A chapter of requests and premonitions concerning the perusal or
omission of the chapter that follows.
In the perusal of philosophical works I have been greatly benefited by
a resolve, which, in the antithetic form and with the allowed quaintness
of an adage or maxim, I have been accustomed to word thus: until you
understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his
understanding. This golden rule of mine does, I own, resemble those of
Pythagoras in its obscurity rather than in its depth. If however the
reader will permit me to be my own Hierocles, I trust, that he will
find its meaning fully explained by the following instances. I have
now before me a treatise of a religious fanatic, full of dreams and
supernatural experiences. I see clearly the writer’s grounds, and their
hollowness. I have a complete insight into the causes, which through the
medium of his body has acted on his mind; and by application of received
and ascertained laws I can satisfactorily explain to my own reason all
the strange incidents, which the writer records of himself. And this I
can do without suspecting him of any intentional falsehood. As when in
broad day-light a man tracks the steps of a traveller, who had lost his
way in a fog or by a treacherous moonshine, even so, and with the same
tranquil sense of certainty, can I follow the traces of this bewildered
visionary. I understand his ignorance.
On the other hand, I have been re-perusing with the best energies of my
mind the TIMAEUS of Plato. Whatever I comprehend, impresses me with a
reverential sense of the author’s genius; but there is a considerable
portion of the work, to which I can attach no consistent meaning.
In other treatises of the same philosopher, intended for the average
comprehensions of men, I have been delighted with the masterly good
sense, with the perspicuity of the language, and the aptness of the
inductions. I recollect likewise, that numerous passages in this author,
which I thoroughly comprehend, were formerly no less unintelligible to
me, than the passages now in question. It would, I am aware, be quite
fashionable to dismiss them at once as Platonic jargon. But this I
cannot do with satisfaction to my own mind, because I have sought in
vain for causes adequate to the solution of the assumed inconsistency.
I have no insight into the possibility of a man so eminently wise, using
words with such half-meanings to himself, as must perforce pass into no
meaning to his readers. When in addition to the motives thus suggested
by my own reason, I bring into distinct remembrance the number and the
series of great men, who, after long and zealous study of these works
had joined in honouring the name of Plato with epithets, that almost
transcend humanity, I feel, that a contemptuous verdict on my part might
argue want of modesty, but would hardly be received by the judicious, as
evidence of superior penetration. Therefore, utterly baffled in all
my attempts to understand the ignorance of Plato, I conclude myself
ignorant of his understanding.
In lieu of the various requests which the anxiety of authorship
addresses to the unknown reader, I advance but this one; that he will
either pass over the following chapter altogether, or read the whole
connectedly. The fairest part of the most beautiful body will appear
deformed and monstrous, if dissevered from its place in the organic
whole. Nay, on delicate subjects, where a seemingly trifling difference
of more or less may constitute a difference in kind, even a faithful
display of the main and supporting ideas, if yet they are separated from
the forms by which they are at once clothed and modified, may perchance
present a skeleton indeed; but a skeleton to alarm and deter. Though I
might find numerous precedents, I shall not desire the reader to strip
his mind of all prejudices, nor to keep all prior systems out of view
during his examination of the present. For in truth, such requests
appear to me not much unlike the advice given to hypochondriacal
patients in Dr. Buchan’s domestic medicine; videlicet, to preserve
themselves uniformly tranquil and in good spirits. Till I had discovered
the art of destroying the memory a parte post, without injury to its
future operations, and without detriment to the judgment, I should
suppress the request as premature; and therefore, however much I may
wish to be read with an unprejudiced mind, I do not presume to state it
as a necessary condition.
The extent of my daring is to suggest one criterion, by which it may be
rationally conjectured beforehand, whether or no a reader would lose
his time, and perhaps his temper, in the perusal of this, or any other
treatise constructed on similar principles. But it would be cruelly
misinterpreted, as implying the least disrespect either for the moral
or intellectual qualities of the individuals thereby precluded. The
criterion is this: if a man receives as fundamental facts, and therefore
of course indemonstrable and incapable of further analysis, the general
notions of matter, spirit, soul, body, action, passiveness, time, space,
cause and effect, consciousness, perception, memory and habit; if
he feels his mind completely at rest concerning all these, and is
satisfied, if only he can analyse all other notions into some one or
more of these supposed elements with plausible subordination and apt
arrangement: to such a mind I would as courteously as possible convey
the hint, that for him the chapter was not written.
Vir bonus es, doctus, prudens; ast haud tibi spiro.
For these terms do in truth include all the difficulties, which the
human mind can propose for solution. Taking them therefore in mass, and
unexamined, it required only a decent apprenticeship in logic, to draw
forth their contents in all forms and colours, as the professors of
legerdemain at our village fairs pull out ribbon after ribbon from their
mouths. And not more difficult is it to reduce them back again to their
different genera. But though this analysis is highly useful in rendering
our knowledge more distinct, it does not really add to it. It does not
increase, though it gives us a greater mastery over, the wealth which
we before possessed. For forensic purposes, for all the established
professions of society, this is sufficient. But for philosophy in its
highest sense as the science of ultimate truths, and therefore scientia
scientiarum, this mere analysis of terms is preparative only, though as
a preparative discipline indispensable.
Still less dare a favourable perusal be anticipated from the proselytes
of that compendious philosophy, which talking of mind but thinking
of brick and mortar, or other images equally abstracted from body,
contrives a theory of spirit by nicknaming matter, and in a few hours
can qualify its dullest disciples to explain the omne scibile by
reducing all things to impressions, ideas, and sensations.
