order to derive the subject from it, is the system which starts from the
subject and tries to derive the object from it. The first of these has
been of frequent and common occurrence throughout the history of
philosophy, but of the second we find only one example, and that a very
recent one; the “philosophy of appearance” of J. G. Fichte. In this
respect, therefore, it must be considered; little real worth or inner
meaning as the doctrine itself had. It was indeed for the most part merely
a delusion, but it was delivered with an air of the deepest earnestness,
with sustained loftiness of tone and zealous ardour, and was defended with
eloquent polemic against weak opponents, so that it was able to present a
brilliant exterior and seemed to be something. But the genuine earnestness
which keeps truth always steadfastly before it as its goal, and is
unaffected by any external influences, was entirely wanting to Fichte, as
it is to all philosophers who, like him, concern themselves with questions
of the day. In his case, indeed, it could not have been otherwise. A man
becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he
seeks to free himself. This is Plato’s θαυμαξειν, which he calls a μαλα
φιλοσοφικον παθος. But what distinguishes the false philosopher from the
true is this: the perplexity of the latter arises from the contemplation
of the world itself, while that of the former results from some book, some
system of philosophy which is before him. Now Fichte belongs to the class
of the false philosophers. He was made a philosopher by Kant’s doctrine of
the thing-in-itself, and if it had not been for this he would probably
have pursued entirely different ends, with far better results, for he
certainly possessed remarkable rhetorical talent. If he had only
penetrated somewhat deeply into the meaning of the book that made him a
philosopher, “The Critique of Pure Reason,” he would have understood that
its principal teaching about mind is this. The principle of sufficient
reason is not, as all scholastic philosophy maintains, a _veritas
aeterna_—that is to say, it does not possess an unconditioned validity
before, outside of, and above the world. It is relative and conditioned,
and valid only in the sphere of phenomena, and thus it may appear as the
necessary nexus of space and time, or as the law of causality, or as the
law of the ground of knowledge. The inner nature of the world, the
thing-in-itself can never be found by the guidance of this principle, for
all that it leads to will be found to be dependent and relative and merely
phenomenal, not the thing-in-itself. Further, it does not concern the
subject, but is only the form of objects, which are therefore not
things-in-themselves. The subject must exist along with the object, and
the object along with the subject, so that it is impossible that subject
and object can stand to each other in a relation of reason and consequent.
But Fichte did not take up the smallest fragment of all this. All that
interested him about the matter was that the system started from the
subject. Now Kant had chosen this procedure in order to show the fallacy
of the prevalent systems, which started from the object, and through which
the object had come, to be regarded as a thing-in-itself. Fichte, however,
took this departure from the subject for the really important matter, and
like all imitators, he imagined that in going further than Kant he was
surpassing him. Thus he repeated the fallacy with regard to the subject,
which all the previous dogmatism had perpetrated with regard to the
object, and which had been the occasion of Kant’s “Critique”. Fichte then
made no material change, and the fundamental fallacy, the assumption of a
relation of reason and consequent between object and subject, remained
after him as it was before him. The principle of sufficient reason
possessed as before an unconditioned validity, and the only difference was
that the thing-in-itself was now placed in the subject instead of, as
formerly, in the object. The entire relativity of both subject and object,
which proves that the thing-in-itself, or the inner nature of the world,
is not to be sought in them at all, but outside of them, and outside
everything else that exists merely relatively, still remained unknown.
Just as if Kant had never existed, the principle of sufficient reason is
to Fichte precisely what it was to all the schoolmen, a _veritas aeterna_.
As an eternal fate reigned over the gods of old, so these _aeternæ
veritates_, these metaphysical, mathematical and metalogical truths, and
in the case of some, the validity of the moral law also, reigned over the
God of the schoolmen. These _veritates_ alone were independent of
everything, and through their necessity both God and the world existed.
According to the principle of sufficient reason, as such a _veritas
aeterna_, the _ego_ is for Fichte the ground of the world, or of the
_non-ego_, the object, which is just its consequent, its creation. He has
therefore taken good care to avoid examining further or limiting the
principle of sufficient reason. If, however, it is thought I should
specify the form of the principle of sufficient reason under the guidance
of which Fichte derives the _non-ego_ from the _ego_, as a spider spins
its web out of itself, I find that it is the principle of sufficient
reason of existence in space: for it is only as referred to this that some
kind of meaning and sense can be attached to the laboured deductions of
the way in which the _ego_ produces and fabricates the _non-ego_ from
itself, which form the content of the most senseless, and consequently the
most wearisome book that was ever written. This philosophy of Fichte,
otherwise not worth mentioning, is interesting to us only as the tardy
expression of the converse of the old materialism. For materialism was the
most consistent system starting from the object, as this is the most
consistent system starting from the subject. Materialism overlooked the
fact that, with the simplest object, it assumed the subject also; and
Fichte overlooked the fact that with the subject (whatever he may call it)
he assumed the object also, for no subject is thinkable without an object.
