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G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.]
TRANSCENDENTALISM
IN
NEW ENGLAND
_A HISTORY_
BY
OCTAVIUS BROOKS FROTHINGHAM
_Author of "Life of Theodore Parker," "Religion of Humanity," &c., &c._
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
182 FIFTH AVENUE
1876
COPYRIGHT,
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
1876.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CONTENTS iii
PREFACE v
I.
BEGINNINGS IN GERMANY 1
II.
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN GERMANY--KANT, JACOBI, FICHTE, etc. 14
III.
THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE--SCHLEIERMACHER, GOETHE, RICHTER, etc. 47
IV.
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN FRANCE--COUSIN, CONSTANT, JOUFFROY, etc. 60
V.
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN ENGLAND--COLERIDGE, CARLYLE, WORDSWORTH 76
VI.
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN NEW ENGLAND 105
VII.
PRACTICAL TENDENCIES 142
VIII.
RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES 185
IX.
THE SEER--EMERSON 218
X.
THE MYSTIC--ALCOTT 249
XI.
THE CRITIC--MARGARET FULLER 284
XII.
THE PREACHER--THEODORE PARKER 302
XIII.
THE MAN OF LETTERS--GEORGE RIPLEY 322
XIV.
MINOR PROPHETS 335
XV.
LITERATURE 357
PREFACE.
While we are gathering up for exhibition before other nations, the
results of a century of American life, with a purpose to show the issues
thus far of our experiment in free institutions, it is fitting that some
report should be made of the influences that have shaped the national
mind, and determined in any important degree or respect its intellectual
and moral character. A well-considered account of these influences would
be of very great value to the student of history, the statesman and
philosopher, not merely as throwing light on our own social problem, but
as illustrating the general law of human progress. This book is offered
as a modest contribution to that knowledge.
Transcendentalism, as it is called, the transcendental movement, was an
important factor in American life. Though local in activity, limited in
scope, brief in duration, engaging but a comparatively small number of
individuals, and passing over the upper regions of the mind, it left a
broad and deep trace on ideas and institutions. It affected thinkers,
swayed politicians, guided moralists, inspired philanthropists, created
reformers. The moral enthusiasm of the last generation, which broke out
with such prodigious power in the holy war against slavery; which
uttered such earnest protests against capital punishment, and the wrongs
inflicted on women; which made such passionate pleading in behalf of the
weak, the injured, the disfranchised of every race and condition; which
exalted humanity above institutions, and proclaimed the inherent worth
of man,--owed, in larger measure than is suspected, its glow and force
to the Transcendentalists. This, as a fact of history, must be admitted,
as well by those who judge the movement unfavorably, as by its friends.
In the view of history, which is concerned with causes and effects in
their large human relations, individual opinions on them are of small
moment. It was once the fashion--and still in some quarters it is the
fashion--to laugh at Transcendentalism as an incomprehensible folly, and
to call Transcendentalists visionaries. To admit that they were, would
not alter the fact that they exerted an influence on their generation.
It is usual with critics of a cold, unsympathetic, cynical cast, to
speak of Transcendentalism as a form of sentimentality, and of
Transcendentalists as sentimentalists; to decry enthusiasm, and
deprecate the mischievous effects of feeling on the discussion of social
questions. But their disapproval, however just and wholesome, does not
abolish the trace which moral enthusiasm, under whatever name these
judges may please to put upon it, has left on the social life of the
people. Whether the impression was for evil or for good, it is there,
and equally significant for warning or for commendation.
As a form of mental philosophy Transcendentalism may have had its day;
at any rate, it is no longer in the ascendant, and at present is
manifestly on the decline, being suppressed by the philosophy of
experience, which, under different names, is taking possession of the
speculative world. But neither has this consideration weight in deciding
its value as an element in progress. An unsound system requires as
accurate a description and as severe an analysis as a sound one; and no
speculative prejudice should interfere with the most candid
acknowledgment of its importance. Error is not disarmed or disenchanted
by caricature or neglect.
To those who may object that the writer has too freely indulged his own
prejudices in favor of Transcendentalism and the Transcendentalists, and
has transgressed his own rules by writing a eulogy instead of a history,
he would reply, that in his belief every system is best understood when
studied sympathetically, and is most fairly interpreted from the inside.
We can know its purposes only from its friends, and we can do justice to
its friends only when we accept their own account of their beliefs and
aims. Renan somewhere says, that in order to judge a faith one must have
confessed it and abandoned it. Such a rule supposes sincerity in the
confession and honesty in the withdrawal; but with this qualification
its reasonableness is easily admitted. If the result of such a verdict
prove more favorable than the polemic would give, and more cordial than
the critic approves, it may not be the less just for that.