But it is time to tell the truth; though it requires some courage to
avow it in an age and country, in which disquisitions on all subjects,
not privileged to adopt technical terms or scientific symbols, must be
addressed to the Public. I say then, that it is neither possible nor
necessary for all men, nor for many, to be philosophers. There is a
philosophic (and inasmuch as it is actualized by an effort of freedom,
an artificial) consciousness, which lies beneath or (as it were) behind
the spontaneous consciousness natural to all reflecting beings. As the
elder Romans distinguished their northern provinces into Cis-Alpine and
Trans-Alpine, so may we divide all the objects of human knowledge into
those on this side, and those on the other side of the spontaneous
consciousness; citra et trans conscientiam communem. The latter is
exclusively the domain of pure philosophy, which is therefore properly
entitled transcendental, in order to discriminate it at once, both from
mere reflection and representation on the one hand, and on the other
from those flights of lawless speculation which, abandoned by all
distinct consciousness, because transgressing the bounds and purposes of
our intellectual faculties, are justly condemned, as transcendent [46].
The first range of hills, that encircles the scanty vale of human life,
is the horizon for the majority of its inhabitants. On its ridges the
common sun is born and departs. From them the stars rise, and touching
them they vanish. By the many, even this range, the natural limit and
bulwark of the vale, is but imperfectly known. Its higher ascents are
too often hidden by mists and clouds from uncultivated swamps, which
few have courage or curiosity to penetrate. To the multitude below these
vapours appear, now as the dark haunts of terrific agents, on which none
may intrude with impunity; and now all aglow, with colours not their
own, they are gazed at as the splendid palaces of happiness and power.
But in all ages there have been a few, who measuring and sounding the
rivers of the vale at the feet of their furthest inaccessible falls have
learned, that the sources must be far higher and far inward; a few, who
even in the level streams have detected elements, which neither the vale
itself nor the surrounding mountains contained or could supply [47].
How and whence to these thoughts, these strong probabilities, the
ascertaining vision, the intuitive knowledge may finally supervene, can
be learnt only by the fact. I might oppose to the question the words
with which [48] Plotinus supposes Nature to answer a similar difficulty.
“Should any one interrogate her, how she works, if graciously she
vouchsafe to listen and speak, she will reply, it behoves thee not to
disquiet me with interrogatories, but to understand in silence, even as
I am silent, and work without words.”
Likewise in the fifth book of the fifth Ennead, speaking of the highest
and intuitive knowledge as distinguished from the discursive, or in the
language of Wordsworth,
“The vision and the faculty divine;”
he says: “it is not lawful to inquire from whence it sprang, as if it
were a thing subject to place and motion, for it neither approached
hither, nor again departs from hence to some other place; but it either
appears to us or it does not appear. So that we ought not to pursue it
with a view of detecting its secret source, but to watch in quiet
till it suddenly shines upon us; preparing ourselves for the blessed
spectacle as the eye waits patiently for the rising sun.” They and
they only can acquire the philosophic imagination, the sacred power of
self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the
symbol, that the wings of the air-sylph are forming within the skin
of the caterpillar; those only, who feel in their own spirits the same
instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in
its involucrum for antenna, yet to come. They know and feel, that the
potential works in them, even as the actual works on them! In short, all
the organs of sense are framed for a corresponding world of sense; and
we have it. All the organs of spirit are framed for a correspondent
world of spirit: though the latter organs are not developed in all
alike. But they exist in all, and their first appearance discloses
itself in the moral being. How else could it be, that even worldlings,
not wholly debased, will contemplate the man of simple and disinterested
goodness with contradictory feelings of pity and respect? “Poor man!
he is not made for this world.” Oh! herein they utter a prophecy of
universal fulfilment; for man must either rise or sink.
It is the essential mark of the true philosopher to rest satisfied with
no imperfect light, as long as the impossibility of attaining a fuller
knowledge has not been demonstrated. That the common consciousness
itself will furnish proofs by its own direction, that it is connected
with master-currents below the surface, I shall merely assume as
a postulate pro tempore. This having been granted, though but in
expectation of the argument, I can safely deduce from it the equal truth
of my former assertion, that philosophy cannot be intelligible to all,
even of the most learned and cultivated classes. A system, the first
principle of which it is to render the mind intuitive of the spiritual
in man (i.e. of that which lies on the other side of our natural
consciousness) must needs have a great obscurity for those, who have
never disciplined and strengthened this ulterior consciousness. It must
in truth be a land of darkness, a perfect Anti-Goshen, for men to whom
the noblest treasures of their own being are reported only through the
imperfect translation of lifeless and sightless motions. Perhaps, in
great part, through words which are but the shadows of notions; even
as the notional understanding itself is but the shadowy abstraction of
living and actual truth. On the IMMEDIATE, which dwells in every man,
and on the original intuition, or absolute affirmation of it, (which
is likewise in every man, but does not in every man rise into
consciousness) all the certainty of our knowledge depends; and this
becomes intelligible to no man by the ministry of mere words from
without. The medium, by which spirits understand each other, is not the
surrounding air; but the freedom which they possess in common, as the
common ethereal element of their being, the tremulous reciprocations
of which propagate themselves even to the inmost of the soul. Where the
spirit of a man is not filled with the consciousness of freedom (were it
only from its restlessness, as of one still struggling in bondage) all
spiritual intercourse is interrupted, not only with others, but even
with himself. No wonder then, that he remains incomprehensible to
himself as well as to others. No wonder, that, in the fearful desert of
his consciousness, he wearies himself out with empty words, to which
no friendly echo answers, either from his own heart, or the heart of a
fellow being; or bewilders himself in the pursuit of notional phantoms,
the mere refractions from unseen and distant truths through the
distorting medium of his own unenlivened and stagnant understanding!
To remain unintelligible to such a mind, exclaims Schelling on a like
occasion, is honour and a good name before God and man.
The history of philosophy (the same writer observes) contains instances
of systems, which for successive generations have remained enigmatic.