Besides this he forgot that all _a priori_ deduction, indeed all
demonstration in general, must rest upon some necessity, and that all
necessity is based on the principle of sufficient reason, because to be
necessary, and to follow from given grounds are convertible
conceptions.(10) But the principle of sufficient reason is just the
universal form of the object as such. Thus it is in the object, but is not
valid before and outside of it; it first produces the object and makes it
appear in conformity with its regulative principle. We see then that the
system which starts from the subject contains the same fallacy as the
system, explained above, which starts from the object; it begins by
assuming what it proposes to deduce, the necessary correlative of its
starting-point.
The method of our own system is _toto genere_ distinct from these two
opposite misconceptions, for we start neither from the object nor from the
subject, but from the _idea_, as the first fact of consciousness. Its
first essential, fundamental form is the antithesis of subject and object.
The form of the object again is the principle of sufficient reason in its
various forms. Each of these reigns so absolutely in its own class of
ideas that, as we have seen, when the special form of the principle of
sufficient reason which governs any class of ideas is known, the nature of
the whole class is known also: for the whole class, as idea, is no more
than this form of the principle of sufficient reason itself; so that time
itself is nothing but the principle of existence in it, _i.e._,
succession; space is nothing but the principle of existence in it, _i.e._,
position; matter is nothing but causality; the concept (as will appear
immediately) is nothing but relation to a ground of knowledge. This
thorough and consistent relativity of the world as idea, both according to
its universal form (subject and object), and according to the form which
is subordinate to this (the principle of sufficient reason) warns us, as
we said before, to seek the inner nature of the world in an aspect of it
which is _quite different and quite distinct from the idea_; and in the
next book we shall find this in a fact which is just as immediate to every
living being as the idea.
But we must first consider that class of ideas which belongs to man alone.
The matter of these is the concept, and the subjective correlative is
reason, just as the subjective correlative of the ideas we have already
considered was understanding and sensibility, which are also to be
attributed to all the lower animals.(11)
§ 8. As from the direct light of the sun to the borrowed light of the
moon, we pass from the immediate idea of perception, which stands by
itself and is its own warrant, to reflection, to the abstract, discursive
concepts of the reason, which obtain their whole content from knowledge of
perception, and in relation to it. As long as we continue simply to
perceive, all is clear, firm, and certain. There are neither questions nor
doubts nor errors; we desire to go no further, can go no further; we find
rest in perceiving, and satisfaction in the present. Perception suffices
for itself, and therefore what springs purely from it, and remains true to
it, for example, a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be
discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion
but the thing itself. But with abstract knowledge, with reason, doubt and
error appear in the theoretical, care and sorrow in the practical. In the
idea of perception, illusion may at moments take the place of the real;
but in the sphere of abstract thought, error may reign for a thousand
years, impose its yoke upon whole nations, extend to the noblest impulses
of humanity, and, by the help of its slaves and its dupes, may chain and
fetter those whom it cannot deceive. It is the enemy against which the
wisest men of all times have waged unequal war, and only what they have
won from it has become the possession of mankind. Therefore it is well to
draw attention to it at once, as we already tread the ground to which its
province belongs. It has often been said that we ought to follow truth
even although no utility can be seen in it, because it may have indirect
utility which may appear when it is least expected; and I would add to
this, that we ought to be just as anxious to discover and to root out all
error even when no harm is anticipated from it, because its mischief may
be very indirect, and may suddenly appear when we do not expect it, for
all error has poison at its heart. If it is mind, if it is knowledge, that
makes man the lord of creation, there can be no such thing as harmless
error, still less venerable and holy error. And for the consolation of
those who in any way and at any time may have devoted strength and life to
the noble and hard battle against error, I cannot refrain from adding
that, so long as truth is absent, error will have free play, as owls and
bats in the night; but sooner would we expect to see the owls and the bats
drive back the sun in the eastern heavens, than that any truth which has
once been known and distinctly and fully expressed, can ever again be so
utterly vanquished and overcome that the old error shall once more reign
undisturbed over its wide kingdom. This is the power of truth; its
conquest is slow and laborious, but if once the victory be gained it can
never be wrested back again.