The writer was once a pure Transcendentalist, a warm sympathizer with
transcendental aspirations, and an ardent admirer of transcendental
teachers. His ardor may have cooled; his faith may have been modified;
later studies and meditations may have commended to him other ideas and
methods; but he still retains enough of his former faith to enable him
to do it justice. His purpose has been to write a history; not a
critical or philosophical history, but simply a history; to present his
subject with the smallest possible admixture of discussion, either in
defence or opposition. He has, therefore, avoided the metaphysics of his
theme, by presenting cardinal ideas in the simplest statement he could
command, and omitting the details that would only cumber a narrative.
Sufficient references are given for the direction of students who may
wish to become more intimately acquainted with the transcendental
philosophy, but an exhaustive survey of the speculative field has not
been attempted. This book has but one purpose--to define the fundamental
ideas of the philosophy, to trace them to their historical and
speculative sources, and to show whither they tended. If he has done
this inadequately, it will be disclosed; he has done it honestly, and as
well as he could. In a little while it will be difficult to do it at
all; for the disciples, one by one, are falling asleep; the literary
remains are becoming few and scarce; the materials are disappearing
beneath the rapid accumulations of thought; the new order is thrusting
the old into the background; and in the course of a few years, even they
who can tell the story feelingly will have passed away. The author,
whose task was gladly accepted, though not voluntarily chosen, ventures
to hope, that if it has not been done as well as another might have done
it, it has not been done so ill that others will wish he had left it
untouched.
O. B. F.
NEW YORK, April 12, 1876.
TRANSCENDENTALISM.
I.
BEGINNINGS IN GERMANY.
To make intelligible the Transcendental Philosophy of the last
generation in New England it is not necessary to go far back into the
history of thought. Ancient idealism, whether Eastern or Western, may be
left undisturbed. Platonism and neo-Platonism may be excused from
further tortures on the witness stand. The speculations of the mystics,
Romanist or Protestant, need not be re-examined. The idealism of Gale,
More, Pordage, of Cudworth and the later Berkeley, in England, do not
immediately concern us. We need not even submit John Locke to fresh
cross-examination, or describe the effect of his writings on the
thinkers who came after him.
The Transcendental Philosophy, so-called, had a distinct origin in
Immanuel Kant, whose "Critique of Pure Reason" was published in 1781,
and opened a new epoch in metaphysical thought. By this it is not meant
that Kant started a new movement of the human mind, proposed original
problems, or projected issues never contemplated before. The questions
he discussed had been discussed from the earliest times, and with an
acumen that had searched out the nicest points of definition. In the
controversy between the Nominalists, who maintained that the terms used
to describe abstract and universal ideas were mere names, designating no
real objects and corresponding to no actually existing things, and the
Realists, who contended that such terms were not figments of language,
but described realities, solid though incorporeal, actual existences,
not to be confounded with visible and transient things, but the
essential types of such,--the scholastics of either school discussed
after their manner, with astonishing fulness and subtlety, the matters
which later metaphysicians introduced. The modern Germans revived in
substance the doctrines held by the Realists. But the scholastic method,
which was borrowed from the Greeks, lost its authority when the power of
Aristotle's name declined, and the scholastic discussions, turning, as
they signally did, on theological questions, ceased to be interesting
when the spell of theology was broken.
Between the schools of Sensationalism and Idealism, since John Locke,
the same matters were in debate. The Scotch as well as the English
metaphysicians dealt with them according to their genius and ability.
The different writers, as they succeeded one another, took up the points
that were presented in their day, exercised on them such ingenuity as
they possessed, and in good faith made their several contributions to
the general fund of thought, but neglected to sink their shafts deep
enough below the surface to strike new springs of water.
Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding was an event that made an epoch
in philosophy, because its author, not satisfied to take up questions
where his predecessors had left them, undertook an independent
examination of the Human Mind, in order to ascertain what were the
conditions of its knowledge. The ability with which this attempt was
made, the entire sincerity of it, the patient watch of the mental
operations, the sagacity that followed the trail of lurking thoughts,
surprised them in their retreats, and extracted from them the secret of
their combinations, fairly earned for him the title of "Father of Modern
Psychology." The intellectual history of the race shows very few such
examples of single-minded fidelity combined with rugged vigor and
unaffected simplicity. With what honest directness he announced his
purpose! His book grew out of a warm discussion among friends, the
fruitlessness whereof convinced him that both sides had taken a wrong
course; that before men set themselves upon inquiries into the deep
matters of philosophy "it was necessary to examine our own abilities,
and see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal
with." To do this was his purpose.
"First," he said, "I shall inquire into the original of those ideas,
notions, or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes
and is conscious to himself he has in his mind; and the ways whereby the
understanding comes to be furnished with them.