Such he deems the system of Leibnitz, whom another writer (rashly I
think, and invidiously) extols as the only philosopher, who was himself
deeply convinced of his own doctrines. As hitherto interpreted, however,
they have not produced the effect, which Leibnitz himself, in a most
instructive passage, describes as the criterion of a true philosophy;
namely, that it would at once explain and collect the fragments of truth
scattered through systems apparently the most incongruous. The truth,
says he, is diffused more widely than is commonly believed; but it
is often painted, yet oftener masked, and is sometimes mutilated and
sometimes, alas! in close alliance with mischievous errors. The deeper,
however, we penetrate into the ground of things, the more truth we
discover in the doctrines of the greater number of the philosophical
sects. The want of substantial reality in the objects of the senses,
according to the sceptics; the harmonies or numbers, the prototypes and
ideas, to which the Pythagoreans and Platonists reduced all things:
the ONE and ALL of Parmenides and Plotinus, without [49] Spinozism; the
necessary connection of things according to the Stoics, reconcilable
with the spontaneity of the other schools; the vital-philosophy of the
Cabalists and Hermetists, who assumed the universality of sensation;
the substantial forms and entelechies of Aristotle and the schoolmen,
together with the mechanical solution of all particular phaenomena
according to Democritus and the recent philosophers--all these we shall
find united in one perspective central point, which shows regularity
and a coincidence of all the parts in the very object, which from every
other point of view must appear confused and distorted. The spirit of
sectarianism has been hitherto our fault, and the cause of our failures.
We have imprisoned our own conceptions by the lines, which we have
drawn, in order to exclude the conceptions of others. J’ai trouve que
la plupart des Sectes ont raison dans une bonne partie de ce qu’elles
avancent, mais non pas tant en ce qu’elles nient.
A system, which aims to deduce the memory with all the other functions
of intelligence, must of course place its first position from beyond the
memory, and anterior to it, otherwise the principle of solution would
be itself a part of the problem to be solved. Such a position therefore
must, in the first instance be demanded, and the first question will be,
by what right is it demanded? On this account I think it expedient
to make some preliminary remarks on the introduction of Postulates
in philosophy. The word postulate is borrowed from the science
of mathematics [50]. In geometry the primary construction is not
demonstrated, but postulated. This first and most simple construction in
space is the point in motion, or the line. Whether the point is moved
in one and the same direction, or whether its direction is continually
changed, remains as yet undetermined. But if the direction of the point
have been determined, it is either by a point without it, and then there
arises the straight line which incloses no space; or the direction of
the point is not determined by a point without it, and then it must flow
back again on itself, that is, there arises a cyclical line, which does
enclose a space. If the straight line be assumed as the positive, the
cyclical is then the negation of the straight. It is a line, which at
no point strikes out into the straight, but changes its direction
continuously. But if the primary line be conceived as undetermined, and
the straight line as determined throughout, then the cyclical is the
third compounded of both. It is at once undetermined and determined;
undetermined through any point without, and determined through itself.
Geometry therefore supplies philosophy with the example of a primary
intuition, from which every science that lays claim to evidence
must take its commencement. The mathematician does not begin with a
demonstrable proposition, but with an intuition, a practical idea.
But here an important distinction presents itself. Philosophy is
employed on objects of the inner SENSE, and cannot, like geometry,
appropriate to every construction a correspondent outward intuition.
Nevertheless, philosophy, if it is to arrive at evidence, must proceed
from the most original construction, and the question then is, what is
the most original construction or first productive act for the inner
sense. The answer to this question depends on the direction which is
given to the inner sense. But in philosophy the inner sense cannot
have its direction determined by an outward object. To the original
construction of the line I can be compelled by a line drawn before me
on the slate or on sand. The stroke thus drawn is indeed not the line
itself, but only the image or picture of the line. It is not from it,
that we first learn to know the line; but, on the contrary, we
bring this stroke to the original line generated by the act of the
imagination; otherwise we could not define it as without breadth or
thickness. Still however this stroke is the sensuous image of
the original or ideal line, and an efficient mean to excite every
imagination to the intuition of it.
It is demanded then, whether there be found any means in philosophy
to determine the direction of the inner sense, as in mathematics it is
determinable by its specific image or outward picture. Now the inner
sense has its direction determined for the greater part only by an act
of freedom. One man’s consciousness extends only to the pleasant or
unpleasant sensations caused in him by external impressions; another
enlarges his inner sense to a consciousness of forms and quantity; a
third in addition to the image is conscious of the conception or notion
of the thing; a fourth attains to a notion of his notions--he reflects
on his own reflections; and thus we may say without impropriety, that
the one possesses more or less inner sense, than the other. This more or
less betrays already, that philosophy in its first principles must have
a practical or moral, as well as a theoretical or speculative side.
This difference in degree does not exist in the mathematics. Socrates in
Plato shows, that an ignorant slave may be brought to understand and of
himself to solve the most difficult geometrical problem. Socrates drew
the figures for the slave in the sand. The disciples of the critical
philosophy could likewise (as was indeed actually done by La Forge
and some other followers of Des Cartes) represent the origin of our
representations in copper-plates; but no one has yet attempted it, and
it would be utterly useless. To an Esquimaux or New Zealander our most
popular philosophy would be wholly unintelligible. The sense, the inward
organ, for it is not yet born in him. So is there many a one among
us, yes, and some who think themselves philosophers too, to whom the
philosophic organ is entirely wanting. To such a man philosophy is a
mere play of words and notions, like a theory of music to the deaf, or
like the geometry of light to the blind. The connection of the parts and
their logical dependencies may be seen and remembered; but the whole is
groundless and hollow, unsustained by living contact, unaccompanied with
any realizing intuition which exists by and in the act that affirms its
existence, which is known, because it is, and is, because it is known.
The words of Plotinus, in the assumed person of Nature, hold true of the
philosophic energy. To theoroun mou, theoraema poiei, osper oi geometrai
theorountes graphousin; all’ emon mae graphousaes, theorousaes de,
uphistantai ai ton somaton grammai. With me the act of contemplation
makes the thing contemplated, as the geometricians contemplating
describe lines correspondent; but I not describing lines, but simply
contemplating, the representative forms of things rise up into
existence.