Besides the ideas we have as yet considered, which, according to their
construction, could be referred to time, space, and matter, if we consider
them with reference to the object, or to pure sensibility and
understanding (_i.e._, knowledge of causality), if we consider them with
reference to the subject, another faculty of knowledge has appeared in man
alone of all earthly creatures, an entirely new consciousness, which, with
very appropriate and significant exactness, is called _reflection_. For it
is in fact derived from the knowledge of perception, and is a reflected
appearance of it. But it has assumed a nature fundamentally different. The
forms of perception do not affect it, and even the principle of sufficient
reason which reigns over all objects has an entirely different aspect with
regard to it. It is just this new, more highly endowed, consciousness,
this abstract reflex of all that belongs to perception in that conception
of the reason which has nothing to do with perception, that gives to man
that thoughtfulness which distinguishes his consciousness so entirely from
that of the lower animals, and through which his whole behaviour upon
earth is so different from that of his irrational fellow-creatures. He far
surpasses them in power and also in suffering. They live in the present
alone, he lives also in the future and the past. They satisfy the needs of
the moment, he provides by the most ingenious preparations for the future,
yea for days that he shall never see. They are entirely dependent on the
impression of the moment, on the effect of the perceptible motive; he is
determined by abstract conceptions independent of the present. Therefore
he follows predetermined plans, he acts from maxims, without reference to
his surroundings or the accidental impression of the moment. Thus, for
example, he can make with composure deliberate preparations for his own
death, he can dissemble past finding out, and can carry his secret with
him to the grave; lastly, he has an actual choice between several motives;
for only in the abstract can such motives, present together in
consciousness, afford the knowledge with regard to themselves, that the
one excludes the other, and can thus measure themselves against each other
with reference to their power over the will. The motive that overcomes, in
that it decides the question at issue, is the deliberate determinant of
the will, and is a sure indication of its character. The brute, on the
other hand, is determined by the present impression; only the fear of
present compulsion can constrain its desires, until at last this fear has
become custom, and as such continues to determine it; this is called
training. The brute feels and perceives; man, in addition to this,
_thinks_ and _knows_: both _will_. The brute expresses its feelings and
dispositions by gestures and sounds; man communicates his thought to
others, or, if he wishes, he conceals it, by means of speech. Speech is
the first production, and also the necessary organ of his reason.
Therefore in Greek and Italian, speech and reason are expressed by the
same word; ὁ λογος, _il discorso_. _Vernunft_ is derived from _vernehmen_,
which is not a synonym for the verb to hear, but signifies the
consciousness of the meaning of thoughts communicated in words. It is by
the help of language alone that reason accomplishes its most important
achievements,—the united action of several individuals, the planned
co-operation of many thousands, civilisation, the state; also science, the
storing up of experience, the uniting of common properties in one concept,
the communication of truth, the spread of error, thoughts and poems,
dogmas and superstitions. The brute first knows death when it dies, but
man draws consciously nearer to it every hour that he lives; and this
makes life at times a questionable good even to him who has not recognised
this character of constant annihilation in the whole of life. Principally
on this account man has philosophies and religions, though it is uncertain
whether the qualities we admire most in his conduct, voluntary rectitude
and nobility of feeling, were ever the fruit of either of them. As results
which certainly belong only to them, and as productions of reason in this
sphere, we may refer to the marvellous and monstrous opinions of
philosophers of various schools, and the extraordinary and sometimes cruel
customs of the priests of different religions.
It is the universal opinion of all times and of all nations that these
manifold and far-reaching achievements spring from a common principle,
from that peculiar intellectual power which belongs distinctively to man
and which has been called reason, ὁ λογος, το λογιστικον, το λογιμον,
_ratio_. Besides this, no one finds any difficulty in recognising the
manifestations of this faculty, and in saying what is rational and what is
irrational, where reason appears as distinguished from the other faculties
and qualities of man, or lastly, in pointing out what, on account of the
want of reason, we must never expect even from the most sensible brute.