"Secondly, I shall endeavor to show what knowledge the understanding
hath by those ideas, and the certainty, evidence and extent of it.
"Thirdly, I shall make some inquiry into the nature and grounds of faith
or opinion; whereby I mean that assent which we give to any proposition
as true, of whose truth we have yet no certain knowledge; and we shall
have occasion to examine the reasons and degrees of assent."
Locke did his work well: how well is attested by the excitement it
caused in the intellectual world, the impulse it gave to speculation in
England and on the continent of Europe, the controversies over the
author's opinions, the struggle of opposing schools to secure for their
doctrines his authority, the appreciation on one side, the depreciation
on the other, the disposition of one period to exalt him as the greatest
discoverer in the philosophic realm, and the disposition of another
period to challenge his title to the name of philosopher. The "Essay" is
a small book, written in a homely, business-like style, without
affectation of depth or pretence of learning, but it is charged with
original mental force. Exhaustive it was not; exhaustive it could not
have been. The England of the seventeenth century was not favorable to
original researches in that field. The "Essay" was planned in 1670,
completed after considerable interruptions in 1687, and published in
1690. To one acquainted with the phases through which England was
passing at that period, these dates will tell of untoward influences
that might account for graver deficiencies than characterize Locke's
work. The scholastic philosophy, from which Locke broke contemptuously
away at Oxford, seems to have left no mark on his mind; but the
contemptuous revulsion, and the naked self-reliance in which the
sagacious but not generously cultivated man found refuge, probably
roughened his speculative sensibility, and made it impossible for him to
handle with perfect nicety the more delicate facts of his science. It
can hardly be claimed that Locke was endowed by nature with
philosophical genius of the highest order. While at Oxford he abandoned
philosophy, in disgust, for medicine, and distinguished himself there by
judgment and penetration. Subsequently his attention was turned to
politics, another pursuit even less congenial with introspective genius.
These may not be the reasons for the "incompleteness" which so glowing a
eulogist as Mr. George H. Lewes admits in the "Essay;" but at all
events, whatever the reasons may have been, the incompleteness was felt;
the debate over the author's meaning was an open proclamation of it; at
the close of a century it was apparent to at least one mind that Locke's
attempt must be repeated, and his work done over again more carefully.
The man who came to this conclusion and was moved to act on it was
IMMANUEL KANT, born at Koenigsberg, in Prussia, April 22d, 1724; died
there February 12th, 1804. His was a life rigorously devoted to
philosophy. He inherited from his parents a love of truth, a respect for
moral worth, and an intellectual integrity which his precursor in
England did not more than match. He was a master in the sciences, a
proficient in languages, a man cultivated in literature, a severe
student, of the German type, whose long, calm, peaceful years were spent
in meditation, lecturing and writing. He was distinguished as a
mathematician before he was heard of as a philosopher, having predicted
the existence of the planet Uranus before Herschel discovered it. He was
forty-five years old when these trained powers were brought to bear on
the study of the human mind: he was sixty-seven when the meditation was
ended. His book, the "Critique of Pure Reason," was the result of twelve
years of such thinking as his genius and training made him capable of.
In what spirit and with what hope he went about his task, appears in the
Introduction and the Prefaces to the editions of 1781 and 1787. In these
he frankly opens his mind in regard to the condition of philosophical
speculation. That condition he describes as one of saddest indifference.
The throne of Metaphysics was vacant, and its former occupant was a
wanderer, cast off by the meanest of his subjects. Locke had started a
flight of hypotheses, which had frittered his force away and made his
effort barren of definite result. Theories had been suggested and
abandoned; the straw had been thrashed till only dust remained; and
unless a new method could be hit on, the days of mental philosophy might
be considered as numbered. The physical sciences would take advantage of
the time, enter the deserted house, secure possession, and set up their
idols in the ancient shrine.
These sciences, it was admitted, command and deserve unqualified
respect. To discover the secret of their success Kant passed in review
their different systems, examined them in respect to their principles
and conditions of progress, with a purpose to know what, if any,
essential difference there might be between them and the metaphysics
which had from of old claimed to be, and had the name of being, a
science. Logic, mathematics, physics, are sciences: by virtue of what
inherent peculiarity do they claim superior right to that high
appellation? Intellectual philosophy has always been given over to
conflicting parties. Its history is a history of controversies, and of
controversies that resulted in no triumph for either side, established
no doctrine, and reclaimed no portion of truth. Material philosophy has
made steady advances from the beginning; its disputes have ended in
demonstrations, its contests have resulted in the establishment of
legitimate authority: if its progress has been slow it has been
continuous; it has never receded; and its variations from a straight
course are insignificant when surveyed from a position that commands its
whole career.