The postulate of philosophy and at the same time the test of philosophic
capacity, is no other than the heaven-descended KNOW THYSELF! (E
coelo descendit, Gnothi seauton). And this at once practically and
speculatively. For as philosophy is neither a science of the reason or
understanding only, nor merely a science of morals, but the science of
BEING altogether, its primary ground can be neither merely speculative
nor merely practical, but both in one. All knowledge rests on the
coincidence of an object with a subject. (My readers have been warned
in a former chapter that, for their convenience as well as the writer’s,
the term, subject, is used by me in its scholastic sense as equivalent
to mind or sentient being, and as the necessary correlative of object or
quicquid objicitur menti.) For we can know that only which is true: and
the truth is universally placed in the coincidence of the thought with
the thing, of the representation with the object represented.
Now the sum of all that is merely OBJECTIVE, we will henceforth call
NATURE, confining the term to its passive and material sense, as
comprising all the phaenomena by which its existence is made known
to us. On the other hand the sum of all that is SUBJECTIVE, we may
comprehend in the name of the SELF or INTELLIGENCE. Both conceptions
are in necessary antithesis. Intelligence is conceived of as exclusively
representative, nature as exclusively represented; the one as conscious,
the other as without consciousness. Now in all acts of positive
knowledge there is required a reciprocal concurrence of both, namely
of the conscious being, and of that which is in itself unconscious.
Our problem is to explain this concurrence, its possibility and its
necessity.
During the act of knowledge itself, the objective and subjective are
so instantly united, that we cannot determine to which of the two
the priority belongs. There is here no first, and no second; both are
coinstantaneous and one. While I am attempting to explain this intimate
coalition, I must suppose it dissolved. I must necessarily set out from
the one, to which therefore I give hypothetical antecedence, in order to
arrive at the other. But as there are but two factors or elements in the
problem, subject and object, and as it is left indeterminate from which
of them I should commence, there are two cases equally possible.
1. EITHER THE OBJECTIVE IS TAKEN AS THE FIRST, AND THEN WE HAVE TO
ACCOUNT FOR THE SUPERVENTION OF THE SUBJECTIVE, WHICH COALESCES WITH IT.
The notion of the subjective is not contained in the notion of the
objective. On the contrary they mutually exclude each other. The
subjective therefore must supervene to the objective. The conception of
nature does not apparently involve the co-presence of an intelligence
making an ideal duplicate of it, that is, representing it. This desk
for instance would (according to our natural notions) be, though there
should exist no sentient being to look at it. This then is the problem
of natural philosophy. It assumes the objective or unconscious nature as
the first, and as therefore to explain how intelligence can supervene to
it, or how itself can grow into intelligence. If it should appear, that
all enlightened naturalists, without having distinctly proposed the
problem to themselves, have yet constantly moved in the line of its
solution, it must afford a strong presumption that the problem itself
is founded in nature. For if all knowledge has, as it were, two poles
reciprocally required and presupposed, all sciences must proceed from
the one or the other, and must tend toward the opposite as far as the
equatorial point in which both are reconciled and become identical. The
necessary tendency therefore of all natural philosophy is from nature to
intelligence; and this, and no other is the true ground and occasion of
the instinctive striving to introduce theory into our views of natural
phaenomena. The highest perfection of natural philosophy would consist
in the perfect spiritualization of all the laws of nature into laws
of intuition and intellect. The phaenomena (the material) most wholly
disappear, and the laws alone (the formal) must remain. Thence it comes,
that in nature itself the more the principle of law breaks forth, the
more does the husk drop off, the phaenomena themselves become more
spiritual and at length cease altogether in our consciousness. The
optical phaenomena are but a geometry, the lines of which are drawn
by light, and the materiality of this light itself has already become
matter of doubt. In the appearances of magnetism all trace of matter is
lost, and of the phaenomena of gravitation, which not a few among the
most illustrious Newtonians have declared no otherwise comprehensible
than as an immediate spiritual influence, there remains nothing but
its law, the execution of which on a vast scale is the mechanism of
the heavenly motions. The theory of natural philosophy would then be
completed, when all nature was demonstrated to be identical in
essence with that, which in its highest known power exists in man as
intelligence and self-consciousness; when the heavens and the earth
shall declare not only the power of their maker, but the glory and the
presence of their God, even as he appeared to the great prophet during
the vision of the mount in the skirts of his divinity.
This may suffice to show, that even natural science, which commences
with the material phaenomenon as the reality and substance of things
existing, does yet by the necessity of theorizing unconsciously, and
as it were instinctively, end in nature as an intelligence; and by this
tendency the science of nature becomes finally natural philosophy, the
one of the two poles of fundamental science.
2. OR THE SUBJECTIVE IS TAKEN AS THE FIRST, AND THE PROBLEM THEN IS, HOW
THERE SUPERVENES TO IT A COINCIDENT OBJECTIVE.
In the pursuit of these sciences, our success in each, depends on an
austere and faithful adherence to its own principles, with a careful
separation and exclusion of those, which appertain to the opposite
science. As the natural philosopher, who directs his views to the
objective, avoids above all things the intermixture of the subjective
in his knowledge, as for instance, arbitrary suppositions or rather
suflictions, occult qualities, spiritual agents, and the substitution of
final for efficient causes; so on the other hand, the transcendental
or intelligential philosopher is equally anxious to preclude all
interpellation of the objective into the subjective principles of his
science, as for instance the assumption of impresses or configurations
in the brain, correspondent to miniature pictures on the retina painted
by rays of light from supposed originals, which are not the immediate
and real objects of vision, but deductions from it for the purposes of
explanation. This purification of the mind is effected by an absolute
and scientific scepticism, to which the mind voluntarily determines
itself for the specific purpose of future certainty. Des Cartes who
(in his meditations) himself first, at least of the moderns, gave
a beautiful example of this voluntary doubt, this self-determined
indetermination, happily expresses its utter difference from the
scepticism of vanity or irreligion: Nec tamen in Scepticos imitabar,
qui dubitant tantum ut dubitent, et praeter incertitudinem ipsam nihil
quaerunt. Nam contra totus in eo eram ut aliquid certi reperirem [51].