The philosophers of all ages may be said to be on the whole at one about
this general knowledge of reason, and they have also given prominence to
several very important manifestations of it; such as, the control of the
emotions and passions, the capacity for drawing conclusions and
formulating general principles, even such as are true prior to all
experience, and so forth. Still all their explanations of the peculiar
nature of reason are wavering, not clearly defined, discursive, without
unity and concentration; now laying stress on one manifestation, now on
another, and therefore often at variance with each other. Besides this,
many start from the opposition between reason and revelation, a
distinction which is unknown to philosophy, and which only increases
confusion. It is very remarkable that up till now no philosopher has
referred these manifold expressions of reason to one simple function which
would be recognised in them all, from which they would all be explained,
and which would therefore constitute the real inner nature of reason. It
is true that the excellent Locke in the “Essay on the Human Understanding”
(Book II., ch. xi., §§ 10 and 11), very rightly refers to general concepts
as the characteristic which distinguishes man from the brutes, and
Leibnitz quotes this with full approval in the “Nouveaux Essais sur
l’Entendement Humaine” (Book II., ch. xi., §§ 10 and 11.) But when Locke
(in Book IV., ch. xvii., §§ 2 and 3) comes to the special explanation of
reason he entirely loses sight of this simple, primary characteristic, and
he also falls into a wavering, undetermined, incomplete account of mangled
and derivative manifestations of it. Leibnitz also, in the corresponding
part of his work, behaves in a similar manner, only with more confusion
and indistinctness. In the Appendix, I have fully considered how Kant
confused and falsified the conception of the nature of reason. But whoever
will take the trouble to go through in this reference the mass of
philosophical writing which has appeared since Kant, will find out, that
just as the faults of princes must be expiated by whole nations, the
errors of great minds extend their influence over whole generations, and
even over centuries; they grow and propagate themselves, and finally
degenerate into monstrosities. All this arises from the fact that, as
Berkeley says, “Few men think; yet all will have opinions.”
The understanding has only one function—immediate knowledge of the
relation of cause and effect. Yet the perception of the real world, and
all common sense, sagacity, and inventiveness, however multifarious their
applications may be, are quite clearly seen to be nothing more than
manifestations of that one function. So also the reason has one function;
and from it all the manifestations of reason we have mentioned, which
distinguish the life of man from that of the brutes, may easily be
explained. The application or the non-application of this function is all
that is meant by what men have everywhere and always called rational and
irrational.(12)
§ 9. Concepts form a distinct class of ideas, existing only in the mind of
man, and entirely different from the ideas of perception which we have
considered up till now. We can therefore never attain to a sensuous and,
properly speaking, evident knowledge of their nature, but only to a
knowledge which is abstract and discursive. It would, therefore, be absurd
to demand that they should be verified in experience, if by experience is
meant the real external world, which consists of ideas of perception, or
that they should be brought before the eyes or the imagination like
objects of perception. They can only be thought, not perceived, and only
the effects which men accomplish through them are properly objects of
experience. Such effects are language, preconceived and planned action and
science, and all that results from these. Speech, as an object of outer
experience, is obviously nothing more than a very complete telegraph,
which communicates arbitrary signs with the greatest rapidity and the
finest distinctions of difference. But what do these signs mean? How are
they interpreted? When some one speaks, do we at once translate his words
into pictures of the fancy, which instantaneously flash upon us, arrange
and link themselves together, and assume form and colour according to the
words that are poured forth, and their grammatical inflections? What a
tumult there would be in our brains while we listened to a speech, or to
the reading of a book? But what actually happens is not this at all. The
meaning of a speech is, as a rule, immediately grasped, accurately and
distinctly taken in, without the imagination being brought into play. It
is reason which speaks to reason, keeping within its own province. It
communicates and receives abstract conceptions, ideas that cannot be
presented in perceptions, which are framed once for all, and are
relatively few in number, but which yet encompass, contain, and represent
all the innumerable objects of the actual world. This itself is sufficient
to prove that the lower animals can never learn to speak or comprehend,
although they have the organs of speech and ideas of perception in common
with us. But because words represent this perfectly distinct class of
ideas, whose subjective correlative is reason, they are without sense and
meaning for the brutes. Thus language, like every other manifestation
which we ascribe to reason, and like everything which distinguishes man
from the brutes, is to be explained from this as its one simple
source—conceptions, abstract ideas which cannot be presented in
perception, but are general, and have no individual existence in space and
time. Only in single cases do we pass from the conception to the
perception, do we construct images as _representatives of concepts_ in
perception, to which, however, they are never adequate. These cases are
fully discussed in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 28,
and therefore I shall not repeat my explanation here. It may be compared,
however, with what is said by Hume in the twelfth of his “Philosophical
Essays,” p. 244, and by Herder in the “Metacritik,” pt. i. p. 274 (an
otherwise worthless book). The Platonic idea, the possibility of which
depends upon the union of imagination and reason, is the principal subject
of the third book of this work.