Since Aristotle, logic has, without serious impediment or check, matured
its rules and methods. Holding the same cardinal positions as in
Aristotle's time, it has simply made them stronger, the rules being but
interpretations of rational principles, the methods following precisely
the indications of the human mind, which from the nature of the case
remain always the same.
The mathematics, again, have had their periods of uncertainty and
conjecture. But since the discovery of the essential properties of the
triangle, the career has been uninterrupted. The persistent study of
constant properties, which were not natural data, but mental conceptions
formed by the elimination of variable quantities, led to results which
had not to be abandoned.
It was the same with physics. The physics of the ancients were heaps of
conjecture. The predecessors of Galileo abandoned conjecture, put
themselves face to face with Nature, observed and classified phenomena,
but possessed no method by which their labors could be made productive
of cumulative results. But after Galileo had experimented with balls of
a given weight on an inclined plane, and Torricelli had pushed upward a
weight equal to a known column of water, and Stahl had reduced metals to
lime and transformed lime back again into metal, by the addition and
subtraction of certain parts, the naturalists carried a torch that
illumined their path. They perceived that reason lays her own plans,
takes the initiative with her own principles, and must compel nature to
answer her questions, instead of obsequiously following its
leading-string. It was discovered that scattered observations, made in
obedience to no fixed plan, and associated with no necessary law, could
not be brought into systematic form. The discovery of such a law is a
necessity of reason. Reason presents herself before nature, holding in
one hand the principles which alone have power to bring into order and
harmony the phenomena of nature; in the other hand grasping the results
of experiment conducted according to those principles. Reason demands
knowledge of nature, not as a docile pupil who receives implicitly the
master's word, but as a judge who constrains witnesses to reply to
questions put to them by the court. To this attitude are due the happy
achievements in physics; reason seeking--not fancying--in nature, by
conformity with her own rules, what nature ought to teach, and what of
herself she could not learn. Thus physics became established upon the
solid basis of a science, after centuries of error and groping.
Wherefore now, asks Kant, are metaphysics so far behind logic,
mathematics, and physics? Wherefore these heaps of conjecture, these
vain attempts at solution? Wherefore these futile lives of great men,
these abortive flights of genius? The study of the mind is not an
arbitrary pursuit, suggested by vanity and conducted by caprice, to be
taken up idly and relinquished at a moment's notice. The human mind
cannot acquiesce in a judgment that condemns it to barrenness and
indifference in respect to such questions as God, the Soul, the World,
the Life to Come; it is perpetually revising and reversing the decrees
pronounced against itself. It must accept the conditions of its being.
From a review of the progress of the sciences it appeared to Kant that
their advance was owing to the elimination of the variable elements, and
the steady contemplation of the elements that are invariable and
constant, the most essential of which is the contribution made by the
human mind. The laws that are the basis of logic, of the mathematics,
and of the higher physics, and that give certitude to these sciences,
are simply the laws of the human mind itself. Strictly speaking, then,
it is in the constitution of the human mind, irrespective of outward
objects and the application of principles to them, that we must seek the
principle of certitude. Thus far in the history of philosophy the human
mind had not been fairly considered. Thinkers had concerned themselves
with the objects of knowledge, not with the mind that knows. They had
collected facts; they had constructed systems; they had traced
connections; they had drawn conclusions. Few had defined the relations
of knowledge to the human mind. Yet to do that seemed the only way to
arrive at certainty, and raise metaphysics to the established rank of
physics, mathematics, and logic.
Struck with this idea, Kant undertook to transfer contemplation from the
objects that engaged the mind to the mind itself, and thus start
philosophy on a new career. He meditated a fresh departure, and proposed
to effect in metaphysics a revolution parallel with that which
Copernicus effected in astronomy. As Copernicus, finding it impossible
to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies on the supposition of
their turning round the globe as a centre, bethought him to posit the
sun as a centre, round which the earth with other heavenly bodies
turned--so Kant, perceiving the confusion that resulted from making man
a satellite of the external world, resolved to try the effect of placing
him in the position of central sway. Whether this pretension was
justifiable or not, is not a subject of inquiry here. They may be right
who sneer at it as a fallacy; they may be right who ridicule it as a
conceit. We are historians, not critics. That Kant's position was as
has been described, admits of no question. That he built great
expectations on his method is certain. He anticipated from it the
overthrow of hypotheses which, having no legitimate title to authority,
erected themselves to the dignity of dogmas, and assumed supreme rank in
the realm of speculation. That it would be the destruction of famous
demonstrations, and would reduce renowned arguments to naught, might be
foreseen; but in the place of pretended demonstrations, he was confident
that solid ones would be established, and arguments that were merely
specious would give room to arguments that were profound. Schools might
be broken up, but the interests of the human race would be secured. At
first it might appear as if cardinal beliefs of mankind must be menaced
with extinction as the ancient supports one after another fell; but as
soon as the new foundations were disclosed it was anticipated that faith
would revive, and the great convictions would stand more securely than
ever. Whatever of truth the older systems had contained would receive
fresh and trustworthy authentication; the false would be expelled; and a
method laid down by which new discoveries in the intellectual sphere
might be confidently predicted.