Nor is it less distinct in its motives and final aim, than in its proper
objects, which are not as in ordinary scepticism the prejudices of
education and circumstance, but those original and innate prejudices
which nature herself has planted in all men, and which to all but the
philosopher are the first principles of knowledge, and the final test of
truth.
Now these essential prejudices are all reducible to the one fundamental
presumption, THAT THERE EXIST THINGS WITHOUT US. As this on the one hand
originates, neither in grounds nor arguments, and yet on the other hand
remains proof against all attempts to remove it by grounds or arguments
(naturam furca expellas tamen usque redibit;) on the one hand lays
claim to IMMEDIATE certainty as a position at once indemonstrable
and irresistible, and yet on the other hand, inasmuch as it refers to
something essentially different from ourselves, nay even in opposition
to ourselves, leaves it inconceivable how it could possibly become a
part of our immediate consciousness; (in other words how that, which
ex hypothesi is and continues to be extrinsic and alien to our being,
should become a modification of our being) the philosopher therefore
compels himself to treat this faith as nothing more than a prejudice,
innate indeed and connatural, but still a prejudice.
The other position, which not only claims but necessitates the admission
of its immediate certainty, equally for the scientific reason of the
philosopher as for the common sense of mankind at large, namely, I AM,
cannot so properly be entitled a prejudice. It is groundless indeed; but
then in the very idea it precludes all ground, and separated from
the immediate consciousness loses its whole sense and import. It is
groundless; but only because it is itself the ground of all other
certainty. Now the apparent contradiction, that the former position,
namely, the existence of things without us, which from its nature
cannot be immediately certain, should be received as blindly and as
independently of all grounds as the existence of our own being, the
Transcendental philosopher can solve only by the supposition, that the
former is unconsciously involved in the latter; that it is not only
coherent but identical, and one and the same thing with our own
immediate self consciousness. To demonstrate this identity is the office
and object of his philosophy.
If it be said, that this is idealism, let it be remembered that it
is only so far idealism, as it is at the same time, and on that very
account, the truest and most binding realism. For wherein does the
realism of mankind properly consist? In the assertion that there exists
a something without them, what, or how, or where they know not, which
occasions the objects of their perception? Oh no! This is neither
connatural nor universal. It is what a few have taught and learned
in the schools, and which the many repeat without asking themselves
concerning their own meaning. The realism common to all mankind is far
elder and lies infinitely deeper than this hypothetical explanation
of the origin of our perceptions, an explanation skimmed from the mere
surface of mechanical philosophy. It is the table itself, which the man
of common sense believes himself to see, not the phantom of a table,
from which he may argumentatively deduce the reality of a table, which
he does not see. If to destroy the reality of all, that we actually
behold, be idealism, what can be more egregiously so, than the system of
modern metaphysics, which banishes us to a land of shadows, surrounds
us with apparitions, and distinguishes truth from illusion only by the
majority of those who dream the same dream? “I asserted that the world
was mad,” exclaimed poor Lee, “and the world said, that I was mad, and
confound them, they outvoted me.”
It is to the true and original realism, that I would direct the
attention. This believes and requires neither more nor less, than the
object which it beholds or presents to itself, is the real and very
object. In this sense, however much we may strive against it, we are all
collectively born idealists, and therefore and only therefore are we at
the same time realists. But of this the philosophers of the schools know
nothing, or despise the faith as the prejudice of the ignorant vulgar,
because they live and move in a crowd of phrases and notions from which
human nature has long ago vanished. Oh, ye that reverence yourselves,
and walk humbly with the divinity in your own hearts, ye are worthy of a
better philosophy! Let the dead bury the dead, but do you preserve your
human nature, the depth of which was never yet fathomed by a philosophy
made up of notions and mere logical entities.
In the third treatise of my Logosophia, announced at the end of this
volume, I shall give (Deo volente) the demonstrations and constructions
of the Dynamic Philosophy scientifically arranged. It is, according
to my conviction, no other than the system of Pythagoras and of Plato
revived and purified from impure mixtures. Doctrina per tot manus
tradita tandem in vappam desiit! The science of arithmetic furnishes
instances, that a rule may be useful in practical application, and for
the particular purpose may be sufficiently authenticated by the result,
before it has itself been fully demonstrated. It is enough, if only it
be rendered intelligible. This will, I trust, have been effected in the
following Theses for those of my readers, who are willing to accompany
me through the following chapter, in which the results will be applied
to the deduction of the Imagination, and with it the principles of
production and of genial criticism in the fine arts.
THESIS I
Truth is correlative to being. Knowledge without a correspondent reality
is no knowledge; if we know, there must be somewhat known by us. To know
is in its very essence a verb active.
THESIS II
All truth is either mediate, that is, derived from some other truth
or truths; or immediate and original. The latter is absolute, and its
formula A. A.; the former is of dependent or conditional certainty, and
represented in the formula B. A. The certainty, which adheres in A, is
attributable to B.
SCHOLIUM. A chain without a staple, from which all the links derived
their stability, or a series without a first, has been not inaptly
allegorized, as a string of blind men, each holding the skirt of the man
before him, reaching far out of sight, but all moving without the least
deviation in one straight line. It would be naturally taken for
granted, that there was a guide at the head of the file: what if it were
answered, No! Sir, the men are without number, and infinite blindness
supplies the place of sight?
Equally inconceivable is a cycle of equal truths without a common and
central principle, which prescribes to each its proper sphere in the
system of science. That the absurdity does not so immediately strike us,
that it does not seem equally unimaginable, is owing to a surreptitious
act of the imagination, which, instinctively and without our noticing
the same, not only fills up the intervening spaces, and contemplates the
cycle (of B. C. D. E. F. etc.) as a continuous circle (A.) giving to all
collectively the unity of their common orbit; but likewise supplies,
by a sort of subintelligitur, the one central power, which renders the
movement harmonious and cyclical.
