a fair, he might say, if they see a man
dancing upon the tight-rope, strained between two posts--have no doubt
in the world that the rope, and the man on it, are equally supported by
the same two posts, which, moreover, they presume to stand up there in
veritable substantiality before them. Were our three sages at the fair,
they would reason otherwise. Fichte would say--these people think there
are two posts! There is but one. That left-hand post is but the shadow
of the other. It is the right-hand _subjective_ post which has projected
it forth.
Schelling, gravely looking on, observes they are _both shadows_:
nay, they are identical. If you were to stand in the centre of
the rope, in the _point of indifference_ between them, and to turn
round till the intellectual intuition were sufficiently excited,
you would find the right-hand and the left-hand post blended
together--undistinguishable--you would perceive their absolute identity.
Shadows! identical! Very true, says Hegel, slowly stepping forward, but
what a mistake have both philosophers and the vulgar been making all
this time! They have presumed that these posts support the rope! It is
the rope which upholds the posts; which are indeed but its opposite
ends. You may see that, separately, each post is good for nothing; it is
the relation between them that is every thing; the rope is all. This
alone can be said to exist. Every thing about us is plainly at one end
or the other end of this, or some other rope. There runs, he would add,
a vulgar tradition that man made the rope. I will demonstrate that the
rope made the man and every thing else in the whole fair.
* * * * *
But it is not our object at present to enter further into the labyrinth
of German metaphysics; at a future time, if our readers should endure
the subject, we will endeavour to act as guide and interpreter through
some of its more curious passages; we are here concerned only with the
points of view taken of the material world. Have we not said enough to
support our thesis? to prove what strange results may be arrived at if
philosopher, following after philosopher, bases his speculations on what
is current in the school-room, instead of recurring to honest and
simple-minded observations of nature--and to show that on this subject
of _perception_ our veterans Reid and Stewart have taken up the only
safe position our present knowledge admits of?