In this spirit the author of the transcendental philosophy began,
continued, and finished his work.
The word "transcendental" was not new in philosophy. The Schoolmen had
used it to describe whatever could not be comprehended in or classified
under the so-called categories of Aristotle, who was the recognized
prince of the intellectual world. These categories were ten in number:
Quantity, Quality, Relation, Action, Passion, The Where, The When,
Position in Space, Possession, Substance. Four things were regarded by
the Schoolmen as transcending these mental forms--namely, Being, Truth,
Unity, Goodness. It is hardly necessary to say that the
Transcendentalism of modern times owed very little to these
distinctions, if it owed anything to them. Its origin was not from
thence; its method was so dissimilar as to seem sharply opposed.
The word "transcendental" has become domesticated in science.
Transcendental anatomy inquires into the idea, the original conception
or model on which the organic frame of animals is built, the unity of
plan discernible throughout multitudinous genera and orders.
Transcendental curves are curves that cannot be defined by algebraic
equations. Transcendental equations express relations between
transcendental qualities. Transcendental physiology treats of the laws
of development and function, which apply, not to particular kinds or
classes of organisms, but to all organisms. In the terminology of Kant
the term "transcendent" was employed to designate qualities that lie
outside of all "experience," that cannot be brought within the
recognized formularies of thought, cannot be reached either by
observation or reflection, or explained as the consequences of any
discoverable antecedents. The term "transcendental" designated the
fundamental conceptions, the universal and necessary judgments, which
transcend the sphere of experience, and at the same time impose the
conditions that make experience tributary to knowledge. The
transcendental philosophy is the philosophy that is built on these
necessary and universal principles, these primary laws of mind, which
are the ground of absolute truth. The supremacy given to these and the
authority given to the truths that result from them entitle the
philosophy to its name. "I term all cognition transcendental which
concerns itself not so much with objects, as with our mode of cognition
of objects so far as this may be possible a priori. A system of such
conceptions would be called Transcendental Philosophy."
II.
TRANSCENDENTALISM IN GERMANY.
KANT.
There is no call to discuss here the system of Kant, or even to describe
it in detail. The means of studying the system are within easy reach of
English readers.[1] Our concern is to know the method which Kant
employed, and the use he made of it, the ground he took and the
positions he held, so far as this can be indicated within reasonable
compass, and without becoming involved in the complexity of the author's
metaphysics. The Critique of Pure Reason is precisely what the title
imports--a searching analysis of the human mind; an attempt to get at
the ultimate grounds of thought, to discover the a priori principles.
"Reason is the faculty which furnishes the principles of cognition a
priori. Therefore pure reason is that which contains the principles of
knowing something, absolutely a priori. An organon of pure reason would
be a summary of these principles, according to which all pure cognition
a priori can be obtained, and really accomplished. The extended
application of such an organon would furnish a system of pure reason."
[1] See Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, London, 1838; Morell's History
of Modern Philosophy; Chalybaeus' Historical Development of Speculative
Philosophy from Kant to Hegel; Lewes' Biographical History of
Philosophy; Cousin's Lecons, OEuvres, Iere serie, vol. 5, give a clear
account of Kant's philosophy.
The problem of modern philosophy may be thus stated: _Have we or have we
not ideas that are true of necessity, and absolutely? Are there ideas
that can fairly be pronounced independent in their origin of experience,
and out of the reach of experience by their nature?_ One party contended
that all knowledge was derived from experience; that there was nothing
in the intellect that had not previously been in the senses: the
opposite party maintained that a portion, at least, of knowledge came
from the mind itself; that the intellect contained powers of its own,
and impressed its forms upon the phenomena of sense. The extreme
doctrine of the two schools was represented, on the one side by the
materialists, on the other by the mystics. Between these two extremes
various degrees of compromise were offered.
The doctrine of innate ideas, ascribed to Descartes,--though he
abandoned it as untenable in its crude form,--affirmed that certain
cardinal ideas, such as causality, infinity, substance, eternity, were
native to the mind, born in it as part of its organic constitution,
wholly independent therefore of experience. Locke claimed for the mind
merely a power of reflection by which it was able to modify and alter
the material given by the senses, thus exploding the doctrine of innate
ideas.