THESIS III
We are to seek therefore for some absolute truth capable of
communicating to other positions a certainty, which it has not itself
borrowed; a truth self-grounded, unconditional and known by its own
light. In short, we have to find a somewhat which is, simply because it
is. In order to be such, it must be one which is its own predicate,
so far at least that all other nominal predicates must be modes and
repetitions of itself. Its existence too must be such, as to preclude
the possibility of requiring a cause or antecedent without an absurdity.
THESIS IV
That there can be but one such principle, may be proved a priori; for
were there two or more, each must refer to some other, by which its
equality is affirmed; consequently neither would be self-established,
as the hypothesis demands. And a posteriori, it will be proved by
the principle itself when it is discovered, as involving universal
antecedence in its very conception.
SCHOLIUM. If we affirm of a board that it is blue, the predicate (blue)
is accidental, and not implied in the subject, board. If we affirm of
a circle that it is equi-radial, the predicate indeed is implied in the
definition of the subject; but the existence of the subject itself
is contingent, and supposes both a cause and a percipient. The same
reasoning will apply to the indefinite number of supposed indemonstrable
truths exempted from the profane approach of philosophic investigation
by the amiable Beattie, and other less eloquent and not more profound
inaugurators of common sense on the throne of philosophy; a fruitless
attempt, were it only that it is the two-fold function of philosophy
to reconcile reason with common sense, and to elevate common sense into
reason.
THESIS V
Such a principle cannot be any THING or OBJECT. Each thing is what it is
in consequence of some other thing. An infinite, independent [52]
thing, is no less a contradiction, than an infinite circle or a sideless
triangle. Besides a thing is that, which is capable of being an object
which itself is not the sole percipient. But an object is inconceivable
without a subject as its antithesis. Omne perceptum percipientem
supponit.
But neither can the principle be found in a subject as a subject,
contra-distinguished from an object: for unicuique percipienti aliquid
objicitur perceptum. It is to be found therefore neither in object
nor subject taken separately, and consequently, as no other third is
conceivable, it must be found in that which is neither subject nor
object exclusively, but which is the identity of both.
THESIS VI
This principle, and so characterised manifests itself in the SUM or
I AM; which I shall hereafter indiscriminately express by the words
spirit, self, and self-consciousness. In this, and in this alone,
object and subject, being and knowing, are identical, each involving
and supposing the other. In other words, it is a subject which becomes
a subject by the act of constructing itself objectively to itself; but
which never is an object except for itself, and only so far as by the
very same act it becomes a subject. It may be described therefore as
a perpetual self-duplication of one and the same power into object and
subject, which presuppose each other, and can exist only as antitheses.
SCHOLIUM. If a man be asked how he knows that he is? he can only answer,
sum quia sum. But if (the absoluteness of this certainty having been
admitted) he be again asked, how he, the individual person, came to be,
then in relation to the ground of his existence, not to the ground of
his knowledge of that existence, he might reply, sum quia Deus est, or
still more philosophically, sum quia in Deo sum.
But if we elevate our conception to the absolute self, the great eternal
I AM, then the principle of being, and of knowledge, of idea, and of
reality; the ground of existence, and the ground of the knowledge of
existence, are absolutely identical, Sum quia sum [53]; I am, because I
affirm myself to be; I affirm myself to be, because I am.
THESIS VII
If then I know myself only through myself, it is contradictory to
require any other predicate of self, but that of self-consciousness.
Only in the self-consciousness of a spirit is there the required
identity of object and of representation; for herein consists the
essence of a spirit, that it is self-representative. If therefore this
be the one only immediate truth, in the certainty of which the reality
of our collective knowledge is grounded, it must follow that the spirit
in all the objects which it views, views only itself. If this could
be proved, the immediate reality of all intuitive knowledge would be
assured. It has been shown, that a spirit is that, which is its own
object, yet not originally an object, but an absolute subject for which
all, itself included, may become an object. It must therefore be an ACT;
for every object is, as an object, dead, fixed, incapable in itself of
any action, and necessarily finite. Again the spirit (originally
the identity of object and subject) must in some sense dissolve this
identity, in order to be conscious of it; fit alter et idem. But
this implies an act, and it follows therefore that intelligence
or self-consciousness is impossible, except by and in a will. The
self-conscious spirit therefore is a will; and freedom must be assumed
as a ground of philosophy, and can never be deduced from it.
THESIS VIII
Whatever in its origin is objective, is likewise as such necessarily
finite. Therefore, since the spirit is not originally an object, and
as the subject exists in antithesis to an object, the spirit cannot
originally be finite. But neither can it be a subject without becoming
an object, and, as it is originally the identity of both, it can be
conceived neither as infinite nor finite exclusively, but as the most
original union of both. In the existence, in the reconciling, and the
recurrence of this contradiction consists the process and mystery of
production and life.
THESIS IX
This principium commune essendi et cognoscendi, as subsisting in a WILL,
or primary ACT of self-duplication, is the mediate or indirect principle
of every science; but it is the immediate and direct principle of the
ultimate science alone, i.e. of transcendental philosophy alone. For it
must be remembered, that all these Theses refer solely to one of the
two Polar Sciences, namely, to that which commences with, and rigidly
confines itself within, the subjective, leaving the objective (as far
as it is exclusively objective) to natural philosophy, which is its
opposite pole. In its very idea therefore as a systematic knowledge of
our collective KNOWING, (scientia scientiae) it involves the necessity
of some one highest principle of knowing, as at once the source and
accompanying form in all particular acts of intellect and perception.
This, it has been shown, can be found only in the act and evolution of
self-consciousness. We are not investigating an absolute principium
essendi; for then, I admit, many valid objections might be started
against our theory; but an absolute principium cognoscendi. The result
of both the sciences, or their equatorial point, would be the principle
of a total and undivided philosophy, as, for prudential reasons, I
have chosen to anticipate in the Scholium to Thesis VI and the note
subjoined. In other words, philosophy would pass into religion, and
religion become inclusive of philosophy. We begin with the I KNOW
MYSELF, in order to end with the absolute I AM. We proceed from the
SELF, in order to lose and find all self in GOD.
THESIS X
The transcendental philosopher does not inquire, what ultimate ground of
our knowledge there may lie out of our knowing, but what is the last in
our knowing itself, beyond which we cannot pass. The principle of our
knowing is sought within the sphere of our knowing. It must be some
thing therefore, which can itself be known. It is asserted only, that
the act of self-consciousness is for us the source and principle of
all our possible knowledge. Whether abstracted from us there exists any
thing higher and beyond this primary self-knowing, which is for us the
form of all our knowing must be decided by the result.
That the self-consciousness is the fixed point, to which for us all is
mortised and annexed, needs no further proof. But that the
self-consciousness may be the modification of a higher form of being,
perhaps of a higher consciousness, and this again of a yet higher, and
so on in an infinite regressus; in short, that self-consciousness may
be itself something explicable into something, which must lie beyond
the possibility of our knowledge, because the whole synthesis of our
intelligence is first formed in and through the self-consciousness,
does not at all concern us as transcendental philosophers. For to us,
self-consciousness is not a kind of being, but a kind of knowing, and
that too the highest and farthest that exists for us. It may however be
shown, and has in part already been shown earlier, that even when the
Objective is assumed as the first, we yet can never pass beyond the
principle of self-consciousness. Should we attempt it, we must be
driven back from ground to ground, each of which would cease to be a
ground the moment we pressed on it. We must be whirled down the gulf of
an infinite series. But this would make our reason baffle the end and
purpose of all reason, namely, unity and system. Or we must break off
the series arbitrarily, and affirm an absolute something that is in and
of itself at once cause and effect (causa sui), subject and object, or
rather the absolute identity of both. But as this is inconceivable,
except in a self-consciousness, it follows, that even as natural
philosophers we must arrive at the same principle from which as
transcendental philosophers we set out; that is, in a
self-consciousness in which the principium essendi does not stand to
the principlum cognoscende in the relation of cause to effect, but both
the one and the other are co-inherent and identical. Thus the true
system of natural philosophy places the sole reality of things in an
ABSOLUTE, which is at once causa sui et effectus, pataer autopator,
uios heautou--in the absolute identity of subject and object, which it
calls nature, and which in its highest power is nothing else than
self-conscious will or intelligence. In this sense the position of
Malebranche, that we see all things in God, is a strict philosophical
truth; and equally true is the assertion of Hobbes, of Hartley, and of
their masters in ancient Greece, that all real knowledge supposes a
prior sensation. For sensation itself is but vision nascent, not the
cause of intelligence, but intelligence itself revealed as an earlier
power in the process of self-construction.
Makar, ilathi moi;
Pater, ilathi moi
Ei para kosmon,
Ei para moiran
Ton son ethigon!
Bearing then this in mind, that intelligence is a self-development, not
a quality supervening to a substance, we may abstract from all degree,
and for the purpose of philosophic construction reduce it to kind, under
the idea of an indestructible power with two opposite and counteracting
forces, which by a metaphor borrowed from astronomy, we may call the
centrifugal and centripetal forces. The intelligence in the one tends to
objectize itself, and in the other to know itself in the object. It
will be hereafter my business to construct by a series of intuitions
the progressive schemes, that must follow from such a power with such
forces, till I arrive at the fulness of the human intelligence. For
my present purpose, I assume such a power as my principle, in order to
deduce from it a faculty, the generation, agency, and application of
which form the contents of the ensuing chapter.
In a preceding page I have justified the use of technical terms in
philosophy, whenever they tend to preclude confusion of thought, and
when they assist the memory by the exclusive singleness of their meaning
more than they may, for a short time, bewilder the attention by their
strangeness. I trust, that I have not extended this privilege beyond
the grounds on which I have claimed it; namely, the conveniency of the
scholastic phrase to distinguish the kind from all degrees, or rather
to express the kind with the abstraction of degree, as for instance
multeity instead of multitude; or secondly, for the sake of
correspondence in sound in interdependent or antithetical terms, as
subject and object; or lastly, to avoid the wearying recurrence of
circumlocutions and definitions. Thus I shall venture to use potence,
in order to express a specific degree of a power, in imitation of the
Algebraists. I have even hazarded the new verb potenziate, with its
derivatives, in order to express the combination or transfer of powers.
It is with new or unusual terms, as with privileges in courts of justice
or legislature; there can be no legitimate privilege, where there
already exists a positive law adequate to the purpose; and when there is
no law in existence, the privilege is to be justified by its accordance
with the end, or final cause, of all law. Unusual and new-coined
words are doubtless an evil; but vagueness, confusion, and imperfect
conveyance of our thoughts, are a far greater. Every system, which is
under the necessity of using terms not familiarized by the metaphysics
in fashion, will be described as written in an unintelligible style, and
the author must expect the charge of having substituted learned jargon
for clear conception; while, according to the creed of our modern
philosophers, nothing is deemed a clear conception, but what is
representable by a distinct image. Thus the conceivable is reduced
within the bounds of the picturable. Hinc patet, qui fiat, ut cum
irrepraesentabile et impossibile vulgo ejusdem significatus habeantur,
conceptus tam continui, quam infiniti, a plurimis rejiciantur, quippe
quorum, secundum leges cognitionis intuitivae, repraesentatio est
impossibilis. Quanquam autem harum e non paucis scholis explosarum
notionum, praesertim prioris, causam hic non gero, maximi tamen
momendi erit monuisse. gravissimo illos errore labi, qui tam perverse
argumentandi ratione utuntur. Quicquid enim repugnat legibus intellectus
et rationis, utique est impossibile; quod autem, cum rationis purae
sit objectum, legibus cognitionis intuitivae tantummodo non subest, non
item. Nam hic dissensus inter facultatem sensitivam et intellectualem,
(quarum indolem mox exponam,) nihil indigitat, nisi, quas mens ab
intellectu acceptas fert ideas abstractas, illas in concreto exsequi
et in intuitus commutare saepenumero non posse. Haec autem reluctantia
subjectiva mentitur, ut plurimum, repugnantiam aliquam objectivam, et
incautos facile fallit, limitibus, quibus mens humana circumscribitur,
pro iis habitis, quibus ipsa rerum essentia continetur. [54]
Critics, who are most ready to bring this charge of pedantry and
unintelligibility, are the most apt to overlook the important
fact, that, besides the language of words, there is a language of
spirits--(sermo interior)--and that the former is only the vehicle of
the latter. Consequently their assurance, that they do not understand
the philosophic writer, instead of proving any thing against the
philosophy, may furnish an equal, and (caeteris paribus) even a stronger
presumption against their own philosophic talent.