Leibnitz, anxious to escape the danger into which Descartes fell, of
making the outward world purely phenomenal, an expression of unalterable
thought, and also to escape the consequences of Locke's position that
all knowledge originates in the senses, suggested that the understanding
itself was independent of experience, that though it did not contain
ideas like a vessel, it was entitled to be called a power of forming
ideas, which have, as in mathematics, a character of necessary truths.
These necessary laws of the understanding, which experience had no hand
in creating, are, according to Leibnitz, the primordial conditions of
human knowledge.
Hume, taking Locke at his word, that all knowledge came from experience,
that the mind was a passive recipient of impressions, with no
independent intellectual substratum, reasoned that mind was a fiction;
and taking Berkeley at his word that the outward world had no material
existence, and no _apparent_ existence except to our perception, he
reasoned that matter was a fiction. Mind and matter both being fictions,
there could be no certain knowledge; truth was unattainable; ideas were
illusions. The opposing schools of philosophers annihilated each other,
and the result was scepticism.
Hume started Kant on his long and severe course of investigation, the
result of which was, that neither of the antagonist parties could
sustain itself: that Descartes was wrong in asserting that such abstract
ideas as causality, infinity, substance, time, space, are independent of
experience, since without experience they would not exist, and
experience takes from them form only; that Locke was wrong in asserting
that all ideas originated in experience, and were resolvable into it,
since the ideas of causality, substance, infinity and others certainly
did not so originate, and were not thus resolvable. It is idle to
dispute whether knowledge comes from one source or another--from without
through sensation, or from within through intuition; the everlasting
battle between idealism and realism, spiritualism and materialism, can
never result in victory to either side. Mind and universe, intelligence
and experience, suppose each other; neither alone is operative to
produce knowledge. Knowledge is the product of their mutual
co-operation. Mind does not originate ideas, neither does sensation
impart them. Object and subject, sterile by themselves, become fruitful
by conjunction. There are not two sources of knowledge, but one only,
and that one is produced by the union of the two apparent opposites.
Truth is the crystallization, so to speak, that results from the
combined elements.
Let us follow the initial steps of Kant's analysis. Mind and
Universe--Subject and Object--Ego and Non-ego, stand opposite one
another, front to front. Mind is conscious only of its own operations:
the subject alone considers. The first fact noted is, that the subject
is sensitive to impressions made by outward things, and is receptive of
them. Dwelling on this fact, we discover that while the impressions are
many in number and of great variety, they all, whatever their character,
fall within certain inflexible and unalterable conditions--those of
space and time--which must, therefore, be regarded as pre-established
forms of sensibility. "Time is no empirical conception which can be
deduced from experience. Time is a necessary representation which lies
at the foundation of all intuitions. Time is given a priori. In it alone
is any reality of phenomena possible. These disappear, but it cannot be
annihilated." So of space. "Space is an intuition, met with in us a
priori, antecedent to any perception of objects, a pure, not an
empirical intuition." These two forms of sensibility, inherent and
invariable, to which all experiences are subject, are primeval facts of
consciousness. Kant's argument on the point whether or no space and time
have an existence apart from the mind, is interesting, but need not
detain us.
The materials furnished by sensibility are taken up by the
understanding, which classifies, interprets, judges, compares, reduces
to unity, eliminates, converts, and thus fashions sensations into
conceptions, transmutes impressions into thoughts. Here fresh processes
of analysis are employed in classifying judgments, and determining their
conditions. All judgments, it is found, must conform to one of four
invariable conditions. I. Quantity, which may be subdivided into unity,
plurality, and totality: the one, the many, the whole. II. Quality,
which is divisible as reality, negation, and limitation: something,
nothing, and the more or less. III. Relation, which also comprises three
heads: substance and accident, cause and effect, reciprocity, or action
and reaction. IV. Modality, which embraces the possible and the
impossible, the existent and the non-existent, the necessary and the
contingent. These categories, as they were called, after the terminology
of Aristotle, were supposed to exhaust the forms of conception.
Having thus arrived at conceptions, thoughts, judgments, another faculty
comes in to classify the conceptions, link the thoughts together, reduce
the judgments to general laws, draw inferences, fix conclusions, proceed
from the particular to the general, recede from the general to the
particular, mount from the conditioned to the unconditioned, till it
arrives at ultimate principles. This faculty is reason,--the supreme
faculty, above sensibility, above understanding. Reason gives the final
generalization, the idea of a universe comprehending the infinitude of
details presented by the senses, and the worlds of knowledge shaped by
the understanding; the idea of a personality embracing the infinite
complexities of feeling, and gathering under one dominion the realms of
consciousness; the idea of a supreme unity combining in itself both the
other ideas; the absolute perfection, the infinite and eternal One,
which men describe by the word God.