Great indeed are the obstacles which an English metaphysician has to
encounter. Amongst his most respectable and intelligent judges, there
will be many who have devoted their attention exclusively to the
concerns and interests of human life, and who bring with them to
the perusal of a philosophic system an habitual aversion to all
speculations, the utility and application of which are not evident
and immediate. To these I would in the first instance merely oppose an
authority, which they themselves hold venerable, that of Lord Bacon: non
inutiles Scientiae existimandae sunt, quarum in se nullus est usus, si
ingenia acuant et ordinent.
There are others, whose prejudices are still more formidable, inasmuch
as they are grounded in their moral feelings and religious principles,
which had been alarmed and shocked by the impious and pernicious tenets
defended by Hume, Priestley, and the French fatalists or necessitarians;
some of whom had perverted metaphysical reasonings to the denial of the
mysteries and indeed of all the peculiar doctrines of Christianity;
and others even to the subversion of all distinction between right
and wrong. I would request such men to consider what an eminent and
successful defender of the Christian faith has observed, that true
metaphysics are nothing else but true divinity, and that in fact the
writers, who have given them such just offence, were sophists, who had
taken advantage of the general neglect into which the science of logic
has unhappily fallen, rather than metaphysicians, a name indeed which
those writers were the first to explode as unmeaning. Secondly, I would
remind them, that as long as there are men in the world to whom the
Gnothi seauton is an instinct and a command from their own nature, so
long will there be metaphysicians and metaphysical speculations; that
false metaphysics can be effectually counteracted by true metaphysics
alone; and that if the reasoning be clear, solid and pertinent, the
truth deduced can never be the less valuable on account of the depth
from which it may have been drawn.
A third class profess themselves friendly to metaphysics, and believe
that they are themselves metaphysicians. They have no objection to
system or terminology, provided it be the method and the nomenclature
to which they have been familiarized in the writings of Locke, Hume,
Hartley, Condillac, or perhaps Dr. Reid, and Professor Stewart. To
objections from this cause, it is a sufficient answer, that one main
object of my attempt was to demonstrate the vagueness or insufficiency
of the terms used in the metaphysical schools of France and Great
Britain since the revolution, and that the errors which I propose to
attack cannot subsist, except as they are concealed behind the mask of a
plausible and indefinite nomenclature.
But the worst and widest impediment still remains. It is the
predominance of a popular philosophy, at once the counterfeit and the
mortal enemy of all true and manly metaphysical research. It is that
corruption, introduced by certain immethodical aphorisming eclectics,
who, dismissing not only all system, but all logical connection, pick
and choose whatever is most plausible and showy; who select, whatever
words can have some semblance of sense attached to them without the
least expenditure of thought; in short whatever may enable men to talk
of what they do not understand, with a careful avoidance of every thing
that might awaken them to a moment’s suspicion of their ignorance. This
alas! is an irremediable disease, for it brings with it, not so much an
indisposition to any particular system, but an utter loss of taste and
faculty for all system and for all philosophy. Like echoes that beget
each other amongst the mountains, the praise or blame of such men
rolls in volleys long after the report from the original blunderbuss.
Sequacitas est potius et coitio quam consensus: et tamen (quod pessimum
est) pusillanimitas ista non sine arrogantia et fastidio se offert. [55]
I shall now proceed to the nature and genesis of the Imagination; but I
must first take leave to notice, that after a more accurate perusal of
Mr. Wordsworth’s remarks on the Imagination, in his preface to the new
edition of his poems, I find that my conclusions are not so consentient
with his as, I confess, I had taken for granted. In an article
contributed by me to Mr. Southey’s Omniana, On the soul and its organs
of sense, are the following sentences. “These (the human faculties) I
would arrange under the different senses and powers: as the eye, the
ear, the touch, etc.; the imitative power, voluntary and automatic;
the imagination, or shaping and modifying power; the fancy, or the
aggregative and associative power; the understanding, or the regulative,
substantiating and realizing power; the speculative reason, vis
theoretica et scientifica, or the power by which we produce or aim to
produce unity, necessity, and universality in all our knowledge by means
of principles a priori [56]; the will, or practical reason; the faculty
of choice (Germanice, Willkuehr) and (distinct both from the moral will
and the choice,) the sensation of volition, which I have found reason to
include under the head of single and double touch.” To this, as far as
it relates to the subject in question, namely the words (the aggregative
and associative power) Mr. Wordsworth’s “objection is only that the
definition is too general. To aggregate and to associate, to evoke and
to combine, belong as well to the Imagination as to the Fancy.” I reply,
that if, by the power of evoking and combining, Mr. Wordsworth means the
same as, and no more than, I meant by the aggregative and associative,
I continue to deny, that it belongs at all to the Imagination; and I
am disposed to conjecture, that he has mistaken the copresence of Fancy
with Imagination for the operation of the latter singly. A man may work
with two very different tools at the same moment; each has its share in
the work, but the work effected by each is distinct and different. But
it will probably appear in the next chapter, that deeming it necessary
to go back much further than Mr. Wordsworth’s subject required or
permitted, I have attached a meaning to both Fancy and Imagination,
which he had not in view, at least while he was writing that preface. He
will judge. Would to Heaven, I might meet with many such readers! I will
conclude with the words of Bishop Jeremy Taylor: “He to whom all things
are one, who draweth all things to one, and seeth all things in one, may
enjoy true peace and rest of spirit.” [57]