Here the thinker rested. His search could be carried no further. He had,
as he believed, established the independent dominion of the mind, had
mapped out its confines, had surveyed its surface; he had confronted the
idealist with the reality of an external world; he had confronted the
sceptic with laws of mind that were independent of experience; and,
having done so much, he was satisfied, and refused to move an inch
beyond the ground he occupied. To those who applied to him for a system
of positive doctrines, or for ground on which a system of positive
doctrines could be erected, he declined to give aid. The mind, he said,
cannot go out of itself, cannot transgress its own limits. It has no
faculty by which it can perceive things _as they are_; no vision to
behold objects corresponding to its ideas; no power to bridge over the
gulf between its own consciousness and a world of realities existing
apart from it. Whether there be a spiritual universe answering to our
conception, a Being justifying reason's idea of supreme unity, a soul
that can exist in an eternal, supersensible world, are questions the
philosopher declined to discuss. The contents of his own mind were
revealed to him, no more. Kant laid the foundations, he built no
structure. He would not put one stone upon another; he declared it to be
beyond the power of man to put one stone upon another. The attempts
which his earnest disciples--Fichte, for example--made to erect a temple
on his foundation he repudiated. As the existence of an external world,
though a necessary postulate, could not be demonstrated, but only
logically affirmed; so the existence of a spiritual world of substantial
entities corresponding to our conceptions, though a necessary inference,
could only be logically affirmed, not demonstrated. Our idea of God is
no proof that God exists. That there is a God may be an irresistible
persuasion, but it can be nothing more; it cannot be knowledge. Of the
facts of consciousness, the reality of the ideas in the mind, we may be
certain; our belief in them is clear and solid; but from _belief_ in
them there is no bridge to _them_.
Kant asserted the veracity of consciousness, and demanded an absolute
acknowledgment of that veracity. The fidelity of the mind to itself was
a first principle with him. Having these ideas, of the soul, of God, of
a moral law; being certain that they neither originated in experience,
nor depended on experience for their validity; that they transcended
experience altogether--man was committed to an unswerving and
uncompromising loyalty to himself. His prime duty consisted in deference
to the integrity of his own mind. The laws of his intellectual and moral
nature were inviolable. Whether there was or was not a God; whether
there was or was not a substantial world of experience where the idea of
rectitude could be realized, the dictate of duty justified, the soul's
affirmation of good ratified by actual felicity,--rectitude was none the
less incumbent on the rational mind; the law of duty was none the less
imperative; the vision of good none the less glorious and inspiring.
Virtue had its principle in the constitution of the mind itself. Every
virtue had there its seat. There was no sweetness of purity, no heroism
of faith, that had not an abiding-place in this impregnable fortress.
Thus, while on the speculative side Kant came out a sceptic in regard to
the dogmatic beliefs of mankind, on the practical side he remained the
fast friend of intellectual truth and moral sanctity. Practical ethics
never had a more stanch supporter than Immanuel Kant. If a man cannot
pass beyond the confines of his own mind, he has, at all events, within
his own mind a temple, a citadel, a home.
The "Critique of Pure Reason" made no impression on its first
appearance. But no sooner was its significance apprehended, than a storm
of controversy betrayed the fact that even the friends of the new
teacher were less content than he was to be shut up in their own minds.
The calm, passionless, imperturbable man smoked his pipe in the peace of
meditation; eager thinkers, desirous of getting more out of the system
than its author did, were impatient at his backwardness, and made the
intellectual world ring with their calls to improve upon and complete
his task.
The publication of Kant's great work did not put an end to the wars of
philosophy. On the contrary, they raged about it more furiously than
ever. As the two schools found in Locke fresh occasion for renewing
their strife under the cover of that great name, so here again the
latent elements of discord were discovered and speedily brought to the
surface. The sceptics seized on the sceptical bearings of the new
analysis, and proceeded to build their castle from the materials it
furnished; the idealists took advantage of the positions gained by the
last champion, and pushed their lines forward in the direction of
transcendental conquest. We are not called on to follow the sceptics,
however legitimate their course, and we shall but indicate the progress
made by the idealists, giving their cardinal principles, as we have done
those of their master.
JACOBI.
The first important step in the direction of pure transcendentalism was
taken by Frederick Henry Jacobi, who was born at Duesseldorf, January 25,
1743. He was a man well educated in philosophy, with a keen interest in
the study of it, though not a philosopher by profession, or a systematic
writer on metaphysical subjects. His position was that of a civilian who
devoted the larger part of his time to the duties of a public office
under the government. His writings consist mainly of letters, treatises
on special points of metaphysical inquiry, and articles in the
philosophical journals. His official position gave repute to the
productions of his pen, and the circumstance of his being, not an
amateur precisely, but a devotee of philosophy for the love of it and
not as a professional business, imparted to his speculation the
freshness of personal feeling. His ardent temperament, averse to
scepticism, and touched with a mystical enthusiasm, rebelled against the
formal and deadly precision of the analytical method, and sought a way
out from the intellectual bleakness of the Kantean metaphysics into the
sunshine and air of a living spiritual world. The critics busied
themselves with mining and sapping the foundations of consciousness as
laid by the philosopher of Koenigsberg, who, they complained, had been
too easy in conceding the necessity of an outward world. Jacobi accepted
with gratitude the intellectual basis afforded, and proceeded to erect
thereupon his observatory for studying the heavens. Though not the
originator of the "Faith Philosophy," as it was called, he became the
finisher and the best known expositor of it. "Since the time of
Aristotle," he said, "it has been the effort of philosophical schools to
rank direct and immediate knowledge below mediate and indirect; to
subordinate the capacity for original perception to the capacity for
reflection on abstract ideas; to make intuition secondary to
understanding, the sense of essential things to definitions. Nothing is
accepted that does not admit of being proved by formal and logical
process, so that, at last, the result is looked for there, and there
only. The validity of intuition is disallowed."
Jacobi's polemics were directed therefore against the systems of
Spinoza, Leibnitz, Wolf--in a word against all systems that led to
scepticism and dogmatism; and his positive efforts were employed in
constructing a system of Faith. His key-word was "Faith," by which he
meant intuition, the power of gazing immediately on essential truth; an
intellectual faculty which he finally called Reason, by which
supersensual objects become visible, as material objects become visible
to the physical eye; an inward sense, a spiritual eye, that "gives
evidence of things not seen and substance to things hoped for;" a
faculty of vision to which truths respecting God, Providence,
Immortality, Freedom, the Moral Law, are palpably disclosed. Kant had
pronounced it impossible to prove that the transcendental idea had a
corresponding reality as objective being. Jacobi declared that no such
proof was needed; that the reality was necessarily assumed. Kant had
denied the existence of any faculty that could guarantee the existence
of either a sensual or a supersensual world. Jacobi was above all else
certain that such a faculty there was, that it was altogether
trustworthy, and that it actually furnished material for religious hope
and spiritual life: the only possible material, he went on to say; for
without this capacity of intuition, philosophy could be in his judgment
nothing but an insubstantial fabric, a castle in the air, a thing of
definitions and terminologies, a shifting body of hot and cold vapor.
This, it will be observed, seemed a legitimate consequence of Kant's
method. Kant had admitted the subjective reality of sensible
impressions, and had claimed a similar reality for our mental images of
supersensible things. He allowed the validity _as conceptions_, the
practical validity, of the ideas of God, Duty, Immortality. Jacobi
contended that having gone so far, it was lawful if not compulsory to go
farther; that the subjective reality implied an objective reality; that
the practical inference was as valid as any logical inference could be;
and that through the intuition of reason the mind was placed again in a
living universe of divine realities.
Chalybaeus says of Jacobi: "With deep penetration he traced the mystic
fountain of desire after the highest and best, to the point where it
discloses itself as an immediate feeling in consciousness; that this
presentiment was nothing more than Kant said it was--a faint mark made
by the compressing chain of logic, he would not allow; he described it
rather as the special endowment and secret treasure of the human mind,
which he that would not lose it must guard against the touch of
evil-minded curiosity; for whoever ventures into this sanctuary with the
torch of science, will fare as did the youth before the veiled image at
Sais." And again: "This point, that a self-subsisting truth must
correspond to the conscious idea, that the subject must have an object
which is personal like itself, is the ore that Jacobi was intent on
extracting from the layers of consciousness: he disclosed it only in
part, but unsatisfactory as his exposition was to the stern inquisition
of science, his purpose was so strong, his aim so single, we cannot
wonder that, in spite of the outcry and the scorn against his 'Faith or
Feeling Philosophy,' his thought survived, and even entered on a new
career in later times. It must, however, be confessed that instead of
following up his clue, speculative fashion, he laid down his undeveloped
theorem as an essential truth, above speculation, declaring that
speculation must end in absolute idealism, which was but another name
for nihilism and fatalism. Jacobi made his own private consciousness a
measure for the human mind." At the close of his chapter, Chalybaeus
quotes Hegel's verdict, expressed in these words: "Jacobi resembles a
solitary thinker, who, in his life's morning, finds an ancient riddle
hewn in the primeval rock; he believes that the riddle contains a truth,
but he tries in vain to discover it. The day long he carries it about
with him; entices weighty suggestions from it; displays it in shapes of
teaching and imagery that fascinate listeners, inspiring noblest wishes
and anticipations: but the interpretation eludes him, and at evening he
lays him down in the hope that a celestial dream or the next morning's
waking will make articulate the word he longs for and has believed in."
FICHTE.